The Schizo-Stroller

When I first came out of hospital I was in a half way hostel with a few other schizophrenics. I was considered to be relatively well, if not quite ready to get my own place (this was years ago). One of the other schizophrenics (we’ll call him Malcom) was into psychic stuff, fascinated by elves (message me if you want to hear a funny but (my) cruel (side) story about that) and Buddhist hells. He was a great bloke though and we got on well. There was a psychic fair on locally and he really wanted to go but the social workers there were too busy, so as I had a car and was relatively (to Malcom anyway) stable,  they asked me to take him.

Anyway, when we got there, Malcom was rushing round the stalls, quite excited, asking lots of questions and enjoying himself. He came up to a stall of a medium, and excitedly said to me, I’ve always wanted to have my reading done. Go ahead I said, I was just there to accompany him, I’m not a social worker. Anyway, he had his reading and seemed quite pleased, but before he got up he turned to the medium and said “I’ve got to ask, how do you know all this stuff?” “Oh, my spirit guides tell me” said the medium. “And how do the spirit guides tell you these things”, Malcom asked. “I hear voices” said the medium. “That’s funny”, said Malcom, “So do I. But they call me schizophrenic!”

Bare with me on this, it’s a bit of a polemic:

John Locke stated that it is justifiable to rebel against abitrary government.

Speed limits are set to minimise death. However this limit is set at a percentage. For example at 30mph the likelihood of survival when hit is 80%. Once set a speed limit is continuously in force, no matter the situation or circumstances. Bearing in mind that the 5 of deaths is set by an authority to minimalise deaths but not completely stop them. This would suggest the percentage and therefore the limit becomes arbitrary.

However, if you are driving, for example, near a school where kids are more likely to run out having less road sense, you would be an arsehole to insist on driving at 60 miles an hour. In fact conscience would suggest you may decide to drive at less than the official speed limit. This is discretion.

Roads are an unnatural system, we don’t naturally follow each other in single file. Single track roads with twists and turns although seen as fun to drive and the embodiment of car as freedom when empty, when full fall prey to the lowest common denominator, when they are too twisty everyone has to drive at the speed of the slowest driver. This driver has the right to drive at as slow a speed as they choose, and so they should. However the fact that there is nowhere to overtake means that the unnaturalness of this system prevents anyone else from driving any faster. The slowest driver dictates the speed.

During the Second World War, the Nazi’s were in power in Germany. However contrary to narrow-minded opinion the majority of Germans were not Nazis. Few were members of the party, a few more actively supported them, but that’s it.

Again anti-semitism was rife but not all Germans were anti-semites, in fact there were many anti-semites in Allied countries as well.

Most German’s knew nothing of the holocaust, and when news came out after the war, the majority of Germans were shocked at what had happened and wondered how it had happened.

Germany still bears the wounds of its history. When I have been in Germany, a few youngsters younger than me have apologised to me for the war on several occasions. Their parents weren’t even born when it happened, what has it to do with them? The wounds run deep.

This has led to much theorising about how it was allowed to happen. There are many theories. One of which is that the majority of people who processed the Jews on the way to the concentration camp knew nothing of what was happening (many Germans knew of the concentration camps but not of the treatment nor the gassing). The whole procedure was rationalised and bureaucratised so that those who processed the papers were merely stamping forms. They had become so removed from the process that they had no reason to question what was an incredibly arbitrary process.

If you are following someone who insists at driving at 30 miles an hour, sticking to the speed limit, on an empty road, at 4am in the middle of nowhere. I’m not saying this person is a fascist but are you justified in wondering if they are the type of people who have internalised a process that allows fascism, totalitarianism, and specifically events like the Holocaust to happen?

Well, I’ve just finished Franz Kafka’s ‘The Trial’, and unsurprisingly this great literary metaphor, that has been described as an allusion to both totalitarianism and religion, has affected me deeply but in my feelings as Josef K. not just socially but, again, in the way that my voices have affected me.

To those who haven’t read it, at the beginning Josef K. is arrested and informed he awaits trial but he doesn’t know why, by whom, or what for.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, when I first became ill, I started hearing voices saying I have to ask a question, I have to pass the test. But I didn’t know what question, what the test was, why I had to ask it or pass this test. And like Josef K. I started asking questions but all I found from my voices was whether I was good or evil or innocent or guilty. As to the good or evil I chose neither, which seriously upset the voices, as to the innocent or guilty, like Josef K. I had no idea what of, and like Josef K. I decided to review my life but could find nothing that I could have done, other than harmless bad boy antics, no serious crimes, none at least that I felt morally guilty about, if this was what it was about. So as Josef K. does, I proclaimed myself innocent and the question and test stupid. Even though some voices were now telling me I’d passed I had no idea what it was I’d passed nor even what I’d done to do so. Yet the voices remained. Whatever had happened I had not proven myself innocent nor in fact been proven guilty.

A similar experience was the one that Joef K. had that everyone else knew about this trial (or in my case test) and knew more about it and my case than I did. It’s a very paranoiac feeling that is an undercurrent of the book. And in many ways alludes to the experience I have that I call the pointless conspiracy (see earlier posts).

Although with medication, the intensity of these voices have gone, I am still left with the nagging feeling that I am being judged and watched.

I would one day like also to analyse ‘The Trial’ as metaphor for the mental health system in general. I realise that the book is deliberately vague as to invite such comparisons but to me this is also due to the similarity to religious and totalitarian systems.

Check this site out for Deleuze (and others) inspired poetry.

Especially the one entitled The Schizo-Stroller – It’s aSchizo’s LiFe, of course.

http://takingthebrim.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html

I myself shall be returning, sporadically, but again.