Mind-Expanding (non-science) things

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Arjan Dirkse wrote:

I think this is due to the protestant reformation. In many ways, this was a culture-destroying movement. It looks at ornaments and extravagance and splendour and thinks this is excess, this is sin.

Yeah, that’s true, the houses aren’t very colourful. They are beautiful though, in the more simplistic way that many harbour/Hanse cities are in Germany, as well. I do love Amsterdam. I mean, the Grachten with the little bridges everywhere… it’s just such a lot of fun to walk around in on a summer night.

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Arjan Dirkse

Christian wrote:

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

I think this is due to the protestant reformation. In many ways, this was a culture-destroying movement. It looks at ornaments and extravagance and splendour and thinks this is excess, this is sin.

Yeah, that’s true, the houses aren’t very colourful. They are beautiful though, in the more simplistic way that many harbour/Hanse cities are in Germany, as well. I do love Amsterdam. I mean, the Grachten with the little bridges everywhere… it’s just such a lot of fun to walk around in on a summer night.

That’s true, the grachtengordel has many cozy places.

 

I think maybe in a way my view of Amsterdam is a bit twisted because I went to school there in a period when I was pretty depressed. In my imagination it always rains in Amsterdam. I have fonder memories of other Dutch cities. I always liked Utrecht a lot.

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Christian

I have been binging on podcasts with a Belgian psychiatrist named Dirk de Wachter who is nice to listen to. He said among many other things that our culture suffers from fear of touching each other, and so we should touch, give hands, rub shoulders, hug more, etc. (consensual of course) He thinks human touch is vital for our mental health. I thought this was interesting. Dutch culture is averse to hugging and such things. I also notice it in myself, I have problems doing this. However when someone pats my shoulders or back it does feel very comforting.

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Todd

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

I have been binging on podcasts with a Belgian psychiatrist named Dirk de Wachter who is nice to listen to. He said among many other things that our culture suffers from fear of touching each other, and so we should touch, give hands, rub shoulders, hug more, etc. (consensual of course) He thinks human touch is vital for our mental health. I thought this was interesting. Dutch culture is averse to hugging and such things. I also notice it in myself, I have problems doing this. However when someone pats my shoulders or back it does feel very comforting.

I think he’s right.

Touching does create a connection. It creates empathic bonds and brings us in touch with our humanity and the humanity in others.

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

I have been binging on podcasts with a Belgian psychiatrist named Dirk de Wachter who is nice to listen to. He said among many other things that our culture suffers from fear of touching each other, and so we should touch, give hands, rub shoulders, hug more, etc. (consensual of course) He thinks human touch is vital for our mental health. I thought this was interesting. Dutch culture is averse to hugging and such things. I also notice it in myself, I have problems doing this. However when someone pats my shoulders or back it does feel very comforting.

I am quite happy that I’ve spent most of my life in the Rheinland, where people habitually hug each other if they’re even briefly acquainted, or just friends of friends. Handshakes are only for very formal occasions, generally if you meet somebody you know it’s hugs.

(As some of our British contingent have had to find out the hard way, which is being hugged quite unexpectedly by a very tall German you hardly know.)

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Arjan Dirkse, Todd

He’s also very nice to listen to, he has a beautiful Flemish accent and way of speaking. I’ve put on some of his talks on a loop on youtube to fall asleep to.

 

One of the other things he has said is that we should try to be each other’s therapist a bit more in life. He notices that a lot of patients come to him who are basically suffering from the stresses of everyday life, and he is not sure to what extent it is the job of the psychiatrist to help those patients. He believes that if people talk to each other about those things a bit more, the need for a psychiatrist is probably lessened.

 

 

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Todd, Christian

Isn’t that what mental health coaches and the like are for?

It’s really interesting that a whole industry has evolved in the last two decades or so that is basically people doing what actual mental health professionals (so, psychotherapists) also do, but with less qualification to do it.

I’m being a bit facetious here, I think there’s a lot to be said for this – in German, this job is just called a “coach” (I don’t know what you’d call it in English – I suppose “mental health coach” can be used like I did above, or something like life skills trainer, but there are probably more in-use and better expressions for the job?) and it’s not properly protected by official diplomas and training, so basically anyone who has done some courses can do it and demand a lot of money for it because there’s demand.

