From an article by Rachel Aviv in the new issue of the New Yorker — "How a Young Woman Lost Her Identity/Hannah Upp disappears for weeks at a time, forgetting her sense of self. Can she still be found?" That passage seemed to compel me to think about what is happening today with transgenderism. The necessity of thinking about transgenderism felt so strong that I was surprised The New Yorker published that passage in that form. Didn't the editors notice? Maybe they did, and the idea is that Hannah Upp has a condition that needs to be taken seriously, and the problem is that the multiple personalities craze of the 1980s has left us, unfortunately, skeptical about real psychological conditions. But we should have been more skeptical of those multiple-personality cases that were so titillating and attention-getting at the time.
Hey, remember when Roseanne Barr said she had multiple personalities? Fortunately, one of her therapy sessions is preserved (from 1994):
(Here's the video in case that embed won't work for you, and here's the transcript in case you can't or won't watch video.)
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Remember that sexual abuse of children was discovered in the 70s.
Child abuse (e.g. nonsexual) in the 60s.
Before that they weren't a thing.
They got media legs and followers.
"Disappearing Into Thin Air", a dissociative fugue in three voices.
Transgenderism goes beyond the mere multiple-personality hoax, since it is more obviously out of sync with biological reality.
But what they have in common is the attempt to use serious mental illness to degrade the culture
What is it about the passage that made you think of transgenderism? Is it that the media takes a very rare condition and makes it seem more prevalent than it is?
What hooks into some primal interest gets ratings and that gets a desire to participate.
"Transgenderism goes beyond the mere multiple-personality hoax, since it is more obviously out of sync with biological reality. "
What the fuck is "reality"? I've lost track.
You seem to have a socially dysfunctional fixation on "reality." Get help.
So, transgenderism, at least the mental aspect including sexual orientation that deviates from an individual's sex, is a form of psychological protection mechanism. A dissociative disorder with social roots, which may be a choice or unconscious response of the brain to isolate an individual from a dissonant reality.
From The New Yorker article: "In both fugues, she had been drawn to water. Her friend Amy Scott said, 'The way she describes it is she finds herself in a body of water and realizes who she is.'"
And "The Shape of Water" was the most-lauded movie of last year, in which, I think, a woman is strangely drawn to an aquatic animal and actually has some sort of sex with him.
What's up with the water? The New Yorker leaves it a mystery (seemingly because Upp's mother wanted it left mysterious): "The first time I spoke with Hannah’s mother, early this year, she told me it was important that an article about her daughter’s experience 'let it stay a mystery.'"
It's cinematic material.
Again: You people fixated on "reality" are missing the reality of popular culture, where we, in fact, live. Please align as well as you can. I'm trying to help.
[I]n the nineteen-eighties, several thousand people claimed that, having been abused as children, they had developed multiple selves.
Yeah, but that doesn't explain the widespread popularity of the mullet or Flock of Seagulls.
"I am not who I appear to be." And "I want to be something more than my biology". Somewhere in there is a boundary between noble striving and madness.
And when Medicine abets the madness ("Let me cut off your penis to make you whole"). Then society is mad.
All time male question, as the world turns, "Hey, where's that last woman?"
AA: That passages seemed to compel me to think about what is happening today with transgenderism. The necessity of thinking about transgenderism felt so strong that I was surprised The New Yorker published that passage in that form. Didn't the editors notice?
That passage didn't compel me to think about transgenderism either, though when you point it out I see the faddishness and "madness of crowds" aspect. I don't see any parallel with this condition in itself, though - not in "honest" transsexuals, and not in the currently fashionable fetishists.
I don't react toward non-"madness of crowds" stories of dissociation with distrust. I find them interesting and wouldn't be surprised to learn that they have a real physiological basis.
That something is caused, or "triggered" by experience doesn't mean that it's a non-physiological, "all in one's head". This young woman's upbringing sounds like it could have been very disorienting, to a susceptible individual. I've known people whose personalities are less extreme versions of the description of Upp's in the article - everything but the dissociative states.
""I am not who I appear to be." And "I want to be something more than my biology". Somewhere in there is a boundary between noble striving and madness."
Is this nonsense?
