Well think what you want. Maybe you can deal with it, some people can't. The psychology of suicide is different than that of euthanasia. Most people with cancer don't want to die.

Anyway AK, Seems like your life has never been touched by tragedy. I hope you never experience anything like I did. You're lucky and have lots of lucky friends.

Maybe that is the problem. Some can deal with it and some cannot. As such, we help those who cannot along till they get to the next crunch. We constantly try go against natural selection and then wonder why the herd gets weak. Psychology of anything is suspect. As much as they like to think so, it is not really a science since there will be so many things that can bump it and it cannot be nailed down and hence reproduced.

Yep. My life is tradegy free. In fact, I don't know what tragedy is except for a play. :rolleyes: Sure wish I was living that life. Only thing I know is that NOBODY owes me a living. It is up to me to sink or swim. If I cannot swim, I sink and deserve it. As to those friends, I sure would love to meet one that has no tragedy.

The nightly newscasts seem to suggest there is a lot of anger among Islamist types all over the world, and they do a lot of bad stuff to express it

The Danish cartoon caper shows they can't laugh at themselves, either.

Any reason we shouldn't keep these types from enriching uranium for bombs (shudder)

I think, AK, that if you take your survival of the fittest mantra to the extreme then you'll be the only one left on this earth. Everyone is extremely deficcient in some way, and extremely efficient in others. If you really think that way then those who can't swim should drown, those who take too large a bite should choke to death, those who trip and break their leg should lay there and rot, and Stephen Hawking should have been put in an institution from the day he was born. (we used to do that)

Here's something for the pragmatist in you and maybe this will change your mind. Some guy is fighting depression. You give him a pill a day. He gets up, gets a job, goes on to become a productive member of society. Good enough for you?

Actually, it may surprise you, or not, that there are tons of talented bodies and minds out there who otherwise would not be able to function were it not for their medication. A google search wouldn't turn up much since nobody is obligated to disclose their medical records, but they walk amongst us, teachers, scientists, trash collectors, and athletes.

Then there are those talented ones who offed themselves because they failed to receive treatment. Hemingway comes to mind, Jaco Pastorius is another, and before I forget, the father of modern computing, Alan Turing.

My point is, survival of a spieces includes helping weaker members. Despite depression or mental illness, most people can contribute. Rare is it the case when mental illness is not treatable, and even then, we make a good effort, not because we want them to work in the fields, but because it's a human, no, Darwinian, trait that's allowed us to survive all these years.

My family has some of that as well. A brief account is that a relative's wife committed suicide and took her parents with her. There are other examples. Mostly, the folks in my clan with severe problems opted the supress it by drug and/or alcohol use. That kind of RX mostly worked.

Anger is part of being human but when one becomes abusive and irrational they are signals that something needs to change. What is odd about anger is that some get a kind of high by being angry. Combine this with spouses who will protect the abusive party and you can see why there are so many homes for battered women. It is odd that many have chosen to hide problems rather than to even try to solve them.

That is correct. But why not use instruments which are readily available and known to work? When your car blows a tire and starts veering into oncoming traffic do you throw away the car or just hope to live with the known tendency of the vehicle to try and destroy itself, and you with it? By your logic a mechanic is a crutch for an ailing car.

Heck make 'em open plastic wrapped packages at customer service counters the world over. :P

Folk who are angered by almost anything should not have weapons at their disposal.

What you said only holds true IF every way is essential to living. That is not true, is it? For example, I might not be able to run fast but I might be strong. What I am saying is that if you are not generally able to survive, tough. If that were the case then the human species would not have gone far. Yes, for every Steven Hawking, how many others do we have that are not? For every Bethoven, Hawking, Einstien, you can offer, I can also show you a Pot Pol, Adolf Hitler, Stalin, etc, etc.

Fair enough. However, also consider that what you are talking about is a salvagable item where the worth is not exceeded by the cost.

It may also surprise you to know that there are probably many more that are able to function without any help too. So?

And there are many more worthless ones, what of it?

Dunno about that. You see deer helping many weaker ones when the lion comes running? Yes, the mother might help her offspring but what of the others?

No. A mechanic will fix a car. However, like I have said. If someone fixed your car like the way the mindfux so called "fixes" people, would you accept it or would you find one that can fix it without all the crap and probably make it worse? People have used it as a crutch because it gets them sympathy. However, if they got no sympathy as in the good old days before psychology came along, you think they would bother or just suck it up and do what they have to do?

It is common for members of a herd to defend any members of the herd.

Dunno. I quite often seem to see them running away when a predator attacks.

I guess I just don't believe that psycology offers any real help. Seems like a lot of people are using it as a crutch rather than what it was intended for. Besides if a 10 yo and 16yo can lie to those people and they can't even detect it, what good are they? I manuplated them into doing what I wanted. Why should I trust them to "help"? Seems to be like jeapody (not sure) where instead of buying a vowel, you can buy an excuse. Can you say that if they didn't give any benifit other than helping the person, IOW, no reduction of penalties, many would go to them?

