A Thought For Pause…
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In this post I’d like to show my own exploring of my identity through sound and vision. I put these short videos together in 2009 as an experiment, trying aesthetically express my sensibilities. Each of the three depicts a different aspect of me. As usual I am always grateful for peoples views and ideas.
Association Framework from Alex Crockett on Vimeo.
Water from Alex Crockett on Vimeo.
FIN from Alex Crockett on Vimeo.
Tags: anxiety, associations, Belief, black and white, culture, Death, Design, drawing, Experience, happiness, Ideas, Images, Life, mind, picture, Poetry, sketches, Video
A tantalizing part of experience is the noise we don’t experience; both the visual and auditory noise in the environment is immense. The environment is an almost chaos. Light, shapes and sounds; all varied and complex. It is natural to think of shapes as formed, ready made for minds to acquiesce. We see ‘a table’ or ‘chair’ or ‘face’, and that is it. From the chaos we see an ordered world. That is amazing.
Furthermore within the order we can navigate, making sense of the fauna and flora of our environments. There is a degree to which the impressionists had it right however, there is a a sense in which their paintings are closer to the reality of perception than our very own eyes. After all we are closer to light than to objects (physically speaking).
Color perception offers a simple illustration. When we see a series of different colors the colors remain constant despite variability in environmental conditions such as luminance. This is known as color constancy and this is thought to be achieved because the brain reads the ratios of difference between the wavebands of light from one surface to the next. As wavelengths vary between the surfaces we are looking at, the brain ‘reads’ the ratio differences between light from surfaces (which stays the same irrespective of light variations) allowing the colors we see to remain constant. In other words the brain computes color properties from ratios which, when we think about the brain as fleshy stuff is just amazing.
We don’t just perceive and navigate, we order the world too. How many of us, moving into a new home hang up pictures ‘where they belong’? The world is not just a thing we receive, it is something we act on and try to control. Our brains, human brains that is, are immense in their ability to both make inferences from the available data and and then structure the world according to our needs. We are the only species known to use tools to make tools. That too is amazing.
Within evolutionary theory there is a not insignificant idea that the more variable a trait is the less likely it is to have adaptive value. The argument goes that truly adaptive changes quickly loose their variability as the remaining population have acquired them, thus leaving previously adaptive traits fully absorbed by a species; they become a part of the total makeup of the species. Although the assumption has been contested the overarching principle has held as a rule.
The point is that there is a base level at which we all operate on the world with the same bodies. Each an agent coming to the world ready to make something meaningful of it with the same demands. It was Darwin who noticed that across cultures facial reactions to emotions have an invariance. To the extent that we as a species have invariant demands, we too have structured responses. In short, we see and act on a world we see that is, in part at least, not just composed of the world, but of our response to it. In as much as that is the case, the world in which we live is our construction.
For me personally, it is not just that we are conscious that is amazing, it is that we are conscious agents with a bid to our futures. We live in reciprocity with the environment in such a way that the environment serves a function in an almost Hegelian dialectic, but rather than being an historical and transcendental metphysic, the relations are immediate and physical. Rather than being governed by an end point that is teleological in some as yet unperceived way, it is itself evolving between the myriad minds that people the world, somehow finding solutions to life as it emerges. In all its detail, that is magical.
Tags: analytical, History, Ideas, Life, Living, Logic, mind, musings, People, Psychology, time, world
“Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are everything. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be those who had done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favor of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favor of equality.” George Bernard Shaw
Madness, the very idea of insanity, it is itself a term that is worth checking. It’s use has not remained consistent throughout history. Clinical definitions of insanity tend to be statistical, that is they are normative; if you don’t fit into the normal population then you’re not sane. Of course that’s not complete; some self harm, some are unhappy and some really wouldn’t cope in ‘this’ world without some intervention. However, few have stopped to check the ’sanity’ of society; the society that for the most part chooses who’s in and who’s out of the clinic.
The system we have works for most of us most of the time. But it is a system, and that means it’s going to miss something out. It doesn’t always work for all of us all of the time. Some groups have historically been more likely to be admitted as hysterical.
