Clarification of Psychiatry: What It Is and What to Do About It

Psychiatry is the following two-fold act:

Part 1: Inventing discrimination.
Step 1: The psychiatrist picks out people he doesn't like based on their behaviors.
Step 2: Everything the psychiatrist doesn't like is labelled part of an illness.
Step 3: Every side-effect caused by the medications prescribed is labelled part of the illness.
Step 4: Pretend, with no evidence, that all things labelled part of the illness are a chronic, incurable, biological, genetic disease, and that the only treatment is medications which, in fact, cause all the behaviors described as part of the illness.

Part 2: Brainwashing.
Step 1: Isolate someone from their friends and family. Give them no contact to the outside world. Take away their posessions. Treat them as inferiors.
Step 2: Reprogram them to convince them all pleasure is bad and all pain is good.
Step 3: Hurt them over and over again.
Step 4: Release them into the world, finally, when they have given up on life.

It is my belief that all psychiatrists must be professionally disabled, and disallowed from doing their profession. There are a list of concrete rules, directed at psychiatrists, which would prevent them from doing their discriminatory and harmful jobs and which are based on pure common sense. Here are some:

1. Everyone in a mental hospital must have the same rights as people in a physical hospital. E.g. cell phones, Bible study, hugging, computers, exchanging notes, publishing written material for distribution, etc. are to be allowed.
2. You are not allowed to punish anyone for legal activities. You are only allowed to punish people through recourse to the law, for illegal activities.
3. You are not allowed to claim something is "scientific" or "known" unless it has been shown to be experimentally valid through scientific experiments. Science is in the business of determining causation, not engaging in wild, baseless speculation. Consequently, none of the data in psychiatric journals as of this writing is to be drawn from, because they all postulate biological and genetic causation for behaviors when no causal link has been established.
4. You are not allowed to prescribe medication chronically as the sole treatment for mental behaviors which probably have psychological causes. You are not allowed to cause brain damage just because you don't like someone's behavior.

If we as a society followed even just one of these rules, psychiatry would be completely defanged and psychiatrists wouldn't be able to find a job, because their profession would be rendered obsolete.

Obtaining a Point of Concentration in Difficult Times

In general, there are two kinds of good in this world. There is all-around general good, which I would call "the good of the light," then there is a point of concentration surrounded by darkness or pain or harm or even evil, which I would call "the good of the dark." There are a few things to keep in mind about the latter kind of good.

For one, it's perhaps difficult to imagine, but this kind of good is not a simple inversion of the good of the light. You cannot simply become one with the darkness, declare that evil is necessary, surrender yourself, and call it good. On the contrary, it is in these occasions where a strong sense of your self and your morality is the most important. Notions of surrender work best in situations of peace. In difficult times, we need fortitude.

The will plays a role in these situations. But the technique of wrangling the will involves a loose grip. The will is like a horse; it can't be forced into submission, it has to be coaxed into submission. Will is an important tool, which needs to be kept in submission to the whispers of the soul and to faith in the greater good. In the case of difficult times, it is an alchemical combination of will and faith that is used to obtain the point of concentration in the midst of darkness, which in turn transforms ordinary negativity or hardship into the good of the dark.

Ordinary darkness is darkness combined with ignorance. It is like a suffocating dark cloud of smoke. The good of the dark is like a clear dark sky littered with stars, or like the city glimmering at night with the light of streetlights. The trick to transforming the one into the other is to find the point of concentration in the midst of darkness.

We should break down this notion of a point of concentration. It has two components: faith and will. Faith is an all-around general sense that positivity exists, and because of its mere existence, positivity pervades all things. Faith is the universal act of uncovering which reveals good, just as a cloud dissipates to reveal stars above or city lights below, or just as the earth is removed to reveal precious gems. This potential for uncovering is a timeless presence, unconditioned by comings and goings.

Will involves two things. It involves a personal self which has the ability to actualize things, and it involves something to be actualized. The personal self and its tools for transformation are fairly well understood. The thing to be actualized, in this case, is something nice and of comfort. Its nature is fairly simple: some form of light, a "good of the light," which does not attempt to transform good into bad.

The world today is a rather dark world. It's full of diseases, conflicts, immorality, income inequalities, and so forth, which make the place very dark. There is a positive side to darkness, though. Only darkness has the ability to generate new, good things, when there is suitable focus. The Qur'an speaks of two kinds of trials: trial by pleasure, and trial by pain. Both ordinary pleasure and ordinary pain are forms of suffering, pain in particular. The reason ordinary pleasure is a form of suffering is because ordinary pleasure revels in the good of the light, but is unclear about the nature of the good of the dark. And, due to the changing nature of things, light will become dark, and then ordinary pleasure becomes a mere pastime. The reason pain is suffering is obvious; we experience it, but don't want to. And therein lies the key.

I recently have been battling with hatred of psychiatry. It's a recurring theme in my life, due to the trauma and post traumatic stress disorder caused by the psychiatric experience. But in this dark world, trauma comes from all directions. It is said that in the future, there will be so much trauma that the lifespan of humans will only be ten years. A lot of people also face trauma caused by the prison experience. Mental wards lead to hatred of psychiatrists, prison seems to lead to hatred of the cops. The difference is that prison punishes you for having hurt someone, while psychiatry punishes you for having been hurt. (Psychiatry, therefore, is worse than prison.) The challenge in situations of extreme darkness like these is to find a generous and wholesome point of concentration.

For me, I found that finding this point of concentration tends to be a complex path beginning with the statement, "I do not want this to happen to me." Thankfully, due to our general and intrinsic goodness, when we're in a state of extreme pain, what we'll tend to focus on is the "want" part. You clearly don't want to be in pain. Well then, what exactly do you want? What makes the situation so unbearable? Then the conversation then moves to, "If this situation were just a little bit more such-and-such I would be okay." The trick is to rest and observe. Try not to fight too much. Inevitably, after wishing for a little bit more such-and-such, you'll run into the brick wall of "Well, that's not what's going to happen." Then you'll begin naturally to narrow down what you want. You'll come up with a statement, "Even if it were just a little tiny bit more so-and-so I would at least be satisfied." If you observe, what you'll notice is happening is that a pulsating cloud of darkness is slowly gaining heat and concentration, just as in the birth of a star, and inevitably you'll reach a point where you begin to shed light.

When you shed light, you'll notice what you're doing is taking ownership of your negativities, and your painful experience, and formulating a positive identity and lifepath. Understanding the process from ordinary pain to positive lifepath is essential to surviving negative places, such as Planet Earth and America.