But… there simply aren’t enough psychotherapists and it’s probably a good thing that there’s now a lot of people who know about techniques and strategies to help people with the problems and stresses they run into in life.
But of course, it’s also a way for the health insurances to save money.

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Todd, Arjan Dirkse

Yes there is that sort of secondary mental help here too, coaches etc. We also have something called “ervaringsdeskundigen”, literally experience experts, who are people who went through some mental health problems themselves which could mean they can therefore offer help to other people who are suffering from such problems.

 

I think what he means is partially that people are too atomized. They think they have to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” and can’t reach out for friends (if they have friends at all) or family to help. It all falls back on the individual. It’s something I experience too, sometimes just sharing or being with a friend or acquaintance can be helpful. Maybe sometimes even more helpful than endless talks with therapists.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. What I do wonder is though… I mean, yes, we are more atomised and many people are lonely, but a generation ago, did interacting more with your community mean that you’d also share more? Quite often the mantra was, you have to grit your teeth and get through it, don’t complain, act as if you’re fine. Even inside families.

It’s strange that it’s still so hard to find connection these days, maybe harder than it used to be for many people. The promise of the internet was that it would become easier to find a community, and in some ways that held true. There’s places like this, there’s networks for cosplayers and LARPers, but probably also for every other hobby or life-choice that people used to be solitary with. And yet, there are also so many people who are completely withdrawn from the society around them.

Yeah I think these things aren’t entirely new, it was always there to an extent…loneliness etc. But I do think there is more of it.

 

As for the internet I think it is a tool that can be used for good or bad. And of course, a facebook friend isn’t really a real friend. But there are resources on the internet that can help.

I think there was a phase when it was mostly positive – connecting to people on social media, communities like our little place back then… and then, the algorithms came and figured out that rage equals engagement.

I think there used to be a realization that in times of need you could fall back on the community, but that community now seems to be fading. When you fail at something in life, that is your fault and you’ll have to suffer for it. You could end up on the street, broke, addicted, whatever…I think the social guard rails that stop people from ending up in such situations are getting worse. People feel that and it causes anxiety.

[Arjan Dirkse]

Various translations of Asian spiritual texts have been “protestantized” I think. Instead of giving a faithful rendering of certain key terms, they put in references to a god who is all about love, like the Christian god. The Easwaran translation of the Upanishads, which is probably the most popular translation, translates “deva atman shakti”, literally god-self-energy, as “the Lord of Love”. Or in another place “brahman” is translated as Lord of Love.

 

I think this mix of Eastern ideas and Christian pietism was also the main influence for the hippie movement. The Tibetan Buddhist group led by Chogyam Trungpa, quite a controversial figure who was an alcoholic and accused of abusing his students, started Naropa university in Boulder, Colorado, which was influential in the hippie movement and new age ideas.

 

 

• This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by Arjan Dirkse.

 

Interview with Morrison. He’s in that mode of “we all merge with the AI and become one”. I think that would be a kind of virtual eternal hell.

 

Honestly, his ideas about magic have always been a bit stupid.

 

Also he repeats the brainlet take here that Elon Musk’s total wealth, accumulated over decades could pay for UBI. It is only enough for a one time 500 dollar stimulus check for all Americans.

 

edit: ooops, I’m wrong there. It is about a one time 2400 dollar stimulus check. So his total wealth could maybe fund UBI for 2 months.

I wonder if there is a connection between the hippie movement in the 60s and later neoliberalism. The 60s was an era of individualism, free love, hedonism, follow your bliss, all that stuff, and individualism was also the driving engine of neoliberalism.

 

(I know neoliberalism was championed by conservative politicians like Reagan and Thatcher, but it also turned against the idea of the responsibility of the community that existed in tradtional religious society.)

https://www.thecut.com/article/false-memory-syndrome-controversy.html

 

This is a pretty interesting piece about Jennifer Freyd, who cam up with the term DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) to describe a tactic abusers use to shove the blame on their victims – and her parents, who she alleged abused her, and came up with the “False Memory Foundation”, a group which alleges many memories of abuse are false, and which has functioned as defense expert in the cases of such people as Ted Bundy, Harvey Weinstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell. Little detail: the False Memory Foundation also featured two psychologists who wrote in a pro-pedophilia magazine that sex with children is not necessarily abusive.