Plato and the Insane Asylum
Robet Kalarghan
or psychiatric ward?
I don't really want to be treated, I just want to be commited to one,
and live out my life there.
Seriously, does anyone have any real advice on how I can just drop out
of society and the rat race? Its not healthy for me. And keeping a
malcontent like me among society can't be good for society either. For
my own good and society's I just need to be isolated from my "fellow"
humans. they will only harm me, and I will only harm them. Thats what
the Lutheran Kierkegaard thinks the Catholics got right and the
Protestants are missing. The monasteries were a safety valve that
allowed people antagonistic to this world, to escape it without
disrupting the system. We really don't have that in our age, other
than the "choice" to starve on the street, which is where I'm headed.
There really is no safety valve or escape hatch. I don't know maybe
there are some deserted islands out there in the Pacific, where I
could literally be a Robinson Crusoe. Probably not realistic though.
Well if those islands exists, I suppose its possible I could somehow
get there with a few thousand dollars. I probably wouldn't last long
in the wild. But nature is a less cruel enemy than man. Nature will
kill me but not enslave me. Or being a hermit somehow, but that takes
capital. I just need to get
away from it all. I reject all social relations. I never want to see
another human again. The very sight and smell of them repulses me.
I've really lost touch. I just don't get humans. I used to think I
did. But the more I study them, the less I understand them. Or maybe I
understand them empirically, I know what they actually do and on an
intellectual scientific level I can understand their motivations
partially. But I can't get inside their heads. Their endless cruelty
just escapes me.
I mean I guess part of it is the Hegelian recognition, the master must
enslave to be recognized. And Nieztche elaborated on it as the will to
power. And you can try and make it scientific by just transmitting the
Will to Gene. The human fascination and lust for cruelty just escapes
me. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that is what you need to survive, and I'm
just a Darwinian miscarriage. Or maybe I have too much of Freud's
superego. I've internalized too much of what society SAYS is good and
become that. In that sense I am the society I hate so much-
personified.
I'm the materialization of the spiritual imagination of society. I'm
the Feurbachian God made flesh. I can understand the mind of God,
which is the spirtitualization of society, more clearly than that of
man. The regret at what man could have been and what he actually is
before the flood. I suppose the God's eye view of the universe, is a
curse and burden to us worm, dust, dirt.
I belong in solitary confinement. The prison population of course is
the embodiment and hyperdistortion of man's will to power, although I
would say the difference with the general population is only
quantitative in nature. So obviously prison itself is no utopia. But
solitary confinement in the "hole" would be my paradise. To be free
from all human contact and all activity. To just sit in an empty cell
24 hours a day. And to have guards slide in the food. It has come to
the point where my only conception of freedom is liberty from
humanity. And so freedom becomes a prison cell. IDK, I guess at the
rate I'm going I will probably end up in an insane asulym believing
I'm Napoleon Bonaparte. As long as I make the leap of faith and truly
believe I'm the Emperor, then nothing can imprison me. The insane
asulym is in its own way a utopia, and it beats the streets.
I think for my personality relative isolation would be far worse than
total isolation. I'm a spiteful resentful person who can not bear
having my social betters above me. I'm in a period of relative
isolation now having dropped of school and not seeking a job. Just
living off my money which should last .5 to 1 year. I was friendly and
jovial with my housemates at first, but now I try to avoid seeing
them. The thing about my depression and need for social isolation, is
it stems more from existential metaphysics than anything personal. So
I'm basically getting a taste of what living on a fixed income would
be like now. And the USA has one of the worst welfare states in the
world, we love the struggle to the death.
I'm thinking of committing myself, but not being cured. In a way it is
utopian. Like Plato's Republic being watched over by authoritarian all-
powerful guardians who are trying to fix you. There is complete
equality among inmates, all your needs are met without work, and no
private property. The trade of security for freedom. But that is the
nature of utopia, nearly all since Plato's time have acknowledge the
need for both the sacrifice of individuality and freedom, and a strong
authoritarian bureaucracy. That is the type of power the asylum has
over you, their power is institutionalized and bureaucratic like in a
utopia. There is the loss of the human element. It is mechanical
machine like. But it is precisely the human element of subordination,
domination, and power that makes it so humiliating and unbearable. I
would prefer to be a patient over an employee. A prison can be a
utopia. Bentham's utopia is designed as the perfect prison system. And
of course the mental institution itself is the petproject of a
plethora of progressive enlightenment reformers overcoming the dark of
superstition with the light of science. It is itself a utopian project.
Teddybear
"Robet Kalarghan" <runs...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:2c4ce831-06e9-46ec...@d10g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
Alex
right quick.
On 11/11/09 7:26 PM, in article
2c4ce831-06e9-46ec...@d10g2000yqh.googlegroups.com, "Robet
Clearbrook
> Just show them this nonsense. They'll lock you up in the pretentious ward
> right quick.
>
> On 11/11/09 7:26 PM, in article
>
> - Show quoted text -
there's always the Alaskan wilderness.
amoussa83
dude, go buy an xbox. make a friend who plays xbox. have an xbox
party. get netflix on xbox and tell a girl that you think is cute to
come over some time to watch a movie, or even better yet, play some
halo. dude, life is pretty mundane. make a friend or two and have a
laugh at somebody elses expense. make it your aim for months or years
on end to get laid. settle dwon with the one girl who goes down on you
pretty regularly with eagerness. for work, fuck man, teach philosophy.
ur probably just as smart and depressed as all of my philosophy
professors in college.