We should return to the Buddha's prophecy about the lifespan of humans. People are eventually going to be so beset by negativities that they will live to be only ten, and humans will be so rare that when they meet they will kiss each other on the mouth. This is a prophesy of the Buddha; it is the infallible word of the Buddha and incapable of error. But we still have a choice, as in ages past. We have a choice to follow our stupid whims and fancy and hurt and exploit people for perverse reasons, or we could be good-of-the-dark people. Rome had a choice in the past. Among other choices, they had the choice between continuing the sundry Pagan assumptions which ignorantly pretended darkness was light, but they chose honest, dark forgiveness in Christ and his purification of crucifixion. That was one choice. Today, we have similar choices. The cumulative effect of these choices is the positive ground for human enjoyment and development which will be in place when humans begin to increase their lives again from age ten back to age 80,000.

When I first heard that humans will be so rare that when they meet they will kiss each other on the mouth, I envisioned lone wanderers in a bleak, post-apocalyptic landscape, beset by hunger and loneliness, wishing in vain for signs of human life. What the Buddha did not mention was Google Glass, bioelectronic implants, and Internet dating. The Buddha said that humankind will face an apocalyptic fall after a seven-days war. The Buddha did not mention whether or not Google Glass, bioelectronic implants, etc. would survive the fall. I propose that if the technology survives, even if the Buddha's word is fulfilled, it's possible that in the interrim between these rare, mouth-kissing meetings, these technologies, or perhaps something functionally similar, will make life at least bearable. We needn't be reduced to lone wanderers as in the image above, but rather we could continue to enjoy the fruits of previous civilization and continue to develop humanity positively.

What this all suggests is that if we focus our darkness, whenever our pain and trauma arises, we are contributing to a positive world in unique ways which only good-of-the-dark situations of dark, Christlike regenerative forgiveness can produce. Our age is the age of our animal natures. We have the choice of being dirty, stray dogs who get put down or starve, or animist deities such as Singhamukha who are wholesome and happy (though wrathful) shamanistic healers. The trick to this choice and this transformation is, I think, finding that point or those points of concentration which illuminate our dark lives.

Why Enemies are Blessings: Re. Morgan Freeman and Lanza

I'm glad Morgan Freeman wrote the response he did for the shootings in Connecticut. Because I completely disagree. And, actually, my disagreement has solidified my resolve to a) not kill every fucking body I see, and b) not kill myself. (Death, by the way, is not an "opposite to life." Another post for another day, perhaps.) The argument went a little like this:

Freeman: http://www.dailypaul.com/266479/surprising-message-from-morgan-freeman-he-blames-the-media-for-ct-shooting

Me: You're full of shit.

Freeman: Yeah? Why's that?

Me: Because you're spouting the same sort of crap that every cynical psychiatrist does. You want more "mental health research," and like any "mental health researcher," you're looking for the essential quality that makes people essentially and fundamentally bad people from the very start, so you can kill it, quarantine it, sedate it, and obliterate it from the human race.

And to top it all off, you're saying the essentialist quality has to do with desire for fame. FAME! Which shows that you, like most other Hollywood celebrities (I wanted to say "hacks" but that's going too far—in this case, anyway, there's actually evidence against that claim), you believe that:

1. Everyone wants exactly what you have.
2. While it was divinely ordained for you to have it, it was not divinely ordained for 99.9999% of the world's population to have it.
3. All the problems of the world would be solved if everyone just gave up on their dreams and stopped wanting what you have, and instead, adopt a submissive position and accept the crumbs that people like you allow to drop off the table.

Freeman: Well, I read your position, because like every Hollywood celebrity in the world I keep up with the writings of Nathan Foster. It seems like you claim here that you understand the inner workings of school shooters. You say, and I quote, "I have these kinds of thoughts running through my head at least 20 times a day...."

You go on to claim the following: "[W]hether or not the objective world is an evil place where everyone deserves to die will be entirely beside the point. It is quite possible, theoretically, that everyone in the entire universe will rise up as your personal enemy." Taken in conjunction with the post about "Absolute Eclectic Morality," It would seem that you, sir, not only understand the shooter, but empathize with him, and perhaps even agree with him. There is actual evidence, in these three posts, that you believe everyone deserves to die.

So what's stopping you? If you think you deserve fame, and you know killing a bunch of people will get you fame, and you don't think that it is necessarily ethically wrong to kill a bunch of people, why don't you do it then, and gain as much fame as you could ever hope for?

Now this thought is what really crystalized my position, and it illustrates the value of enemies. (Not that Morgan Freeman is a mortal enemy of mine, but he does have a point of view which I completely disagree with, and in this case, that is enough.) The rest of the conversation:

Me: For one, if everybody didn't deserve to die, they probably wouldn't all eventually die. And for another, while I may, from time to time, hold the belief that everyone deserves to die RIGHT NOW, unless I actually have the ability to kill every single person in the world—not just a handful of people in this or that place, but literally everyone—I'm really just tooting my own horn. Everyone is going to die anyway. Why do I need to speed up the process?

And besides that obvious negative point of view, there's a positive reason not to kill everyone as well. There is a possibility that they have something to teach me. See, I'm a firm believer that situations of ignorance are ripe situations for new and meaningful knowledge. As it says in the Bible, "Many are called, but few are chosen." It's perfectly okay to be chosen, or not to be chosen, to be the one who kills everyone in the world. And while it's not certain that there's a reason why I'm not that person, there's a possibility that there is such a reason.

Which leaves me with two options. 1) I should've been chosen but wasn't. In which case, I have an opportunity to root out the real enemy and deal with that spirit. Or, 2) I should NOT have been chosen, and wasn't. In which case, I had something to learn, and it's better that I wasn't chosen.

Freeman: Great, so with your manic/depressive psychosis and acceptance of others, you're going to choose the other option, and off yourself in the basement?

Me: I'm glad you brought that up, because no, I'm not. I'm just like everyone else; I'm going to die eventually, and there's no reason to speed up the process. And there may be an opportunity to make a difference.

Freeman: You seem to be making the argument that living in this world is completely ephemeral. The only reason not to actually kill yourself, or anyone else, for that matter, is based on distant probabilities that perhaps they have benefit to the world. This is also evidenced by your insistance, in your response ("My Perspective on School Shootings"), that to end school shootings, we should train in discovering other-worldly goddesses, rather than human relationships here on Earth.

Me: I do NOT make the claim that life is ephemeral. I DO, however, make the claim that where you live your life is ephemeral, as long as you can make out goddess-Buddhas. If my body here on this Earth is killed, I'm fine with that, as long as I can find a place somewhere else where I can make out Buddhas. The choice is completely meaningless.

Freeman: If the choice is meaningless, why not try your luck with another body in another world, rather this one, which obviously causes you so much pain?

