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View Full Version : So I found out why people think we're all nuts




tmosley
01-26-2009, 12:09 PM
It's because we are. (http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=864)

We see reality too clearly, and don't lie to ourselves nearly as much as most people do.

M House
01-26-2009, 12:15 PM
Mosley you're gonna start a new philosophical movement called "depressive realism" here. That's almost as bad as me putting together "cynical optimism".

acptulsa
01-26-2009, 12:17 PM
Yeah, I've been lightly touching on this in the liberal blogs I attempt to radicalize (j/k--sort of) from time to time.

"Both Paul and Kucinich had a reality problem", or words to that effect. You mean, I replied, like when everyone was laughing at him last spring for saying the economy was about to tank?

"[The gold standard] is too far outside the today's mainstream." And if today's mainstream is so damned great, why did our president campaign and win on a message of change?

Yeah, the media spin is an entirely suitable substitute for reality to many. Just as a flat earth at the center of the universe once was. But reality is still reality, and it's fun to watch them try to, and fail to, deny it.

shocker315
01-26-2009, 12:18 PM
In an insane world, a man of sound mind speaking the truth (RP and supporters)... appears insane.

Madcat455
01-26-2009, 12:20 PM
In the kingdom of the blind... The man with one eye.. is deemed a lunatic for believing in this "sight" thing.. Humiliated , and eventually run out of town amidst the throng of ppl chasing him with canes.

Brooklyn Red Leg
01-26-2009, 12:41 PM
We see reality too clearly, and don't lie to ourselves nearly as much as most people do.

Well, as the saying goes 'Even paranoids have enemies'. :D

mconder
01-26-2009, 12:45 PM
Wow...that article really helps me to understand myself better. I still dont think I want to become healthy and deluded though.

Cowlesy
01-26-2009, 12:49 PM
What has science done!

Kotin
01-26-2009, 12:56 PM
Mosley you're gonna start a new philosophical movement called "depressive realism" here. That's almost as bad as me putting together "cynical optimism".

:D

Anti Federalist
01-26-2009, 01:27 PM
Yeah, that about sums it up.

It’s a disconcerting concept. It’s certainly easier to think of the mentally disordered as lunatics running about with bizarre, inexplicable beliefs than to imagine them coping with a piece of reality that a "normal" person can’t handle. The notion that we routinely hide from the truth about ourselves and our world is not an appealing one, though it may help to explain the human tendency to ostracize the abnormal. Perhaps the reason we are so eager to reject any departure from this fiction we call "normality" is because we have grown dependent on our comfortable delusions; without them, there is nothing to insulate us from the harsh cold of reality.

Interesting point about about the compulsive hand washer.

This person knows that even with normal washing there are billions of germs and pathogens left behind. More on the way as soon as something is touched.

Now, consider, could this be source of apathy in the "information age"? How would the obsessively clean, using the same example again, even explain his obsession 200 years ago when there was no knowledge of microbiology as we know it?

As the horrors of reality come crashing in from all sides, is it any wonder then that the great unwashed retreat into torpor and apathy?

This really is the new break point, the new dividing line, not left or right but realist vs. non realist.

acptulsa
01-26-2009, 01:32 PM
This really is the new break point, the new dividing line, not left or right but realist vs. non realist.

Hadn't thought of it in those terms, but most of my blogging elsewhere lately has been right along these very lines. I'll catch some left winger and some right winger going hammer and tongs and tell them both why they're letting this goofy distraction divert them from the real issues and the real dangers. It's quite a concept--and, I think, an important one.

Dreamofunity
01-26-2009, 02:35 PM
Insanity is a perfectly natural adjustment to a totally unnatural and negative environment. - R.D. Lang