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Thinking the unthinkable

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Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#271

Post by dkarl »

konstruktor wrote: post #165
unimpressive wrote: post #99

> “Then I’m going to kill myself,” he said. I remember doing that. > He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work. I remember that. > A few weeks ago, Michael..threatened to kill me I did that too. She forgot to mention the time(s) he threatened to run away. (I'd be surprised if he didn't.) After a marathon of transfers, expulsions,…

If a sudden moment of clarity would be a repeatable cure for mental illness, we would not need mental healthcare. Please read up on confirmation bias.

I think for most people there's a lot of reflection, conscious or subconscious, that leads up to a "sudden moment of clarity" and a great deal of consolidation work that follows. It's hard to tell the complete story of accepting a simple fact that you've been resisting for a long time. When I read something like this, I don't think, "Yeah, right," I think, "How would this have played out for me?" The story would have been long, boring, pathetic, off-putting, and embarrassing. Which may be why these things are always presented as sudden moments of clarity, though I'm open to the possibility that other people actually experience them that way.

The point I take away is not the instantaneous nature of his insight but _what_ he realized: that the consequences of his vices would become more and more serious, and that he didn't want to pay the price. (The discovery of empathy, I think, was a side effect. People are generally emotionally blind to the side effects of behaviors they have no intention of stopping.)

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#272

Post by DenisM »

unimpressive wrote: post #99

> “Then I’m going to kill myself,” he said. I remember doing that. > He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work. I remember that. > A few weeks ago, Michael..threatened to kill me I did that too. She forgot to mention the time(s) he threatened to run away. (I'd be surprised if he didn't.) After a marathon of transfers, expulsions,…

It's also posible that you simply got better for a natural reason, and then rationalized the outcome post-factum.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#273

Post by dkarl »

fatbird wrote: post #256
elpachuco wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Then I’m going to kill myself,” he said. I remember doing that. > He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work. I remember that. > A few weeks ago, Michael..threatened to kill me I did that too. I wonder if a nice beating would have done you any good. I have one anecdotal story. My older brother was uncontrollable at the age of 9…

Another word for "beating" is simply "consequence". Establishing that there are negative consequences for particular behaviours is what's important (and that they're consistently applied and adhered to), and clearly the mother knows that--she punished him effectively by yanking his electronics for a day. There's nothing particular about beating a child that's more effective than other punishments. Show me a child who…

I don't know about you, but there was a limit to how how bad my parents could make me feel through non-abusive consequences. There was always an emotional weighing of the impulse to misbehave versus the punishment that would follow. As with most children, the deprivation of privileges my parents could inflict on me was generally severe enough to outweigh the emotions that drove me misbehave, but when a kid's impulses are too strong, I imagine his feelings of rage and defiance can outweigh any non-abusive punishment a his parents can inflict. These days such a kid is destined for an institution, even though a few beatings might make him a functional member of society.

That said, I think it's for the best that physical abuse is criminalized, because I don't think human beings can be trusted to use it judiciously. Like you pointed out, when accepted, it is used inappropriately and destructively much more often than it is used appropriately (hey, just like guns.) However, one consequence of giving up corporal punishment is that some (very small) subset of kids will be deprived of punishment that could have set them on a better course, and in the end society will resort to violence to control them, violence carried out lawfully via the justice system.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#274

Post by Mz »

vailripper wrote: post #270
fatbird wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another word for "beating" is simply "consequence". Establishing that there are negative consequences for particular behaviours is what's important (and that they're consistently applied and adhered to), and clearly the mother knows that--she punished him effectively by yanking his electronics for a day. There's nothing particular about beating a child that's more effective than other punishments. Show me a child who…

What this misses is that for many mental illnesses, is that the connection between actions and consequences is broken. My brother had EXTREME issues with oppositional defiance disorder and ADHD growing up. I can guarantee you my parents made sure there were consequences, but it doesn't matter. They simply can't connect the actions they're taking in that moment to the consequences they will receive afterwards.

A lot of parents (and employers) come up with consequences that are not really logically tied to behavior. Often, they just try to "punish", which fails with a lot of kids, or even backfires. My oldest son has (among other things) a high tolerance for physical pain (and, as an adult, a red beard, when red hair is a trait known to be tied to high pain threshold). He could be quite difficult as a child, both because he didn't much care when his risky behaviors hurt and spanking was pretty pointless. But when designed right, consequences did work. Punishment did not.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#276

Post by justincormack »

mpweiher wrote: post #200
justincormack wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the list http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/20/the-worst-mass-shootings... It certainly looks like Scandinavia and the UK might have a problem. Europe as a whole still has fewer than the US for a similar population but it is high. None for China, India or Brazil. So it is not just about normalisation...