Me: Obviously, Morgan, you don't keep up with my writings as much as you claim, or you wouldn't have missed this post, in which I claimed that it is precisely the decisions which are meaningless—for example, Coke vs. Pepsi, Planet Earth vs. Planet Venus, human-form vs. goddess form, etc.—that are the most important. And not only did I make that claim, but I considered it such an important claim that I advanced the further claim that it is actually the basis for a just and creative society.

Hopefully you know, by now, that I mean exactly everything I say. And if we take the eclectic view of my philosophy, you'll understand that I am completely committed to a) NOT killing myself, and b) NOT killing others. This is a profound vow which, on many days, is like choosing to drink a specific cola-flavored drink. But many days there's actually a moral reason to follow it.

My Perspective on School Shootings

Approximately a year after my psychiatric hospitalization, and as a direct result of it, a number of thoughts I'd been having about the world culminated in a script for a short movie. It was about a school shooter. And it summed up the mindset of such a person in a simple argument, which I've not yet seen in circulation.

See, we tend to think that people commit school shootings because there aren't people "paying attention" to them. They lack the human interaction they need, and the human interaction they get is adverse to psychological health. So they attack a school or workplace in order to "get back" at the people who did them harm.

Now this view seems to make sense, but it leaves something important unexamined. It may explain the Columbine or Virginia Tech shooter, who shot their classmates. It may explain the shooter in Moscow Idaho, as well, since he probably believed that the government was the cause of all his problems, and therefore decided to shoot government employees.

But what about Adam Lanza?

Lanza shot a bunch of grade school children who had absolutely nothing to do with him. There was no reason whatsoever, according to the above-mentioned theories, for him to shoot these children. They were not his classmates. They were not his coworkers. And they did him no harm. This obviously points to this folk theory of school massacres as inadequate. In fact, the fact that the children did Lanza no harm is so obvious that, I bet, it factored in to his decision to shoot them. Which brings me to my own theory.

The thoughts I'd been having culminated in a simple, logical argument, which can be expressed formally. It goes like this:

1) Because of what I've experienced, the world is a very bad place. So bad, someone deserves to die for making it this way.

2) It's no one's fault in particular.

---

Conclusion: Everyone deserves to die.

Obviously no one has the power to kill everyone in the entire world. The next best option, then, is to kill as many people as possible.

Now this argument may have different flavors. It may take this form, for instance: "The world has been specifically designed to harm me." Or, "People in general exist for the sole purpose of harming me." Or any number of variants. But the key point is the same: existence in general is so awful, based on my own experience, that people who perpetuate this existence must be destroyed. Since it's no one's fault in particular, everyone must be destroyed.

Looking at it in this light, the meaning behind Lanza's apparently meaningless shooting becomes clear. Why unrelated children in an unrelated school? Because who it is does not matter. Everyone deserves to die, and the situation is so desperate that action must be taken right away. Therefore, Lanza decided to shoot as many people as possible as quickly as possible.

Another point ought to be mentioned in regards to the question, "Why first-graders?" Well, first-graders are relatively undeveloped human beings. They have not yet had the chance to become the kind of people who contribute to the existence that people like Lanza have come to despise. Better to kill them, Lanza probably thought, before they become that way, and save them from contributing to that kind of treachery.

So what's the solution to this kind of problem? I can tell you with absolute certainty exactly what the solution is not. The solution is emphatically not psychiatric. Identifying and treating the "mentally ill" shooters before they shoot people will probably result in more shootings. Remember: I have these kinds of thoughts running through my head at least 20 times a day, and they did not start until after I submitted to psychiatric treatment. From my perspective, psychiatric treatment is almost entirely the cause rather than the solution to the school shooting phenomenon, insofar as psychiatry makes existence unbearable.

The solution is to make the world a better place. And I'm not talking, necessarily, about a one-piece-at-a-time strategy. For example, my strategy for doing this, partly, is to simply not exist in this world, and in that way make it better. For example, I've trained myself to see pictures, of goddesses or whatever, as living beings in and of themselves. Then I interact with these pictures, so I don't have to interact with the "real" world. Because the real world disproportionately causes me harm—harm for which no solution readily exists.

Psychology, today, is ill-equipped to deal with this problem. I always laughed when I talked with my therapist, because I would give him a long string of everything that had been going on, and how nothing had been going right, and the only thing he could say was, "Wow, that sounds pretty bad." Psychology has coping strategies for dealing with particular things which cause psychological problems. If the news is upsetting, limit access to the news. If a workplace setting is causing problems, take five minutes to visualize a better place. We have de-escalation techniques for dealing with problematic people. We encourage people to hang out with beneficial friends, rather than harmful ones.

But what happens when there are so many particular things, coming at you from all angles, and with such frequency, that it just seems like the world itself has set out to hurt you? What if you have no beneficial friends? What if it isn't the workplace that's causing you problems, but the entire world? At that point psychology has no answers, and in order to shut you up, refers you to a psychiatrist, who causes more problems. But why not apply these coping techniques to the world itself? Psychology will say that hanging out in seedy bars, for instance, will lead to having seedy friends, and therefore, you should not hang out in seedy bars. So if, living out your life, you have been completely unable to make more than maybe one or two friends who treat you right, why not stop hanging out in the world? Why not hang out with goddesses instead?

One might respond that we should make a commitment to live in the world rather than outside of it, in order to make the world a better place. Yes, of course this is true, but I think it's unreasonable to expect everyone to be able to handle everything the world throws at them all the time. If the world consistently throws us more than we can handle, we may need a temporary alternative.

But that alternative doesn't come from nowhere. Remember, even our pictures of goddesses are anthropomorphic: they're inspired by things in the world. It is quite likely, in fact probable, that our goddesses will behave similarly to people in the world, if we haven't trained our minds. And then, of course, there is no possible escape.

That is why it is of vital importance for people to come up with a wholesome, inspired, concrete philosophy of ethics, or "the way the world should be." This philosophy should be crystalized and clear to the philosopher. It should be founded on a solid basis, such as meditative experience. That way, even if the objective world continues to do nothing but hurt you, goddesses will nevertheless be attracted to your ideas, and, if absolutely necessary, you won't need to live in the world at all. And if your ideas aren't adequate, so long as you're honest with yourself, the goddesses will let you know, and you can revise from there.

Thus if we train people to be honest with themselves, self-expressive, introspective, and fundamentally inquisitive, we will have cut out the basis of mass shootings. If we allow people to question objective reality, formulate self-expressive philosophies of living, and have real and direct intercourse with our fantasies (rather than intercourse mediated through objective reality), whether or not the objective world is an evil place where everyone deserves to die will be entirely beside the point. It is quite possible, theoretically, that everyone in the entire universe will rise up as your personal enemy. But it is impossible for there to be any space anywhere in existence where a goddess-Buddha does not reside, if we've been trained to see them. That is the solution to hateful killings in the world.

