h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks for reporting in, friend. I've been worried.

I get what you're saying. If there's an emergency, you have to call the emergency number. Always call - no matter whether you think it will help or not. No matter whether you think you're disturbing someone. Just call.

Oh, and get after your doctor about this. Ask him/her what's the best thing to do. You're right - maybe it's chemical? How about a checklist of things to do if you start to feel like this, one, two, three?

I again everyone I'm going to sign off now I am passing out here where I sit, I'm going to bed - thanks again - but please if anyone can think of anything - I'll try and respond, I'll try and read what everyone is saying here and will try and respond and try and explain ...

Sleep well, and our prayers go with you.

Goodnight Willem


lil x

Morning Willem

I hope you managed to get some rest last night.

Please write to us today, tell us what you are going through and we will try and support you through this.

If that is too difficult please can you just keep checking in

Something HonestLago said yesterday really struck a chord with me
he said 'that the people around you don't love you accidently'.
This is true and I found it to be a powerful realisation.

At the moment there ar times you feel that we asking a lot of you, even perhaps too much to endure the worse aspects of your psychosis, that there is even an element of selfishness on our behalf.

But we are doing this out of love, love that is not accidental. The concern shown on this thread comes from people who care about you.

It is difficult to see you go through this, but suicide as an alternative wouldn't make things easier for us. Even in the long term.While the grief might subside, there would always be an ache, an empty place where you should be and all that wishful thinking. I wish my friend was here, I miss him.

Those moments when Dmitri actually remembers a great dream he has had, Elektra sees a new dino discovery, I see a leopard slug, or some amazing moss on a tree, when we are messing around on the daydream thread and come up with a concept that you would be able to put into a picture and mvp could make a poem. So many if onlys.

You are precious Willem, for you and to us.

I know life is difficult for you, incredibly so at the moment, but it still has meaning and is meaningful, you have much to live for. Hold on in there.

love Peanut

All right everyone I'm back and thanks again. Now I had lots of conversations with cops last evening. The ONE BIG THING all of them said was that it was awful that I am alone, *living* alone and that I don't have friends or interact with people. In terms of the help I need this also figures prominently, in terms of what I explained to Websailor. On my own my thoughts can go anywhere whatsoever and there's nothing to help me keep them under control. If I have someone else who's reasonably close whom I can speak with ... I have a second opinion, someone to help ground me, someone to rein me in a bit.

But with the cops I could not fully explain the difficulties of *doing* this.

The difficulties come down to the paranoid mindset - once again. This makes it difficult for me to trust people, to open up to people. And ... NOT opening up to people makes it seem to me that I'm being dishonest and that there are barriers between us that defeat the purpose. It doesn't help if people say 'you just have to trust people'. I have many times done that and then I was disappointed, abused or taken advantage of. And also taking in mind what I said about what it is like to be in a delusional fit ... how many people will understand that and not become freaked out by it if it should happen ... even just in the beginning stages? I think ... and this is based on attempts to make friends over the past twenty-one years ... that people will tend to run away then ... not understanding what is happening, weirded out, nut sure what they could do, apalled at the strange and inexplicable 'turn' their friend just took.

Also: the matter of 'reasoning' with a person who's delusional. This pertains to this very thread! Right now - I am, if I try and gauge myself, about 80% rational and 20% delusional. The delusional part probably comes in with how seriously I'm considering my present practical problems to be, and perhaps also the way I estimate people will react if I kill myself. Say, I am *overestimating* my problems and *underestimating* the severity of people's reactions to my suicide. We can talk about this - but the nature of a delusion is *resistant* to persuasion, so you can say lots of things but then I will go 'yes, but ...' and it doesn't matter that I am here now and writing this explanation myself because I *still* cannot change the delusion - one part of me thinks it might be wrong but the stronger part - the one controlling my deeper motivations, set beliefs and impulses to action - thinks that way and is very, very hard to persuade otherwise - by others and even by myself!

Consider now a more powerful delusion: say for instance I believe I am *physically* immortal and want to commit suicide to prove it. (This is something that DOES feature in my patterns of thought around suicide and dying ... I have an extremely complex delusional framework from which various different things, even contradictory seeming, can jump out at different times.) This delusion will be very much more resistant to persuasion, because it goes out from a view of reality that is *very* different from that of 'normal' people. So no matter how people try and talk me out of it, in my own mind I will think: poor they, they just don't know! I will believe I know something profound about the deeper nature of reality that other people don't and can't know. I will hold my belief in my own *physical* immortality on the assumption that I have come to very specific insights or that certain important facts have been revealed to me, and to me alone. I might, spurred on by such a discussion, feel a stronger urge to commit suicide so as to clearly prove that I am immortal.

