The Schizo-Stroller

A little while ago i wrote about the ignorance of the phrase ‘other’s have it hard too’.

How it’s just a form of rubbing the callousness of the world into some poor bugger’s face in the name of a supposed ‘Other’ that in all truth you don’t give a shit about either.

So a little while ago i received a comment from a concerned citizen who had taken extra special time in their life to let me know I was attention seeking (see i’m doing it now) and should just pull my self together.

I mean the fact that a large part of my psychosis, which we all know is just damn complainers like myself bringing stuff on themselves, is about persecution from such people, must be my evident imagination and if I was more responsible I would realise it was just the delusions of a self-made victim. If I only had more discipline I wouldn’t have to walk the streets shouting to invisible voices. What a lazy, self-indulgent cunt I am.

But I would like to thank the commenter for bringing to my attention the fact that the type of person that my punitive voices exhibit really does exist. i’m not that paranoid or delusional, some scum somewhere really does think the things I criticise (or my voices criticise) myself for. But hey, the voices must be right and the pain that brings me to let blood or headbutt walls on a regular basis is the wailing of a cry-baby.

Of course it was gonna happen, there may be some of you reading this now who think this is self-indulgent crap (for the record, IF you do, then in return I think its about time you turned round and faced YOUR abusers, rather than let your coldness creep in because YOU refused to grieve your loss or heal your pain, and hell are you gonna make people pay for it. YES THAT’S YOU. Your need to punish yourself and others is self-indulgent too. BEING KIND TO YOURSELF AND OTHERS IN THS WORLD TAKES FAR MORE INNER STRENGTH THAN SHITTING ON PEOPLE, PUSSY – yes, I’m not feeling too strong today myself). But whilst that person or someone else was going to say something one day, I am writing in the public domain after all, on the other hand this blog has been around for over 5 years now and it’s the first comment of its kind.

So to the rest of you. I still loves ya.

(I’ve posted this song before but I think it’s appropriate again)

I remember the bleep strain of house and techno from the nineties, never really got into it.

This from Terror Danjah, does your bloody nut in, as they say. Brilliant. Storming track.

Another classic Jon Cousin’s email for Moodscope, this time titled ‘Accept It’.

After discussing the etymology of the word ‘practice’

He suggests:

“Now this is a slightly roundabout way of introducing the concept of us having much to gain when we ‘practice acceptance’, the idea that it’s generally self-defeating to try and change those things we stand no hope of influencing.

In its original form, I suspect the version of ‘practice’ which was meant was the ‘customarily or habitually’ one, but in a neat semantic twist, maybe it’s also handy to think about the other one – working repeatedly at acceptance so we become better at it?

I suspect that you don’t go from accepting nothing to accepting it all overnight. I’m sure that just like all change, progress will be slow and steady.

But any progress is progress, and every journey can be thought of as a series of steps.

So could it be that the best way to practice acceptance is to practice, every day?”

Eh?!

Since when did the roots of the recovery and survivor movement that was once described by the Hearing Voices Network and others as the next ‘Civil Rights movement’ become the practice of abeyance.

Look that etymology up Jon. It means:

1. A state of temporary disuse or suspension.
2. The position of being without, or waiting for, an owner or claimant.

It requires the practice of acceptance, oh, and owner can be substituted for ‘capitalist’.

And it is important to train the emotionally distressed to ‘accept it’ lest they stand up, finally, against those who are shitting on them because they’re scum enough to pick on the vulnerable.

It’s the true task of every mental health ‘social entrepreneur’. It’s what separates them from the activists.

The only progress that comes with acceptance at a time when you are victimised is that of the victimisers.

Which side are you on?

Before the birth of my daughter and my subsequent breakdown, some of which has been catalogued on this blog, I had spent two years facilitating a hearing voices group. I have been on sabbatical of sorts since, but recently i was asked to return.

When I went to talk about returning with the other facilitator I learnt that one of our regulars had killed himself. You do not know who he is, or who he was, but this is an obituary of sorts.

Of sorts because I did not know him. He would turn up regularly, tall, thin, with long silver hair and incredibly long fingers. But he only brought with him that part of him that he dared. For all his pleasant withdrawnness he was always present, one of the most talkative. The most frequent member in my experience to join the facilitators in kindly and concerned succour to the other members of the group. He was intelligent and sharp but also caring.

But he never presented too much of himself. His voices would not allow him to. The voices that with a harsh and cold logic told him that he had to kill himself, frequently. To me as a facilitator he would so often look as though he was just about to come alive, venture forth to claim his place in the world, to which he could have added so much, when he would return with a new scar.

There was a surface to him. When most people think of someone as surface they think of those who only show their shallow depths. But this was more like a surface of a bell jar. Every now and again his humanity would peak through, then disappear leaving just a generous spirit.

And it seemed few could penetrate this surface, nor it seemed dare he, as if the high regard others held for him might draw him out, so better to remain behind. And remain, in the time I knew him, he did.

I do not know his past, when I was at the groups he rarely spoke of it. As i said I did not know him. And i cannot even begin to wonder what happened to him. But whatever it was, there was now a surface behind which he hid, only penetrated it seems by those voices.

He would tell of his battles with them to remain alive, battles he fought again and again. And it seems he lost the war. In fact as I heard it he had planned the surrender meticulously.

He will be missed.

Two thoughts kept me up tonight, so here I throw out online them as salt at a demon.

One. How well does the concept of karma sit with the fact of genocide?

Two. I think of myself as an entertainer of the idea of a demiurge.