Notes on This Blog and My Previous Post

I'm not going to post here again concerning psychiatry in the foreseeable future, and I want to dedicate this post to explaining why.

What is the purpose of a blog? To me, a blog distinguishes itself from social media, internet forums, chat rooms, and the like because it is literature. A blog constitutes a body of literature, which can be referred back to for reference. In that sense, while social media, internet forums, etc. are temporal, a blog is timeless. Things do not need to be repeated here; as long as I say something once, I can feel comfortable leaving the topic alone.

I see no reason to continue writing about psychiatry simply because I've already said all I wanted. The last post, "The Problem with Psychiatry in Three Quick Arguments," represents the culmination of my point of view regarding psychiatry. It is as crystalized as it can be. This is precisely how deep the rabbit hole goes; I need dig no further.

Sure, I may feel the need to elaborate, but really all I'll be doing is further sharing the ideas in the previous post. And many posts previous to that one elaborated quite well enough. So while I may see the need to elaborate, I see no need to elaborate here.

There is only one concept which I haven't talked about on this blog, which is the solution to the problem. The solution is simple: three agnosticisms, and three behavior modifications. To wit:

1. Being agnostic about the science.
2. Being agnostic about the diagnosis—it's validity and it's applicability.
3. Being agnostic about the treatment—it's validity and it's applicability.

1. Modifying psychiatrists' behavior of lying.
2. Modifying psychiatrists' behavior of manipulating.
3. Modifying psychiatrists' behavior of using coercive and violent force.

These solutions are implied in all my previous posts. But now, they have been crystalized. The problem is crystalized; the solution is crystalized; there is no need for further discussion here. Whether or not these ideas become accepted is a matter for society to deliberate, and though I certainly see the grave danger posed by psychiatry, and I hope others see it as well, it is not my place to dictate what society will and will not accept.

This is not an "Internet suicide" by any means. An "Internet suicide," for those of you who don't know, refers to when a highly opinionated person joins an Internet group and expects everyone to agree with them, starts a dumb flame war when they learn many people don't, and then concludes their presence on the site with a message, in all caps, saying, "SCREW YOU ALL YOU'RE ALL STUPID I'M NEVER COMING BACK HERE AGAIN." At which point exactly no one seems to care. This post is not that, because a) I never expected anyone to agree with me, b) I don't care if they don't agree with me, c) I'm still going to post on this blog, and d) I'm still going to spread my views about psychiatry, just not here.

So please stick around; though you won't see this particular vein of anti-psychiatric philosophy, you can all look forward to a lot more philosophy and beautiful things.

The Problem with Psychiatry in Three Quick Arguments

I've composed an open letter to psychiatrists which sums up, in three linear, deductively valid, logical arguments exactly what is wrong with psychiatry. Previously I was wondering how deep the rabbit hole goes; this is precisely how deep it goes. I'm mailing this to psychiatrists, and I want a response. I think I deserve one, and I hope others, especially those directly harmed by psychiatry, can see why.

A Short Philosophical Examination of Love and Crushes

This topic is one that is of central importance to me. I remember one time, in a spiritually turbulent state, I ran away from my home town of Moscow, Idaho. In the midst of all the confusion and pain, I got a moment of beauty. I was treated to a twenty-first birthday dinner, desert, and drinks by two lovely ladies, who had only just met me a day or two earlier.

One of the ladies told me, "A lot of people come to this town and want to teach me something. Do you have anything you'd like to teach me?" Politely, I asked her, "Is there anything you'd like to learn about?" And she said, "Teach me about crushes."

A lot of the insight I believe I've gained into the idea of crushes, and of love, was expressed in that conversation. And at that particularly turbulent time in my life, the importance of insight into these things can't be understated.

The first thing I said was that there is a fundamental distinction between love and crushes. The two are not really the same. In other words, you can relate to the object of your affection as having a crush on her but not loving her, as loving her but not having a crush on her, as having a crush on her and loving her at the same time, or as neither having a crush on her nor loving her. (Note, I'm going to exhibit a little gender bias here and refer to subjects of affection in the male gender and objects in the female gender, not because I think all women are objects, but simply because I am a male and I'm speaking to my own experience, and can't speak to the experience of women, though I'd bet it's similar.)

So if love and crushes are so fundamentally different, in what ways are they different?

For one, love is among the class of things which lasts forever and which can be applied equally to everyone. You can say, truthfully, that you will never stop loving someone. Crushes, on the other hand, are not among that class of things. You cannot say, necessarily, that you will never stop having a crush on someone.

Love is also nonviolent and caring. Crushes, on the other hand, are essentially violent. This is why they're so scary. You feel as though the object of your affection could literally crush you, and that would be perfectly okay, and that if you could just kiss her once, it would be good to go off and die somewhere because your life will be complete because nothing you could possibly experience would ever be even a close approximation to the experience of that kiss.

Love is a nonconceptual thing. It cannot be defined, and therefore cannot be limited in any way. Crushes, on the other hand, are conceptual. In many ways they are the epitome of conceptual thinking. When you have a crush on someone, you conceptualize her to painstaking detail, individually running your mind over every one of her features, everything she ever said, every look she ever gave you, and so on, obsessively, for days upon days. You are extremely attached to the concept of the woman you have a crush on, and this is the essence of what a crush is.

What more can be said about love and crushes? It seems, from the foregoing, that we should strive in every way to adopt the former and avoid the latter. That having a crush on someone is an ethical failure. But this cannot be true, because it is possible to both love and have a crush on someone, and love admits of no intentional ethical failures.

I believe there is a way to ethically have a crush on someone. It involves intimate knowledge of the idea of what a crush is, so one can avoid its pitfalls (anger, tears, frightening behaviors, and so forth). It is perfectly acceptable to be enthralled by the concept of a woman. But, in my opinion, one must have an agnosticism of this concept along with the enthrallment. If you love every minute detail of someone, but remain open to the possibility of details which you do not know—some of which, perhaps, may be frightening or even ugly—then your crush is ethical. And if combined with love, it can even be an enriching and positive experience.

How can something so crushing possibly be enriching and positive? Because crushes have the potential to fundamentally transform the way you see the world. Imagine you are completely enthralled by the concept of a woman. You look at her once and cannot help but skip a breath. You think of any detail of her—the way the carries herself, the way she does her hair, and so on—and are inescapably ravished by the absolute beauty of it. But, you also love the woman, and are willing to accept her for her faults (even if you can't see them yet), willing to withhold violence and even take on violence for her sake, willing to give her what she needs—even when she needs to be free of being a concept, and so forth. And, therefore, you are also willing to be agnostic of her features as a concept, because these features change—and new ones appear, and old ones disappear—and love does not change.

