7 ms·

The Dawn of Cultural Schizophrenia (2023)

• PaulHoule 3y ago
  I went to the library at my Uni a while back looking for books on paranoia, a phenomenon associated with schizophrenia, and was disgusted that the majority of books were like this article, confusing vague ideas about culture with important concepts from mental health. It’s shameful because there is enough ignorance and confusion in this area and we don’t need people who should know better (as this author expresses) to create more. I’d also reject the idea that the proliferation of stories really overloads people because stories follow their own physics (that I’d quarter-jokingly call pataphysics) and so constrained they recycle a limited repertoire of patterns. principles and archetypes and even if the details of the stories become a blur, one internalizes the structure.
  • illuminant 3y ago
    You seem a big deal (karma wise) so I don't want to get banned by saying my usual "understanding of schizophrenia is all wrong because the voices in our heads are really disembodied others." Read my last comments and tell me if I'm out of line. I was press ganged into Americas thought control hooligan army fifteen years ago and I've been fighting thought control ever since. I am a first hand source. This is a growing problem because it's real and modern understanding is backwards.
    • LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
      Greer is good.
      • LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
        Greer IS good! F...ing dimwits!
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • StreetChief 3y ago
    "Leading masses of conversations to become little more than titbits of information and data flung in solely as signifiers of knowledge and meaning, yet never actually adhereing to any form of practice or purpose," seems pretty accurate to me. I am curious as to what purpose you went to your uni library for. Medical research? Curiosity? What writings did you find? Why is it a problem that people use schizophrenia in conversation and writing? Not all discussion is medical research, and is certainly not held to those standards.
    • theaussiestew 3y ago
      It's concerning because conversation has become just about talking and the pleasure of having a chat, rather than truth-seeking. Not that conversation should or must be about truth-seeking, but seeing conversations being idle chatter everywhere, with medical terms like "schizophrenia" being thrown about willy nilly is unsettling. One does not have to speak in the parlance of a medical researcher in order to find meaning and truth in a discussion around mental illness, and yet despite this, most information in this space is just noise.
      • StreetChief 3y ago
        Most information in most spaces is noise. Finding the signal in the noise is difficult in every area, and restricting colloquial (or philosophical) discussion because of overlap with a medical field seems rather harsh to me. We need to learn to understand things deeply, not just look at the surface of the issue: instead of "regular literature is mixed in with scientific literature, so this article is bad," maybe we could look at the what the article provides, and use it to draw new conclusions or support our understanding in addition ways. I see many problems in our society, our culture, that I would describe as schizophrenic, as a reflection of human predilections, and this article provides another lens for understanding.
    • walledstance 3y ago
      I’ll agree with this. Study language and lingual theory. Much of language is metaphor we apply to different lens. Language is mainly a process of trial and error. We continue saying something, refining that saying through different word usage until we come up with a term that fits our lens correctly. Words don’t have rules. Humanity makes those rules and then applies them. The commenter below, mentioning “truth-seeking” would need to define what they mean by truth. Is this capital T truth that applies to everyone or lowercase truth that applies to the specific and differing lenses we use?
  • bluetomcat 3y ago
    Nowadays we encode micro-stories in memes. We address a particular situation with the most relevant meme. We don't comprehend any overarching stories or belief systems apart from capitalism, free-market economics and technological progress. Instead of addressing structural societal problems, we treat mental health and classify new kinds of mental disorders.
    • huijzer 3y ago
      Good point. What would you suggest? I wouldn’t know. Lowering taxes on beer in pubs? Raising taxes on social media accounts?
      • RugnirViking 3y ago
        money isn't the most important driver in decisions. Making something previously free paid is a much bigger drive than tripling the price. Why? it's the fact that you actively have to decide to do something and execute on it. If you made it so that in order to keep a social media account you had to submit a form each week to the local social media office, hardly anyone would have one. Even (especially) if you could submit a reimbursement form to have any costs associated with filling and posting the form returned.
      • bluetomcat 3y ago
        > Lowering taxes on beer in pubs? Raising taxes on social media accounts? Reforming the whole media system to not incentivise engagement. Let Facebook become a place where one shares family pictures with close relatives. Reward the YouTuber who produces infrequent 2-hour long videos that talk about philosophical ideas.
        • HKH2 3y ago
          > Reward the YouTuber who produces infrequent 2-hour long videos that talk about philosophical ideas. YouTube Longs.
        • nradov 3y ago
          You can just directly pay the YouTubers that you like, and unfollow Facebook accounts that you don't want to see. But if you're suggesting some sort of government restrictions or subsidies, screw that.
  • the_gipsy 3y ago
    Perhaps you're wrong in expecting the term "paranoia" to be exclusive to some clinical definition that you happened to be seeking at that time. I don't see how stories sharing some common structure (what does that even mean? rise-and-fall combinations?) makes it impossible to become overloaded by them.
