Who invented the question mark?

Who invented the question mark? Nobody knows. It's a mystery; a great question.


https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/origin-of-question-mark

Narcissists will say, "I'm a narcissist"

Narcissists will generally say, “I’m a narcissist” if asked. Other people will not do that so much. This is considered a good and quick narcissist test. If a person is asked, “That Carly Simon song ‘you’re so vain’….. is it about you?” a narcissist would say, “yeah.” That would be a good test. The Carly Simon Test. 

Don't Own Your Manic Episodes

This was an idea I first heard from Ajahn Brahm in a YouTube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXd09oGHD0I&t=2578s

Basically, people with bipolar feel an extreme level of regret for the things they've done. The one key to overcoming that regret, and basically feeling no regret anymore, is to realize that it wasn't you doing those things. Anyone around you can see it clearly already. When you're manic, you're not being yourself.

I often want to hold on to all of my experiences even if they're painful. I want to feel like, "I may have been manic, but at least I existed." Well no, I didn't exist. Nothing exists forever. My real personality comes and goes. It will eventually die when I'm 84 (That seems like long enough). So why own the parts of me where I was clearly not myself? I felt like myself at the time, but I wasn't.

Don't own it. That is the idea of no-self for Buddhism. It's not just don't own that, but also DO own the parts of yourself that are really you. It's not hypocritical to say, "This was me" and "that wasn't me." It's not hypocritical because it's just a fact. The time you showed up manic to work and confused and scared people was NOT you. You are the good person right now who would never dream of doing those sorts of things.

It's very important. One of my goals as a teenager was to live a life of no regret. I can't say I accomplished that, except that I wasn't me when I did regretful things. In that sense, I have lived a life free of regret. I don't regret anything I've ever done while sane. And while insane, I wasn't me.

What Apparent "Laziness" Really Is For the Mentally Ill

People who are mentally ill are not lazy. I saw this posted elsewhere, on https://themighty.com/2017/05/unemployed-mental-illness-secrets/
However, from my experience this is also absolutely true. I have a mental illness, but that is not why I say this. I say this because I worked in a group home for the mentally ill for 8 months. Probably 10 out of the 12 clients there would just sit around apparently doing nothing. I have been in that exact same situation so I know it wasn't just, "doing nothing." What they were doing is getting into such a deep state of relaxation that they were unable at that moment to lose their minds. It is necessary for our health. When I'm sane, I am a remarkable person. However, there is a so-called monster inside of me, and when I go insane I really become a monster. I have to put in extraordinary effort, just like these clients did, to not let that monster dictate my life. I need to sleep a little more, zone out to get into that state of peace, and relax a lot.

It's basically like this: We sit around not going insane most of the time, and we do a little work here and there when we can. Then, if we do end up losing our sanity, it seems that not only are we lazy and selfish, but we also hurt other people with our behavior. It is a real problem, but it is not resolved by just working constantly and ignoring the illness. Ignoring the problem is a very ineffective coping strategy for anyone. We need to relax, a lot, in order to be good people. Everyone is capable of being good, but people have different mechanisms by which they accomplish this. Good luck to everyone out there who is struggling, and congratulations to everyone who is succeeding.

You may ask about those 2 clients who refused to take it easy and relax. Why could they do this but the others couldn't? The answer is: Those 2 clients ended up having extreme meltdowns and in various ways tore the entire house apart.

Golem was the only one who really loved the ring

Sauron was pure evil, except for his ring. However, his ring was still attached to him. The ring really was, like Isildur said, the one beautiful thing about Sauron. However, because it was attached to Sauron's menace, it had to be destroyed. Now, how could it be destroyed? Almost anyone who touched it instantly got attached to its magnificence and couldn't let go. They weren't in love with the ring, though. They loved it personally, for its power and grandeur.

Golem, however, loved the ring's power totally and absolutely. He saw something special in the ring. No matter where Golem turned in his life, there was despair and hunger. When he saw the ring though, he was free from all that. It brought him a glimmer of peace.

The only thing the ring needed to be freed from its dark side, Sauron, was to have someone unconditionally love it. Someone to love it not for its capability to bring power, but just because of its beauty. When Golem really showed it that the ring was loved, the ring did not need to be there anymore. It fulfilled its destiny. How did Golem love it when he was so despicable? The only good thing about Sauron was the ring, and the only good thing about Golem was his love for the ring. Golem was the opposite of Isildur. Golem was totally despicable except that he had the basic characteristic of love deep within him. That love was embodied by the creation of the most despicable creature Sauron, of something that truly was beautiful, the ring.

Isildur's bane killed him, but Isildur showed compassion for the ring. He knew that to destroy the ring would be to destroy the basic goodness that was within Sauron. That would mean making Sauron totally evil.

Yet Sauron threatened to bring doom to all of humanity if he returned. This was imminent. Sauron was destroyed by Golem loving Sauron with true devotion. The ring was the opposite of Sauron, yet made by Sauron. Golem became one with the ring, and disappeared forever.

Why the Hard Problem of Consciousness is Hard

The Hard Problem of Consciousness is hard because consciousness is the First Principle of existence. The Hard Problem of Consciousness is, "why do the chemical processes of the brain, the inputs and outputs, turn into an experience of being?" The answer cannot be solved because consciousness is the very first fact of being. Just as Aristotle's first principle of reason was noncontradiction, and so it became impossible to conclusively prove it in the field of logic, consciousness is the first principle of being. Noncontradiction is to reason as consciousness is to all of existence. David Chalmers famously said that one thing we cannot deny is that we're conscious. Descartes similarly said I think therefore I am, "cogito ergo sum." It is true it's the only thing we can't deny, but it is also the only thing we have to take on faith. It is the ultimate combination of epistemology ("how do I know" philosophy) and ontology ("what is being" philosophy). Along with this blend, or perhaps because of it, consciousness is self-affirming. It is also eternal, because if existence goes on in the universe for other people, and if consciousness is a first principle of being, then individual being exists beyond life and into the next life.

Axiomatic Rules in Psychology

There are axioms in math. There are axioms in physics. Great thinkers always use at least 1 axiom. A Big Think talk discussed the axiom of Einstein, "the speed of light is constant." What is the axiom in psychology? It starts from the self-affirming principle, "Truth is true." This is also known as non-contradiction. I propose that what we should hold onto (and what I do hold onto) is, "speak only truth." It is a moral imperative, proposed as far back as least 300 years ago with Kant. However, it informs psychological research rather well. It also takes it into a different domain than other sciences.

Originally, psychology was a combination of science, philosophy, and theology. It still has theology and science underpinning it, but it's losing some of the philosophy. The philosophy of ethics is a good place to see psychological axioms. How can obligation to such law create psychological insights in thinkers?

Clinically, this may have applications. The goal of counseling is often to get a client to reveal a big fear, something dark that was never revealed to others. Once this is done, counseling begins. This makes honesty essential.

Experimentally, this has methodological benefit. Do not deceive in order to learn. That would be self-refuting. Studies that use deception are not informative, because there is no proof in a deception. It is completely illusory. Falsehoods are fake. False=false.

What is an actual result in an experiment that could follow from "speak only truth"? Potentially, we could see if adherence to logic causes psychological benefits from emotions to thinking. However, we could also do it as a thought experiment. What happens when someone says, "It is but it isn't"? It is simply delighting in a feeling of intuition which is actually just confusion objectified.