Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Taking After the Psych(ologists & iatrists)os

I recommend the whole 18 and a quarter hour long Episode 88 of the Peace Revolution Podcast, but at hour 18, we find a gem inside of an Adam Curtis film. Apparently, some psychiatrists "found" that half the population has mental disorders by testing their system.  Mr. Curtis does not understand what he is describing.  He expresses no consternation or amazement that, although the test of the system returned "astonishing results," while it was being tested, its results were taken as accurate.

At 38:30 in "The Trap 1 Fuck you Buddy! Adam Curtis" an experiment is described which led to a test that seems to have failed to find solid evidence that their theory was BS, so they moved forward as if their theory were rock solid. This is how coercive authorities wreak havoc with our world. Adam Curtis does not realize what he is describing from 43:15 through 43:54. After you listen, listen again to what he said at 43:21, "to TEST the system." He completely misses the implication of TESTING less than 30 seconds later when he, and the people filmed in his documentary make gross logical errors. We still live in the world which pathologizes normal human experience.

Sadly, the official interpretation of the obviously broken system caused a large number of people to use the test as a list of recommendations they could follow in order to avoid "mental disorders."  While this is discouraging to those of us with working brains, it provides a strategy that might be effective.

I developed the following test which should help determine whether or not the person taking it has a quality as undesirable as a mental disorder, the quality of destructive self-deception, by which I mean those who need some kind of counseling.  Counseling is appropriate if their lives are to proceed normally rather than getting worse and worse, ultimately leading to premature curtailment of what could otherwise be a long and joyful life.

Self-Deception Test

  1. Do you generally question the validity of what authority figures tell you?
  2. Do you find that parts of your understanding of the world may not be accurate?
  3. When you test a system and its results astonish you, do you look for flaws in the system?
  4. Are you curious about things that disturb or upset you?
  5. Does your conscience ever tell you that obeying someone is wrong?
  6. Do you follow your conscience even when it tells you to defy an authority figure?
  7. For the questions so far to which you answered yes, were they easy?
  8. Have you ever deceived yourself?

SCORING:
You get one point for each question you answered YES.
0 points: Please avoid me, and good luck!
1 - 2 points: You are honest sometimes, which gives me hope.
3 - 6 points: You are like most people, most likely asleep or in denial and in danger because of it.
7 - 8 points: Welcome to the club.  Please help more people get in.

If you scored anywhere from 1 to 6, please contact me for counseling and let me know which questions you had to answer with a NO.  If you got a 7 or an 8, please offer your counseling services to others.  You may copy and paste this post as your own, or else rewrite it as you see fit.  If you scored a zero, well, your suicide cannot come soon enough for me.

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