Mental illness

How does one become mentally ill? Or more specifically, what does it really mean to be mentally ill? One would say it is simply deviating from the norm. Another person, possibly educated in the field, would say theres underlying damage in their thought processing mechanisms "faulty 'circuits'" or "humor imbalance"("neurotransmitter imbalance" if you want the current term).

I'd rather say it is an implication of the society the faulty mind is in. There are innumerable number of ways a mind could be distressed, but when it is, there are as many more ways a mind could react to it. I tend to believe the "faulty circuits" or the "imbalance"... or "social deviance" are all simple veils over the many reactions to mental strain. To me, mental problems stem from signs in the community, and society more so than an individual. If a child grows up in a faulty society he will notice it early. This child will be told immediately that everything is alright, and the child can either accept it, or deviate.

I find myself sitting in a crossroads. I've always seen myself as one happy to sit in the ivory tower. I have always thirsted for knowledge and betterment of myself and those around me. But then I step outside, and see how ignorant I am that not everyone else wants the same as me. I've spent my life as a tool for a single piece of our society, not knowing how big the stakes are. I entered my realm of society because I was pushed there. However, I regret nothing because if i was not pushed here then I could have drifted in the sea of our society ending up anywhere, but most likely near the bottom.

I think my illness began when I became a mental half-breed. I believe I've turned myself into the mental equivalent of a mutt. None of the pure-breeds recognize a mutt as an equal, but he is more resilient due to his reversing the ages of inbred ideas. Unfortunately I have no idea where to go or what to do. I feel I have advantages to a game that only I want to play, and the game everyone else is playing seems repetitive, boring and above all, childish.

Revamp

Trying a new style out. Just going with whatever's on my mind, as it comes rather than trying to mull over ideas that are a number of years old, that even I barely understand anymore. I've changed the name from "Gray Force" (it just doesn't suit my mind anymore; also found a completely unrelated "Grey Force" blog) to a slightly more strange "Hormetic Minds" I'll let people try to figure out what that means, but the obvious clue is in the name--> See "Hormesis". Sure, its a medical term that has no contextual bearing on something as grand as a mind, but I like inventing new meanings to good words (rather than inventing an arbitrary and unnecessary words to be filed into the "synonym" bin).

In any case, I've also changed my pseudonym from "Last Of The Gray". I never liked it that much.It was too silly, pretentious, and I don't feel it suits me either. I changed it to a term I sort of invented, called "Chaorder Gradient". I like it because it is near impossible to imagine such a thing as a gradient from order to chaos, but at the same time I feel it could be represent a human, or a society, or anything else complicated enough to holster a form of intelligence. Does a man support chaos, or does a man support order, one school of thought will teach you that humans are a constant pressure towards order, and move to another place, maybe even a block down the street and you get someone preaching that natural humans press on towards chaos. Following either school of thought will cause implications on a person in the long term, but thats a bit too much to talk about. I prefer to stand firm in the stance of neither. Furthermore, we are neither good nor evil, neither left nor right, and neither  transcendent nor base, by nature. But the fact of the matter, people do hold these qualities, they exist along the whole fabric that is our society. Finding them is the trick though.

Mental Spiral

What if there was a Double helix in the mind? Now, I don't mean a physical or visible one, but a mental one, a thought form that emulated a double helix. What would that implicate?

First, The helix must be dissected. What would the individual chains be? Well, I'm going with what i always use, a thought form. Each chain would be it's own independent thought, but why would the two formulate a double helix? If the normal action of a thought form is either to destroy, combine with, or ignore, what causes a double helix? Something of equal force must be both pulling and pushing these two thought forms together. For this to happen, it requires an undecidable question. one where it is impossible with the information at hand to decide on an answer. In the quest for truth, both are correct, and neither are correct. From an external point of view, these two thought forms have become unified into a singular object with no external meaning aside from mere existance.

