The Closing of the Scientific Mind

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-closing-of-the-scientific-mind/

My thanks to Deepak Chopra for tweeting this article.

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Down Time

I am hijacking my blog with complaints about staff and such like, and I think I would like a change of direction.

A few weeks ago I made some notes in my notebook.  I looked at them briefly (that is, the first note), and decided against putting them all up here.  They had been intended for my blog at the time.

One thing I was thinking at that time is that I am honouring the wrong writing voice (for the sake of psychiatric staff reading, many writers recognise more than one voice.  There is a play by Pirandello called ‘Six Characters In Search Of An Author’.  It is something like that and doesn’t call for medication.  They are writing voices, not psychotic voices, whatever psychotic is supposed to mean).  I recognise at least two voices that present as – one a motivation for writing, one a source.  The one I had been ‘honouring’ was a ‘yatter, yatter, yeah, critical’ one.  A follow and reproduce one, not a source.  I felt the one I needed to honour was more grounded and sprang out  of an emotional/devotional relationship to God and love for others.  I’m not sure, in fact I know that I have not always succeeded in going with that perception or even in always believing it to have been valuable.

I will write a few of the notes I made, especially after having put this one in writing.  Some of them were made with my blog in mind, others with my psychologist.  Also I was thinking about Terry at the time, because he had recently given me some time that meant a great deal to me.

~~~//~~~

“My lecturer, on a day like the one I’m having today, said there was a lot of ‘id’ around . . . This always seems to happen when I feel inspired and best able to express myself . . . Everybody around me seems artificially happy and deliberately uncaring.  I’m even feeling as if some people are being deliberately obstructive.  I’m sitting in a cafe trying to write”.

(I then drew a line in a different place and started again with . . .)

“I know I’m not mimicking anyone”.

“The staff are supposed to be here for us, not themselves and each other.  But the way they misbehave then lie about it or get evasive shows they are basically here for themselves”.

“Thoughts, staring, fear and outrage – grief” (That is, when I get a thought I want to let run and chase where it is going, people stare at me, I feel fear and outrage which I suppose to be grief because the inspired thought is stopped).

“Honouring the wrong voice.  Writing voice – spirit”.

“Jim said ‘come on’ when letting me out of the door.  I said ‘no, I’m not a dog’.  Possible misinterpretation of what meant as affectionate support.  Bless him”.

“I love Jim – I enjoy his smile when he sees me”.

“Kiran – mimicry, bubble – I vulnerable, she not – shameless, barefaced liar’OK’ – no – slander and perjury.  She is beautiful and her eyes are full of light – makes me feel i shouldn’t have a problem with it – Mimicry, copying, matching – why is she doing it – I have a right to know – don’t I?”.

“I think the problem here might just be culture shock – I’m not used to Nottingham, I’m from London.  When I’m out I hear quite a few people talk like the nurses”.

“Robb Thompson – what did he say that I just thought of?”.

“My shame is their shame.  Voice?”

“Terry – the way he looked at me – my glory and the lifter of my head” (It was intelligent, appreciative and kind, not to say tender.  That look has passed now.  I kept wanting it again, or somehow to retrieve something it communicated and made me feel.)

The last thought was as far as I got sitting in the hotel restaurant drinking whatever it was at the time.  The rest was on the Arboretum a couple of hours before seeing my psychologist.

I was feeling afraid in the Arboretum for some reason of what people might be thinking of my sensitivitiies as manifested by my body language and wrote this next comment:

“Most of the time our heads are so full of our own thoughts we might not notice the sights and sounds around us, unless for some reason we have become particularly sensitised”.

“William Blake – damn braces, bless relaxes” (I had received that as braces are to be damned, relaxes are to be blessed.  But in recent months, if not years, I have thought of it as ‘damn’ causes you to brace yourself, and ‘bless’ causes you to relax, more often than not, for both giver and recipient).

“This nervousness and ‘no’-screaming resistance when I write like this for a meeting (comments missed out, quite personal) is just anxiety and self-censorship and I needn’t pay it any attention.  I don’t need to worry about its impact on the other person or fear lack of efficacy when notes eventually become communication.  If it serves as nothing else it can serve as a seed or launching pad for later exploration.  What matters is that we trust each other”.