The fact that I understand this right now is *hopeful* - because I see this *now* it would seem I could keep on seeing it, but unfortunately this thing doesn't work like that. In a future delusional state I can *completely forget or disregard the understanding that I have now*. Again: something goes WRONG in the mind, and this puts it beyond the reach of what we would call everyday calm, collected, common sense.

So: I do want close friends - especially, close friends in my own community to whom I can speak, with whom I can participate in fun activities. But on the one hand I have the inherent distrust of people due to a paranoid disposition; on the other hand that paranoid disposition, even if it does not result in distrust of them, might end up challenging them with things they don't know how to respond to.

Still: I do think real-life friends ... IF they understand my problem ... could help *temper* the worst of my delusional tendencies, but perhaps not completely prevent them altogether. My big problem is still how to *make* friends given all this.

Hi Peanut, sorry that there was a simulpost there, thanks for your message! I slept well last night (the night before I hardly slept at all which might have been a factor in me wigging out ...)

Today I think I'll be online most of the time, maybe in between make a little sketch ... Rod asked that I draw something for Colours of Wildlife. I have a painting already completed that I was thinking of sending in ... I wanted to tweak it a bit, so maybe I could do that. I am still feeling extremely raw so I won't be able to concentrate much or work very hard today ... but I'll see what I could do.

Maybe a part of my delusiveness right now - I honestly can't really see people 'around me' who care for me, let alone love. For instance lots of the cops I spoke with last evening said they would be hurt if I killed myself - they don't know me at all! Which makes it a bit hard to take *them* seriously ... and so by extension, I also distrust it if any *other* people say they love me or care for me. If the cops could lie to me like that, then so can they.

If and when there is difficulty opening up to people then at least maybe you could open up to yourself through your writing and artwork. As I mentioned I think your writing and artwork will be valuable for others.

It seems to me that your network of support and friends should include the medical profession: those that are directly helping to deal with your condition. There should be associated with the medical centre a community of experienced helpers as well as those that have the condition in various forms and strengths, that you could tap into to share experiences and solutions as well as to develop the social side of things. Maybe there is a weekly discussion meeting you could attend. Maybe there are public lectures describing latest treatments and assessment of these condition. Maybe the police as an institute also have a community of support people that you can tap into as well.

At some point it might be useful if you could discuss the possibility of doing something with your artwork and writings. Maybe in the form of presenting your work in exhibitions and the possibility of selling your work on a regular basis.

StoneAart

Willem, I am very glad to see you back online.

About policemen; I believe they choose that job partly because of a general love for people, wanting the best for as many as possible. This includes a special love and care about people in real trouble, and wanting to help even strangers. So, yes, even if they don't know you personally, they see that you are a fellow human in need, and care.

About delusions; I am very very impressed that you are lucid and rational enough to know that you are ill. That you can see that parts of your thinking is your illness, and parts are "you".

Do you regularly see a psychiatrist? Are you getting medication? I will guess that you do, and that you take your medication.
(Personal story, a near relative regularly goes into psychosis. She takes her medication, feels fine, decides she is not ill, stops taking it, gets ill, is taken for care, takes medication, and repeat from top. Don't be like her.)

I also think that personal, face to face contact with people would be good for you. Are there perhaps support groups? A community center? Perhaps you could take part in a painting group, where you would be appreciated as a member or as assisting the teacher.
It will probably be exhausting to be among new people, but I hope you can try.

Much love and care
Milla

I am someone who likes to learn. So when I am talking to people I listen to them, try to understand what they are saying, I try to see if it makes sense to me. If it doesn't make sense to me I try to imagine whether it could make sense from a different perspective, maybe through someone elses eyes ... and through this I might also learn something about the perception and thought processes of the people I am speaking with.

Sometimes it doesn't matter whether I can trust them or not or whether they care for me or not. I know how fickle peoples emotions can be since I know how my own emotions can change. However I am always interested in hearing what others have to say, their advice and recommendations. If it makes sense I will use it. If it doesn't make sense I will file it under possibilities but not necessarily use it.

