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Personal Responsibility
I got SLEEP last night. It was good sleep, too - the kind where you wake up in the morning and getting out of bed isn't so bad, even if it is really comfortable. I'm still a bit tired, which means I should try to go to bed earlier tonight, but I'm not in that exhausted, can't function state like I was yesterday.
Odin, that sucked!
But today it is the new and improved me, capable of making mistakes much faster and more impressively. In other news, our computer guy - L.C. - has a new nickname: Richie. I hate telemarketers.
I ran into an interesting article today on Bully Magazine that spoke about Alcoholics Anonymous and how it was a religious cult masquerading as a self-help program. While I was working with adults who had mental illnesses, I ran into AA rather a lot. We have a bi-weekly AA program and quite a few of the clients were alcoholics. For the first time, I ran into the 12 steps of AA and what I read left me deeply disturbed. It seemed like the focus of the group was to remove all of its members sense of self control by having them admit they are powerless and then submit their will to a higher power. This bothers me on a number of layers. Tim Hall wrote about the Five Myths of AA; I'm going to speak about what I view as the psychological ramifications of AA.
First of all, psychologically speaking and as far as we know so far, there are only a very few things that are legitimate psychological diseases and almost all of them involve trauma to the brain - not the mind but the physical brain. It is theorized that schizophrenia, dissociative disorders and personality disorders are all incurable, but it is equally likely that there are cures we just haven't stumbled onto yet or that we're refusing to acknowledge because we're so caught up in viewing psychology as pathology.
To me, alcoholism seems to be a manifestation of a certain type of personality - that of an addictive (or greedy) personality. The focus of the addiction is alcohol to alcoholics, but given the recent rise of '-aholics' including shoppaholics and sexaholics I think we can reasonably suppose that these have a common theme - that of wanting to escape pain or boredom via an external source. I think the fact that individuals can become addicted to such a variety of things (including alcohol, drugs, gambling, shopping, sex, eating) is an indication that the chemical makeup of the object isn't as important as the chemical makeup of our response to it, ergo the pathology, if it is such, is internal not external (for drugs such as cocaine and nicotine there is a physical component, though, which makes this problem much more confusing).
A long time ago, Freud postulated this thing called sublimation. Sublimation was the act of taking ones desires (lust, hate, greed) and channeling that energy through something else in order to function in society. So, lust would be sublimated into a complex series of mating rituals that eventually lead to monogamy. This works well if it is conscious. This works significantly less well if it is not conscious or if the social structure fragments, as it has now. I think all of this '-aholic' nonsense is a form of sublimation gone horribly, horribly wrong. When one feels lonely, one has a number of choices - call a friend or acquaintance, go out into public to meet someone, eat a gallon of ice cream. At some point, due to internal forces and external learning, the eating of a gallon of ice cream becomes the sublimation for feeling lonely, a pairing which is reinforced by the serotonin release in the brain in response to any chocolate in that gallon of ice cream. Eventually, one is overweight and still lonely; the problem hasn't been solved, it's only been sublimated - and sublimated badly. From a Jungian perspective, alcohol is a substitute for 'spirit' or religious feeling and food is a substitute for 'matter' or emotional matters (especially pertaining to ones mother; matter = Mater. Hehe.).
What AA seems to do by taking the self and the self's power out of the equation when dealing with alcoholism is set up its members to fail. According to Mr. Hall, AA's success rate is around 2%; I'm not particularly surprised. I knew a client who went to 3-4 AA meetings a week. He received only two dollars a day. He once took his two dollars, stopped at a liquor store and bought the cheap stuff and put it in his bag, went to an AA meeting and finally went home and drank! He had no reason to stop. He was being supported in his drinking, and it wasn't really his fault anyway, so even if he drinks it's 'all right.' At no point was this client at all invested in his own treatment, so of course it failed! And at every step of the way, the very people who claimed they were going to help him were reinforcing his status as a powerless individual.
Powerless individuals 'can't help themselves,' and so are set up to fail. In my opinion, it is only when one takes responsibility for every part of one's life and mind that one can subsequently improve in relation to the rest of the world. Of course, taking responsibility for things sucks, so most people understandably don't do it.
Only a total moron would choose to be miserable for a while in order to become a better person. ;)
This is like an eternal one of those questionnaire things you send around to your friends. Of course, 10 to 1 no one actually reads these since they're cut out. ;)
Daily:
Daily Double
1. Have you ever felt/seen anything paranormal?
Only a couple of times... the best externally verifiable one was in my mom's old car. The electrical system was dying, which resulted in the driver's side window only working intermittently. We'd managed to get it fixed once, but mom had subsequently rolled it down for a beautiful day and it had gotten stuck. The day she was going to leave, I was driving it. At numerous points during the day I had tried to roll up the window, because she was going to be driving for two days and it was going to rain and storm during those days. None of the times I tried it did it work. So finally, I figured I'd ask for divine help, since I was certainly getting nowhere. I spoke a few words to Thor, explaining the situation and asking if he, as god of lightning (and hence electricity) would give the window enough power to go up so that my mom wouldn't get drenched for two days as she drove cross-country.
