9th International Symposium Against Isolation- together against racism and oppression.

by Sean Crudden - impero Fri Dec 03, 2010 19:37 Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth 0879739945

Just a note to say that I facilitated a workshop on "Isolation" for Cooley Environmental and Health Group about 4 or 5 years ago in The Strand Hotel, Omeath. Contrary to expectations it turned out to be one of our highest quality workshops. Unlike your event we concentrated on isolation at a personal level. A few years later we ran a winter workshop about "Bullying." There are obvious connections there at both a personal and political level. There is a clear qualitative difference between solitude and isolation. Who was it that said, "I want to be alone."? We considered things, too, from a religious perspective drawing simple fundamental lessons from The Book of Job. Of course, at all times, I am always mindful of the position of the mentally ill and mental patients. Isolation plays a big part in our oppressed and circumscribed existence.

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Sat Dec 04, 2010 15:20

wanted to be left alone.

I still have trouble with that designation of the sensitive or delicate emotionally being classified as 'mentally ill'.
When you think of what passes for mental health in our sick society, a robust ego that pays no heed to who or what it tramples to get to its self-serving goals 'because we're worth it', up to and including falsifying information to engineer wars for the theft of resources and enslavement of populations(well, the ones that survive the onslaughter)I still think our terminology of diagnostics in the area of mental health needs something more than a tweak.If Blair Bush Rumsfeld and their collaborators are sane, I need a tranquilliser.If those who happily jet off to luxury enclaves in the heart of exotic poverty created by our trade policies are not mentally crippled by their blinkers, then I may need restraint. Mental instability in a falsely concretised value-system is a symptom of a healthy allergy to dogmatic 'recieved wisdom' bullshit. The first sign of mental health is a critical attitude to authority that seeks recognition without validation, other than by itself

I reckon homo(self-designated, again)sapiens is a bit of a mentally sick monkey.When he fell out of the tree because he hadn't the ambidexterity to hold his banana and the branch simultaneously like a healthy simian, he landed on his head and did a bit of collateral damage.
Evolution, as darwin, sketched it, is our attempt to repair that damage.Methinks the wrong monkeys are in the zoos.And many of those classified(and propagandised into believing it by white coats and authoritative manner)as ill are the healthy ones recoiling from the excesses of our pereverted values.
We confuse a robust ego for a healthy mind. Not wise, smart, or ultimately sane. Health, mental or physical, is always a matter of delicate balance, and for a healthy individual there will always be degrees and cycles on the way to maturity.Hence the turbulance of adolescence as we seek to accommodate our sensed intelligence to the blatant contradictions in our petrified, atrophied, ossified and fossilised culture.only the lie of cosmetic change can be legitimised. Health is then defined as a successful adjustment to these norms, or(as in both western and eastern gulags)denied when we fail to adjust and conform.Hence our society of masks and lies.

by Sean Crudden Sat Dec 04, 2010 22:29

Hi Opus

When I saw my name missing on the latest comments page I thought my comment had been hidden. Anyway glad to hear from you. Yes it was Garbo although I suspect her remark was more for public consumption to boost her image rather than a sincere personal statement. But I am not sure. Maybe she was being sincere. Anyway it was in character to some extent at least. A lot of the euphemism and bullshit language surrounding mental illness gets on my nerves and I look for the simplest way through the bullshit. Naturally a lot of people do not like my language. A patient in my book is anyone who is receiving medical treatment from a doctor. A mental patient is one who is receiving medical treatment for a mental illness. A mentally ill person in my vocabulary is anyone who has received a diagnosis from a psychiatrist or anyone who is likely to receive such a diagnosis in the near future. The rights and the wrongs of it are not an issue with me and I agree with you. In my book, and in yours, it is clearly a mad mad world. But I rarely ever talk about that. You are able to do that far more eloquently than I. I see it as my function to advocate on a daily basis for mental patients and the mentally ill, an increasingly large and fraught category of people. I would welcome your advice. Really I would welcome advice from any quarter. But spare me a lot of bullshit.

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Sun Dec 05, 2010 13:54

I recognise what you are saying about individuals suffering the psychological turmoil of what we call mental illness, and have personal experience of dealing with people in various states of disintegration, sometimes requiring chemical or physical intervention. These are real problems, and I am not advocating we desert such individuals in some denial of their predicament. More trying to rebalance the focus to include the social drivers of the symptoms.Formally I have big respect for the likes of Ivor Browne, people who can see over their academic and professional partitions to larger set of definitions.
My case, such that it is, is that our societies are sick, neurotic, and at their furthest extreme when all restraint is abandoned, perverted and psychotic to a pathological degree. Witness the torture, lies, robbery, rape, kidnapping destruction unleashed every time we unleash the dogs of our resource wars(now noticable by the public refusal to acknoledge they are going on at all) as we return to the justifications of our actions on humanitarian grounds, bringing 'democracy' and human rights to the Balkans(nobody remembers the self-serving Deutchland pulling the loose thread of Slovenia to start the unravelling of a delicate balance), Iraq, et al.
Re-run of the 'civilising mission' of the white man bringing civilisation to the heathen savage, even as we(Europe) enslaved, plundered, massacred and prostituted these 'savages' who had often a less martial analysis of the highest achievements of our species.

T'aint simple(otherwise we would not be dealing with 'complexes' of psychological problems), and any statement can be misinterpreted or misrepresented by those who have an aversion to some of the ramifications of non-orthodox analysis. I am sure you are familiar with our capacity for self-delusion, we dont have to look hard for examples in public life.I'm listening to the same geniuses every day instructing us as to how we are to extract us from a mess they created, their credibility by no means damaged by their failures, and their bullshit unchallenged by the fourth estate pundits. The conditions these nuts will now inflict on the less egotistic and greedy will do nothing to lessen stress and poverty which will fedd into crime, alcohol and hard drug self-medication which is going to increase your own workload.This, as I said is neither smart nor sane.
I'm not financially capable of making the trip to Vienna, but if anything is going on in Ireland next year that you think I might be able to give any useful feedback to I can try and make it. I'm out west, so particularly anything this side of the shannon is more reachable.