"Jesus answered and said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."... Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.... "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.... He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit... When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions... But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised....Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life... However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.... and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ..."
I practiced Art of the Fugue for years, having been attracted by Glenn Gould's organ performance of it.
Desire to participate, classical music version.
(Doesn't seem to be on youtube, just Gould/piano. Columbia records must have pulled the copyright thing. Too bad, it was a glorious performance.)
"What the fuck is "reality"? I've lost track."
Funny. But to take the joke seriously: Many people have. It's part of degrading the culture, if by culture we mean our shared ways of keeping track.
"You seem to have a socially dysfunctional fixation on "reality." Get help."
Funny, but to take the joke seriously: Who. me? I'm not fixated on anything, and, social butterfly that I am, have experienced no dysfunction thus far. And not to fear: I get my helping of unreality right here on this blog every day.
"You seem to have a socially dysfunctional fixation on "reality." Get help."
No, I have chromosomes.
I read this article the other day, ironically at the time I was reading Walker Percy's "The Last Gentleman" in which the main character suffers from fugues.
No, I have chromosomes.
Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue (fugue starts at 6:00)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNWOhm5iXxs
A fugue is a way to keep living, but still escape your problems.
The logical next step is suicide.
Attention whores need to up their game when our attention flags and our capacity for compassion wanes as their fashionable disorders go out of style.
I never really liked Norm MacDonald. He always seemed bored, his acting just dialed in. That clip reminds me of that.
Is this nonsense?
Pardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon?
I just checked the internet and "Ramtha" is still around.
Sure. Why not?
“Again: You people fixated on ‘reality’ are missing the reality of popular culture, where we, in fact, live. Please align as well as you can. I'm trying to help.”
Popular culture is not reality.
"Popular culture is not reality."
The culture you live in is your reality. You are not living under the conditions for which your brain evolved. You are living in a shared space with other human minds, and the whole thing could be called pop culture.
And last I looked, Donald Trump is President. Before him, Barack Obama. Tell me that's not pop culture.
Maybe we need to define our terms.
We've come a long way since then...today our crazy people mutilate themselves in an attempt to change genders.
You seem to have a socially dysfunctional fixation on "reality." Get help.
Repeal the 19th.
There is no reality.
There is no truth.
There are only feelings.
Maybe we need to define our terms>
OK. My take on it.
Popular culture is that which the majority of the population follows as a general rule. It arises as an amorphous thing. There are no actual written rules or strict outlines, but people do recognize where (vaguely) those outlines are. Popular culture is an organic and naturally changing evolving thing. It doesn't mean popular in the sense that people are popular like a Prom Queen or that people have voted to approve. It just is the culture that the majority accepts (at the moment) as being the norm.
POP culture is an artificial construct. Generated by media, or other activist groups, who wish to purposely try to "change" or otherwise morph "popular" culture into something that those who want to force change approve of. Pop culture is currently foisting ideas onto popular culture such as acceptance of transgenderism must be a thing, or men can decide they are women and use the female bathrooms, or as in the 1960's the concept of free love as opposed to the old stodgy popular culture's concept of love/marriage/fidelity.
Pop culture in art is the media trying to convince you that a painted replica of a Campbell's Soup Can has the same artistic merit as a Rembrandt. People are free in an organic popular culture to decide this for themselves. If enough people decide so, then it is so. In a POP culture you are coerced into accepting that a Soup Can = the Mona Lisa.
Pop culture is a conscious choice to implement change. Popular culture is organic.
I've been reading this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds
Highly recommended.
After you finish a couple of chapters, it'll give you insight as to why this kind of stuff continues to happen. Transgenderism and Climate Change are the examples that come to mind.
Another example of "popular" culture versus "pop" culture was the heroic efforts of the media to try to convince people that Michelle Obama was some sort of fashion Goddess and we should all be in awe of her gorgeousness.
Now, there is nothing really physically wrong with Michelle. She isn't hideous or deformed. She just isn't what the media wanted to foist upon us as a fashion icon and ideal of beauty. People with eyes could see that the reality of their own vision was not matching up with the image that the "pop culture" proponents wanted us to see.
