“There seems to be becoming a direct correlation: mental illness and right-wing/ Republican political content. Bad enough without adding weapons designed for mass homicide.”
Alexandra, you write “There seems to be becoming” to describe a pandemic of mass psychosis that has been present for years and has grown exponentially since one of hi…
“There seems to be becoming a direct correlation: mental illness and right-wing/ Republican political content. Bad enough without adding weapons designed for mass homicide.”
Alexandra, you write “There seems to be becoming” to describe a pandemic of mass psychosis that has been present for years and has grown exponentially since one of history’s great mind poisoners became President of the United States in November 2016.
The public plainly shares a gross misunderstanding that comes of viewing all psychiatric illness as an individual phenomenon. This is in itself a delusion comparable to seeing, say, the AIDS outbreak or Covid exclusively in terms of individual health. The least we can say is that the wellbeing of the entire population, the sick and the healthy, is affected when gripped by fear. And today, we face fear growing out of unprecedented and accelerating change, fear deliberately fomented by mind poisoners for political purposes, as when Hitler and the Nazis took power in 1933.
Here, I feel bound to cite someone much derided, precisely for his ability to encompass the big picture:
“…It is becoming ever more obvious that it is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is man’s greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes.”
Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life
The least that can be said is that everyone’s peace of mind is affected. There is a positive side to this, which should, I hope, encourage Matt Fulkerson.
WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER. Once this realization spreads, a healthy reaction can take place and delusions weaken.
It is up to every one of us to spread the antidotes of kindness and understanding over the earth, calming people still in the grip of nightmares.
That’s the carrot. The stick: the principal mind poisoners must be dealt with as a matter of the most urgent priority. Mankind's survival depends on it.
Now, why did I speak of kindness as the essential carrot to be offered to those infected by mass madness?
Maybe many will have lost all patience with them and I can think of someone who -- understandably -- takes that impatience much further.
But if there is anything we can ask experienced clinicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, it is for advice on how to speak to people suffering from delusions.
Negation won't work, denial guarantees failure. No choice but to listen, to agree, to gently, patiently reassure, talking them gradually out of their nightmare. You can, for instance, say they're right to be scared... not to be stampeded. Calm it...
Any shrinks here who can refer people to practical sites accessible to laymen???
*
As for those surviving Supreme Court justices whose weirdly skewed interpretation of the Second Amendment has led directly a hecatomb of unnecessary deaths, psychiatric help would be the least of things.
All those who pass legislation that puts so-called semi-automatic rifles in the hands of psychotics or block legislation to prevent such access are accessories after the fact.
They have aided and abetted mass murder and inflicted severe damage on American society... and international respect for the American republic. In so doing, they undermine world peace at a crucial juncture in world history.
Peter, some of the best training that I got in that area was in crisis negotiation training. I was a negotiator on our SWAT team for nearly 20 years; of the dozens of one on one contacts in that kind of crisis setting (one which, basically, overwhelms the ability of routine patrol to handle a situation, almost always because of the presence of weapons and the danger to bystanders), almost all of them were from that foundational delusion on the part of the subject of the call/negotiation.
I want to add something that sets out from the specific needs of children and educators.
My wife mentioned a psychologist called Alexander Kolmanovsky, telling me that he is wonderful when it comes to explaining war and violence calmly to children who will otherwise stay confused and terrified. Not hiding, talking as to adults.
This led me to look the man up and I found him on this useful site: psyhelpworld.com.
Please look and share this practical wisdom about human interactions.
(A personal example: I never forgot how a nearby table with a group of peacenik ladies so cut my appetite that I couldn't eat my lunch!)
Such persons find the ground pulled from under their feet in lands where all public figures are required to declare support for war and violence, including the perverted interpretation of the Second Amendment.
Is it not curious how figures like Putin, Kaczynski, Netanyahu all spout endlessly about "fighting Nazis" while spreading the selfsame mind poisons as those which Hitler and Mussolini used to destroy our world.
Thank you and good luck. Seems there are far more Kolmanovsky items in Russian, which is how my wife was following him (she is Russian born, now, thank goodness, a French citizen), so one finds plenty of poor translations or lists of headings.
Looking at other English texts, I found a very interesting one in which he inveighs against kindergartens. (Interesting to me because of a variation from a friend of mine, suspicious of when small children are overmuch influenced by adults and slant their creativity to please those adults rather than enjoy their play... I have a significant case in the family…)
Here’s a straightforward text written in proper English, one that spells out the basics:
This does sound very much like the kind of training that's called for, indeed the basic approach needed in dealing with so many of the world's terrible challenges. The metaphor I have often used is that of sappers, the bomb disposal squad. That, instead of the usual "bomb 'em back into the stone age" nonsense.