  • emmet 3y ago
    It is very disappointing that I was prepared to write off a pretty interesting article because of their decision to do this. I do agree with your second point though, especially when this is proven by the prevalence of the holy "algorithm".
• Anotheroneagain 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    extraordinary statements need extraordinary links to data backing up claims extraordinary fantasy and or science fiction premise needs wise rabbit superheroes with psychic powers and laser pistols. I'm not sure which of these your comment was meant to be but I think you should provide the needed content.
    • lupusreal 3y ago
      He spams this nonsense on /sci/ often and can never back any of it up.
      • Anotheroneagain 3y ago
        That is a lie.
        • lupusreal 3y ago
          So there are two of you people going around saying lead is an essential nutrient? That seems unlikely.
    • Anotheroneagain 3y ago
      No data disputing it will get published, as a policy.
      • weberer 3y ago
        Alright. Can you at least post a self-published source? I never heard of this before.
      • mrkeen 3y ago
        Then at least publish the policy.
• bowsamic 3y ago
  I agree that it is as wide as the ocean and as deep as a puddle and it really does lead to a degeneration of meaning, however I think it keeps people solely in the depressive state rather than a schizophrenic one. It really isn't finding meaning and connections in everything if everything is only investigated only to a surface level. It usually just functions more as a form of shallow social signalling: "Yes I've heard of Hegel, yes I've watched Lynch, yes I know a few words in German" etc. From an individual point of view, often it's a matter of being scared to take a leap of faith into one topic, or simply a matter of great distraction, particularly with vapid online spaces (HN included) and shallow entertainment, or even just a symptom of their own psychological issues. For me it has been a combination of all of them, but ultimately also just a thought: too quickly giving up and spiralling into a kind of self-hating shallow engagement when I am challenged by something. It's true that people are now stretched over too many cultural artefacts "like butter spread on too much bread". But honestly I can't be bothered to worry about the sociocultural impact of this, I will just focus on enjoying meaning and connection in my own life. I find that pretending "the culture" doesn't exist is the only way to really enjoy it now. I just pursue exactly what I enjoy in the way I enjoy it. I've had enough of actively seeking cultural companionship, particularly online. It was ultimately distraction from living a rich life anyway. For me, I think learning what I find meaning in, what I really enjoy, was just a part of growing up. It is an ongoing process, but it is growing.
  • Astie 3y ago
    > It was ultimately distraction from living a rich life anyway. May I ask what you meant by "rich life"?
    • bowsamic 3y ago
      Not being severely depressed, not hating everything, not feeling like a complete failure at everything I do, being able to enjoy things like nature and art, no longer feeling embarrassed and shutting down the emotion of joy when seeing a cute animal, etc.
• FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  from article "On the other hand, we can become so lost in language games themselves that the grounded connection of language to the cultural meaning system is lost, and we end up desperately spewing out word-salads in a frantic attempt to find that lost connection. The former problem of living Becker linked to states of depression, while the latter he linked to schizophrenia." To some extent, I liked the article, even agree mostly, but itself also tends towards the 'word salad'. Does this mean anything "":On the one hand, then, we have ‘depression’ as an understanding of a relationality that is so locked into a singular frame of reference that any sense of sovereignty is usurped by the self-imposed dogma of the system itself, leading to both the former ignorance Greer writes of and a personal form of melancholic depression. On the other hand we have schizophrenia, a relationality so unkept than anything and everything is packed full of meaning, connections are drawn between everything, and existence is pure pattern and relation. But, if everything means something, nothing means anything. Meanings needs limits, yet can’t be dogmatically limited. Meaning, then, needs equilibrium.""
• bondarchuk 3y ago
  >But, if everything means something, nothing means anything. Stated without argument, and, as far as I can see, simply false. I know this pattern from "if everything is bold, nothing is bold" (typography), where I'd agree with it (if all text is bold no single piece of text can stand out from the rest, which was originally the function of bolding text), I just don't see how it transposes to meaning. If 'meaning' is a perceived relation from 'A' to 'B', then adding another perceived relation from 'C' to 'D' does not change that in any way. Perhaps the author's point is that when only a few things meant something, it was easier to fall into the illusion that this meaning was more than just a relation between things which are meaningless in isolation, that there was some wellspring of meaning that goes above and beyond mere relationships, into a different metaphysical plane of existence, and one could even be in communion with it in ones daily life ("actual fulfilment") by attending to a few common myths or stories or what-have-you. Alas, I would say this is just an illusion and while it might be legitimate to lament the loss of a comfortable state, you would just be fooling yourself by closing your eyes and going back to it at this point. By the way, what is meant by "meaning" anyway? The phrase "X means Y" is clear enough, but then the things the author really seems to want to say hinge on a non-relational use of the word, e.g. "X is meaningful", "there is meaning", "signifiers of meaning", "meaning that is meaningful". I know there's a colloquial use of "meaningful" but AFAICT "X is meaningful" then means little more than "X makes me happy (and less afraid of death)". It's certainly not a unique fault of this article but it would be nice if someone were to define their key terms, for once.