Zarathustra
8564-233...@d5g2000yqm.googlegroups.com:
> On Nov 12, 1:26 am, Robet Kalarghan <runsch...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Anyone have info about living in Info about living in an insane asylum
>> or psychiatric ward?
>
> I don't like trolls..
> well the main reason I am writing you is because your English is
> really good, and I learnt some interesting words to express my
> thought. Sorry with the others if in part I will speak in his
> language ...ok I am qualyfing but Socrates need:)(btw if someone want
> to correct my englishyou are welcome indeed..)
> Thank for that.
> I am a kinda of philosopher pua, and I have to acknowledge that
> despite tall you are not off topic at all since Plato is never off
> topic.
>
> Usually human being are a kind of sheeps(Jeffries, a pick up artist)
> if you propose something they will often follow you
> if you do this in a congruent and logical way.
>
>>The monasteries were a safety valve that
>> allowed people antagonistic to this world, to escape it without
>> disrupting the system.
> Kierkegaard seems more Focault here, if you quote this maybe you do
> not know
> that Mr Soren, an incongruent man, loved to seduce with the same
> strenght, maybe is not a case he wrote a wonderfull seducer's
> diary.And maybe you do not know Foucault as well considering you did
> not quote his works belonging to the madness and the insanity, a
> really boundless work
> But let's go into the business The philosopher in the 7th books of the
> Repubblic have to go down (katabasis) after he have the revelation
> (never matter if is metaphisical, political, or complementar to the
> dialectical method), so I am not sure that the human being should go
> away from the society.For Aristotle, that he used to suck in
> comparison with the master of the accademy he used to attend and that
> I have above summoned, man is by nature a social animal; and an
> unsocial person who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is
> either unsatisfactory or superhuman... I think he was right and you
> feel clearly the mediocrity of the society the epiumeticon, the 3th
> part of the society, namely the masses. But the problem is that touch
> the chicks is funny and you can say that you need an intelectual
> feedback ot be turned on, but I can insure you that deny the
> miracoulous physiology reflected in the anatomics aspect of a chicks.
> The game(namely the empirical rules and tips that the seducers usually
> share) is a good way to socialize, and this rings me a bell. How can
> you deny that one of the most important icon for every conoisser of
> the subject phylosophy, he used to stay in the agora and have
> speeches with poor and illiterates people? Are you maybe more wise
> than the aristofanic figures of Socrates?
>
> continue Aristotle: Society is a natural phenomenon and is prior to
> the individual...And any one who is unable to live a common life or
> who is self-sufficient that he has no need to do so is no mefmber of
> Society, which means that he is either a beast or a god
> Are you maybe a god? I think not, being an anacoret outside the world
> means to deny himself on my point of vue if you have contents and you
> are smart, it means to deny the empedoclean law of the aggregation, of
> the love. Maybe is not a case that it is really difficult to find in
> this community a guy that did not have an itis(namely felt in love for
> a girl, of if you prefer a man or wathever is the subject of the love)
> The seduction does not means link someone to you, like reckless
> linguistic did, but is a complex...game( mystery, strauss or others
> pick up artists coined this name, if you deny the seduction you deny
> habermas, heidegger, the regretted Levi-Strauss, all the great
> mystical of every time, because is in the Other that is manifested
> the real experience. could be fair to escape by the world, but the
> reality is that this can not be a ready-made choice because in this
> way you put before in advance the possibility to find , like Plato
> says in the convivium, the other part of yourself.
Foulcault viewed monastaries as being an instrument for the control, or
"training", of individuals. A way of grasping their very being and moulding
it into preconceived ideal. This was done through a means of constant
observation and correction, which requires a controlled spatial and
temporal enviroment. In "Discipline and Punish" he shows how this method
for control was transfered, refined, and now pervades all sections of
society in order to make "useful" people. These people are cogs in a
complex machinery of society that is to a large extent self regulating, as
the "cogs" are willing participants in their own enslavement, much like
society in Huxley's "Brave New World", which borrows extensively from
Nietzsche's "Appolian/Dionysion" dichotomy. One of the effects of this is
the tendancy to characterize people not by any inherenttraits, such as
"intellect", "courage", etc, but rather by the space they occupy in the
machinery.
What you need to realize is that the "ideal" that holds this machinery
together is a construct which, whilst perfectly adequate for for the
"majority" (average), is of no use to those who are of exceptional nature.
Here you should follow Nietzsche's counsel, and become a "creator of
values". Also, it is important to understand that the "will to power" does
not mean power as it is expressed in a master/slave relationship, but
rather the will to create, to impress yourself on reality. Not a will to
live, but a will to LIVE!! Reject all notions of what is "natural",
everything is "natural", this is a term used by those who cannot think of
any reason why they should prefer one thing over another, other than it is
"natural".
"You go your way, and I'll go mine. As for the TRUE way, the ONLY way, IT
DOTH NOT EXIST!"
Thus Spake Zarathustra