--bzzt-- (months later-- to present time)

Re-reading over all of my posts ive noticed that i may have noticed a neat trend over the last year or 2. Two strong and strange ideas have penetrated my mind and gripped me, and have tangled and grappled neither has succeeded in dominating me. The above post was half finished and un-posted a number of months ago, and I think it speaks more about myself than anything. These ideas are grappling me and pulling me in a strange direction that is probably nearest insanity.

I am trying to fashion myself as a mediator of the impossible. I am half way between maniacal rationality, and whimsical irrationallity. I am trying to find chaos in order, order in chaos, magic in science, science in magic. I wonder if I am the mental spiral, the host of these two opposing ideas grappling with eachother as they fall down a cliff or rise into the sky. Directionality is lost to me. Will i stumble on what I am looking for?

Paradoxes are fun.

My new hobby: making up new definitions that fit my needs. The definition of a Paradox is that it is paradoxically true and its apparent falsehood leads to its truth. I do not know (nor do i care) if this can really be used as an official definition, but its what I prefer to use.

I use it to attempt to dispel polarization. I do this by taking any seemingly and "obviously" false statement, and turning it inside out in order to force paradox. I'll take this statement and use any devious thought form to cast doubt on adherence to dogmatic truth.

I say Rationality Is Irrational. This is because no matter the situation, a fully functional and rational person will invariably run into an irrational person. If you attribute anything to rationality, it will follow that the opposite would be attributed to irrationality. One may believe that it is rational for a person to avoid all that is irrational, but unfortunately, that which is irrational may by the same token be compelled to seek out the rational. Then the two are doomed to meet no matter the situation.
So now when rationality and irrationality meet in the same room, what does the rational one do. As ingrained into our society, its probably rational to not bother that which is unknown to you, and therefore the opposite would be to poke, prod, bother, and maybe even kill that which is unknown. Then what does the rational do? Does it turn the other cheek, and forfeit its livability, or even possibility its life? or does it attempt to banish the irrational by in fact turning it onto itself forfeiting its purity as true-rational? Either way, pure rationality does not survive past this simplistic setup. It breaks down to two possibilities Rationality is Irrational, or Rationality is suicidal (which in turn is viewed as irrational anyways).

Now I know as much as anyone that this is a silly argument, but it brings a Catch 22. What if my logic was irrational in the previous argument? Well then a rational person must disregard everything that I have said. Everything I have said will probably be bulked together and had a big rubber stamp of nonsense. The rational man must dogmatically disregard my claims as I am mindless. But in my opinion I am the rational one, and he is the irrational one for he dogmatically believes things without consideration. Who is right? Well I am because I say so, and Polarization like his is my enemy.

I guess all I can say is anti-polarization is polarizing. I want to irrationally push this rational view to the infinite limits.

Yet Another Disclaimer; oh, and I destroyed the religions by describing them

The more i think about the brain, the more I find i have to change my belief system just to get any new information. So far it seems that staying dogmatic to the ideas I began creating last year, not only is silly as i do not completely agree with them all, but I myself have already taken a step above and beyond them. My older strategy and mindset was as much as i hate to say it, too scientific. I would get to a point where I would need to find some evidence of my ideas to believe them, when in fact the ideas are self referential and in some way affirm themselves. In short, I've been finding a need to scrap rigor in favor of subjectivity, as the brain's thoughts are highly dependent on the core beliefs of a system. In any case, for now on, I can never say if I am making things up as I go, or if I thought of my ideas beforehand and decided to write them down. It doesnt matter; im just going to write.

I've been experimenting with many different thought styles, those of which I am against to the core, but this core is what I'm trying to rip apart a little to get a larger view of the world. I've always had a general interest in all world religions, even though for the majority of my life I've held that I'm an atheist. A year ago I began to attempt to conjoin every religion. I have been able to mutate any religious belief into a simple mental model, each of which I could fit into a single larger one: the brain itself. I decided rather than continuing my long rambling of posts I've been doing, I'd jump right into the grit of my point.

