Into the Void

Today I learned that the Arabic word for mental illness has the same etymology as the Arabic word for evil spirits. This has an unfortunate effect on how the mentally ill are perceived in the Middle East.

Language is an odd thing. It enables you to express your innermost thoughts and feelings. BUT it almost guarantees that the thoughts and feelings you express have been totally shaped by the language itself. In the words of comedian Lenny Bruce,

“Believe me, I’m not profound, this is something that I assume someone must have laid on me, because I do not have an original thought. I am screwed. I speak English. That’s it. I was not born in a vacuum. Every thought I have belongs to somebody else.”
– Lenny Bruce, quoted on Rakes Progress: Lenny Bruce is not afraid

So what’s happening is that as long as the doctors use that old-fashioned
word to describe mental illness, demon-possessed the mentally ill will remain.

Arabs don’t have a monopoly on superstition though. The following TinyUrl will take you to a google search for “mental illness exorcism.”
http://tinyurl.com/5gwe4p

I’m having a bit of trouble making non-technical things fit into my brain today.
I can understand wanting to be stable. No, not really, stable people are bloody boring. What I can understand is wanting to be able to do the things I want to do without having to cancel because of a bad day. A bad day
meaning I can’t concentrate, or I am indecisive, or I am tired or maybe on the flip side the normies are just moving/thinking/being like dinosaurs.
Let’s define stability sometime, ok? I think stability means that I don’t fall so far afield that I can’t meet my obligations. What do you think?
But are those really bad days? If we didn’t have it beaten into our heads that having moods swings and being creative makes us BAD PEOPLE, we wouldn’t think twice about making time for our own needs. Maybe on the indecisive days I should shelve books by LOC number, while I should make use of the high days time flipping through books trying to synthesize new meanings.
Why do the doctors want to label us and stigmatize us and force us to behave like everyone else? And why do we buy into this abuse? Oh, right, because being forced to be someone you aren’t is painful. When someone talks about “hope” in the context of having a mental illness, what exactly does that mean? There’s no cure for this short of identifying the bipolar gene and ABORTING us. If we are going to hope, let’s hope that someday society will stop wanting to punish anyone who is a little different.

Technorati: stability bipolar bipolar+disorder mental+illness mood+swings stigma

Well, the news is full of fun stuff today. The press could do so much good if they directed their energy into improving the world.
Man faints, dies after seeing epidural. Ok, I can almost see this. The needle is three inches long and marked in stripes to indicate depth of penetration. It looks kind of like a skeeter’s tweeter.
US reporter jailed in CIA trial. This one is tricky. Background: Joseph Wilson was confronting Dubya over the questionable evidence he had presented to justify the rape of Iraq. To retaliate, someone told a NY Times reporter that his wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA agent. Nobody knows how many people have died because she was outed - she was in a sensitive overseas post. Furthermore, the reporter who is being jailed, Judith Miller, doesn’t even know who the leak was! The issue here is whether the press has the right to keep sources confidential.
G8 calls for new climate dialogue. There are only 5 people left in the world who don’t accept the awful fact of global warming. All of them are in the White House.
The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Christian Doc Speculates Why Americans Rank #1 in Mental Illness. Have you talked to God today, Ma’am? He can save your sanity.
Drug Kingpin investigated for “doctor shopping”.
Ah, here we go… Mars picture of the day.
Soccer moms on dope. “We don’t see families torn apart. We don’t see the violence. We don’t see the robberies and the burglaries,” he said. “Meth is definitely worse on society than ( marijuana ).” Huh?
Ever wonder why we went after Iraq when so many of the 9-11 highjackers were Saudis? Here’s a profile of the gentleman that Dubya knows as Uncle Bandar.
Armor Plate your iPod. Clever devils, those Japanese.
This one’s from MemeMachineGo! It’s about the recent eminent domain decision by the Supreme Court. The one that allows your town to bulldoze your home if they can increase their tax revenue by giving the land to someone else.

Technorati: Joseph+Wilson Dubya Iraq Valerie+Plame Judith+Miller Mental+Illness Uncle+Bandar eminent+domain