Hi Willem,

hope you dont mind if I add my thoughts to those already expressed.
Firstly you are not alone in trying to deal with these feelings of depression and worthlessness, many many people have the same thoughts that others would be better off and have an easier life without them in it. Thoughts of physical immortality and the desire to see if you're right and everyone else is wrong is a common aspect of many types of mental illness, I wonder have you been clinically diagnosed correctly in all the years youve been struggling with these thoughts? It may be you've been incorrectly or self diagnosed and you need to sort this out immediately and through the proper psycho/pshychiatric system where you live.

It is a very good thing that you recognise when you are delusional and a part of you is fighting against it. Many people with suicidal inclinations wouldnt plan it so well in their heads with respect to the pain involved to both yourself and those who know you, so take comfort that even in your delusions there remains a degree of rationalisation, again,this is a good thing. You just need to be given coping mechanisms for dealing with the delusional/depressive tendencies.

The first step in anyones recovery is recognising they need help and ore importantly seeking that help. By posting this discussion you have actually done both! again this is a good thing, keep talking.

Writing and art can be a powerful coping tool my friend, I have first hand knowledge of both and the benefits they have brought. Personally I was advised to write my feelings down as therapy after a very bad accident,which left me without a job, the means to support my family and feelings of utter dejection. I chose to write fiction based on real events and sat down at my PC for a week or so straight and just typed til it was done. I still go back to that piece of work and add or alter bits as my understanding changes. My photography and photoshop work has also helped in the past by 'giving life' to someof the images that were in my head at that time.

I also run a magazine for male patients in a mental hospital and encourage them to express their thoughts and share with others who may not know they are having the same problems and delusions as the next person. This outlet for expression is a good thing, you seem to be an articulate and talented individual, use that as a strength and a gift to inspire others. An insight to your feelings.

Finally a secure base is essential for you , this need not be a physical 'home' or family and friends, its just somewhere you can talk and not be judged or condemned for your feelings. Willem my friend, it appears from reading others remarks that you have that secure base right here, again this is a good thing. Interact with those who will not judge.

Please carry on seeking proper care and treatment.

Take care.

FWR

I'm glad you slept well. I know it is important for you to work so I hope you can get a little done today. Try to look after yourself as best you can not just emotionally, psychologically but physically.

You eating okay? having a low blood sugar can have an effect on mood as well as your energy levels.

I don't think what the cops said was a lie, they would obviously have a different emotional response to me or any of your friends, but they were speaking from a place of compassion for a fellow human being.

Yes they are strangers to you, but you are full of compassion Willem, so if it were you in their position, you would want to help, you would care about that person even if they were a stranger to you. If you then found out that that person went on to commit suicide it would be upseting.

You have explained very well how difficult it is too *see* the love or compassion that people have for you, to trust but not impossible.
Also that you would like friends to 'temper' your perspective so that was me doing some tempering

Hello folks and thanks for the ongoing conversation ... I will respond or at least try to about some of the things you mention and ask ... I just want to post quickly something I just wrote about the problem surrounding *awareness* of delusion or a tendency towards delusion:

I KNOW THAT I AM CRAZY: CATCH-22 AND THE EPIMENIDES PARADOX

I want to speak about a specific problem with my own paranoia. I am not sure if it is a factor with the paranoia or schizophrenia of other people – it might be. So maybe if I discuss this here it could be of help.

Catch-22 is a book by Joseph Heller and is about the craziness of war. There is far more to that book than the catch itself – but the catch encapsulates the spirit of the book. Catch 22 says that a pilot might be grounded – having to fly no more combat missions – if he were insane. If he was insane he would not realize how dangerous those missions are and would have no concern for his safety. But if he did realize that the missions were dangerous and if he were concerned for his own safety then he was not insane. So: if he asked to be grounded it proved that he was sane and therefore could not be grounded, but if he was insane he would not ask to be grounded and therefore had to continue flying the missions. As Heller puts it: “Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.”
The Epimenides Paradox: Epimenides, a philosopher from Crete, said ‘all Cretans are liars’. This is even referred to in the Bible. So: if Epimenides is also a liar – is he lying or not when he says all Cretans are liars? If he’s lying, he’s not a liar and so telling the truth, but then he’s a liar and so can’t be telling the truth, and therefore isn’t a liar …
So: where this comes in with paranoia is this – knowing when one is delusional.