The addictiveness of a mental system, or a religion, comes directly from the structure, or apparent structure of the brain. The belief in a singular god and a singular devil is the belief that there is a single source of life and death in a brain. Cristians' God and Satan are simply embellished wrappers around the concepts of excitation and inhibition. The monotheistic view lacking polarization, holds that there is a single source of both good and evil, light and darkness, etc. This is analogous to the Jewish God, or the Tao Taijitu. This is why the concept of evil is lost on some cultures, but is highly ingrained in other cultures.

Now, there are also polytheistic religions, these are simply that there are numerous smaller versions of these 'ultimate' gods that in essence act the same way as them. The only difference is that these deities are constantly battling each other. These also commonly answer to the greater God(s) equivalent to the monotheistic varieties. Each variety of a religion when seen in this narrow view, leads to just a very small number of variables to consider. In my opinion, the polytheistic gots represent the rainbow of emotions humans can employ. No emotion is greater, only different from the others(I also attribute these to the primal forces of Taoism)

The variables i've seen consist of the following
1) Polarization vs. Unpolarization: Good and Evil truly exist and representative gods can be created, or the two are two sides of the same coin and cannot be separated into more than 1 entity.
2) Multiple vs. Singular: Are there multiple gods or just one. For that matter it must also be considered if they is polarized or unpolarized. If there is a pantheon, is it a group of neutral ones that get into petty squabbles? or is it a great war of a holy pantheon and an evil pantheon fighting for some higher purpose beyond us? It begs the question, what is the difference between a singular polarized belief system, and a multiple polarized belief system. Well, that is completely dependant on the third variable.
3) # of metaphysical hierarchies: Are we among the gods?, are we below the gods? are we above the gods?. Are we below gods that answer to higher gods? Think of it as you will but i think this be represented as -1, 0, 1, 2, 3+, (infinity?). I think of this number as how many levels you have to travel to get to the concept of the highest god. -1 being the megolomaniac, 0 being the athiest, and 1 being the monotheist, etc. Each follows a very different belief system. Each hierarchical level is also dependant on the.

Now, i guarantee there are more variables; as there always are, but with this simple system, and a little creativity i believe anyone could easily catalogue any religion along these simple terms. In case anyone has not figured it out, I am basically equating this god system to the thought mechanism of the brain. Most probably, these gods are simply the mnemes ive been describing earlier, but at the same time i've decided the mneme idea is far too short sighted and by the same token, so is the religious view of the world.

It is my opinion that in a sense the variables described earlier pull an impressive idea that these religions are both true and false at the same time. They are false on the grand scheme that they profess(IE, im still an athest somehow), but they are very true on a small scale that is (nearly) imperceptable to the believer. However, just because it is imperceptable does not mean it is not useful. The scale that the religions do hold true on is so finite, and so small, that it taps into deep meaning of the simplest objects. A religious (and in my opinion justifyable) view is that these deep deep meanings are not only at our roots, but also watching over us; they are the god(s). But again, as I stand, if there are gods, they are not watching over us, they are watching under us.

The mneme and the anti-mneme

Now we know it is hard to say what a mneme is, but despite how extremely global the definition is, some properties can be extracted. One finding I have found is that perspective is key specifically multiple perspectives. However, a mneme's perspective is a bit different from a human's so a multi-perspective view requires understanding a single one.

From any given mneme it is assumed there is both not only higher and lower, but also equal mnemes. Now it must be noted that equal here does not mean the same, I am only speaking of hierarchical level, It could be of equal level but in a completely separate realm (hypothetically one in the temporal lobe and one in the occipital lobe). These two are physically distant, but could effectively be close in the mneme realm due to the relay capacity of the thalamus.

The best way i have been able to represent the mneme realm is a vacuum containing numerous indistinct mnemes fighting to survive. A seeming necessity for me is to personify the mnemes in a way that they in their own way have desires and almost even emotions just as a full human brain would. The only desire of any mneme can be generalized as the desire to expand and proliferate within the mind. However, as i have said earlier, everything that is thought of is a mneme, and this includes the mneme realm that I am speaking of. However, the mneme realm is the higher mneme in this situation, while the lower ones are fighting to proliferate within this particular idea. Effectively the mneme realm is both the known universe to the lower mnemes, as well as their own little personal god to be appeased.