~~~//~~~

I cut my notes a little early, basically I got bored and didn’t feel the others were going anywhere.  I’m bored with it now.  I might come back to this post later and fill in the end gaps.  One thing I said was that I’m not available to people – I’m walking around in a stupid cloud of fear and trauma.  I feel raw and unprotected, undefended.  That was then.  Sometimes it is now as well.

Out here writing from notes feels better than trying to think as I go, but the notes I wrote this entry from were all written in public.  I have given up the idea of ever having a home where I feel at peace and have any degree of privacy.  I feel open to everyone against my will, and it isn’t only because of my blog.  I still feel there are psychic connections between my concentration and disturbances when I am on my own in a room and disturbances happen nearby.  I’m not sure which is the cause and which the effect, but it seems to work that way, much more often than not.

Wow, So Busy (in my head)

I’ll make time to draft tonight and post tomorrow.  At least now I have my own laptop again and can draft it offline in the privacy of a room which is not going to disappear!

One comment only:

I wrote everything about the deaths and everything to my psychiatrist. She still decided I was section 3 material and I have received no support following my letter, certainly not any based on the content of my letter, which people who know my blog is personally sensitive, and I asked her if she considered herself responsible for the information I have given her, and she said no.  My immediate response to that was to thank her for that piece of information.

Wrote to my uncle, am now in touch with my sister again.  Wrote to Tommy Boyd, but not with this, have to clear my flat by Friday, they decided I don’t have a close enough connection in my uncle.  That was before they knew I had a sibling here, and before I did, because I didn’t know where she was, but she told me that our uncle had been accepted as a link in her case.

Does the plot thicken,or have the rules changed?

I’vehad nothing in writing about anything, just threats of getting rid of my stuff, on the phone, if I didn’t turn up with basically an hour’s notice.

Love you, you-know-who.  It feels so delusional I daren’t even say your name with that statement.

Starbucks Abusive Treatment and Unethical Selling

I’ve been back 4 months and dependent on outside sources for most of my needs, including food and drink, all that time.

So the time has come, sitting in Starbucks between Charing Cross and Embankment, the one half way between, not the one at the end right near Embankment station, to ask if this outbreak every time I go in happens only to me, or if other people get it as well.

As soon as I came in (and this often happens with Starbucks, any branch) they jumped on me immediately I walked through the door and when I asked for a minute they replicated my gesture (raised index finger).  Then they immediately went into a whole load of stuff about ‘baby’, in a singsong voice which felt like a confrontation, but it also has the air now of being caught out a bit in what they are doing.  That, when it is time to hand over the money, is when I start to resent the whole transaction, and I told them so.  Today is the first time I have been in here.  They were also talking about bags and reacting awkwardly and to me that says that, whether they meant that for me or not, they recognised the thing in itself when they do it in other ways.

I got quite cross with them, saying it was subliminal interrogation and harassment and they tried to make out they didn’t know what I was talking about.  So I said to leave it, if they didn’t even want to acknowledge they understood anything.  But I also said I knew they did understand because they were salesmen and I had done selling myself.

Every time they have banged a surface I have seen by their reactions that, even if that time was not deliberate, they were completely aware that they do do it deliberately.  They were loudly saying words like ‘crushed’, loading it all with significance.  I’ve wondered for ages if it is some sort of club selection/initiation/rejection procedure, that this place which I thought was just an open, walk in good coffee place actually operates a selection process, very aggressively and violently, if my experience is anything to go by.

The thing is, they are always going on about babies every time I walk in.  ‘Baby’ this, ‘baby’ that, ‘baby’ for ‘maybe’, and there are plenty of people who would find that difficult for all sorts of reasons – infertility, still birth, abortion, miscarriage, cot death, for instance.  Both men and women.  I am not the only person who does not need this, and it is, by its very nature, visceral and inappropriate to be used in a selling context.