“I know that I am delusional” involves a paradox of this sort. If I believe I am delusional – am I right? Suppose I am delusional about believing I am delusional. My belief in being delusional is a delusion – so I am not delusional – but I *am* delusional because I believe I am delusional when actually I am not … see where that goes? If you’re crazy and know it, you’re not crazy but then you’re crazy for thinking you are, because you aren’t.

This is not a frivolous example that is not relevant to the issue: it goes to the core of being delusional. It is the problem of trying, with a delusional mind, to determine what elements in that mind are delusional. It plagues me even when I am at my most rational. I *know* that I can become seriously delusional but I can’t easily determine myself which of my notions are delusional. This was referred to in the movie ‘A Beautiful Mind’ (which in many ways was a very inaccurate portrayal of John Forbes Nash’s delusions and perhaps paranoid delusions in general) when Nash said to a friend, paraphrasing, that he cannot use his mind to think himself out of his problems because his mind *was* the problem.

You can get another idea of it by imagining you have two different yardsticks: the one is accurate, the other is inaccurate. How do you know which is which? It doesn’t help to measure one with the other if you don’t know which one is the one that is wrong!

The core of what makes me go paranoid is inescapable contradictions in what I am seeing around me. Also that my perceptions are not clear-cut, but influenced by my mindset, which itself is influenced by my perceptions … a chain reaction could result in my perceptions starting to become misperceptions which changes my mindset into a skewed direction which then feeds back and influences my misperceptions to become even worse, feeding back into my mindset. And I have often thought that I might have a kind of ‘overactive mind gland’ just to put it wrongly but to give you a useful image, that causes such chainreactions of feedback between mindset and perceptions that snowball into delusions with great rapidity.

But all right … let us suppose this: I realize that I am delusional or that I tend to delusions. I’ve seen clear evidence of me being delusional: I once believed that the entire music industry was a satanic conspiracy on very flimsy evidence and now I totally do not believe that any more. But all I know is that I had one belief once and now I have a different one that completely contradicts that one. I still don’t know for true which is delusional. I consider the earlier one to be delusional, but maybe I was right then and am delusional now. I seek evidence and I use my powers of reason as much as I can, but knowing that I probably was delusional once I am stuck with the dread that I am delusional *now* and unable to tell it the way I was unable to perceive my delusions once before.

Suppose we now bring in a friend – in the metaphor above, the second yardstick. This friend can now provide second opinions with which I can compare mine. But suppose this friend is delusional him/herself? The problem is – me being delusional, how can I tell that the friend I’m asking for advice is not delusional as well?

This problem doesn’t go away by bringing in more friends. It’s like getting a third yardstick – suppose the yardstick agrees with the one or the other, or suppose it differs from both – you still don’t know which is *really* the accurate one.

To expand this to the full scope: a major, major part of my paranoia involves belief that I live in an entire society that is insane. This belief figures into the two yardsticks example like this: in the time of Apartheid, in which I grew up – it dominated my mindset until the age of twenty – we had one set of beliefs that we considered true and right. A righthinking person would agree with the tenets of Apartheid. Then all that was overthrown. With the post-Apartheid mindset of today, what we believed under Apartheid was wrong – so wrong that it counts as a full blown delusional belief system. Indeed when we look at it today the evidence for what we believed seems as flimsy as the evidence a person uses for believing his toaster is sending out waves by which the CIA is controlling him like a robot. So: the entire country – or at least the power elite, the people who determined the beliefs of the populace – apparently was once stark raving mad. Now we have a quite different belief system imposed from new rulers – which the populace again believes with little criticism. How do we know that this isn’t crazy also? And – what could be the case for South Africa could be the case for any other country. America for one. America seems from where I am looking to be a place of rampant insanity. There is not a single worldview – a good sign is that there are a plurality of views – but some of those views, some of those groups, do seem to be quite crazy – and they can be substantial, they can include millions of people. How many people in total *do* believe the things Alex Jones says? From my perspective Alex Jones seems to be proclaiming full-blown paranoid delusions and *many* people buy it, or different but similarly crackpot theories. David Icke? Again this is not a frivolous example but *incredibly* relevant to my own problems … more on that later, I hope. But this gist of this is to try and help you understand how difficult it is for a deluded person to realise s/he is deluded and on the problems of correcting delusions by way of the feedback from other people when the danger exists of large groups of people – perhaps entire countries, and what I think in my wilder periods, PERHAPS MOST OF HUMANITY being dangerously deluded.