Now, why would the mneme realm want to be appeased? Again, because this is a mneme in it of itself. It's only desire is to expand. Now the hierarchy as begun to crop up; the mneme realm is swimming within its own meta-mneme realm which it is attempting to appease.

If all mnemes want to do is expand, and allowing lower mnemes is all that can be done to expand itself, then what stops it from simply allowing all inputs to proliferate within itself. Hypothetically if only excitatory neurons existed, this would happen (and the brain would be rather uninteresting and uncomplex). In effect there would be loads of mnemes(if they can even be called such) that would just appear and waste energy, with no meaning. A necessary evil in the brain that controls all of these problems i like to call the anti-mneme. If a mneme is consisting of only excitatory action, the anti-mneme only consists of inhibitory action (in reality, with this view, each are consisting of combinations of both leaning to their respective polaritybut I'll get to that in a later post).

If only mnemes were allowed, in the lower level than a higher level antimneme could inadvertantly be triggered leading to a complete destruction of the original mneme. This goes completely against the singular desire of a mneme. As I said, expansion is a desire of a mneme, but in reality, an evolutionary perspective yeilds that only those mnemes with sufficient expansion and control survive in the brain. It is an imaginary desire without any internal knowledge of the system being necessary.

Now i think thats enough for this post; eventually i will drop the anti-mneme view in preference for the idea that both mnemes and anti-mnemes have tendency to act as either one in different situations.

I go into this next entry with an unfortunate lack of proof. I hold that it comes out of some very basic logical ideas which are mostly lost to me. I start out with the idea that in this hierarchical structure of the brain, it can be said that any mneme within it is a statistically averaged compilation of smaller mnemes. Here is a classical paradox of an item being defined by itself. But as is written in one of the many examples in Godel Escher Bach, the object is only being defined by smaller Versions of itself. Attempting define these recursively defined objects plagues the mind with recursive problems. Pondering this enough leads one to think that the only way to fully understand the workings of a mneme, you must first fully understand the workings of a mneme. Depending on the kind of person you are, this can either seem like a brick wall, or a path of infinite opportunity. Obviously I think the latter.

Now I would like to say that trying to define the mneme is a bit difficult because no-one would really accept a definition simply as "a recursive object that eludes defining". What I'd expect works best is attempting to define both its smaller parts , as well as its context. But wait, not only are the smaller pieces, mnemes themselves, but the context is a grander mneme the over arcs the original mneme. Unfortunately, the reason it is difficult to explain what a mneme is, is because our only tool for understanding, explaining, visualizing, and thinking, is this universal mneme. Its like trying to explain what an orange is, when all you have is the smell of one; you know there is something unique there, but you do not have the pieces to understand it.

We do however have a couple other tools. We do know that the brain has a basic biological basis, and therefore physical basis. Before i knew much of the structure of the cortex, I had believed that hypothetical webs of neurons with no distinct organization were the hierarchies in the brain. However, upon reading Hawkins' On Intelligence Ive come to believe the basic unit of thought is not a single neuron, but is a highly repeated structure known as a column in the cortex. This is a much more versatile structure than the simple input-output system of a neuron, and has most likely been time-tested by evolution. What must be noted is that the mnemes are not contained in or synonymous with the columns. The networks of columns are the mutable medium for which the mnemes travel through.

The last point I want to make in this entry is that the repeated layers of columns in the cortex are what cause the basic structures of low and high level mnemes to be identical. The individual columns are unaware of their place in the whole scheme of the brain; they are simply built to receive information, process it in its own way, and if conditions allow, pass the information on. As the different layers are built the same way they interact in relatively similar ways, but the scale in both time and space(in the brain's context) are very different.