Study after study has confirmed that, but nothing is done. How would you feel if your depression wasn’t just neuro-chemical; how would you feel if a part of how you felt, part of what you experienced in your unhappiness was your brain’s reaction to the world you live in? It’s not improbable, in fact it’s more than likely. It’s well known that people in different cultures have different prevalence rates for mental illness. It’s also known that relapse rates are lower in other cultures for mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. Self harm has a cultural orientation as does anorexia, why can’t we see the mind in part as an expression of the world it lives in, expressing itself in part as a reflection to the context in operates in?
That is, to what extent is our own mental health a reflection of our societies sanity? Social factors do have an influence; isolation in Western cultures is thought to be one causes of depressive symptoms (it’s not for nothing that there are higher rates of mental illness in poorer inner city communities, and amongst them women have the highest rates – men drink more).
In early societies there is no doubt that life was hard. There is less doubt that people’s lives were shorter, more was expected of them and the consequences of not submitting to the group was, without doubt, severe. There is no question that the freedoms we have in the modern world are wonderful when we have them. Within cities that are worlds unto themselves live and breath forests of people, all interwoven, disconnected and striving for survival within the forest.
Most definitions of sanity have the terms ’soundness of mind’, again, a normative definition. I wonder though, is it so wonderfully normal? In a society so wealthy we can’t care for our poor except by charity. That seems neither equitable nor sane when we are richer than we’ve ever been.
In the world we created from the forests, we haven’t lost the struggle, just the forest. Our virtues are not defined by our humanity nor our community.
The footsteps found in Africa are still walked, but they walk fragmented realities. We live in cities of millions, and by necessity. However, that same necessity has brought with it a ferocity en-mass. The faces of strangers are not the faces of people, and so we can laugh with cruelty.
But, a suffering person is still a person suffering. In a blind drive to ease our own suffering further we escape the banality and ennui of existence in entertainment. And it seems quite justified; life is hard after all. Worse than that is that by our own standards we are far from neutral. It is not just as Jonathan Glover puts it so well in his book ‘Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century’ that psychological distancing is part and parcel of the greatest evils of our time, but, as Hannah Arendt also makes the point, distancing is done by us, in the banality of our own normal society and in a guilty cover for truth we are capable of every rationalization.
This post is not an indictment. It is a question. In our quest for happiness the conditions of the best and most pervasive happiness must be considered. And a signifiacnt part of that is, are we in our own society happy despite the comforts of what we know..
Tags: anxiety, black and white, culture, Experience, Fear, History, Ideas, Life, Living, musings, People, photography, poem, Psychology, society, time, world
“Living for ones own pursuits, surrounded by others doing the same is not community”
Ernest Becker, The Structure of Evil
I don’t know at what age we become conscious of ourselves as agents in the world. I remember being a child passively. Things happened, and somehow, even if I was the cause of something happening I had no sense of agency. The world happened around me and I was a part of it, but I don’t remember thinking that I played any part in what was happening.
Somehow as you get older however, there’s a time, maybe a moment when that changes. As adults we not only become conscious that choices we’ve had in the past are antecedent to where we are now, we have a responsibility for the consequences. But worst of all, the harder I think the more I can draw lines dating to a time where I was still unaware of the responsibility I would feel now.
These thoughts can weigh heavily on most of us. I doubt that many of us can attest to complete satisfaction with everything in our lives. And by no means do I mean the house we live in or the job we have. Life is just a bit more than that for us. Who we are, the confidence we feel and the power that we feel we have over the future seem intrinsically linked to our past in much the same way.
For me personally it is for exactly these reasons that I value my education and the achievements I’ve made in life. Whatever can and will be taken away from me the past can never be removed. But I value even these things because I know that they are valuable, not just to me but to the people who have recognized them. As far as that is the case I am reminded that my achievements don’t always stand on their own. They also stand in relation to the people who have made me feel that they are achievement.
What am I getting at? A good question indeed.