In a way, more or less the whole world has silly ideas. Some are less silly, some get a lot of debate and are turned down by a majority of people, but still others are really bad and still get support. It is confusing, no doubt about that.

And I hadn't thought really about how upsetting it must be when the rules of a society turn upside down, like when Apartheid was abandoned.

I thought about what you wrote about knowing which yardstick is faulty, and how to ensure that not all the yardsticks are. When it comes to people, I think it's reasonably safe to assume that most people are reasonably sane, so the more people around you who agree on something, the more likely it is to be a sensible view. (Which of course fails fantastically in the Apartheid example... unless you take into account an even larger poplulation)

It must be horrible not to feel you can trust your own mind. But I still think that interacting with people more often will help you realise what's what. Arguing, debating, with others is probably more rewarding than doubting yourself, alone.

I hope you find somewhere to do that.

Milla

All right, to answer some of what Stone Aart, Milla and Freewayriding said:

Diagnosis: was diagnosed in 1992 with schizophrenia, after suicide attempt and being interned in a psychiatric clinic for a week and a half. Saw psychologists and psychiatrists regularly after that. My folks took me to Pretoria on a regular basis to see a psychiatrist there for several years. (Just a note to help you understand the kind of society in South Africa – this psychiatrist was murdered not long after). I saw psychologists here, and later started seeing a psychiatrist here also. The diagnosis was amended to paranoid schizophrenia in particular at some point … and from all that I’ve read my symptoms do seem to conform to that. I saw an occupational therapist also. I was again hospitalized in 2001 shortly after the 9/11 attacks because I again tried to commit suicide a part of the reason of which was that I felt responsible for those attacks. I saw and spoke with several different psychiatrists at the clinic and was again interred for a week and a half.

Over the course of all this I exchanged an enormous volume of talk and writing with these psychiatrists, I was taken through several different kinds of medication – and monitored – and experienced lots of weird and profoundly unpleasant side effects and what I am taking now seems to be working the best at keeping me calm and level-headed while minimising side effects … but as you see they don’t work always. I do take them faithfully. But situations of great stress alter my ‘normal’ level of mental balance to the point where the medication don’t work well enough any more.

But I am still and always was to a great extent not satisfied with psychiatrists and psychologists because no matter how much we spoke there were elements, I felt, which we never got to discussing with the attention which they merited. In particular: NO psychologist or psychiatrist EVER seemed to want to actually discuss the significance of the delusions (or maybe ACCURATE beliefs) that I was experiencing or troubled with.

Now you speak of community initiatives, support groups and so on. As far as I know these do not exist here. This country is a country in chaos and disarray, with great levels of social disintegration. We do not help each other, we are right now seem to be individuals and small groups caught and trapped in little islands of isolation, struggle and despair.

This brings us to … my involvement with the local artists’ community. I AM right now taking art classes with a small group of other people. Now … I get along with these people … but at the same time our classes powerfully bring me under the impression that I am not like these people and I cannot relate to them. Most of them are rich, far richer than I (but there’s an angle with that as well) and they speak of things like holidays at expensive resorts, or even overseas holidays, they speak of all sorts of things they can afford that I can’t so I feel like a poor person among rich people – very inferior and insecure. They have different belief systems that often upset me a lot. For instance there is still a bit of racism and old attitudes left … and because of my feelings of inferiority I cannot bring myself to say ‘please don’t speak of people like that’. And most of them are Christians of a specific kind that I cannot identify with … I do not wish to condemn Christianity (because even if in the worst case Christians are deluded, being deluded myself I cannot judge) and I do know that many if not most Christians are good people but all the same there are things I just cannot agree with. For instance a conversation happened in class where ‘good atheists’ were being discussed. Now first of all the going idea among Christians of this kind is that atheists are in general bad people (they have to be – they are not right thinking, they reject God, they revel in sin instead of repenting … if they repented their sins then they would be Christians and so on) so a person mentioned a particular atheist as actually being a wonderful, warm and friendly person. Every Christian in the class agreed that this was sad! Because that person, despite being such a good person, would be going to Hell. A local preacher (EXTREMELY popular here – in fact a major ‘public figure’ hailed as a sort of prophet, the kind of person whose words move great masses of people) was quoted as saying: ‘good people don’t go to heaven – people who BELIEVE in Jesus go to heaven’. What I wanted to say in class was this :”well all right then – let the believers go to heaven, and I’ll be happy to go to the place where all the good people go.” But of course I didn’t say it. For the sake of civility I have to keep my mouth shut so much, and I cannot express my true ideas and feelings.

