From quotez: “The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.” -Carl Jung Not sure I’d stretch it to ‘all’ mental illness (though, y’know, out of me & Jung, pick the famous psychologist type. So … ), but I’d pay this one. Avoidance is a mental …
doctor_k_ poses an eternally interesting series of questions: So : are you religious/irreligious? What role does it play in your life? What are the central tenets of your beliefs/ lack of beliefs? How do you reconcile the bits of your religion that don’t fit? If you have changed your religion …
Ditmar results announced: congratulations to all who won & all who were nominated! What she sez: Yay, Justine Larbalestier, for poking holes in that whole ‘woe is me, it’s just not the same around here since the golden age ended’ rubbish some people go on with. Please. I hate that …
More brain food for those recent discussions: “If the world was without any natural evil and suffering we wouldn’t have the opportunity, or nearly as much opportunity, to show courage, patience and sympathy.” – Richard Swinburne “When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters – one …
“However jewel-like the good will may be in its own right, there is a morally significant difference between rescuing someone from a burning building and dropping him from a twelfth-storey window while trying to rescue him.” Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions Follow @deborah_b
It’s interesting how statements once meant to be inclusive have become exclusive. Like, take for example, B.F. Skinner. Skinner (1904-1990, or so the web tells me) is considered to be one of the forefathers of that particular school of psychology known as behaviourism. When I was studying psych, behaviourism was …
And in other ‘fun things you, too, can do’, today I updated my will. It was just an overdue thing — nothing at all to do with all the dying that’s featured in discussions lately. I stumbled across the half-completed will under an overdue water bill (which seemed particularly poignant …
“Suicides have already betrayed the body.” – Anne Sexton, Wanting to Die Today’s subject line was prompted by girliejones in our discussions on the suicide of Hunter S. Thompson. How do you pick a day to die? Not just die. How do you pick a day to inflict irrevocable violence …
But suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build. – Anne Sexton, Wanting to Die http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?45442B7C000C07050E70 Thankfully, I want most to know ‘why build’. Thief — how did you crawl into, crawl down alone into the death I wanted so …