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Posts Tagged ‘free-will

The best: Stories of the strife of individuals confronting, fending off and challenging frequent low blows

Of this terribly cruel reality.

And on sex pleasure disadvantages between genders.

Writing about your ideas, position, concepts, world view model… should not cover many pages.

Actually, if you have a fascistic or communist tendency of considering history from a mass perspective, the reality of the world is disgustingly simple and straightforward and should not cover blackening many pages.

De Gaulle said:  We pretended to fight confused passions. We struggled for a cohort of denied and refused principles. And we strove to pay back a very cruel reality.

What is most impressive and worthwhile is writing about individuals on how they confronted and fended off the frequent low blows that everyone of us suffered and experienced with various degrees of long-term dysfunctional consequences.

Serious authors implicitly want to believe in the free-will of people (against demonstration to the contrary) and how they challenged the bitter and cruel reality by elevating their spirit and acquiring valued habits to sustain the long haul.

Otherwise, materials for writing will be dry and totally unpleasant to read.

And the purpose of writing will be confused since barely anyone is interested in lifeless topics and stories.

We don’t think of changing our life unless and before we canvass a satisfactory model of how we want the world to be changed.

What is terribly human is that rare are the people who remember or find the courage to tackle the second phase in their life: Mainly changing their behaviours, one at a time, in order to be faithful to their quest for a better quality of life to all.

Jean Paul Sartre told de Gaulle: When I read what I published decades ago, I don’t understand much of what I meant. It is as my double was dictating to me. All these lucubration trying to affirm the free-will of individuals and encouraging them to stand fast. It is my double who is the clever one and I have been carrying him all along.

As all reputations, mine was also build on misunderstanding.

The most interesting topics that touch our deepest chords are how we describe, feel about, and comprehend the other gender. (Why is it always the Other?)

In this case, male authors had a field day in the history of literature, since they imagined they knew a lot about females.

Female authors knew, at a certain age, that they had not much rich and worthy materials to write about male: They reverted to talk about the other females, shedding new insight on female psychic, early training for acquired habits and skills and behaviour.

What was lacking is male taking seriously female works to read and appreciate.

Evidences show that females have overwhelming advantages over males, particularly on reaching a certain age, say over 30.

Females have a natural endowment for taking great pleasure in sex. And they can do it with other beautiful, younger and fresh females.

And they can design a personalized dildo that perform wonderfully, anytime and anywhere.

What man has but his hand? Even a thousand hands will not make any difference in results: despair and depressive periods for not being that endowed to enjoy sex.

This relic of passive partner, as aging diminishes his strength and endurance.

 

 

Do tamper your categorical opinions and positions on life

Contradictions in logical arguments do not directly relate to contradictions and paradoxes applied to real life.

The existential approach to life emphasizes the importance of the individual and his perspective on the world and his needs to make his own choices, particularly his own set of values, are pertinent, assuming that choices are available and the values applicable within the society conditions.

Life exigencies are proving that our claim of the existence of fundamental choices are actually absurd in most situations.

Think of those wretched and poor people who happened to be living in a desert-like type of climate and no rains fell for two successive years.

What choices had they to avoid famine and high child mortality?

Did the UN food relief camps happened to be erected at walking distance?

Claiming that our actions are causally determined is mostly a fallacy. Even what we think is an intentional action, well-thought out and reflected upon is fundamentally related to many other influences and factors that we have accumulated and internalized through our previous experiences, community customs and traditions.

No! Human free-will and determinism are not necessarily compatible and logical, simply because neither are materially proven and are just a priori premises that satisfy our ego as strong and determined individuals. The Will needs to be recharged frequently to have any impact, and we keep forgetting to recharge it by resting and enjoying quality times. And Will is never Free, but a highly expensive commodity that require assiduity on a long series of actions till fruition.

And no, the rightness of actions is not related to the consequences of the actions. Simply because consequences are not necessarily linked to the decision of an action, but are related to many other factors that could not be controlled or were not fully considered before and during the process of actions.

And yes, all events are caused, with the understanding that complex causes and interactions cannot be exhaustively contemplated or fathomed. Thus, we tend to drop the causality concept in real life because we comprehend the almost impossibility of considering the myriad of variables affecting any action-decision.

And yes, presentism (only the present exist) is not necessarily contradicting eternalism (past, present and future are merely different segments of the temporal dimension relative to where we are).

First, no one actually consistently believe that only the present exist.

Second, our memories and learned experiences are drawn from the past and based on habit acquired from consistent applications of reactions, customs and traditions.