The window rolled up.
2. Do you believe in ghosts/spirits?
Yes. I have little experience with them, but I do think there is more out there than seen by our five senses. I also think that there are many people with vivid imaginations. I'm ill equipped to differentiate.
Blogger Seeds
Describe a place. Discuss the feelings associated with it. Tell an event that happened there.
I had a tree for a while, though had is always an odd epitaph to use with nature, by the banks of Sligo creek about a half hour walk from my house. It had this perfect crook a ways up it that I could sit in. I'd walk down with a pillow, a couple of books and maybe a snack or two, climb up and sit and read. I used to feel so peaceful there, and even if people walked by they rarely looked up so I had relative privacy. A few months later I went back and it was covered in poison ivy.
This maple tree was quite tall and had one branch that curved down over the water. It grew several feet from the side of the path and the easiest way to get to it was to cross the creek in the shallows because the weeds were so thick. The bark was rough, which made it easier to climb, and in spring and summer you'd be practically invisible up in the branches.
Daily Zen
What are your 3 favorite movies? Books?
Movies: (1) Labyrinth - because it really took over my imagination at a time when I needed those sorts of lessons about growing up (2) The Last Unicorn - because it introduced moral ambiguity and was simply lovely (3) Cold Comfort Farm - because just thinking about it makes me smile.
Books: (1) Fools Run, by Patricia McKillip - because it's a mind trip that never gives up and never grows old (2) Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - because it's a perfect mix of philosophy and humor (3) MindKiller, by Spyder Robinson - because it's the only book I've ever thrown across a room while cursing out the author.
Thursday:
Thursday Three
1. Who was the last person to give you a present?
Mara and Ash are giving all of the Fruits Basket obsessed figures for the zodiac characters we like best. I'm getting a bunny!! (Though Momiji is much cuter as a rabbit.)
2. Who was the last person you gave a present to?
I gave a present to the daughter of a good friend just a couple of days ago. I found some of those dinosaur eggs - it's a Dinotopia promotional - and she's a dinosaur fiend. I had originally thought to get one for my roommate Ryan (he adores Dinotopia, but is not a dinosaur fiend), but they were having a buy two get one free sale, so I picked up three. I kept one (the pretty blue one!), Ryan got the second (number 24, who is the important one in the movie), and Cheyenne got the third one (and proceeded to show it to everyone who came over).
3. What is your favourite present that you received?
The print I picked out (with the quote from Psalms) has to be my favorite thing I own that someone else gave me, but I mostly enjoy presents because when I look at them I think of the people who gave them to me, and because people tend to give me pretty things, which I love.
Odin, that sucked!
But today it is the new and improved me, capable of making mistakes much faster and more impressively. In other news, our computer guy - L.C. - has a new nickname: Richie. I hate telemarketers.
I ran into an interesting article today on Bully Magazine that spoke about Alcoholics Anonymous and how it was a religious cult masquerading as a self-help program. While I was working with adults who had mental illnesses, I ran into AA rather a lot. We have a bi-weekly AA program and quite a few of the clients were alcoholics. For the first time, I ran into the 12 steps of AA and what I read left me deeply disturbed. It seemed like the focus of the group was to remove all of its members sense of self control by having them admit they are powerless and then submit their will to a higher power. This bothers me on a number of layers. Tim Hall wrote about the Five Myths of AA; I'm going to speak about what I view as the psychological ramifications of AA.
First of all, psychologically speaking and as far as we know so far, there are only a very few things that are legitimate psychological diseases and almost all of them involve trauma to the brain - not the mind but the physical brain. It is theorized that schizophrenia, dissociative disorders and personality disorders are all incurable, but it is equally likely that there are cures we just haven't stumbled onto yet or that we're refusing to acknowledge because we're so caught up in viewing psychology as pathology.
To me, alcoholism seems to be a manifestation of a certain type of personality - that of an addictive (or greedy) personality. The focus of the addiction is alcohol to alcoholics, but given the recent rise of '-aholics' including shoppaholics and sexaholics I think we can reasonably suppose that these have a common theme - that of wanting to escape pain or boredom via an external source. I think the fact that individuals can become addicted to such a variety of things (including alcohol, drugs, gambling, shopping, sex, eating) is an indication that the chemical makeup of the object isn't as important as the chemical makeup of our response to it, ergo the pathology, if it is such, is internal not external (for drugs such as cocaine and nicotine there is a physical component, though, which makes this problem much more confusing).