That one can value one’s achievements is an achievement in life. There are many of us who continue to fail to recognize the value in ourselves. Worries of adequacy as ridiculous as they may be are also all to human. And that is in effect the point. Irvin Yalom once wrote the wonderfully acute observation that falling in love was akin to death. Better to stand in love with another, to stand in a relationship of partnership through life that bring each-other down with a suffocating fall. That relation of support through life I don’t think stands only for a couple, it stands for each of us and is an exquisite metaphor for the relation of support and recognition that each of us aspires to within our community. Despite my achievements, despite my personal confidence in the existence of my own humanity I seek to have that humanity seen in a community of friends. Why? Because it is in the reflection of their eyes that I can see myself.
Looking around the world it is clear that it is the reciprocity of affection, the recognition of being and substance in us all that bears significance as a species. We are born, it is true, into a world of strangers. The world and all it’s competition manages to strangle the essence of humanity through its mechanism. However, like many unanswered questions it also ought to be remembered that there are many things that we have in common as people that are more fundamental than our differences. It is in that respect that the gesture recognition is a significant force in all our endeavors.
The world as it is will continue to arm us. That is natural enough. However, when one thinks about all of the characters that have managed to unite people through conflict it is the men and women who have seen past transient and insignificant differences and found resonance across the divide who continue to inspire our values beyond cynicism and constraint. It seems to me that to aim for the same values, as unattainable as they may prove to be is a good starting place for all of us individually. "> »
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Tags: culture, developing, Family, Life, Me, mind, musings, People, Poetry, Psychology, society
“Any attempt to define what psychopathology is presupposes that we know what normality is. In view of this, any consideration of psychopathology requires an examination of the notions of mental health…..Throughout history, people’s understanding of psychopathology has constantly shifted; different cultures and historical periods have labeled ‘mad’ those whom other times and societies have regarded sane”
Alessandra Lemma in An Introduction to Psychopathology
It has to considered to what extent any one of us has what might be described as sanity and is ‘normal’. I am sure that more than one of us would describe ourselves as normal, other would quite happily demonstrate all the ways in which they are atypical. As a psychology student I remember quite clearly identifying myself with every kind of neurosis we were presented with in the lecture hall. Either way I’m not sure that ‘normality’ is a requisite of either sanity or health. The view to normality presupposes some kind of definition of what a person ought to be in a society to be like everybody else. It is certainly clear to me that this is a nonsense.
One thing is clear, in order that others, with no insight into ourselves regard us as ‘normal’ we are required to do what they do, behave as they behave and feel like they feel. I am confident that this is in no way dissimilar to the opening of almost every dystopian fiction written or realized.
Normality is no doubt useful. Social science uses what is called ‘the normal distribution’ as a means of testing for significance in research. The normal distribution is not a logical or mathematical ‘truth’, it is an empirical observation. It just so happens that when phenomena a measured they tend to fit, on a graph, what looks like a bell shaped curve. That curve also tends to have certain properties that make it identifiable as the normal distribution and, as a consequence it has become a useful constancy to test against for abnormality in a population.
In addition we rely heavily on our ability to predict what the world will be like. Constancy in our environment is an important part of our ability to navigate the environment and surprise can cause a certain anxiety. When the mold is broken, or someone doesn’t quite fit the mold, it is less the actual threat and more the perceived uncertainty that makes us weary. Society has to function, in order that it does we have to rely on the fact that it will do whatever we expect it to do at any given time. In that respect normality and stability are important for us.
However, there is a clear sense in which an absolute need for constancy is pathological. If one take people with neurotic dispositions for example, they may for all purposes live a normal life, however, the threat of ambiguity and uncertainty can be too much. Often times people with anxious personality types abhor what they do not know and are quite willing to impose on their environment their own versions of what is normal (and hence good). There is a clear sense in which dogmatism is an example of this.
The desire to fit the mold, to inhibit the passions in order that we are ‘normal’ is neurotic. It is a function of neurotic minds that the world is black and white according tot heir ideas. Once boundaries for understandable behavior are set they are in effect set in stone. But to what extent does this reflect real life?
I would like to take some time making the issue as unclear as possible. Not for any other reason than to show what lack of clarity the issues has for me en-route to maybe discovering some way of thinking about it.