Third, we need to define what is Present. Is it in seconds, minutes, hours, your own life, the life of mankind, your generation…? Eternalism must also be clear whether their concept includes the history of earth, and the universe with all the species of animals and plants.

We are unable to shed from our reasoning the inductive processes. If the trend in the past indicated certain outcomes, then it is highly probable that the outcomes will be the same.

We are exposed to several problems in inductive reasoning:

First,the problem is that the underlining condition is that nature and conditions are uniform.

Generation change, and even nature climate is changing. To what extend can we delimit the uniformity concept?

Second, we are not capable of remembering the conditions and situations in the past that generated a specific event to feel confident that the same outcome will take place.

Third, we tend to forget the observed instances and rely instead on the current instances of characteristics of the premises.

We need rough inductive reasoning to survive, regardless of the many errors that we are led to.

Inductive reasoning help us in our daily quick decisions by retrieving outcomes from our memories.

“Did not have choice or free will”? Phillip Seymour Hoffman 

What these people have in common with Phillip Seymour Hoffman (deceased-drug addiction)?

Actor Cory Monteith (deceased-drug addiction), singer Amy Winehouse (deceased-alcoholism), author David Foster Wallace (deceased-depression), actor Jon Hamm (depression), TV personality Nicole Richie (anorexia), actress Karla Alvarez (deceased-anorexia/bulimia), actress Amanda Byne (bi-polar disorder), actor Howie Mandel (ocd) , reality TV star Vinnie Guadagnino (anxiety disorder),  actress Brooke Shields (postpartum depression)?

In the wake of the tragic loss of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a great artist, partner, father, brother, and son, I offer the following facts about the neurological disease of addiction.

The overwhelming majority of adults in the western world have passed through experimental stages in their lives where they have dabbled with some kind of brain altering addictive substance, i.e., cigarettes, alcohol, prescription pain killers, ADHD medication, anti-anxiety medication, marijuana (save the ‘it’s not addictive” arguments for later, please).

And the overwhelming majority of these adults will emerge from their experiments unscathed, believing that their free will and good choices are what saved them from becoming addicted.

The problem with this thinking is that it is factually incorrect, and all wrong.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman 1967-2014

Phillip Seymour Hoffman 1967-2014

debbie bayer blog

debbie bayer blog (selected as one of the top post today Feb. 3, 2014)

Phillip Seymour Hoffman did not have choice or free will and neither do you.

What saved the adults from becoming addicted is that their brains did not respond in the same way that an addict’s brain does. They were born with a resistance to addiction. Their free will and good choices had nothing to do with it.

It is time for all of us who got through unscathed to stop patting ourselves on the back for our genetic good luck, and it is time to stop judging those who were not born with the same good genes as defective.

About Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a relapsing drug addict, you may have had the thoughts, “He knew better.” or “Shame on him for throwing his life away.”

Let’s look at these ideas through the lens of how the brain actually works.

Phillip Seymour  “knew better.

He ‘knew better’ in the frontal lobes of his brain, where we all execute our better judgment and can make calculations of our behaviors and circumstances based on risk and reward.

Here’s the problem.

The activity of our frontal lobes can be shut down by the other parts of our brain when there is significant stress in our body. This comes from what is called the “fight, flight, freeze, or faint” mechanism.

This mechanism in the brain is hard-wired into each of us for survival purposes. It is the part of the brain that puts someone into shock when they have been injured and/or traumatized. It is also the part of the brain that can allow a person to lift a car by themselves if their loved one or someone they care about is in danger.

The brain does not analyze the type of stress it is experiencing, that is, this ‘fight or flight mechanism’ is binary.

The brain functions on a “yes” or “no” basis (a binary reaction as in computer).  ”Yes,” there is enough stress to activate the mechanism or “no,” there is not enough stress to activate the mechanism. Human beings have no control over when this mechanism is activated.

This is how PTSD works.

Seemingly innocuous sights, sounds, smells or sensations trigger this brain mechanism even when there is no actual threat to the person. The stress in the body is not even consciously recognizable to the person with PTSD.

The brain reacts to the trigger and the person is put into the experience of being threatened without choice or control because the frontal lobes cannot get their signals through. When this mechanism is activated, free will and choice become impossible. This is true for each and every human being on the planet, whether we like it or not.

The brain of an addict, Phillip Seymour Hoffman in this case, experiences withdrawal symptoms as stress. And since it operates on a binary system, it does not sort out “good” stress (I’m so sick because I’m kicking heroin-good for me!) from “bad” stress (I’m so sick because I’m kicking heroin I’d better call a doctor).

The brain only knows if the stress is present or not and how much stress is present.