I don’t normally get the answers I seek, on my blog.  But for what it is worth, this is my experience, and I wonder if this is something they do to everyone.  Along with that is other stuff.  God stuff, vegan stuff, camp vamp (as I’ve heard it referred to).  They are doing a heavy emotional display right now.  At least some of it is theatre.  Every time they say ‘yes’ my reaction is one that I would have if lied to or assaulted in some way.  They are playing right into my face now.  it is really insulting and hurtful and they can see I am hurt by my reactions, and the man just hid his face behind the counter.  They are team laughing and mocking and intervening, aural interjections in response, I assume, to my body language.  Their own body language is quite aggressive and contemptuous, strutting up and down in front of me, and one of them just (15.35 edit) said something about ‘stupid’ and is hanging around looking miserable, as if I am supposed to care how he feels.  The same one that . . .

. . . (One of them) just came over and ‘asked’ me if he could ‘ask’ me to calm down.

It is viscerally savage and dishonest.

Posted 15.23pm Saturday 7th January 2012, UK time.

I Just Get Fed Up Of It, You Know?

People say and do atrocious things, regularly, deliberately, knowingly, routinely, knowing they are wrong, then they do it again, because that’s what they do, but suddenly they don’t want it to have the effect that it does and they apologise, for someone’s hearing, if not for the hearing of the people they have offended.  Names and pack drill, I have the Robert Elms programme yesterday, and every day, in mind, at least on this occasion.  The cheek by jowl set up.  But it could be the rest of the media, or church, or politics.  All of those industries.  That is all they are.

The thing is, they have no intention of stopping permanently.  That is how their industry works, the most injurious, demeaning, subliminal, verbal assaults.  So sorry, but what does sorry mean?  Nothing, except that, this time, we want something and can’t afford to offend you, or someone else hearing what we are doing.  I feel sorry for him.  I think he probably means well.

I love you guys, but sorry means nothing if you don’t intend to change.  Stop what you do, as an act of policy stop it, please, or stop saying sorry when you do it and it happens not to fit what you want to achieve on that particular occasion or someone exposes it.

I hope we understand each other. Any quistions (sic), do let me know.

I’m Sue Barnett.  Now let squet (skit) the weather.

Rights and Privileges

The first time I heard someone say that if you commit a crime you lose all your human rights it was from James Whale.  I didn’t believe he meant that and I thought he said it deliberately with all his characteristic bile (this is how they pitch at that particular audience), in full knowledge of the fact that there is a difference between rights and privileges.  If you believe in human rights they must be inalienable.  You never stop being a human being, no matter what.   I was very concerned last night to see the director of Liberty unable to counter that argument.  She appeared to be at a loss. 

Before people talk about replacing the European Human Rights Bill with a Citizen’s Rights ruling for the UK, I wonder if the people who want to do that also want to invalidate the fact that it was largely, if not entriely, the UK that drafted the Human Rights Bill in the first place. 

Giving an undeserving person in prison the vote along with the deserving does no harm.  They can only vote for what the law allows.  So I say, if a party is illegal in nature, you should not allow it to stand for election.  You can’t blame the voters if you as the decision makers will not take that stand.  It isn’t fair to whip the populace for choosing something you have allowed to be on offer.  If what is considered legal is seen as a democratic ruling, then it is up to those in power to take the responsibility to uphold that ruling, and barr what is illegal.  Please stop having whinging public arguments about it.  It seems fairly clear to me 🙂  (Erm, excuse me, aberrant and ignorant 5 minutes).

Denying the vote to a deserving prisoner at the same time as denying it to an undeserving prisoner, though, can indeed cause a lot of harm.

I say that whoever is against this European ruling is wrong, and needs their human competence examined.  Look at the recording.  Look at the hatred that flares up in the eyes of the woman who positions herself against it.  That is what I personally find horrifying every time I meet it.  It’s witch hunt, scapegoat stuff.  It’s a nasty, irresponsible loosing of base, blind passions to make decisions about how we are to govern ourselves.  That is validated every day by politicians and media.  So everyone thinks they have a right to relate out of those passions in every day life, even if they hold power.  Guys, are you trying to get us to self-destruct?  Is that your aim and goal? Because it most certainly looks like it from where I am.