What is clear is that normality and sanity are in effect synonymous on the one hand but, they in another sense they can quite clearly been seen to stand in opposition to each other. In as much ’sanity’ is concerned there is a synonymy with normal function. However, at the same time there is an equal discrepancy as far as the desire to be normal is manifest. In this latter sense, it is almost as if the very desire for normalcy is in and of itself a kind of insanity, a state of mind that constricts the very freedom of spirit and the individuality of expression that makes the human psyche what it is, a socially creative agent.
It is that sense that true insanity seems the most manifest. I found the following definition of a Lunatic online:
LUNATIC, persons. One who has had an understanding, but who, by disease, grief, or other accident, has lost the use of his reason. A lunatic is properly one who has had lucid intervals, sometimes enjoying his senses, and sometimes not.
I wonder however, to how many people who are not ‘lunatics’ this definition would apply. Personally I am prone to periods of dejection, dysthemia and depression. I have experienced pains in life and am sure that I will continue to experience pain and suffering during my life. However, I have also experienced wonderful highs and in no way do I feel abnormal in this. I don’t think there is anything atypical about the grief that I’ve had. What is more, I am quite sure that my senses have not always served me well. I continue to learn that I am prone to serious flaws in my reasoning but, at the same time would be loath to consider myself a lunatic.
It is worth noting that society as a whole has its own values regarding sanity and insanity. I don’t doubt that there is a regimentation to our own society that imposes restrictions on the limits to which free expression is possible. What those limits are and how they are defined is in my mind a serious question.
A typical response might be that if an individual finds it hard to cope in a society, if an individual is in fact suffering then they may qualify for treatment. This raises to parallel questions. The first is, to what extent is the individual responding to the way in which the society finds them, secondly, to what extent is a certain amount of suffering a prerequisite of life. The point I am making is not only the the world in which we live seems to make almost unreasonable demands on people and their capacity for happiness that I for one have never seen, but at the same time, to what extent are we really living in a kind of dystpopia of which we are in fact unaware?
Our virtues are not defined by our humanity in as much as they defined by our success. And by that success we are quite ready to bleed our humanity. what about our own society as whole? What about the whole of humanity? Is it sane? In early societies there is no doubt that life was hard. There is less doubt that peoples lives were shorter, more was expected of them and the consequences of not submitting to the group were, without any doubt severe. There is no question that the freedom we have to express ourselves in the modern world is a wonderful aspect of our lives today. Within cities that are worlds unto themselves live and breath forests of people, all interwoven, disconnected and striving for survival within the forest. Some people enjoy great freedom, however many also suffer great inequity. Most definitions of sanity have the terms ’soundness of mind’, again, a normative definition. I wonder though, is it so wonderfully normal?
There is little doubt that a society needs to function. In order that it functions it is clear that certain values for typical behavior are set. Anarchy, both of mind, people and a nation at large is in no way different to a state of perfect entropy. A state in which the informational, structural and functional value of the system in question is beyond use. However, at the same time there does seem a human danger that exists in the opposite direction. That danger is that we consolidate our horizons so narrowly that the essence of humanity and human creativity are inhibited to the extent that society ossifies.
There is ample evidence both in historical literature and in modern academic literature to suggest that we take for granted what we believe to be clear cut mental conditions. However there is also something about the very concept of sanity that is an anathema to freedom of mind and of spirit. And without suggesting a better alternative, I would at least like to pose a warning. That as a society of people mutually engaged in the single purpose of working towards a better future, we consider our relationship with the insane and welcome the prospect of difference, if not for the very reason that the minds that appear so different may be the reality that we need in our default to normalcy.
I worked in a psychiatric hospital after I left university. There was little doubt that the patients I worked with would not have been able to manage on their own in the world. However, one thing that struck the strongest cord with me. One that still sounds loud today is that in between the incoherence of that time, between the spoken lines I felt a clear reflection of truth. When the patients were upset they weren’t able to articulate they complaints in a way that made sense in relation to the physical world. But what they meant to say were truths that we as wardens in the hospital were certainly not prepared to accept.
Tags: anxiety, culture, Experience, Fear, happiness, Ideas, Life, Living, mind, musings, People, Science, society, world
