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It's about schizophrenia, hallucinations, and weird shit

For the few upcoming days I'll be posting things mostly from a curious book I've been reading: 'The Divided Self' by R. D. Laing

It is indeed an important achievement for the child to gain the assurance that the adults have no means of knowing what he does, if they do not see him; that they cannot do more than guess at what he thinks to himself if he does not tell them; that actions that no one has seen and thoughts that he has ‘kept to himself’ are in no way accessible to others unless he himself ‘gives the show away’. The child who cannot keep a secret or who cannot tell a lie [...] has not established his full measure of autonomy and identity. No doubt in most circumstances good reasons can be found against telling lies, but the inability to do so is not one of the best reasons. - The Divided Self

*bot*

مِن كتاب العصا (جزء من البيان والتبيين)، للجاحظ

ما عدا عركات الطفولة بالعودة مال الماسحة والسيوف البلاستك

أصلًا الجاحظ وأُسامة بن منقذ كل واحد منهم ألّف كتاب إسمه 'كتاب العصا' 😂

In media vita*—No, life has not disappointed me. Rather, I find it truer, more desirable and mysterious every year—ever since the day the great liberator overcame me: the thought that life could be an experiment for the knowledge-seeker—not a duty, not a disaster, not a deception! And knowledge itself: let it be something else to others, like a bed to rest on or the way to one, or a diversion or a form of idleness; to me it is a world of dangers and victories in which heroic feelings also have their dance and playgrounds. ‘Life as a means to knowledge’—with this principle in one's heart one can not only live bravely but also live merrily and laugh merrily! And who would know how to laugh and live well who did not first have a good understanding of war and victory? *Latin for ‘In mid-life’

An Age of Decadence inevitably follows. Frivolity, aestheticism, hedonism, cynicism, pessimism, narcissism, consumerism, materialism, nihilism, fatalism, fanaticism, and other negative attributes, attitudes, and behaviors suffuse the population. Politics is increasingly corrupt, life increasingly unjust. A cabal of insiders accrues wealth and power at the expense of the citizenry, fostering a fatal opposition of interests between haves and have-nots. Mental and physical illness proliferates. The majority lives for bread and circuses; worships celebrities instead of divinities; takes its bearings from below rather than above; throws off social and moral restraints, especially on sexuality; shirks duties but insists on entitlements; and so forth. The society’s original vigor, virtue, and morale have been entirely effaced. Rotten to the core, the society awaits collapse, with only the date remaining to be determined. - Immoderate Greatness, by William Ophuls

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I think it is clear that by ‘understanding’ I do not mean a purely intellectual process. For understanding one might say, love. But no word has been more prostituted. - The Divided Self