[lit-ideas] Who's Crazy? We Are
- From: Paul Stone <pas@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 08 Jun 2005 12:06:16 -0400
JK: The upshot is if you, for example, believe in God, you can
be technically diagnosed as having
>a mental disorder.
>CK: (How does a psychiatrist treat compulsive praying? My guess is that
>this is one of the
>most prevalent disorders in the world, only few would admit to it.)
"One man's ceiling is another man's floor" Paul Simon (mid '70s)
>JK: I found it highly troubling what was required for "normalcy".
What is NORMALCY? Local? Citywide? Statewide? Countrywide? Continentwide?
Worldwide?
Does anyone actually put any stock in these silly things?
Robert Pirsig poses a question in his Lila something to this effect: "if
you were the only person on earth, could you possibly be rightly called
"insane"?" Who are we comparing things to? He also proposes the radical
idea that one 'cure' for this insanity might be to relocate the 'afflicted'
to a society that was more conducive to their 'normalcy'.
We all have our 'craziness' and I think that Harold Hungerford is
absolutely right when he says "the bar for "mental illness" is a lot lower
in the US than it is in much of the rest of the world."
It's a bit like the 'shocking' statistics that battered wives shelters etc.
trowel out "50% of women have faced some kind of violence by the time they
are 18". I counter it with "oh yeah, by your definitions, 100% of men have
faced some kind of violent attack by the time they are 18." Does this mean
that men are facing crises? Do we need shelters? These "numbers" are
meaningless, deliberately shocking, meant for fear-inducement and not at
all helpful.
"80% of people will get cancer some time in their lifetime". Yeah, and MOST
of them will be over 70 years old. MEANINGFUCKINGLESS!!!
It all depends on how you define 'mental illness'. It all depends on what
'violence' is. It all depends...
I would urge everyone to take a look at a very little book called "how to
lie with statistics" by Darrell Huff (1954). It'll make you think several
times before you swallow that salesman's pitch, that frontpage story or the
latest 'statistic' politicians throw at you.
paul
Paul Stone
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Vice-President
Esco Engineering
179 Lansdowne Ave
Kingsville, ON, Canada
N9Y 3J2
Voice: 519 733 3122
Fax: 519 733 6094
Homepage: www.esco-engineering.ca
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