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We were talking about the mind and how it perceives its own processes, and how, if you ever grill people about how they see their own selves and the way they imagine their minds, they will come up with metaphors and concepts that seem extraordinarily weird to anyone who is not them.
Walter Jon Williams has an excellent sf novel called Aristoi, in which some of the high tech is psychology. People have learned how to induce multiple personalities in themselves (which they call daemons) in a very controlled manner, so that rather than having any kind of disorder or deficit, they can tap into the almost unlimited potential of their own selves. He makes it sound really fun, too: call up the physically adept daemon to help you with a fight, or the aesthetically-minded daemon to add to your appreciation of a work of art.
I once mentioned to Walter that I wished I had daemons. He looked rather surprised, and said, "But you do."
"Well, sure, in a sense," I replied. "But I mean I wish I had them the way they're depicted in your book, so they really feel like other people, not just portions of myself."
"The daemons in Aristoi were my attempt to write down the inside of my own mind, the way it feels to me," replied Walter.
"...really?" I said.
Or some such; this conversation is obviously not verbatim. Unfortunately, I did not a get a chance to further quiz him on what he meant by that.
But that's something else that makes me wonder whether the line between what are generally considered to be (a few-- not all!) mental illnesses and quirky but normal thinking processes is merely whether or not the person in questions interprets "other personalities," say, or "I am not human" as metaphor or fact.
Is there really something very different about the mental state of Otherkin, or do they just interpret the very common sense of being different from everyone else, and the also quite common identification with non-human beings, as metaphysically real rather than metaphoric?
Is that also the difference between Walter and Sybil?
Thoughts? Fascinating personal disclosures? Musings on delusions/ideas which are socially normal vs. weird, when they're actually quite similar?
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This is a little tangential, but I guess my point is that everything is metaphorical and everything is literal - depending on your viewpoint.
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One of the tests for delusional beliefs is whether the person holding that belief understands that his/her belief is way off from the norm. If a person believes he's an alien, but has the tact not to go shouting it in Store 24, then he's signalling that he understands that, whatever he believes, he can comprehend the fact that other people don't believe what he does.
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One is socially accepted, at least for certain values of 'God', the other isn't. Rationally, they are pretty similar.
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This reminds me a bit of an article I read about Charles Bonnet syndrome (http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=604), which is sort of the exact opposite of what you're talking about; for some people, when their eyesight begins to fail, something (the brain, starved for visual input?) begins to make them 'see' incredibly vivid, real hallucinations. They *know*, rationally, that they aren't real, but apparently it can be pretty disconcerting. (And of course a lot of people simply think they're going senile, which is sad.)
Anyway. The most fascinating bit, to me, is the very last comment in the comments section, #79, from a woman who experienced this as a child. And she assumed-- for her whole life-- that this was what people meant when they said they were "imagining" things. Because that's what imagining things is, isn't it? It's a way of seeing things that aren't really there. But then when she got eye surgery, at the age of *thirty,* she finally figured out that her idea of imagination was unique, and other people don't actually "see" imaginary things.
So it really does make me wonder how many people have completely unique... mindsets, or beliefs, or understandings of things, and just go through their whole lives thinking "well, isn't everyone like this?"
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The kicker is, she got into her 30s before realizing that how she saw space did not correspond with the norm.
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I can see what I imagine (fortunately not all the time). I also "see" sound and (rarely) tastes or smells. Certain sorts of visuals cause me intense pain. I also have a very nice set of voices in my head that read to me. None of this is particularly useful, nor is it normal. But hell, human brains are *weird*. And it's not like any of the rest of me is particularly normal *g*.
Most people with odd brain function know they're not normal, and they make allowances for the rest of the world. The ones who forget that not everyone has multiple personalities, or that no in fact most of the world can't see sirens are the ones who have trouble.
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I think it should be clear from my comment that I wasn't saying that no one who has ever existed EVER actually "sees" the things they imagine. Obviously the commenter I described was someone who did.
What was interesting to me was that she went nearly her whole life without realizing that she was perceiving things differently from most everyone else in the world, which means it obviously never *did* cause her any trouble. I mean, in generally, human beings tend to assume that whatever they happen to be used to is "normal," so it just makes me wonder how far this power of assumption stretches. How much about our lives really *is* unique-- but we never notice? How many of us just assume, like in Jonquil's original example, something like "well, doesn't everyone create 'multiple personalities' to accomplish tasks?" Etc.