From that list, I count 16 events in the US and 4 in the EU. Populations are 501M (EU) and 316M (US) (Wikipedia). So 4:1 incidence rate, 6:1 adjusted for population. Very similar to the overall homicide and gun death rates. I'd agree that Scandinavia has a bigger problem (EU would be at 2 without Finland). (Norway is not part of the EU, and I also didn't count the US soldier going on a rampage in Afghanistan).

Norway is culturally part of Europe, joining the EU does not really change much.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#277

Post by justincormack »

mosselman wrote: post #143
justincormack wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the list http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/20/the-worst-mass-shootings... It certainly looks like Scandinavia and the UK might have a problem. Europe as a whole still has fewer than the US for a similar population but it is high. None for China, India or Brazil. So it is not just about normalisation...

Please. 'it is high' in Europe'? Playing it fast and loose with the word 'high' if you ask me. Of those mentioned in the list; 6 in the past 25 years are in Europe. 3 shootings, on this list alone, happened in the US in the past 6 months! Most European countries probably haven't had any of this type of thing happen in the past 25+ years.

Well, its not very statistically significant anyway, but the number outside the US and Europe at all is very small. There are too many in Europe to say they are non existent... sure nothing like the US. Most European countries are very small which was what this thread was about.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#278

Post by ampersandy »

ForrestN wrote: post #252
ampersandy wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beating your children isn't to manipulate them into becoming little slaves, it's to punish them for going against society's expected behaviour (which one might argue is its own form of slavery). Can you back up your claim that beatings produce poor outcomes for children in "highly educated societies?" Or that 'less educated societies" are inferior because they don't have qualms about spanking their kids when they mis…

See the quote from AAP I posted elsewhere. Corporal punishment has been shown to be less effective than alternatives, and probably harmful to children. Corporal punishment is more common in less affluent/educated societies than it is in wealthy/well-educated ones. This is common knowledge. I never said anything about inferiority. It's not about judging anyone, it's about contradicting bad advice.

Less effective in what setting? If physical punishment is more common world-wide, that is rather telling evidence that our forebears found it to be the most effective way to bring children in line, and it has been done ever since; at least until western civilization decided it was improper or at the very least, sub-optimal.

My point is that who is the AAP to say how best to raise children? I seriously doubt the validity of any study that claims to be conclusive on how to raise children, and would make a bet that any research they did was localized to the US. Anecdotally, several of my friends were beaten as children and turned out fine. All this proves is that sometimes physical punishment works and sometimes it doesn't. But the same goes for "establishing a loving relationship with your child;" since you can hardly do that when they're threatening to stab you with a knife.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#279

Post by mattdeboard »

leviathant wrote: post #184
konstruktor wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a sudden moment of clarity would be a repeatable cure for mental illness, we would not need mental healthcare. Please read up on confirmation bias.

Agreed. I'm a little taken aback by the parent post's "I was like that, but fixed myself with Linkin Park" attitude. It came off to me as rather dismissive, although I don't believe that was the intention at all. My mother-in-law has bipolar, and is in the hospital pretty much every spring. She has the benefit of being in Australia, where the health care system is leaps and bounds better than what we have in America,…

> I'm a little taken aback by the parent post's "I was like that, but fixed myself with Linkin Park" attitude. It came off to me as rather dismissive

Almost as dismissive as summing up his post as, "I was like that, but fixed myself with Linkin Park."

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#280

Post by grogs »

polyfractal wrote: post #135
unimpressive wrote: post #99

> “Then I’m going to kill myself,” he said. I remember doing that. > He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work. I remember that. > A few weeks ago, Michael..threatened to kill me I did that too. She forgot to mention the time(s) he threatened to run away. (I'd be surprised if he didn't.) After a marathon of transfers, expulsions,…

Re handwriting: If you are still into improving your handwriting, buy yourself a fountain pen. It makes it a lot of fun to experiment with new characters and drastically alter your handwriting. I've always had meh handwriting. Not horrible, but not pretty either. I've been slowly converting my scratchy characters over to smoother, more flowy characters with embelleshments, since fountain pens make it so easy to play.…

And copying characters as they appear on your monitor probably isn't a great idea. You want to see the flow, fonts generally are not cursive, and the letter aren't really how you'd want to write them (less loops and too many serifs). The 'a' in pretty much every font looks completely different to the 'a' I was taught to write.

It's gonna be super weird when we get a generation which has terrible handwriting - it'll probably be soon.

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