*** I hurt, therefore I should kill? ***
 

Folks:

EVERYONE has a snapping point - some know what it is and how to avoid it, others court trouble. Even more revel near the edge, waiting for someone else to either bring them back from the edge, or push them over. It all depends on the observers' perspective. And if you're the person near the edge, experience will make, or break, you.

Reading some of these posts REALLY makes me think that we're all near the edge, a little too close. The way these writings shoot barbs back and forth at one another - I wonder what would happen if everyone met in a parking lot in St. Louis (Sorry, I'm just picking someplace in the middle of the U.S.!) with their Benzes? Some of the anger and angst would boil over? I wonder.

Listen, some of us (if not all) have had friends, acquaintences, relatives and loved-ones suffer unspeakable episodes in their lives. Some of us may have even been victims ourselves. But, those of us that are here, now, know better than anyone else what it took for us, or our friends, to keep on going. It may have been the thought of another loved one, some childhood memory, or the fact that you weren't going the let the B**tards get you. Whatever it took to get you to the next day was the medicine for the moment.

Now, what will you do for yourself tomorrow? The next day? Next week?

It you want to drive yourself to the "looney-bin" worrying about if the "sky will fall" and run around like a chicken with its head cut off, then you ain't long for this world. The stress alone will probably kill you in due time.

As for me, I will continue to surround myself with positive people, consider the source when I run into the other kind, and sleep contented knowing that, at least, I didn't try to "screw" my neighbor and have to sleep with one eye open wondering if he's going to seek his revenge.

:D

My last response was incomplete. The herd animals I’m familiar with will generally run away when confronted by something they can’t defend against. Around here elk and deer will attack any dog/coyote/wolf that comes close. They will chase that kind of predator individually or in groups. If they catch the predator they will stomp them until the predator is incapacitated. They will not go after house cats, raccoons, skunk, birds, marmot. They will generally run away from humans but I’ve experienced cases where some will act very aggressively towards humans. Based on 4+ years of regular observation acting agressivly towards humans is rare and only a few individuals will do it.

Perhaps you are trying to cast practitioners of psychology and/or psychiatry as exaggerated mind readers and condemn them for that. There are doubtless some or many who try to be. But the key detail is that when one goes to them of their own choice because they are seeking relief it amounts to a different criteria than if one is forced to spend time with them.

The personal case you described suggests that you were very effective at presenting only what you wanted to present. It sounds as if you got what you wanted, and walked away disrespecting the profession because you successfully deceived them. How many of us have had an opportunity to resolve a conflict but didn’t do it, and then blamed someone else for our inability to be honest or forthcoming at a critical time?
Anyway, solutions for most anger issues boil down to taking some kind of pill and providing months of time to see if the pill will make a difference. Another approach consists of going through a learning process to identify queues causing explosive anger. Sometimes one works where another doesn’t. But the patient has to be willing to try and also acknowledge that immediate gratification is not part of this process.

From the article

Well, if a 10 yo can deceieve them, why do we place so much faith in what they say? What about a full grown adult? Yes, parents go seek solutions for their ill behaved kids. Sugar was blamed. If that were true, Chinese New Year is 15 days of all kinds of sweets. Kids would be rioting and there would be mayhem then. Look at the kids we have today. Can you say they are any better than the previous generations?

I don't disrespect the profession only because I could lie to them. I disrespect them because I feel they cause more problems than they solve. In their own ways they have some influence on how we handle the kids. You see the kids being better today than before they stuck their hands in, took away corporal punishments and pretty much all sort of punishment because it was violent, gave the kids a bad example, etc, etc?

Also in court, they are used as a cop out. If I could manuplate them to say that my doing art class was more harmful than not doing only because I didn't care for art classes all the age of 10, what do you think adults that "consult" them could and do use them for? Look at Michael Fay and tell me what you think.

My point is that if people are so screwed up that they need help from these witch doctors, maybe it is too late for them and more merciful to put them out of their misery or let them die off without affecting the rest who are not in such need of a voodoo practitioner.

You make some good moral arguments for altruism and I wont argue against them because I think morality (and altruism is one expression of moral behavior) is a sort of glue or mortar for society.

I would like to explore altruism at the extremes. I'm thinking of times when the entire social contract is under great pressure. For example, in times of drought and famine, moral choices shift. Under long-term, life threatening stress, I believe the Steven Hawkings and Franklin Roosevelts are soon neglected and left to die. A parent would feed his child and a husband, his wife before sharing outside of the family bond. This is morality in time of want and it has an obvious genetic component.

A society that has plenty can afford to carry the deformed and aberrant. Therefore, I would suppose that lean times are chlorine in the gene pool, removing the weak, old, and non-productive.

Now bear with me while I go a step beyond.

What would happen to a society that never has lean times? I submit that deleterious genes would propagate and non-productive people would proliferate. The proportion of workers to non-workers would gradually shift, favoring non-workers.

Bot