The Schizo-Stroller

A large group, a population perhaps, are in hell up to their necks in shit. One of them pipes up, ‘You know we’re up to our necks in shit?’. Some of the others start to argue that it’s the natural order of things, it’s the way it’s always been, we are in shit therefore we are essentially ‘in-shit’ dwellers. ‘Oh,’ says the original speaker, ‘I just was wondering how we got here.’ ‘…And? What you think you’re better than us?’ ‘Elitist!’ ‘Snob!’ cry the others. ‘Sorry’ says the original speaker, ‘I just thought it might help us get out of here.’
After a bit, somebody else suggests, ‘You know it does smell a bit.’ There are a few cries of ‘you’re as bad as him’ and ‘Blasphemer!’ but then another goes ‘You’re right, I keep gagging.’
And so it continues. But there are still those who want to stay right there and wish to keep everyone else there too. Forever the anti-intellectuals.

Things were bad, the world was a living hell.

I felt tired and tried to sleep.

But in my sleep I had terrible nightmares, I slept for years, fitfully.

Then when I woke up all the shit was still there. Nothing had changed.

So I’m going to do my best to fucking change it.

And if you blame it all on the individual ever again. Making each and every wo/man individually guilty of something we are collectively responsible for again, leaving each and every wo/man isolated and alienated, I’m going to fucking smack ya.

All those with me meet me out the back door

Peace and love, Schizo xxx

So we have the concept of twinness, the idea that we are attracted to those similar to us, so as Stephen Biddulph explains ‘people who differ on the surface but are very similar deep down, will be inexorably drawn into couple relationships.’ He continues, ‘you will be aware of your differences but your similarities will, for the most part, be unconscious.’

Biddulph’s argument is that we are born in a sense with natural gifts of clear intelligence, intuition, concentration, spontaneity, warmth, etc (this is a belief I have found shared from Liedloff to Rowe), but through the child-raising processes of the modern world (and I would argue other cultural and social facts) these abilities are often repressed by adults who find it too much, but our repression occurs differently with every individual, thus Biddulph suggests ‘we are attracted to people because they have activated certain qualities, which we also possess but in an unawakened state’. If you hold someone in great esteem  it is because you have an untapped ability to be like that person. This, according to Biddulph includes the heroes we admire.

Now if we think of popular heroes then what comes to mind is the fact that Winston Churchill is often voted as some sort of greatest Britain, again and again. The worrying thing is this means that there are vast numbers of people who feel the need to be like him to be complete. Does this include his eugenicist beliefs then? (http://www.winstonchurchill.org – and for those who think this is a smear, sorry, these following quotes are from the official site) Does awakening their capacities involve being ‘in favor of the confinement, segregation, and sterilization of a class of persons contemporarily described as the “feeble minded?”‘ Are we to believe that a vast proportion of the population have an untapped capacity to believe that “The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the Feeble-Minded and Insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate.” Are a large proportion of the nation trying to reach a place where “The improvement of the British breed is my aim in life.” People who are not whole because they are yet to regard “races as different, racial characteristics as signs of the maturity of a society, and racial purity as endangered not only by other races but by mental weaknesses within a race.”

Perhaps some lacking in our personalities might be better left unawakened…

“I am not a man! I am a free number!”

Seriously, this was a search term someone used to find my site.

So here’s the answer: Don’t!

Being ‘disciplined’ by others is highly likely to be a factor in their breakdown. So unless you’re unusually cruel or un-self-reflective, leave well alone.

Please! I mean this – PLEASE! For ‘whatever you believe in’s sake, DON’T!.

A lot of people who seem to cope with hearing voices seem to have some belief that their voices are those of dead people, as do also many who don’t seem to be able to cope. The difference seems to be the power of the voices over the voice hearer.

I’m not arguing for against this reality, but let us take it hypothetically to be true. Those who can pick or choose whether or not to believe the voices they hear seem to be able to get this power relationship right. Those who seem to feel their voices have some powerful all-knowing wisdom that is superior to theirs don’t.

So what does this mean. Well in plain english those who cope realise that just cause Uncle Ned is dead, doesn’t mean he’s somehow magically reached nirvana. If Uncle Ned was a tosser when he was alive, chances are he still is. If you think he’s talking shit you’re probably right.

I could go into coping mechanisms being affected by previous relationships with authority figures, the ability to be heard in personal relationships resulting in feelings of powerlessness etc etc but the above paragraph probably says it better

We often blame the ones we lose for our loss. At least when the cause is a death you can’t hurt them by doing so.

If the Napoleonic code in 1804 was one of the first attempts to create a legal code that would introduce the notion of absolute ownership, and this in essence was an actual codification of an attempt to control the woman’s phallus, then can we allow capitalism to take a woman’s form as metaphor?

So what of late capitalism, in Mark Fisher’s book Capitalist Realism he suggests that Francis Fukuyama’s book The End of History was much derided but the message quietly assumed. I would like to play with this idea a bit further using the metaphor of Capitalism as a woman, and at that as an attractive woman who had been in an unhappy and antagonistic marriage with State Socialism.

We can see Fukuyama as the guy who realising she had won the divorce with what looked like a particularly fortuitous settlement, not least because it looked like she got all the kids (although Uncle China had an eye on the family), decided to fuck her. Unfortunately he suffered premature ejeculation and was widely laughed at. However others had always seen her beauty and progressed to sleep with her, many of these men, and women, were more virile.

Her orgasm increased, however due to the psychological attentions of so many abusive lovers she had a breakdown, many of these lovers tried to medicate her in an attempt to get her up and fucking again, but perhaps if we move the metaphor back to people, a woman who had been through so much abuse would require someone to treat her respectfully and listen to her, she may well be full of self-hatred form earlier abusive relationships, thinking she was worthless and deserving of such treatment. Of course, in a professional relationship, but the best care would come from those who don’t want to sleep with her lest the relationship become abusive once more, perhaps those who don’t find her particluarly attractive but respect her rights as a human being. But most of all from those who see her as just one woman among many, all of whom are equally worthwhile.

[Edit 06/04/10: What the fuck was I on about there? But to flog a dead analogy; bank bailouts as maintenance payments? No fuck it, I'll leave this as a reminder of what utter shite I can come up with. Also concerned about my own allusions there that women only want to sleep around because they're damaged, which ain't strictly true.]

Can you make a living out of madness, out of being mad, not curing it?

Taking into account such a possibility I am currently trying to get a certificate of attendance from my psychiatric unit as evidence of a life skill at prospective interviews.

To show how tough one is (in case the burly working classes don’t know and to assess your outward signs of your salvation) when ill one must carry on working so that:

1. One may be less productive throughout the duration of the illness

2. Make the duration of the illness longer to continue this lower productivity.

3. Pass it on to your colleagues so they may continue the above tasks after one basking in how hard working we all are and isn’t that a priori what makes us meritous and proves we’re better than the next man (as we get paid more and in a meritocracy based on pay logically then if you’re paid more you’re better).

Thus the rationality of the work ethic is again proven.