Do they understand you are bipolar? Or what bipolar is?
the destructive instinct
- Thread starter allisone417
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Fraggle Rocker
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Well then you've just gotten a lesson: "Don't do stupid things that you can't undo." Remember that lessons aren't just for you, they're for everyone. People see you being followed around by this, maybe they'll be a little less likely to do it themselves. That's why most of the nanny-state laws are bad. People are not impressed by being told that they must wear seat belts, use condoms, or avoid taking LSD outdoors. We have to spend a zillion dollars in tax money and repeal our own civil rights to get them to behave themselves. But when one of their friends goes through a windshield, gets pregnant or AIDS, or stares into the sun for five minutes and ends up blind, it might have more of an impact and the total cost to society is lower.
Besides, no name is unique. I figured "All Is One" was something inscrutably metaphysical.
I want to capture a bear in Alaska and take him to Antarctica. I'll make a fortune for being able to go on tour with the world's first bipolar bear.
Probably not. The kooks I know who do say that it's governed by a set of rules almost as complicated as the tax code. You have to endure the life you were given because it's some kind of lesson, challenge or punishment. Ending it prematurely is a worse violation of the rules than genocide. You'll be sent to Karma Prison: come back as a Baffin Island Cootie with a ten-thousand year lifespan.
It might have been better to say "people who love her." When someone you love dies, you can't help grieving, no matter how much you can appreciate the fact that her suffering has ended. Suicide is the worst possible way to lose a loved one. Because she had a choice, you spend the rest of your life wondering what you could have done differently to help her get her life onto a more positive path.
Sorry, I'm taking this a bit personally because just yesterday a friend's nephew offed himself, his own son's best pal. The poor kid is inconsolable and wracked with guilt.
I've known three or four people who are still living with the suicide of a loved one. I don't mean to be too terribly insensitive, and I admit that this is not true in all cases or perhaps even most cases, but for some people one of the motivations for suicide is to punish the people who love them.
My wife and I are aware of each other's wishes and there's an ostrich egg full of water ready for each of us. Unfortunately it is indeed difficult to get the medical establishment to follow these instructions because every day they can keep you alive is more money in their pocket. And to be more charitable, it's not easy for a person who has devoted himself to saving lives to watch somebody die.
My mother lived all alone and when she had a stroke she just lay patiently on the floor. Unfortunately she lived in a trailer park--excuse me, "mobile home community"--for geezers and after two days the neighbors started saying, "Has anybody seen Granny Fraggle?" They called the cops and she ended up in a warehouse. She had all the forms on file and we carefully chose a place that promised to obey them, but they still violated them and tube-fed her after her next stroke, giving her another year that she didn't want. Her sister did a better job, she lived in a mobile out in the middle of the desert and by the time anybody found her she was part of the landscape.
Still, I really do believe that the Baby Boomers, whose wants and needs have been changing our culture ever since the Hula Hoop and rock'n'roll, will get the rules rewritten about end-of-life issues. At the very least, people will be able to spend their last days smoking some really good drugs.
We knew that was going to happen when we shuffled the index around. It's easy enough to move threads, so if the moderator left it here obviously he doesn't think it's a big problem. This certainly does not belong in Free Thoughts, maybe Human Science or Science and Society if you want to get picky. This is close enough.
People have been exorcising their demons that way for millennia. It must work.
This is a "virtual community" and it works. People have been adept at building new kinds of social relationships since the first extended family unit of hunter-gatherers figured out how to cultivate a food crop (fig trees if you're wondering), built a permanent settlement, and had to learn to live in harmony and cooperation with people from outside their family.
Well.... Up until very recently, people have been able to choose between staying in the Mesolithic Era (nomadic hunter-gatherers living with "tribal group dynamics") or showing up at the edge of the nearest village or city and asking, "Hey how can I get in on this deal?" People have been voting with their feet and the winner is: Civilization! Of course there have always been a handful of people who didn't like it and voted the other way, returning to the wilderness to live by their hunting, fishing and bear-fighting skills. That option is not really available any more except in stark places like Alaska. I think people like you would have an easier time sorting life out if you had that option available. Even if you decided to stay where you are, the process of making that choice just has to be beneficial.