When withdrawal symptoms, i.e., physical distress, anxiety caused by emotional stress, etc. reach a certain point in the brain, the brain automatically cuts off the access to the frontal lobes (in a manner of speaking) and begins to direct the body rebalance the stress, to find equilibrium, so that the brain can return to “normal” functioning.

“Normal” functioning to the brain of an addict is defined as having the addictive substance in the body. So while any relapsing addict “knows better,” the addict literally cannot access the part of his brain where his/her better judgment is stored.

The addict loses his choice and free will and is at the mercy of his brain which is in extreme stress and working to regain it’s equilibrium, at any cost, i.e., get more of the addictive substance.

The idea of losing choice, of relinquishing free will, is unthinkable to most of us, especially those of us fortunate enough to live in the U.S. where we have so many choices in so many areas of our lives.

Also, human consciousness defends heavily against the possibility of ‘no choice’ which is paradoxical considering we each carry a brain mechanism that removes choice, but I digress.

Suffice it to say that according to our brain physiology, choice and no choice are equally important to the survival of the species. The problem is that we humans are only conscious of the importance of choice (and the free will to make those choices).

Over the centuries, mankind has had tremendous difficulty acknowledging and treating brain disorders of all kinds.  And we haven’t made much progress in our supposed “enlightened” age of civil rights either.

Consider this, it was less than 50 years ago that 90+% of those born with Down’s syndrome were institutionalized for life.

Also, in spite of (or maybe because of?) a tremendous increase in the diagnoses of brain disorders in the last 40 years, all but a small percentage of treatment centers and publicly funded programs for treatment have been permanently shut down.

What we have on our hands in the U.S. is a mental health, i.e., brain health, crisis.

This is abundantly clear to us every time someone with a serious brain disorder buys an assault rifle.

Actually, those instances are but the tip of a gigantic iceberg. And even though we have had great breakthroughs in neuroscience, we are woefully lagging behind in treating people who suffer and offering support to their families.

How did this happen?

There are more than a few ways to answer that question.

One of the important answers is that we are naturally defensive against the idea that brain disorders which disconnect us from our free will exist. It’s too frightening an idea to consider, so we come up with stories.

A century or more ago our stories revolved around the idea that the person suffering was possessed by demons, and that these demons ran in the family. Perhaps the person’s mother was possessed? May she was a witch? Someone in that family must have sinned and now they are being punished, etc.

It was stories like these that ran so strongly through our cultures that families up until, well now, actually hid loved ones away in mental institutions and even disavowed knowledge or connection to them in order to avoid the stigma that would be placed on the healthy family members also.

We have made some progress, but as Mr. Hoffman’s death painfully points out, not nearly enough.

We seem to have compassion and some amount of treatment and support available for those who have schizophrenia, psychosis, delusional disorder, autism, and Downs syndrome.  (It’s not nearly enough treatment and support and the families and loved ones of those with these disorders suffer an enormous amount financially, emotionally, and physically with the burden of lifetime care of those who live with these challenges.)

Outside of these few of the many neurological disorders that exist we lose all compassion and concern for people and their families who are suffering, and we tell a modern day version of the demon possession story about them.

We continue to isolate and reject people suffering from a physiological disorder of the brain and force their families and loved ones to bear the lifetime burden of their care in shame and silence, in 2014, in the wealthiest nation the planet has ever known.

Our stories about these people who look so normal, so successful, on the outside but whose lives come crumbling down upon them or are cut ridiculously short no longer revolve around possession by evil spirits but by a defect in their character (selfish, lazy, greedy, arrogant, gluttonous, apathetic, hedonistic, etc.), a defect in their temperament (evil, violent, narcissistic, vain, eccentric, etc.) or a defect in their judgement or intelligence (immature, moron, idiot, being an a**hole).

In the absence of knowledge about how the brain functions these stories created theories about the causes of these behaviors (moral corruption, low character) and consequences which mirrored our cultural value system (it’s their own fault, they got what they deserved).

Out of our stories came ideas on how to avoid these behaviors (work hard, believe in God, be kind to others), consequences of these behaviors (why goes around comes around, God helps those who help themselves) and systems of support to uphold the implementation of these ideas (church, 12 step, therapy).

Sometimes the theories, ideas for correction and the support systems even work, but sadly, not most of the time.

All of the above stories/theories are normal individual and cultural adaptations to the unexplainable. This is how we humans learn and grow.

Gratefully, these days few if any people think a person with a phobia has had a spell cast upon him by a witch and now needs an exorcism while the family and neighbors have to find and lynch the witch.

Neither is a person with an addiction suffering from poor character, temperament, or judgment from which he can be cured with hard work, belief in God, attendance at church, 12 step and therapy. (Hang in there, recovered and recovering 12 steppers. I’m on your side. See ** below.)