And I know too well that sentence can be read multiple ways semantically.

The world is upside down.

I know it’s silly, I’m a grown man in my 40s, but i particularly enjoy listening to Grime whilst doing the house work. For example JME seems quite good for folding clothes and putting them away and Swindle is particularly enjoyable putting the kids’ toys away, and Terror Danjah for dusting. I’m sure there’s something not quite right there, a bit wrong, but hey, there you go. Floats my boat.

“It’s easier to be a molar anti-bourgeois than a molecular anti-bourgeois” (Schizo Stroller, 2012)

On hegemony and ideology:

I wrote about Jon Cousin’s Moodscope a while ago, I’m ashamed (a 3) to say until today I have, like a smack addict who says he’ll quit, still been using it (although as I’ve been taking herbal tablets for my anxiety, the graph has been relatively flat for a while), but i have been keeping a journal as I suggested and it has proved effective, especially with access to a far more extensive range of emotions, one that recognises the link of emotions to needs (and yes I do also find the qualitative, narrative form far more satisfying than the quantitative ‘measurements’ of Moodscope), but I still needed a push to give up Moodscope. Well Jon today kindly gave it.

In the daily reminder he wrote:

“Arguments sit at the very heart of politics and law.

One side has its view, the other another.

Then it’s all about attack and defence, back and forth, parry and thrust, which for an outsider can seem bewilderingly confrontational.

I never really got the debating society thing at school which is very possibly why I’m neither a politician nor a lawyer.

Despite this, I think most of us feel we’re ‘supposed’ to defend our point of view. When someone takes an opposing position about something in which you hold a belief, it can feel like an attack on you.

And when we’re attacked, we’re programmed to defend ourselves, which may sometimes take the form of fighting back.

Often, though, what really is the point?

Just as you’re hardly likely to agree with everyone else’s way of seeing things, neither are they always going to concur with yours.

You only have so much mental energy, and when the fuel tank is low, pursuing arguments can drain it.

So, maybe, just don’t.

A wise man once told me that I should feel no need to defend my point of view.

And you know what? There’s no arguing with that.”

And there’s a sense he’s right, arguments do make you tired, and like the embattled disabled on the dole under the onslaught of the Tories you probably need all the help you can get. what Moodscope’s all about, right?

But don’t forget Jon Cousin’s job before he got ill was a business based in advertising, so be careful when he says
“I never really got the debating society thing at school which is very possibly why I’m neither a politician nor a lawyer.”

No he was in advertising.

Later he says

“You only have so much mental energy, and when the fuel tank is low, pursuing arguments can drain it.

So, maybe, just don’t.

A wise man once told me that I should feel no need to defend my point of view.

And you know what? There’s no arguing with that.”

That’s right “don’t” followed by “there’s no arguing with that”.

So what is he advertising?
Straight after these passifying words he writes

“Lastly, just in passing and talking of politics, I’m happy to report that UK Health Secretary Andrew Lansley referred to Moodscope in a speech on Wednesday. Caroline caught it on her iPhone so we’ve popped it on YouTube (Moodscope mention at 00:42):”

And he doesn’t want to lose customers because he is being promoted by Tory Health Minister Andrew Lansley, the destroyer of the NHS, and the support most of his customers rely on. Here’s what the NSUN Network for Mental Health think of Tory policies in their article in the Guardian.

“A year ago the government’s mental health strategy, No Health Without Mental Health, was published, with the aim of ensuring all departments and agencies worked together to reduce the annual £105bn cost to the UK of psychological ill health…
The strategy clearly identifies five main predeterminants of mental health that must be improved in order to deliver the practical objectives of the strategy: employment, housing, education, community cohesion and physical health. An assessment of the state of each of these factors reveals that ministers appear to be wrecking their own strategy.”

And the people affected those who are being sold down the river by Andrew Lansley are Moodscope’s best cusotmers, wait, only customers.

It would be prudent to soften them up. Of course in his argument for not arguing he missed out a bit, when to stand up and be counted. Here is philosopher Terence Blake talking about a similar thing in reference to the philosopher of science, Feyeraband’s take on the physicist Schroedinger’s political views. It’s similar but adds another dimension. When it’s right to reply.

“Sometimes it is advisable to avoid an exchange as the context forbids any real thinking and we are faced with just sad old ego talk: no real communication, no openness, caricatural binary oppositions, hectoring and bullying, oversimplification, aggressive declarations and emotions that replace the subtle and nuanced intensities of thought. One should just walk away, or at the worst smile and say “Yes, yes, of course.”

Sometimes it can be necessary to stay put and speak up, because even if a dialogue is impossible the monologue of the self-elected is inacceptable, one must show, to others and even to one self, that alternatives exist, that other voices are possible.”

It is that last paragraph that Jon Cousin’s leaves out. The one saying stand up to the oppressors. Now i may not be an advertising man but I have studied rhetoric, and as far as that is concerned, Jon’s post before mentioning Andrew Lansley is a sucker punch. Defuse the desire to reply, remind you that you are exhausted and should lie down and get run over, it’s not worth the energy. Maybe he’s not a rhetorician, rhetoric is a form of debate and Jon attempted to kill the debate dead before it could get going. Which makes him a damn good advertising man, and a dangerous emotional crack dealer.

By a notebook, write a journal, read up on DIY self-help, or get some good peer support. Or better yet join an activist community. You get to stand up for your rights and as a benefit you get the peer-support thrown in.

This is classic! The TV ska introduction-to-dancing version of here’s three chords now form a band.

YouTube playlist courtesy of the Wire