Fraggle Rocker said:
he's a daoist... so i think he believes in rebirth, because eastern religions/philosophies teach it.
life is not a lesson, challenge or punishment... but if you think it is, then it is. thinking that life is a lesson or challenge can make life easier.
i can never die because i exist in everybody. we are the same, because both of us call ourself "i".
when we have learned everything, we just forget everything again and start over. there is no karma, nothing is no one's fault because nobody has a choice. there is no choice but to have a choice. hitler wasn't any worse than jesus. he only had a different role to play.
the nothing had no choice but to create everything... because it was/is everything.
if you love god/love/yourself in everything, you'll never have to be sad if someone you love dies, because god can never die. i don't love anybody, so if someone in my family dies it's no different than if someone in africa dies. no one is closer to me.
people become sad when someone they love dies because they have made the person a part of their ego/love/heart, so a part of them dies when the person dies. love is like gravity. people love each other because they are separate from them. jesus loves everybody because he is one with them.
you can't love anybody, you can only love the love itself (a.k.a. god). without that feeling, you wouldn't love anybody. the feeling of love is the connection to god, who you really are... happiness.
people are naturally happy. think of children. but when people "grow up", they create resistance with their ego... it separates them from themselves. fear of being happy.
how stupid, what's the point of punishing someone when they never even find out because they're dead. when you're dead, nothing exists, so no one can suffer. but you can't die.
you can't die, you can only forget that you are eternal. that's the only "cure" for the disorder called life. but when people use that cure, for some reason, most of them want to be eternal again.
life is disorder. death is order, the cure for disorder. but the cure is nonexistent because it is nonexistence.
-- just some noise
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Whom are you talking about? AllIsOne is a girl and I don't get the impression that she's into woo-woo. Besides, the Dao has a considerably smaller component of the supernatural in it than even Buddhism, to the point that one could argue that it is not a true "religion."
One of my wacked-out friends who is into woo-woo explained very patiently that each life you are born into was selected for you by a supernatural committee that includes yourself during the time that you're up there between lives. It has a purpose, partially something you chose because you want the experience and partially something that is chosen for you because you either need or deserve the experience. I don't know if she speaks for all believers in reincarnation but this version of it is no more preposterous and no more based in sheer wishful fantasy than the basic concept of a "soul" at all. At least it was quite entertaining.
Everyone is entitled to their beliefs, but that one is not very useful for helping to advance civilization and I surely hope it doesn't catch on. Some people really are bad and need to be culled from the herd. I don't believe in the death penalty because it is incompatible with the fundamental principles of civilization, but people like Hitler need to be forcibly removed from positions of power and placed in secure facilities where they can't infect people with their psychotic lunacy. With the current incomplete state of civilization and the limits of our technology, sometimes that regrettably can only be done with deadly force but it's not a decision to be made lightly.
Love is an instinct that goes back beyond the Stone Age, as is grief over the death of a loved one. Even other species practice it. I'm a great believer in the power of our uniquely massive forebrains to override our animal instincts, but I doubt that we'll be able to override this one. And who would want to? We need people to expand the circle of loved ones they care about in order to advance civilization. We need people to feel grief every time somebody they've never heard of dies in Iraq or Darfur. I don't see how a religion that teaches people not to mourn the death of someone they love is worth doodly squat.
Exactly. And you're supposed to feel bad about both of them! That's what's wrong with America and much of the human race. They don't feel much of a pang when someone on the other side of the planet dies, even if it's to a large extent their own fault! Shortly after 9/11, someone asked an American how many Muslims he would be willing to sacrifice in order to save 3,000 American lives. He answered, "All of them." This is just sick!
Your statements have veered into complete incoherence. Nonetheless, even though we may regard it as "stupid" for people to punish their family and friends by killing themselves, some of them do it. It is certainly worth bringing that to the attention of someone who is considering suicide, in case that is part of their own motivation and they simply haven't realized it.
Now you're veering off into religion. Note that General Science and Technology is one of our science subforums. Science and the scientific method are to be respected here at all times--or at least not flouted--even when we're talking about dating, sports, current events or suicide. If you want to hold a discussion in which a supernatural model of the universe is accepted as truthful, rather than simply being discussed academically, please take it to the Religion subforum next time. Thanks.
emptyforceofchi
wrong, i am not. i must believe what you believe.
it's better to feel good about both of them, because feeling bad makes the world more bad.
teehee
[qipte]Science and the scientific method are to be respected here at all times--or at least not flouted--even when we're talking about dating, sports, current events or suicide. If you want to hold a discussion in which a supernatural model of the universe is accepted as truthful, rather than simply being discussed academically, please take it to the Religion subforum next time. Thanks.[/QUOTE]
wow u sound calm like a book
Bipolar II. The highs are not manic but the lows are just as depressive and destructive.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Oh. I don't see any traces of daoism in his writing, and I don't think the dao is really very strong on reincarnation anyway. If you can even call it a religion it's very much a religion of this world, like Rastafarianism.
Duality is part of the universe. It's okay to feel bad about bad things, even if they're bad things that happen normally and naturally. Losing someone you love is a bad thing, even if it is inevitable, but certainly if you feel you might have helped prevent it. Losing hundreds of thousands of people in Darfur due to greed, corruption and religions that squash the rich human spirit into a pathetic binary model is also a bad thing. We need to be outraged about it because if we get motivated to fix it, that will make the world "more good."
Those are just the drugs they shoot you up with when you become a moderator. They have to trank us or we couldn't do it.
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