What we fail to see is

a) how self-serving these old stories are, and

b) how ineffective our current treatment modalities are (see #a).

Our theories about addiction don’t really exist to explain the illogical behavior of someone who is suffering, but mostly to separate ourselves from that behavior with the assurance that what has happened to that “loser” won’t happen to us.

And when the need to distance ourselves from that “loser” is satisfied we don’t bother to fact check our theories.

Nor to we bother to notice if the treatment schemas we’ve created even work (they don’t).  Rather good proof that our theories are self-serving, don’t you think?

We also fail to notice the fear and sadness that comes up for us when we hear of the tragedies that befall those with high-functioning neurological disorders, especially now.

It’s 2014 and tragedies like the death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman have been happening steadily for 40+ years, with no end and no answer in sight. In light of this kind of repetitive hopelessness we are left with little choice but to blame the victims in order to soothe ourselves.

And it is difficult, if not impossible to create solutions in the presence of hopelessness.

The mental health/brain disorder crisis we are facing right now, this decades-long epidemic, is with the so-called high-functioning neurological disorders, i.e., depression, anxiety, bi-polar, ocd, anorexia, bulimia, and addiction (I have left out more than a few of the disorders, but these are the most familiar of the lot).

However, neuroscience is offering us the best reason to hope for good treatment outcomes in decades. The more we learn about how the brain works (like when the fight/flight mechanism is activated) and how it works when it is “broken” (fight/flight mechanism too easily triggered in addicts) the easier it will be for people who have these brain glitches to be identified and treated without shame and blame.

The first, most effective way to face our cultural crises of too many people with brain disorders being undiagnosed and untreated is to educate ourselves about these disorders and learn to spot the people who are suffering so that we can help them understand what is wrong with them and help them to agree to receive treatment.

We have to change our cultural view of addiction and the like before we can create more effective treatments for it and the other high-functioning neural disorders.

The change has to come from those of us who either do not have the disorders or have been successfully treated for the disorders because those with the disorders are not able to help themselves.

I like to say it this way, the last person to know that his brain is broken is the person with the broken brain.

This is just the way human consciousness works.

The only organ in the body that seems to make self-diagnosis impossible is the brain. I mean there is no mistaking a kidney stone trying to pass. When someone is in that kind of pain they don’t blame it on their lack of character. But the brain is expert at being able to reframe and explain away its own glitches.

Whatever isn’t working in a person’s brain is that person’s “normal.”  Over time people with high-functioning neurological disorders develop plausible explanations for their symptoms and adapt to them as best as they can.

And when life’s problems that are obviously (to those around them) connected to their neurological disorders become apparent on the outside of their lives (car accidents, drained bank accounts, lost jobs, broken marriages, etc.) they usually blame their own character defects or someone or something else.

Therefore, the person with the problem is the least likely to be able to get themselves the help they need.

Here is where the education begins, when otherwise high functioning people think and act in ways that defy facts and logic and threaten their well-being and the well-being of their loved ones, then we need to understand that they have a brain disorder, not a moral or character disorder; and they need medical treatment, not shaming, blaming, therapy or a sentence to a 12 step program.

This means that alcoholism, drug addiction, eating disorders, suicide attempts, phobias, adhd, anxiety and depression, et al are all disorders of the brain and as such need the treatment of a medical doctor first.

(Read that again. It’s a truth, not a theory. But since the truth is not widely known it will seem counter intuitive. You will want to say, “Yeah, but…..”  Read it again. Alcoholism is a brain disorder. Drug addiction is a brain disorder. Let it sink in.)

Here’s why this is true–otherwise high functioning people could not be high functioning without good judgment, good enough character, and at least average intelligence.  If they can hold down a job, go about the activities of daily living, have friendships and loved ones, and display empathy towards others before and during their lapses, melt downs, relapses, et al.,  then their frontal lobes are fully functioning.

The only explanation, for their behaviors then, is that their frontal lobes (where their high-functioning skills are located) have been hijacked by a different part of their brain.  When someone’s brain is highjacking their frontal lobes, they need medical treatment.

Blessedly, neuroscience is catching up with us and giving us facts about how our brains actually work.  So it is time NOW to drop those stories we have made up and begin to apply the facts of neuroscience as we understand them to the untimely deaths of addicts of all kinds and to the public meltdowns of otherwise functioning adults.

And it is way past time that we spread the word about what is really going on with these people who struggle mightily and their families who bear the burden of loving them and having to care for them.