Think of what this implies if you can maintain both the love and the crush, and if the crush never surpasses the love. It means that if some ugly feature of her appears, it may surprise you, but eventually you will be enthralled by it. Suppose you experience paranoia and are into conspiracy theories. Almost always, your crush will inevitably become the center of the conspiracy. You'll think she's a reptilian or something. But you love her, and you still have a crush on her, so inevitably, you become enthralled by the idea that she's a reptilian, and love her all the more for it. And so forth. Any negative feature or character trait that you can possibly think of, if she somehow adopts it in your mind, you eventually become enthralled by it.

Crushes therefore have the power to transform the entire universe from something negative to something positive and worth living for. When combined with love, both the love and the crush can feed off one another, and no matter what negativity you experience, the object of your affection has the power to change it all.

I used to think that the only right way to deal with crushes was to give them up. But this only caused me more pain, because of the emotional sterility of being without crushes, and the humiliation and fear when you inevitably develop another one. The only right way to deal with crushes is, I think, to learn to sincerely love everyone, in case you develop a crush on them.

This attitude is not only desirable, but necessary. Inevitably, you will develop a crush, and if you're not prepared, you'll be completely consumed. It happens all the time: people become emotional wrecks because the person they "loved" (read: "had a crush on") didn't "love" them back. Well, if you love them, in the real sense of the word, it doesn't matter if they "love" you back. Or maybe they marry their crush and end up beating them when they do something they didn't expect. But people who love each other don't hurt each other.

I've had a number of crushes. But I wasn't completely consumed. By any of them. Or, if I was, I recovered. I was lucky. And because of it, my life will never be the same. They are psychicly dangerous things, crushes. They hurt. But learning to navigate the madness can be essentially wholesome. Crushes: ultimately, an experience worth having.

Finding Wonderland

I had a dream one time where a conspiratorial reptilian was harassing me and questioning me, harping on me for quite a long time. Because he was a reptilian, I was completely engaged with him during the confrontation. It was sort of similar to The Scarecrow in Batman Begins, though not quite as frightening in nature.

At one point I simply got tired of the whole thing. So I retreated from the world. The reptilian finally realized this and said, "Ah, it's no use. He's lost in Wonderland." He was right.

What is Wonderland?

We always worry about how fast time flies by us. Years become blurs in the past. Days don't even seem to exist. We can't remember if something happened last month, or three months ago. We have this notion that time goes by faster and faster until we reach the inevitable point of our destruction, having accomplished nothing. The only solution, I think, is to go down the rabbit hole.

I think Phillip Dick was right when he wrote about how we have the capacity to change the course of time. He wrote a story about a few punks who took drugs which changed how time flowed. Now, for me, days go by very slowly. They do not fly by. It is better to do things this way, I think. More fulfilling. And I think everyone has the capacity to slow their time down.

See, usually we get caught up in this notion of becoming financially secure. We want security for our jobs, our homes—we don't even want to entertain the possibility that we'll be without a job or without a home. This may be nice, for a while; we may feel we've accomplished something. But the problem begins when time starts to speed up. Which isn't good.

I think we should lose our jobs and our homes. At least, we should put them at risk. Then we should slow time down until it stops. Once we do that, we will have found Wonderland—a shimmering, still and celestial Wonderland where the Queen of Hearts is nowhere to be found. We will have found the place in the universe outside of time and space. It is the only true world of the forms: where every wished-for thing we ever knew is present, for all eternity, right at our fingertips.

Make no mistake, this is not enlightenment. One can live in the world of time and be enlightened. So Wonderland isn't exactly necessary for us. But don't you think it would be kind of nice to slow things down a little bit? Don't you think it would be pleasant for time to cease slipping through our fingers? I tend to think so, and I think that for our culture, finding Wonderland should be a goal.

The world shouldn't be so boring that we want it to pass us by as quickly as possible. Frankly, I think we are all celestial beings, and a little piece of Wonderland, however we get there, is worth finding.

Jewish Identity Disorder: Psychiatry in Action

We all know that, here in NAZI Germany, there is an epidemic of individuals, invisible to most but tragically evident to some, suffering from a new mental disorder. The very name of the disorder is enough to make you tremble in fear and feel sick to your stomach:

Jewish Identity Disorder.

Here's what we know of the disease. It is generally incurable and chronic. While mostly marked by cognitive features (like believing you're the Chosen People of God, and not believing that Our Savior Jesus Christ of Nazareth came to this world to save us for our sins, and various other beliefs not shared by the common culture), the disease also generally results in physical abnormalities. For example, there's a documented correlation between JID and curly hair and hard noses. Furthermore, there is quite a body of research which shows that JID runs in families. There may be a genetic component as well.

While effective treatment of the disease remains ever elusive, the catastrophic toll of JID across The Fatherland cannot be understated. Every day, thousands of Jews are rounded up by the police and shipped to treatment facilities. Many of them never get out. The ones that do get out generally live a life of terrible poverty and social stigma. The stigma is often described as the worst part: many good Jews understand that they have a serious mental illness and need treatment, often, unfortunately, at national treatment facilities. Despite their cognitive inferiority, they understand that there is something terribly wrong with them and that they'll probably never recover. We have to combat this. The time has come for our society to recognize that the profoundly life-changing diagnosis of JID simply doesn't justify treating them as inferiors, even though they are.

Your friends at the National Socialist Party stress the need for a national strategy to address the JID problem. We must also take into account the growing body of literature on recovery. There is a certain percentage of people with JID who only go to a treatment facility once, and, after professional treatment with Haldol and other psychoactives, they come to the conclusion on their own that they in fact aren't Jewish and never were. We also recognize the role of peers—others who have claimed to be Jewish—in treatment, as long as they follow evidence-based practices proven effective in decreasing the symptoms of JID. Also, strict professional boundaries must be maintained. (For obvious reasons, we can't have outside people with JID making personal friendships with inmates at our state-of-the-art treatment facilities.)

We stress that everyone should read up on the abundant literature regarding Jewish Identity Disorder. The severity of this national problem cannot be stressed enough, and an informed citizen is an empowered citizen. Sieg Heil!

Poor Joe. He's Depressed.

"I don't feel too well today. My son, Joe, is depressed."

"That's too bad! Is he being raped for it?"

"Yes, thank God. Wouldn't want him committing suicide you know."

"I know. It's such a travesty that so many children refuse to be raped."

"Yes! And here's the crazy part; we're not even allowed to rape adults unless they ask for it. I worry that when my child grows up I can't rape him anymore."

"Can you believe how crazy the government is? I mean, I know when my child needs to be raped. I should be allowed to rape him whenever I choose."

"Well anyway, I'm so glad our school has a school rapist. With all these damn budget cuts, a lot of people can't even pay someone to rape their own children."