A long time ago, Freud postulated this thing called sublimation. Sublimation was the act of taking ones desires (lust, hate, greed) and channeling that energy through something else in order to function in society. So, lust would be sublimated into a complex series of mating rituals that eventually lead to monogamy. This works well if it is conscious. This works significantly less well if it is not conscious or if the social structure fragments, as it has now. I think all of this '-aholic' nonsense is a form of sublimation gone horribly, horribly wrong. When one feels lonely, one has a number of choices - call a friend or acquaintance, go out into public to meet someone, eat a gallon of ice cream. At some point, due to internal forces and external learning, the eating of a gallon of ice cream becomes the sublimation for feeling lonely, a pairing which is reinforced by the serotonin release in the brain in response to any chocolate in that gallon of ice cream. Eventually, one is overweight and still lonely; the problem hasn't been solved, it's only been sublimated - and sublimated badly. From a Jungian perspective, alcohol is a substitute for 'spirit' or religious feeling and food is a substitute for 'matter' or emotional matters (especially pertaining to ones mother; matter = Mater. Hehe.).
What AA seems to do by taking the self and the self's power out of the equation when dealing with alcoholism is set up its members to fail. According to Mr. Hall, AA's success rate is around 2%; I'm not particularly surprised. I knew a client who went to 3-4 AA meetings a week. He received only two dollars a day. He once took his two dollars, stopped at a liquor store and bought the cheap stuff and put it in his bag, went to an AA meeting and finally went home and drank! He had no reason to stop. He was being supported in his drinking, and it wasn't really his fault anyway, so even if he drinks it's 'all right.' At no point was this client at all invested in his own treatment, so of course it failed! And at every step of the way, the very people who claimed they were going to help him were reinforcing his status as a powerless individual.
Powerless individuals 'can't help themselves,' and so are set up to fail. In my opinion, it is only when one takes responsibility for every part of one's life and mind that one can subsequently improve in relation to the rest of the world. Of course, taking responsibility for things sucks, so most people understandably don't do it.
Only a total moron would choose to be miserable for a while in order to become a better person. ;)
This is like an eternal one of those questionnaire things you send around to your friends. Of course, 10 to 1 no one actually reads these since they're cut out. ;)
Daily:
Daily Double
1. Have you ever felt/seen anything paranormal?
Only a couple of times... the best externally verifiable one was in my mom's old car. The electrical system was dying, which resulted in the driver's side window only working intermittently. We'd managed to get it fixed once, but mom had subsequently rolled it down for a beautiful day and it had gotten stuck. The day she was going to leave, I was driving it. At numerous points during the day I had tried to roll up the window, because she was going to be driving for two days and it was going to rain and storm during those days. None of the times I tried it did it work. So finally, I figured I'd ask for divine help, since I was certainly getting nowhere. I spoke a few words to Thor, explaining the situation and asking if he, as god of lightning (and hence electricity) would give the window enough power to go up so that my mom wouldn't get drenched for two days as she drove cross-country.
The window rolled up.
2. Do you believe in ghosts/spirits?
Yes. I have little experience with them, but I do think there is more out there than seen by our five senses. I also think that there are many people with vivid imaginations. I'm ill equipped to differentiate.
Blogger Seeds
Describe a place. Discuss the feelings associated with it. Tell an event that happened there.
I had a tree for a while, though had is always an odd epitaph to use with nature, by the banks of Sligo creek about a half hour walk from my house. It had this perfect crook a ways up it that I could sit in. I'd walk down with a pillow, a couple of books and maybe a snack or two, climb up and sit and read. I used to feel so peaceful there, and even if people walked by they rarely looked up so I had relative privacy. A few months later I went back and it was covered in poison ivy.
This maple tree was quite tall and had one branch that curved down over the water. It grew several feet from the side of the path and the easiest way to get to it was to cross the creek in the shallows because the weeds were so thick. The bark was rough, which made it easier to climb, and in spring and summer you'd be practically invisible up in the branches.
Daily Zen
What are your 3 favorite movies? Books?
Movies: (1) Labyrinth - because it really took over my imagination at a time when I needed those sorts of lessons about growing up (2) The Last Unicorn - because it introduced moral ambiguity and was simply lovely (3) Cold Comfort Farm - because just thinking about it makes me smile.
Books: (1) Fools Run, by Patricia McKillip - because it's a mind trip that never gives up and never grows old (2) Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - because it's a perfect mix of philosophy and humor (3) MindKiller, by Spyder Robinson - because it's the only book I've ever thrown across a room while cursing out the author.
Thursday:
Thursday Three
1. Who was the last person to give you a present?
Mara and Ash are giving all of the Fruits Basket obsessed figures for the zodiac characters we like best. I'm getting a bunny!! (Though Momiji is much cuter as a rabbit.)
2. Who was the last person you gave a present to?
I gave a present to the daughter of a good friend just a couple of days ago. I found some of those dinosaur eggs - it's a Dinotopia promotional - and she's a dinosaur fiend. I had originally thought to get one for my roommate Ryan (he adores Dinotopia, but is not a dinosaur fiend), but they were having a buy two get one free sale, so I picked up three. I kept one (the pretty blue one!), Ryan got the second (number 24, who is the important one in the movie), and Cheyenne got the third one (and proceeded to show it to everyone who came over).
3. What is your favourite present that you received?
The print I picked out (with the quote from Psalms) has to be my favorite thing I own that someone else gave me, but I mostly enjoy presents because when I look at them I think of the people who gave them to me, and because people tend to give me pretty things, which I love.