Then there are things like homophobia … rejection of evolution … there is an attitude of ‘magic’ Christianity such that God will magically help out and reward ‘His’ people. Will a just God really make teenagers die in a traffic accident because they jokingly said something ‘blasphemous’ … would God really answer prayers and magically heal ‘His’ people while letting people critical of Christianity die horribly of cancer … saying prayers and formulas that will ‘magically protect’ them … things like that, the idea of *trusting God* which sounds so nice and noble but in practice people do foolish things inspired by this ‘trust in God’, in essence they trust that God would come and clean up their messes for them all the time, so they don’t think of the consequences of their deeds, they don’t act responsibly but ‘trust God’ to direct the course of their life. I have examples of how horribly wrong this can go … but in class I can say nothing. What I desperately want is that there could be a discussion around religious matters that can depart from respect but where there will be sufficient openness to at least be willing to listen to evidence and arguments from the other side. But what I see – and not just in art class, I see this in *attempts* at religious discussion online as well – is that people depart from a totally closed standpoint where evidence or arguments from the other side cannot be admitted even from the outset. I see this from the side of atheists also which to me is also not right.

So: even while trying to be social with people I find my feelings of isolation and alienation deepening. The things I disagree with are extremely important to me. I might be wrong – but what if I am right? If I am right then a great lot of nonsense is being said, and a great lot of wrong beliefs are being espoused that do in the end actually hurt
Right – a taste of why it is difficult for me to socialize even with people who are artists like myself with whom it could be assumed I would share interests.
But: through the art class I am experiencing *some* human contact and, yes, opportunities for displaying and selling my art. But … I am having a very hard time still selling my art. While everyone likes it, hardly anyone is buying it.

Policemen … my experience of them varies between finding them sympathetic and considerate and also finding them callous and incompetent. I have had dealings with the police before where they did not investigate crimes as they should have. There is evidence of laxness … we are experiencing crime sprees in the country … even murders are often apparently not taken seriously … there are many charges of police corruption. While the discussions last evening were mostly sympathetic I was also perceiving – or believe I did – some mixed messages.

(Just as a note: like I said I have trouble selling art – and I work very hard at it – every piece I produce is a MAJOR difficult undertaking. One of the policemen suggested I give him a piece of my art as a gift – which I did. It’s a piece which was about two weeks’ worth of work – so representing half a months ‘actual income’ to me if I was able to sell everything that I create. Since I sell so little it is actually worth about a third of the ‘actual income’ I earn in a year.)

Wow, thanks for explaining so many things. I can understand that the art group is troubling you, even if some parts are good. And they indeed seem very different from what kind of people I would choose to spend time with... I wish it were different.

South Africa must be different from Sweden in ways I can't even imagine. In a way I knew that, but just how different is still hard to grasp.

I think I would get on well with the *people* in Sweden, Milla, but I would very much miss the nature and wildlife of South Africa. And also ... I do understand the people here, and I can be sympathetic with them even if in ways I disagree with them. But still ... there are these barriers I don't know how to get beyond.

Anyways: what you said earlier about 'more' people probably being more right ... I've really wondered hard about this because again if you take humanity as a whole but look at *time* then there were times in which almost all humans believed some very wrong things. Now we can look back and say they were wrong ... and we might be right about that. We have more evidence today. But do we have enough? In the future with even more evidence we might come to believe that the people of today were very wrong about some very important things.

The matter of delusion also involves evidence: as far as I can tell a lot of paranoid or other kinds of schizophrenic delusions *do* start out from evidence, but evidence that is misinterpreted, or the importance of which is not accurately judged. In this way 'crazy' people are not different in *nature* from what we consider 'normal' people - because all normal people will also often not interpret evidence perfectly correctly (in fact there might be no such thing as a perfect, correct interpretation) but in degree - paranoid people misinterpret things *more* and *more severely* than normal people do to the extent that it causes *serious problems* for them.

But the problem also relates to interactions between people. When 90% of your belief system differs from that of another person, it becomes almost impossible just to communicate with that person. The same words mean different things for the one compared with the other.