"We just have to keep fighting. Some people even want rape to be illegal altogether."

"I can't believe how crazy some people are. Especially the Scientologists. I hear that the anti-rape movement actually comes from Scientology."

"It's true: once, I heard Brad Pitt one time go on this crazy rant about how bad rape is because it was all started by some galactic alien at the center of the galaxy."

"The thing is, this is an entire movement of people inspired by the crazy theory that rape was invented by a galactic overlord named Xenu. Oh, they'll deny it, of course. They'll say rape is bad no matter who started it. But who are you going to believe—a rapist, or someone who thinks rape is bad?"

"And what about those people who think rape should be consensual?"

"That's like the worst idea ever! You think someone really knows when they do or don't need to be raped?"

"That's the thing! The people who really need to be raped don't know that they need it. It's so sad that people just won't recognize the humanity in raping people against their will."

"Oh well. I guess we just have to keep raping our children and hope these insane people just go away someday."

"They never will, you know."

"I know."

What is Wrong with People?

Okay. Here's one thing I absolutely hate about the human race. They completely refuse to do the right thing.

Imagine if you were to say, "Rape is evil, it destroys humanity, and it needs to be abolished." Imagine if everybody simply ignored you, then proceeded to institutionalize rape and rape you.

Well, if you say, "Psychiatry is evil, it destroys humanity, and it needs to be abolished," people ignore you.

yeah. It's kind of like that.

You don't know. I've been through psychiatry, and it is one of the most traumatic experiences that a human being can possibly have. And it's getting more and more traumatic every day, forced against younger and younger people. Imagine if I were to say, "Raping children is evil, it destroys humanity, and it needs to be abolished," and everyone thought I was some kind of nutcase, because everybody knows that the best thing to do to a child is to rape him/her. I mean, duh! Rape is healing! Didn't you know? I mean, they do it at hospitals, it must be good for you!

Listen to this. Please. "Madness Radio: Talking About Suicidal Feelings David Webb." Note what he says: "I've known women who have been raped who say psychiatry is as bad as rape." Read this on rape: "The association of sexual assault and attempted suicide within the community." Note the suicide attempt rate: 15%. Teen suicide attempt rate of people with schizophrenia? 50%. But wait, that's just because the illness is traumatic, not psychiatry, right? So I guess we can keep on conspiring behind teens' back and then telling them the thought that people conspiring behind their back is a disease. I guess we can lie to and manipulate them with impunity and tell them how the thought that people are lying to them and manipulating them is a disease. I guess we can tell them how terrible their plight is then tell them how thinking their plight is terrible is a disease. I guess we can assault them with forced medication and tell them that assault is bad. If you don't understand the inhumanity of this, you're not human. Period.

For Christ's sake please read my posts on psychiatry, believe them, and share them.

A Note or Two on Yelling at People

A while back I decided to yell at my therapist. We both agreed that a shouting match was the most appropriate thing to do at that time. No, it wasn't one of those sterile, therapist-y agreements—"I want us to try something new. Let's have a shouting match. Don't be afraid; let it all out." We don't do business that way because it doesn't work. My therapist is a straight-up, no bullshit kind of guy. He wanted an emotional response. Well, he got one.

"Nathan," he said, "you just seem to think these psychiatrists all get together and sit around saying, 'Gee, let's see how many people we can hurt and oppress today.' You really think psychiatrists go to medical school for eight years and live on crappy doctors' wages just because they felt like hurting people was a cool thing to do?"

"They don't have to! The entire system is based on fallacious and fundamentally oppressive assumptions. I don't care what kind of person you are, if you believe that people's minds are diseased, you're going to be oppressive! It's the same as saying you're a flawed person!"

"Great. Tell me: when has a psychiatrist ever told you that you're a 'flawed person?'"

"I've been lucky not to have to work with psychiatrists since the mental hospital. But I know people who have. And if people weren't regularly abused like what happened to me, there wouldn't be a consumer survivor movement."

"See? With you it's always 'Oh, I've heard stories.' What about you? I want you to tell me right now, what evidence do YOU have?"

So I told him my story. I told how I went to the doctor for help because I thought I was sick. How he started talking behind my back to my friends and family about how I should probably get on meds. How I started sensing that people were conspiring behind my back. (Because they were.) And how they hit me with, "You have a mental illness. There's something wrong with your mind and it'll never get better. You'll probably live a half life filled with misery and regret, and take these pills which change the way you see the world but don't make anything better. Oh and be sure to talk to your friends and family about it, see what they have to say. That's important, you know."

"So," He said. "You went to a doctor for help, and he gave you help." (Gasp.) "What a surprise."

"How can you call that help??"

"Look, Nathan. It may have hurt. But he did what he thought was in YOUR best interest. But you give him no credit. You think he just did it all because he had some kind of grudge against humanity."

"You know, NAZI's were all ordinary, nice people too. They only became monsters because they were trained that way. Psychiatrists are trained to believe that people—REAL people—can have something FUNDAMENTALLY wrong with them, with their very minds. That's what they believe."

"Tell me, how many years have you been trained in psychiatry?"

No answer.

"Well I have been trained in psychiatry." (He loads a web page about the WRAP program.) "Look at this program that every mental health professional in the State of Idaho is REQUIRED to take."

From there on I was on shaky grounds. I'd never been formally trained in psychiatry, and though I'd heard things about the consumer-directed movement in mainstream psychiatry, I hadn't looked at it much. There was still a thing or two I wanted to say, though.

Emotions were hot, of course, and the fiery exchange went on deep into the night. But there was nothing about the shouting that wasn't congenial and ultimately beneficial. And we concluded with friendly words: about how he liked to see me "all fired up," how angry we never really get, and so on. The point is: it was beneficial. It was positive and wholesome. If I had not decided to get angry, I would've missed the point.

Let me show you something I made:

The execution may not have been the best, but those goddesses are real. They'll come to me, in the middle of the night after a bad day, wrap their beautiful thighs around me, and get right inside my mind.

They're like, "I fucking hate you. You're a terrible person. I wish you would die. You're bad. I hate you. Just die."

They break my neck. They feed me poison and rip my intestines out. They hurt me, and they don't stop.

They're like: "I hate you. Just die. I fucking hate you."

And suddenly, when the world stops, I burst into tears, look her straight in the eyes, and—the love. We cuddle; flowers bloom, babies coo, birds tweedle, and everything's alright.

You know that feeling of grimacing through an unbearably hot sauna then laying down for twenty minutes in 40 degree water, blissed out like you've taken some cocktail of the most amazing drug, only without the addiction or side-effects... kind of like that. Ladies, I'm telling you, it's hard to compete with an experience like this. (Come to think of it, probably shouldn't try either.)