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The thing that felt like a wall in my brain between me and the task that I desperately needed to do? Not there anymore. The faulty impulse control that made me obsess over and eat a piece of the cake in the break room? It's fixed, so that the cake has become merely one of several options and not an inevitability. It hasn't been a miracle change, but there's enough differences now that it makes me realize I was experiencing *something* different than usual.
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The thing is, she's not unique. Or at least not more unique than anyone else is. We're all weirdos here, including you. It's a near certainty that you have at least one way in which you perceive the world that most people don't experience. And well, it looks like you haven't noticed yet.
Most people are functional. They also have weird brains, and mostly they notice if their nose is rubbed into it. Not before. So the assumption of "I am normal" stretches pretty far. MOF a common response in kids to discovering that they've got a learning disability is "well *I'm* normal, everyone else is strange".
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You remember that cognition study, where it turned out that the people who thought they were best at a job turned out to suck at it, and the people who were best at that job rated themselves as barely higher than average? People get -- and cling to -- demonstrably wrong ideas about the world all the time. This is why politics is an ongoing enterprise.
Also, I mean, how many "above-average" drivers do you know? Everybody thinks they're an above-average driver.
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Which may mean I actually *am* above average, but I'm suspicious of that theory. I seem to make about as many boneheaded mistakes per trip as the "average" person does, and that's a helluva lot of mistakes.
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So yes, sometimes, when you think you suck, it's because you really do! I think the cognitive error is much more common (and more extreme) on the positive side than on the ngative side.
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Speeding, mistiming and then running red lights, forgetting to use turn signals... they're all errors I make and they're bloody dangerous. A typical short walk, bike ride or drive shows me that *most* drivers make mistakes, and I'll see around 5 mistakes in a typical 15 minute period. So figure I get passed by 50-100 drivers? That is a 5-10% error rate, which is around what I hit. Thus, barely competent.
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so, yeah.
I do remember struggling with the separation of story mode and reality when I was small, but this is already long enough.
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Ironically, I had the opposite problem, starting when I was quite young but continuing through my mid-twenties: I did have mental problems, but everyone just thought that crying spells, suicide threats, jumping out of my skin at loud noises or unexpected touches, etc, were just the way I was, as part of my artistic temperament or something. It didn't really get through that those were symptoms of an illness rather than inherent parts of my existence until I ended up working with several people who had taken psychology classes in college, and they pointed it out rather forcefully.
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I have other similar stories from friends; it was a long time before I could take therapy seriously.
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And now with the meds, I'm learning that a large part of it is due to not being able to stay focused on one task long enough to complete it. (The rest seems to be patterns of behavior I've got ingrained as a result of said lack of focus.)
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Of course there's the whole Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind theory, which apparently claims that in ancient times, people really did perceive all their thought processes as external voices, which they interpreted as Gods talking to them.
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I read an interview with Patrick Swayze (I still can't reconcile Road House (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098206/) with To Wong Foo... (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114682/)) in which he referred to his inner demons. There was something in the quote that read like literal inner demons. Thinking of my internal thought processes that don't do as I'd like as separate demons (or "daemons" for us geeks) can be a useful fiction. I think the separation of that metaphor can help bring clarity. But I don't actually think that I'm possessed by demonic beings from the nether worlds.
Being weird, it took me many years to be in any way comfortable with my weirdness. What made it harder for me and induced me to think I was crazy was that adults would define my eccentricities as dysfunctional. "Well, if my thinking prevents me from functioning, I must be crazy" went the reasoning. It took me decades to overcome those external definitions of functionality. I realized that, while I do have "normal" friends, most of my friends are labeled as "weird" but they are just as functional as the normals. It's possible to march to the beat of a different drummer and still be in the Sanity Parade.
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I do! Well, I'm not sure I'd call it a 'pronunciation' because I'm fairly sure I couldn't vocalise it, but there is a definite... gap? As you say 'a specific texture of silence'. Depending how I read (speed-read versus slow, drinking it in) I 'hear' the story. So much so that I can listen to audiobooks of books I've already read myself, because the other voice (whoever it is) sounds wrong.
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