In trying to figure out what is going on in the world - in my periods during which I *feel* sane, balanced and levelheaded - I have still tended to NOT go by what other people think or feel - not the majority of the people in my country, and also not the majority of the people in the world at this time or any other. I have tried to reason things out according to principles of logic - I have studied philosophy - coupled to the evidence I could find in my own life - and here the pitfall is of course that some or much of this evidence could be misperceptions - but still I have taken what I could find in my life, what to me seemed right - and then compared this with evidence from what other people said, from what I read about the world, about science, and what I've aimed for is something that makes sense, something that is coherent with other things, a kind of belief system that forms a whole that is as far as possible not internally self-contradictory and that matches pretty much all of the evidence. This is what - at this point after 21 years of struggling - I am trying to use for guiding my thoughts and actions - and overall it works well. But it is a 'large and general' sort of belief system and the difficulties I experience now have to do with small practicalities.

I have to figure out specific things. Right now a problem that I am obsessing about involves some other person. This person started out a conservative Christian, then became radical to the point of being very weird (well in my view) even compared to other conservative Christians ... speaking about satanic magic and plots ... starting to involve conspiracy theories. Was reading David Icke's work. Then seemed to have quite abandoned Christianity, now openly speaking hostility about Christianity. Then seeming to speak favourably of some of Ayn Rand's notions. Then speaking in über-capitalistic terms: the world is not for poor people, the market rules, The Economist is now the trusted source of the truth. Now this person is an expert in economy, investment, making money. Next this person is speaking in full-on occultist sort of terms ... speaking of all kinds of natural magic, magic qualities in food. Makes more statements that seems to indicate a great interest in occultism. Well all right ... I am leery of occultism but I try to read some things about it, and I suggest that this person might enjoy a certain musical band with occultistic aspects. I was just trying to help myself by being more accepting and less fearful of this kind of stuff and also helping this person by telling him about something he might enjoy. And I find it all right if this person is openminded and gets away perhaps from the materialistic capitalistic worldview. Now this person loves this band and is really into it ... and now I am really worrying because from what I've read about the band they take the occultism very seriously and are even into what they themselves call 'evil' and now I worry about having prodded this person into the wrong direction ... having done the wrong things though well-intentioned.

Oh and for interest's sake, this is a Swedish band.

When I am asleep and dreaming, or maybe half awake and daydreaming, and start to think: then those actual thoughts can be "interesting". I can go along with thoughts and a perception of a world that appear real and true and solid. But when I wake up and remember the dream and my thoughts and perceptions during that dream, I sometimes feel relieved that my dream and my perceptions were in fact false ... a type of delusion.

What I have sometimes wondered is why when I am in that dream state I am unable to work out that indeed my perception and thoughts around that perception are delusional. It seems to me that when I am dreaming it is impossible for me to determine that my thoughts are delusional or not. It is only when I am awake does something seem to kick in that is able to determine that those thoughts were in fact delusional.

The conclusion that I draw is that there is a structure / function in the brain that kicks in during the awake state that somehow anchors my thoughts and perceptions to a consistent set of paradigms that allows me to distinguish the "reality" from something else. If somehow that structure or function was to become impaired in someway ... as it must be in the dream state ... then I can well imagine that this can cause problems ... and maybe this is what happens in a simple sense when one suffers from forms of psychosis.

I think the important thing when considering whether the world is insane or not or whether a group of people are insane or not ... is the emotion that it generates within us. Ultimately it is emotion that drives us in this world ... that compels us to do something or not .. to act. If one is able to disconnect the thought from the emotion, then it becomes "safer" to explore those thoughts ... this is something that is or at least should be part of the training for academia and the "professions".

Now, if those thoughts are causing a strong negative emotional reaction within us, the best and maybe only solution, is to try to stop thinking. This can be achieved to some extent by physical exercise ... going for a walk around the block, going to the gym, going swimming, doing the gardening, tidying, cleaning ... or occupying the mind with a task, painting, going to an art gallery, studying ... or distracting the mind, going to the cinema, watching a film, listening to the radio. Emotions can be intensely powerful, but they do decay away after a few hours if the source that is causing that emotion is removed (which may be a certain thought or worry).

For me whether the world is insane or not or whether a group of people are insane or not is unimportant. I look for consistency in behaviour, consistency of thought, and from that try to work out how that behaviour or pattern of thought helps them cope with their world. Sometimes the behaviour or pattern of thought may help them individually in someway. Sometimes it might help the family unit that they are a part of. Sometimes it might help the society or community they are a part of etc etc.