Responsible, competent policing is precious but expensive, so oligarchies tend to dispense with it except for the protection of oligarchs and their key servants.
I have always believed we are all connected. I do not have a clear recollection of this but one of the U.S. astronauts (Schweickart or Swigert? Can’t recall) said he looked at the moon from space and thought, why am I so special to be having this life-changing experience, but then he realized the whole world, every person on earth had also changed, he was a conduit to everyone. As he processed the experience the whole world was too. I think it hurts all of us when any of us are suffering injustice, cruelty and neglect. We all feel it. But when we feel powerless to turn things around we are susceptible to the b.s. of the greedy and venal among us. I myself feel powerless to change things. My own State of Wisconsin is gerrymandered and legislators in power support profits over people at every turn. We have 38 prisons without enough staff to keep them safe. Rather than think maybe we have too many humans in prison the people in power here have become crueler and lockdown those in custody in overcrowded cells and deny them time outside or in the library or communal meals. Those legislators go home every weekend without a care. The energy generated is certainly negative and we are all absorbing it here in our state. Why ever would anyone be surprised when people don’t respect the law? Of course if you are not aware or do not believe we are all connected you may fail to recognize how feelings of powerlessness can equal trouble in unexpected ways. Love and compassion is needed. Not finger pointing fundamentalism which seems to be winning at every turn. It is a race to the finish right now. I wish I felt more confident the world will be able to heal. I read HCR and certain other Substack writers to keep my flickering hope alive. The fact they can voice their thoughts so freely in our country is one piece of hope I cling to. Maybe, just maybe our system of government (to quote Leonard Cohen) has the range and the machinery for change. Is Democracy coming to America as Cohen said?
It will always be deeply encouraging to hear, to read pure, unalloyed truth expressed as lucidly, as cogently as you have here.
It's almost like reading a brief update of John Donne's Meditation XVII, especially that sentence "No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main" and the passage that follows.
Thank you, and I hope you will never, never allow yourself to be discouraged by the folly, the cruelty, the pathetic mediocrity of Wisconsin's current political masters.
“There seems to be becoming a direct correlation: mental illness and right-wing/ Republican political content. Bad enough without adding weapons designed for mass homicide.”
Alexandra, you write “There seems to be becoming” to describe a pandemic of mass psychosis that has been present for years and has grown exponentially since one of history’s great mind poisoners became President of the United States in November 2016.
The public plainly shares a gross misunderstanding that comes of viewing all psychiatric illness as an individual phenomenon. This is in itself a delusion comparable to seeing, say, the AIDS outbreak or Covid exclusively in terms of individual health. The least we can say is that the wellbeing of the entire population, the sick and the healthy, is affected when gripped by fear. And today, we face fear growing out of unprecedented and accelerating change, fear deliberately fomented by mind poisoners for political purposes, as when Hitler and the Nazis took power in 1933.
Here, I feel bound to cite someone much derided, precisely for his ability to encompass the big picture:
“…It is becoming ever more obvious that it is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is man’s greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes.”
Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life
The least that can be said is that everyone’s peace of mind is affected. There is a positive side to this, which should, I hope, encourage Matt Fulkerson.
WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER. Once this realization spreads, a healthy reaction can take place and delusions weaken.
It is up to every one of us to spread the antidotes of kindness and understanding over the earth, calming people still in the grip of nightmares.
That’s the carrot. The stick: the principal mind poisoners must be dealt with as a matter of the most urgent priority. Mankind's survival depends on it.
Now, why did I speak of kindness as the essential carrot to be offered to those infected by mass madness?
Maybe many will have lost all patience with them and I can think of someone who -- understandably -- takes that impatience much further.
But if there is anything we can ask experienced clinicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, it is for advice on how to speak to people suffering from delusions.
Negation won't work, denial guarantees failure. No choice but to listen, to agree, to gently, patiently reassure, talking them gradually out of their nightmare. You can, for instance, say they're right to be scared... not to be stampeded. Calm it...
Any shrinks here who can refer people to practical sites accessible to laymen???
*
As for those surviving Supreme Court justices whose weirdly skewed interpretation of the Second Amendment has led directly a hecatomb of unnecessary deaths, psychiatric help would be the least of things.
All those who pass legislation that puts so-called semi-automatic rifles in the hands of psychotics or block legislation to prevent such access are accessories after the fact.