See, in our culture, we're so rational and deliberating and scientific that we forget the heat of emotions. We forget the value of rage and depression, and of tears. I hate it when people say, "Don't cry." Actually I love it, because it makes you cry. The more they say it the more you cry. That's why it's so nice to say. The trick is, don't analyze and deliberate and come to the reasonable conclusion, "She probably doesn't want me to cry. I should stop now." Because tears are the seeds of joy.

I know it's not right to hurt people. I know it's not right to get angry and yell at someone and put them down. But sometimes, if you're extremely careful, it's the best way to show love. If you REALLY love someone, and if you yell at them lovingly, it's like that hot sauna. It opens your pores and all the bad stuff in the world comes out. Then when you cry together, and hug each other, and the birds and the flowers—it's like the cold water. It's bliss. As long as you love, you can't go wrong.

Brandon Raub: It Could Happen to Anyone

Well I was silent on this for a while, but since Brandon Raub got almost half as much attention as a turnip, I have to comment.

It's bullshit.

This kind of indefinite detention happens every day, and would be happening with or without NDAA or the Patriot Act. Where was the Rutherford Institute when it happened to me?

The problem is not the government, but psychiatry, which is, and always has been, fundamentally opposed to a free society. From Foucalt's Madness and Civilization: "[Madness] is at every moment judged from without; judged not by moral or scientific consciousness, but by a sort of invisible tribunal in permanent session." I know what he's talking about, because I've experienced it. Why police, arrest, try, and execute undesirables if you can get them to do all this to themselves? This is the essence of psychiatry. Psychiatry was an evil and illegitimate institution since its inception.

And now people get worked up because they think it might happen to them, under the Patriot Act. Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but if a couple of psychiatrists say it is going to happen to you, it's damn well going to happen to you. That's the way it's always been. But, oh, I thought it was only supposed to happen to those crazy people nobody cares about, not to ME. Again: if psychiatrist says you're crazy, you're crazy, cause psychiatrist says.

Fight the problem at its source: end the institution of psychiatry.

Psychosis as Sexual Pleasure

Psychosis can actually be one of the most pleasurable experiences you can have. All it takes is a little courage and self-confidence. It's really tough to gain courage and self-confidence when your world is literally falling apart around you. But if you carefully approach the other world, and get to know it, become comfortable with it in a safe place, it's really not such a bad place.

The fear, for me anyway, was always losing control. Losing control of my mind and becoming something else. But I've experienced many, many bouts of psychosis, and except for once, I NEVER lost control. At least, not because of the psychosis. I became weird and freaked people out, because I was so paranoid... of the psychosis. I would do anything to try and be absolutely sure I was being "normal." But here's a secret: the more you try to be normal, the less normal you become.

Once I overcame the fear of losing control, the fear of losing my self, I recognized that this radically "other" world was a whole lot of fun. The funnest kind of fun. The demons and spirits trying to attack me suddenly became beautiful Goddesses. The fear and paranoia became wonder. The voices (few as they were, with me) became insight. Think of it this way: if you want a real fantasy world, you'll have to make a radical break with reality. And that can't be anything but scary. But it can also be rewarding.

Make no mistake: I DO have schizophrenia. I've been officially diagnosed, and hospitalized against my will. I know what these feelings are, viscerally. I'm on medications. But I insist: I have come to enjoy them. They are worth experiencing.

In fact, they are more worth experiencing than the medications. I took medications to rid myself of these feelings, and everything became infinitely worse, and I still haven't recovered. Instead of feeling paranoia, I was asleep constantly. I slept as much as 14 hours a day. When a filmmaking project of mine fell through, in the deepest depression, I finally had to make a decision. I decided: psychosis is infinitely better than medication. From now on, I would prefer psychosis to medication every time, and if people didn't like it, too bad for them.

Of course, I'm still on a low dose, but only because it's useful to me not to jump ship to the other world and become lost. I still have a stake in the "real" world. But if the beautiful Goddesses whisk me away for a while, even regularly, people will just have to get used to it. Because having a clear and alert mind, which isn't medicated to the point of sloth, is unquestionably better, even if I lose myself from time to time. I'm sorry, but the doctors have done so much more harm than good. I won't go so far as to say I should never have been medicated. But madness has been enriching and beautiful, while medication has been horrid.

When I Would Vote Republican

Psychiatry is Thought Policing. The Thought Police, especially in public schools, are trying to outlaw emotions and vast territories of free thought. There is nothing positive about psychiatry.

In order to advance their agenda of control and mental slavery, the Thought Police first make school life intolerable, then when any student in any way expresses how intolerable school life is, they use fear tactics to frighten parents into believing their son or daughter has something called a "mental illness" (a thing which they simply made up) and that the kid cannot be trusted to think for themselves. They then encourage every effort to forcibly disallow the child to think for themselves and make authority figures think for them. This, of course, causes the child immense suffering, which they will obviously express, and when they do, it confirms their proposition that they have a "mental illness."

No tactic is too extreme to force the child not to think for themselves. Schools have been known to put children in isolation for hours and not allow them to go to the bathroom. They also torture children with electric shocks to get them to fall in line. If they express suicidality (who wouldn't in such a situation?) they use police force to incarcerate them and deny them all basic rights in a "mental hospital" (prison). Abuse is rampant at these hospitals. While according to the first Amendment, people should be allowed to videotape orderlies at these hospitals, if you try to force them to respect this right, they will violently tackle you to the ground, take away your camera permanently, put you in isolation, not allow you to eat with the other inmates, and put you on a higher dosage of mind-killing medications in order to subdue you.

Parents naturally have a bond for their children. So when they are afraid for them, they take control of the situation. This instinct is twisted and perverted into a sadistic form of mind-control and manipulation by the Thought Police. If you can get a parent to believe that their child has illegal thoughts ("mental illness"), they will use any and all tactics to force the child to think the way they prescribe. They will try to "help," which in essence means torture and traumatize the child into allowing the parent totalitarian mind-control to force out the illegal thoughts.

How do they frighten parents into becoming proxy Thought Police? Consider a publication I found at the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, entitled "Red Flags in Children's Behavior." What exactly are some of these "red flags?" For adolescents, some include, "drug and alcohol use," "difficulty with relationships," "inattention to appearance or grooming," "risk taking behaviors with little thought of consequences," "extreme sensitivity to rejection or failure," "social isolation." In other words, being a normal adolescent is illegal. In order to satisfy the Thought Police, you must be a completely abnormal teenager--a freak. But of course, if you ever get depressed because you're a freak, that's an illegal thought, and they will bear down on you using every tactic they have in their arsenal.

According to the Thought Police, humanity is illegal. And to punish being human, they will torture you and traumatize you any way they can.