This disconnect between the two was not only obvious, the attitude that you MUST agree to the elevated Gorgeous status of Michelle or else you are a racist rankled people and caused a "popular culture" backlash.
Sometimes Pop Culture works. Other times it doesn't because the "Popular Culture" is quite resistant to actual long term changes.
@DBQ: Your comments re Michelle Obama reminded me of The Emperor's New Clothes.
Which relates back to the concept of "Pop Culture" versus "Popular Culture" ... or that conflict between "the reality that we want" versus "the reality that is real".
I'm pretty sure that by the time they reach the finish line, Biology will have a big lead on Transgenderism. Sort of like Secretariat winning the Belmont Stakes.
What's up with the water?
"The ungraspable phantom of life".
"You seem to have a socially dysfunctional fixation on "reality." Get help.
Says Pilate to Jesus.
I am quite prepared to believe that people can mentally disintegrate due to mental illness, to the point where their personality becomes undefined. A personality is a fixed set of beliefs, tendencies, preferences, and behaviors. I like cheeseburgers and science fiction. But someone mentally ill may suddenly develop irrational beliefs about any particular thing (science fiction is real or scary, cheeseburgers are poison) and thus the stability of self vanishes.
But multiple personalities? no.
What is shared by suicides, trans feelings, goth lifestyles, multiple personality disorder, and "recalled" sexual abuse, is that fads sweep through society that attract disturbed people so you get waves of these behaviors. If these things were true events or due to individual circumstances, there would not be waves of them.
Reality has been defined operationally as “Reality is what does not go away when you stop believing in it.” I give this quote a lot of credit as it was made by P. Dick, an author who knew what being crazy was.
In my forty year career I never met a multiple personality that wasn't therapist-induced.
A wise psychiatrist once sighed to the team "The sad thing about multiple personalities is that they add up to less than 1."
Multiple personalities are as real as the 1980s Amirault sex abuse case. That is, they are both complete fictions.
I'm pretty sure there are different parts to my mind. I don't know about the multiple-personality thing though, since I only experience, and access one personality, that is the part that is writing this right now.
At the same time I do have fleeting interactions with other things, brief glances that suggest that my personality isn't the full extent of what's going on within my skull.
Here's a prosaic example: how do I think?
There are many problems I can solve just by making the effort. I just have to ask the question and I immediately get an answer. I don't really know how that works, but I assume this can legitimately be described as thinking and that many people do the same thing.
There is another kind of thinking I do though that I wonder about. But before I get to describing that, first I should say a bit more about what I'll name Type A thinking. Type A thinking is -- ask a question, get an answer -- and there may be many cycles of asking myself questions and getting answers before I really get to where I'm trying to go, but I could, if I were taking notes, reconstruct the process of how I got from a certain point to another point.
Okay, so that's Type A thinking. My second type of thinking I'll call Type B, and the big difference is that I have no idea how Type B thinking works.
I do know how to invoke it. The procedure is first to try Type A thinking, and then when and after prolonged effort that fails I start to suspect it's time to go to Type B. And what is Type B as far as I can know it? Well, it's to make clear to myself, and I know that I'm making it clear to that part of me that is not my personality, that I want an answer, and to lay the problem out as clearly as I can. Then I release and drop it into the depths.
It generally takes a while. At least a day, but sometimes it has been weeks, before an answer is suddenly there. And I mean suddenly. I've done this so many times that I've tried to study what happens when my mind receives the answer. I can't detect any duration. It's seems one moment I don't have the idea, and the next moment I do, and I have no understanding, really, of how I moved from one state to the other, and can barely remember not having the answer, even though five minutes before I didn't.
Here's another example. I use to dream a lot -- this isn't so true now -- but when I was younger it sometimes seemed to me that half the time I was awake I was dreaming. So here's the question. What part of me is constructing those dreams? It isn't me, i.e. my personality, because I'm not aware of making any effort.
Prof. Alt house said" Is this nonsense"
I'm sure I understand the question, especially in light of my initial comment. This passage in John speaks of a spiritual transformation. I thought we were discussing a physical and biological transformation.
As to the nonsense question
"When we tell you these things, we do not use words that come from human wisdom. Instead, we speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths." 1 Cor 2:13
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