Remember, these people don’t know that their brains are broken.  They are high-functioning and so they blame themselves. And they come to hate themselves for their problems more than you can imagine.  They live in a dark and self-loathing world where they come to believe that they don’t deserve any help which is why they don’t surrender themselves for treatment. They need the help of their friends and families and the world around them in order to get around the obstacles of their broken brains to get help.

When our entire culture understands as common sense that addiction is an individual neurological disorder that requires immediate medical attention then a person like Phillip Seymour Hoffman has a chance to understand that he has “one of those brains” that will shut down his frontal lobes and take away his ability to exercise good judgement and control of his behaviors.  And until he knows this fact about his brain in same the way that he knows a bone sticking out of his leg means he needs to go to the ER, then him and those like him will not be able to ask for help.

And a guy like Phillip Seymour Hoffman isn’t going to know these things until we all know them.  And that time is NOW.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman died from having a combination of sensitivities in his neural wiring that caused his brain to override his better judgement, take away his free will and caused him to take the actions that ultimately killed him.

It appears that these sensitivities were unknowingly activated by a prescription of pain killers that were necessary at the time to treat a different medical condition.  Because of his previous 23 years of being clean and sober he was presumed  safe to take the pain medication. And it looks like what he and maybe even his doctors didn’t know about how his brain worked kept him from staying in treatment long enough to allow his brain to rewire itself around those sensitivities and render him clean and sober again.

For this, like all addicts in this situation, he deserves our kindness and compassion.

If this post has helped you to understand addiction please do share it.  My passion is to help educate us all so that more people with neurological disorders will get the treatment they need.

Debbie Bayer, MA, MFTI

Note to my 12-step friends:  There are two caveats to the success of 12-step work
1) It works when you work it, and
2) You have to be honest, and some people are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.
There is no doubt that over the last 70+ years the 12-step community has the highest success rate among alcoholics of any other treatment modality. This community is also incredibly successful in the support of sobriety among drug addicts of all kinds.
The problem lies in the millions of people who cannot meet the two criteria for success in a 12-step program due to other types of brain disorders.  Their suffering demands that health professionals continue to seek out effective treatment strategies for them.
I am certain that you have compassion for their plight and support these more unfortunate folks in their recovery.
DB

Free-will Eugenic: Finally you have Choices (February 7, 2009)

 

            Eugenic is the elimination of undesired embryos, malformed babies, unwanted babies or undesired grown ups for one reason or another.

 

All that parents need to know on the condition of a fetus of six weeks is a drop of blood from the mother.  The mother blood carries cells transferred from the fetus and all the necessary information can be obtained from a single cell.  A wide array of diseases of physical and cognitive natures, whether curable or incurable, can be diagnosed at six weeks of the fetus. A sample of these diseases is: sterility, mongolism (Down syndrome), Elephantine, blindness, deafness, metabolic deficiencies, epilepsy, mental retardation, cancer (ovary, breast, colon, and prostate), neurological, Alzheimer, and anxiety to name a few. Consequently, the parents are strong with the following facts:

 

 First, would the baby be normal or not.

Second, if the baby is normal would he develop grave physical or mental illnesses in the short or long term?

Third, would the sane baby develop at his adulthood incurable illnesses such as cancer or Alzheimer?

 

Parents have now sound facts on the preconditions of the fetus and they can make bold choices for an abortion before the fetus is legally considered a human with all the legal and social complications.  One day, you might have to decide or be asked to contribute your opinion as a family member then answer the following questions by selecting a disease from the array that I have already mentioned:

 

If the fetus is surely to die immediately after birth then would you abort?

 

If the fetus would look physically sane but mentally retarded then would you keep him and shoulder the responsibility of caring for him throughout your life?

 

If the fetus would turn physically handicapped but mentally sane then what is your decision?

 

If the fetus would turn out sane physically and mentally for the first three years before a physical handicap develop then what is your decision?

 

If the fetus would turn sane physically and mentally for the first three years before a mental handicap develop then what is your decision?

 

If the fetus would turn sane physically and mentally for the first ten years before a mental or physical handicap develop then what is your decision?

 

If the fetus would turn sane physically and mentally for the first 20 years before a mental handicap develop then what is your decision?

 

If the fetus would turn sane physically and mentally for the first 40 years before a mental handicap develop then what is your decision?

 

You now have choices; failure to decide is a choice, a stupid one.

 

Note: If you give birth to an abnormal baby with full knowledge of the consequences then you still have to deal with the attitudes of the grown up baby when he is told the facts.  The adult might hate you forever or separate from the family or lead an introverted life or whatever.  The array of later psychological consequences is in the hundreds.


adonis49

adonis49

adonis49

March 2023
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