I am a solid Liberal, but the Republicans have a great track record against psychiatry. If Democrats EVER take up the position that we should "help" people with "mental illness," I won't care about the environment, I won't care about gay rights, I won't care about rampant corporate corruption, I won't care about civil liberties, I won't care about domestic spying, I won't care about foreign wars, I won't care about militarizing the police, I won't care about the war on drugs, I won't care about regulation of Wall Street; if Democrats EVER try to "help" people with "mental illness," I WILL vote Republican. Period.

It is imperative that right-thinking people let the world know how we feel about the disgusting anti-human institution of psychiatry and oppose it in any possible way we can.

Why Psychiatry is So Evil

This is the end game for people with psychosis. Dissidents will be silenced, and creative minds will be subdued.

How the Schizophrenic Mind Works

Everything people with schizophrenia do (assuming they are logical people) is absolutely logical. It is consistent with reason, and perfectly sane. A person with schizophrenia who understands the mandates of logic and reason, is skilled in ethics, acute in understanding, perfectly level-headed, with a correct view of the world, will display symptoms of schizophrenia. She will believe people attack them in their sleep. She will stare into space and become unresponsive to stimuli. She will experience anxiety and stress. It is not that she is stubborn. It is not that she is immature. So why do she acts the way she does, if she is perfectly sane?

What would you do in a room with a rapist? You would be very wary of their every move. You would avoid them at all costs, or if you cannot avoid them, you would at least lock your door at night. You would try to reason with them: "If you rape and attack people all your life," you would say, "you won't have many friends. People will call you a rapist. You will go to jail. You will lose your job."

But what is rape? Do you even know? Have you ever been raped? Most people with schizophrenia have never been raped. But they see people nodding their heads. They see people curling their lips into a smile. They see people snapping their fingers and making a pistol of their hand. By the force of logic, this all screams "Rape! Murder! Incest! Conspiracy!"

This seems very illogical. But honestly, what is logic? With no reference point, logic disappears. Suppose you are ten years old, and you have never lost a toy before. You put your toy down on the counter, with the vague feeling that you will remember it when you need it. Next thing you know, you can't find it. Did you behave illogically? Of course not. It is not deductively valid to say that placing toys on the counter leads to losing them—it is a logical fallacy. The best you can do is have a loving parent tell you, "If you don't set aside a place for your toys, you will end up losing them." Now, you have a reference point. You think; "Putting toys in random places —> losing them." At this point it is logically valid to say, "Assuming the counter is a random place, if I put my toy there, I will lose it." This is logic.

Now a person with schizophrenia is a human being. Because she is human, she feels a sense of connection when people smile at her. It creates a special feeling in her mind. So, she knows, "This special feeling is means communication." It is now highly logical for her to say, "If I experience this special feeling, I must be experiencing communication." Similarly, she feels a different kind of connection when people yell at her. This comes with it's own special feeling. And so on for other feelings.

Now television, newspapers, books, etc. give us an image of what the mind of a rapist is like. What they convey has a sense of realism to it. Why? Because it is connected with our personal experiences. Clearly, the person with schizophrenia has the same image. She knows, "When I feel this way, I have had that experience." She knows, "This special feeling generally indicates a communication of lust." Someone nods their head at her. She feels that special feeling. It is LOGICALLY VALID for her to assume that she is in danger of being raped. It is LOGICALLY VALID for her to behave in a paranoid manner. It is LOGICALLY VALID for her to lock her doors, to plead with the person not to rape her, or hitchhike to California. She knows this person must logically be a rapist. It is clear and obvious. Here's the argument in standard form:

1. Special feeling —> communication of that which leads to rape.
2. Special feeling.
   ----------------------
3. Rape is imminent.

Logic is the most valuable tool we have. Why should we oppose logic?

Now, consider the statement: "If the people on TV claim that rapists are commonly jailed, commonly lose their friends, commonly are socially ostracized, and I know rapists who are not jailed, do not lose their friends, are not socially ostracized, then the people on TV are lying." Perfectly reasonable, right? Of course it is. Therefore, for the person with schizophrenia, it is PERFECTLY REASONABLE for her to think, "People on TV lie all the time." It is PERFECTLY REASONABLE for her to think, there must be a conspiracy. It is PERFECTLY REASONABLE for her to believe that all of society is against her.

Now, if all of society is against you, and you know that someone is going to rape you, would you defend yourself? Of course you would. A person with schizophrenia knows by the force of logic that she will be raped, that society is against her, and that it is perfectly reasonable for her to defend herself. So she sprays her best friend with mace. Is this wrong of her? Is this unethical? Of course not. It is ABSOLUTELY UNDERSTANDABLE. 

What does this make the mental hospital? Unjust. It is an enforcement of arbitrary authority. It creates nothing but pure confusion. No one behaves specifically to gain admittance to a mental hospital. They behave logically, reasonably, understandably, and suddenly, they are in a mental hospital. What would you do if someone stalked you, sent you threatening notes, called you on the phone ten times a day? You would call the police. What if you know the police won't come, and the person is in the same room with you, looks at you, and walks toward you, clearly communicating lust? You would spray the person with mace. What would you do if they sent you to a mental hospital? If you get angry at the mental hospital, and they tackle you to the floor and shoot tranquilizers in your ass? You would be bewildered, traumatized, confused. Reality? What reality? Reality makes no sense. There is no justice. There is no comfort.

Medications may help. But they do not cure. So to many people with schizophrenia, they do nothing but confuse. Why am I taking medications? I know that that person was trying to rape me earlier. He may not be trying to rape me now, but what of that? Me taking medications won't make him any less of a rapist. Sure, it may be bizarre that all of a sudden he doesn't have lust. But what does that have to do with me? These medications haven't done a thing. I see things in exactly the same way as before, only now I have side effects. Furthermore, I know society is screwed up, that there are massive conspiracies afoot, and that anyone may be in on it. It's not that they aren't rapists, they're just trying to make me take medications. Screw it, I'm going off my meds.

Sending a person with schizophrenia to the mental hospital will not change anything. Nor will prescribing medications to them. What is the solution? The only solution is to teach them to abandon logic. Abandon comfort. Abandon justice. Accept nothing but pure experience, no matter what the situation. Suppose they will rape you—what of that? People get raped. You just have to deal with it. Suppose you taking medications doesn't make others stop raping people—what of that? The trained psychiatric professional says, you must take your medications. Why not put him in the driver's seat for a while?

Our experiences are fallible. Our communication is arbitrary. Our ideals are empty. There is no truth in thoughts, in words, in objects. The only truth is in the mind. People with schizophrenia, just as everyone else, will do well to learn this. They will stop being paranoid. They will stop spraying people with mace. They will stop being angry. I guarantee the world will be a better place, no matter where they are—mental hospital or elsewhere.