  • rmah 3y ago
    It seems pretty clear to me that the author means "has meaning" means "is important".
    • bryanrasmussen 3y ago
      having meaning is only definable if we say what that meaning is. So two things can have meaning and mean two different things. thus "if everything means something, nothing means anything." is wrong because 'meaning' as a property is not enough to establish that all items have the same quality and thus the quality does not serve to distinguish and becomes, excuse the phrasing, meaningless.
• swayvil 3y ago
  But reality isn't a story. It's a nameless, formless, infinitely deep thing. And you don't need a story to navigate it either. A story (map, theory, etc) is just one (immensely popular) way. Maybe our deep concern with stories is the issue. Like a man who puts his head in a sack and then complains about the dark
  • bowsamic 3y ago
    Well, it's the only thing we can concern our minds with, since anything we think about falls under the category of "story" as you note by synonymising it with "map" and "theory". Sure, we can just simply live, and we must, indeed, actually just exist in this world, but it's hard to interpret your comment as anything other than "just stop the mind", which to me doesn't seem particularly productive. You haven't really argued that it's limiting to be deeply concerned with stories, you just say that it's blinding but haven't justified why. Is it also blinding when a man is deeply concerned with the physical act of eating, or with the act of walking?
    • swayvil 3y ago
      I did not mean to suggest any kind of exclusivity. No "just live" or "just stop the mind". What I offer is a bit of perspective. The mind only looks big when your nose is buried in it. And when your nose is buried in it all you see is mind stuff, stories become central, and mind-related problems look like mountains. It's a tempest in a teapot situation. (Also, it's limiting to be deeply concerned with stories because doing so concentrates your attention into stories and mind, rendering all else dim to invisible. It's that trick of perspective. And then when everybody you know is doing the same thing and that's all that anybody talks about, then reality becomes just a story)
      • bowsamic 3y ago
        Right, but it's impossible to get out of the mind, so what's the problem? We can never leave the perspective of mind
        • 3y ago
• kouru225 3y ago
  This Becker guy seems to have made a very specific argument that schizophrenia is connected to mania and it flew over the authors head. At least, that’s my guess here. What the author is talking about is mania, but he’s using the word schizophrenia. “On the other hand we have schizophrenia, a relationality so unkept than anything and everything is packed full of meaning, connections are drawn between everything, and existence is pure pattern and relation.” ^ that’s mania. Mania exists on the opposite side of the spectrum of depression, which is why we usually call it “manic-depression” when someone has mood swings. I’m fine with creating new definitions and using whatever words you want to use, but by using the word schizophrenia, we lose a connection to mood swings that I think is more representative of our cultural reality right now. We’re not all manic. Some of us are depressed, and some of us shift between the two.
  • ysofunny 3y ago
    > some of us shift between the two. I think ALL of us shift between the two. or rather I'd say that we all experience a combination of both over our lives when people shift between opposite states way too fast, from a big and deep depression to a high excited manic state that's called bipolar disorder. but normal people can and indeed are (is what I'm saying) expected to experience both extreme but possibly shifiting between extremes over the course of many weeks or even months, rather than a few minutes like in bipolar patients
    • robotresearcher 3y ago
      Bipolar patients commonly have months-long swing periods. Typical period is a few weeks. Not correcting anything parent said, just adding information.
    • 11217mackem 3y ago
      quite misinformed. ~1/3 of bipolar people fall into the category you are describing – rapid-cycling bipolar. for the rest, the cycles are months long, whether manic, euthymic, or depressed, and often following seasonal patterns. clinical bipolar disorder vs. the ups and downs of human life are quite different. it's difficult to understand unless you have seen a loved one suffer it, or have been afflicted with it yourself.
• dosplatos 3y ago
  > The question, then, is to what extent limitation is healthy? Our minds filter reality for survival. But, we over-use our minds. Too much stuff in the cache, and not enough stuff going to dev/null/. Living in the technological society we do today requires more and more attention on various things. If you just turn off your mind for a while and stop overclocking, this isn't such a huge issue. Easier said than done. I try to meditate, and I feel it helps, but it's difficult.
• m0llusk 3y ago
  There are a million stories in the naked city, but no one can tell which one is theirs.
• pphysch 3y ago
  Greer's thesis is interesting, but I don't see what this article adds to it. Western Culture is firmly in the "one story" paradigm, and reaching the terminal state. "Too many stories = schizo" seems like a defense/cope from someone in the popular "one story" camp. I say this because the author doesn't really substantiate it with examples, or explain how/when the culture transitioned from "many" to "too many". IME people described as "schizo" often have a "one story" worldview of the world, i.e. believing strongly that their views are Truth, but struggle to form a cohesive "one story" and go crazy. In contrast, a "many stories" person is detached from owning the Truth and can better cope with contradictions and differing worldviews.