They have aided and abetted mass murder and inflicted severe damage on American society... and international respect for the American republic. In so doing, they undermine world peace at a crucial juncture in world history.
A long and tedious process, sort of like deprogramming.
Very much like deprogramming.
Not fast or easy. Not for the faint of heart or the impatient.
Peter, some of the best training that I got in that area was in crisis negotiation training. I was a negotiator on our SWAT team for nearly 20 years; of the dozens of one on one contacts in that kind of crisis setting (one which, basically, overwhelms the ability of routine patrol to handle a situation, almost always because of the presence of weapons and the danger to bystanders), almost all of them were from that foundational delusion on the part of the subject of the call/negotiation.
I want to add something that sets out from the specific needs of children and educators.
My wife mentioned a psychologist called Alexander Kolmanovsky, telling me that he is wonderful when it comes to explaining war and violence calmly to children who will otherwise stay confused and terrified. Not hiding, talking as to adults.
This led me to look the man up and I found him on this useful site: psyhelpworld.com.
Please look and share this practical wisdom about human interactions.
(A personal example: I never forgot how a nearby table with a group of peacenik ladies so cut my appetite that I couldn't eat my lunch!)
Such persons find the ground pulled from under their feet in lands where all public figures are required to declare support for war and violence, including the perverted interpretation of the Second Amendment.
Is it not curious how figures like Putin, Kaczynski, Netanyahu all spout endlessly about "fighting Nazis" while spreading the selfsame mind poisons as those which Hitler and Mussolini used to destroy our world.
The evil that men do lives after them...
Thanks for this info, Peter. I will be researching this today.
Thank you and good luck. Seems there are far more Kolmanovsky items in Russian, which is how my wife was following him (she is Russian born, now, thank goodness, a French citizen), so one finds plenty of poor translations or lists of headings.
Looking at other English texts, I found a very interesting one in which he inveighs against kindergartens. (Interesting to me because of a variation from a friend of mine, suspicious of when small children are overmuch influenced by adults and slant their creativity to please those adults rather than enjoy their play... I have a significant case in the family…)
Here’s a straightforward text written in proper English, one that spells out the basics:
https://mariaschildren.ru/en/programs/schedule/psychologies
This does sound very much like the kind of training that's called for, indeed the basic approach needed in dealing with so many of the world's terrible challenges. The metaphor I have often used is that of sappers, the bomb disposal squad. That, instead of the usual "bomb 'em back into the stone age" nonsense.
Responsible, competent policing is precious but expensive, so oligarchies tend to dispense with it except for the protection of oligarchs and their key servants.
I have always believed we are all connected. I do not have a clear recollection of this but one of the U.S. astronauts (Schweickart or Swigert? Can’t recall) said he looked at the moon from space and thought, why am I so special to be having this life-changing experience, but then he realized the whole world, every person on earth had also changed, he was a conduit to everyone. As he processed the experience the whole world was too. I think it hurts all of us when any of us are suffering injustice, cruelty and neglect. We all feel it. But when we feel powerless to turn things around we are susceptible to the b.s. of the greedy and venal among us. I myself feel powerless to change things. My own State of Wisconsin is gerrymandered and legislators in power support profits over people at every turn. We have 38 prisons without enough staff to keep them safe. Rather than think maybe we have too many humans in prison the people in power here have become crueler and lockdown those in custody in overcrowded cells and deny them time outside or in the library or communal meals. Those legislators go home every weekend without a care. The energy generated is certainly negative and we are all absorbing it here in our state. Why ever would anyone be surprised when people don’t respect the law? Of course if you are not aware or do not believe we are all connected you may fail to recognize how feelings of powerlessness can equal trouble in unexpected ways. Love and compassion is needed. Not finger pointing fundamentalism which seems to be winning at every turn. It is a race to the finish right now. I wish I felt more confident the world will be able to heal. I read HCR and certain other Substack writers to keep my flickering hope alive. The fact they can voice their thoughts so freely in our country is one piece of hope I cling to. Maybe, just maybe our system of government (to quote Leonard Cohen) has the range and the machinery for change. Is Democracy coming to America as Cohen said?
It will always be deeply encouraging to hear, to read pure, unalloyed truth expressed as lucidly, as cogently as you have here.
It's almost like reading a brief update of John Donne's Meditation XVII, especially that sentence "No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main" and the passage that follows.
Thank you, and I hope you will never, never allow yourself to be discouraged by the folly, the cruelty, the pathetic mediocrity of Wisconsin's current political masters.