Saturday, September 22, 2007

Egocentric

On my post the other day about my psychotic experiences and belief that things that had happened to me in my life harboured a divine message, kodeureum left the following comment:

please remember that you are just one infinitessimally minute fragment of that entity called humankind.

At first it stung. Like: "get real BPG, you're just an inconsequential piece of shit in the wider scheme of things". Ouch!

But actually K had a very good point. The classic symptoms of psychosis:

  • feeling that people on television or radio are talking about, or talking directly to them
  • believing that headlines or stories in newspapers are written especially for them
  • having the experience that people (often strangers) drop hints or say things about them behind their back
  • believing that events (even world events) have been deliberately contrived for them, or have special personal significance
  • seeing objects or events as being deliberately set up to convey a special or particular meaning
quoted from Wikipedia

In other words psychotics think that the world revolves around them - LITERALLY. And maybe that's why 'Tart (a friend who has also suffered genuine grade psychosis) recently said:

I actually walked out of 'The Truman Show' because I could not stand the psychoticness of it. It bothered me so much.

Funny thing is that I've watched the Truman show 5 times (one of my best). And, just like Tart, the reason that movie sticks out with me, is that it comes the closest to showing what psychosis really feels like (but unlike Tart I taunt myself with these memories in a kind of masochist way) In the Movie, the central character Truman eventually works out that:
  • feeling that people on television or radio are talking about, or talking directly to them
  • believing that headlines or stories in newspapers are written especially for them
  • having the experience that people (often strangers) drop hints or say things about them behind their back
  • believing that events (even world events) have been deliberately contrived for them, or have special personal significance
  • seeing objects or events as being deliberately set up to convey a special or particular meaning
What makes the movie so brilliant is that, in fact, the world IS revolving around him. Which just makes it even the more psychotic-like.

But if, unlike Truman, you are not starring in a One Man Reality TV Show, then it's nearly a certainty that you're going through psychosis. The other certainty (by implication):

You are, at that point in time, the most EGOCENTRIC person on earth.

In fact at its very extreme psychosis can translate into SOLIPSISM - the belief that you are the only person in the universe and everybody/thing else is just a figment of your mind.

The very interesting thing about SOLIPSISM is that it is has always been a fairly central concept in philosophy. More than that, it is one of the most difficult to disprove. Because at the end of the day the only certainty you can have was arrived at by the French philsopher, Descartes:

I think therefore I am

What Descartes failed to recognise is that what he was actually saying was:

I think I think, therefore I think I am ( - BPG)

And now a little coincidence to end: The first time I watched "The Truman Show", i felt so unnerved and psychoticish afterwards that as soon as I got home I had to reassure myself that reality was just plain ol' reality. So I switched on the TV set. What did I see:

A Y shaped twig flying by itself through the blue sky. DINfuckingKIM!! People in South Africa may remember the advert for household insurer Santam, where a guy threw a branch in the sky for his dog to fetch. And it was round about the time I had started writing my first book "A Branch of Wisdom", a book centred around a Y shaped twig that was on the psychiatrist's table during my first psychotic hospitalisation. Yeah, get your head around that one...

(or was it just egocentricism 123% ???)


8 comments:

  1. i always reminisce fondly of my solipsistic days. there's nothing like going around telling everyone they're computer simulations.

    if you ever lucid dream, don't forget to try and convince the dream characters you encounter that they're all in your head and not real. see what they tell you...

    finally, this planet is enslaved and human beings have it worse than cows (or lab rats, if you will). but if you can fool yourself that freedom can be had while in human form, that's grand. passes the sentence much faster.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great post and you should have tons of comments about it. I remember feeling like my eyes were truly open the first time that I watched "The Matrix"

    Something just felt really right about it and I still can feel completely ok with not being able to get out of this mad hatters version of what the real world should be. It's a fun playground to be in from time to time.

    The Truman show on the other hand didn't do much for me except make me feel really crap that this guy just didn't get that this whole world was set up to dupe him for a purpose that wasn't his to being with.

    I guess I really like the idea of thinking that the whole of society is being duped rather than just me because then I don't feel so damn alone.

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  3. i have no time to check out the entire blog right now, but im extremely intrested in these matters... i've been especially researching on neurosis, lately... this is really informative, in a human way, too...
    i'll see it all when i get back, i hope...

    check out my blog, you might find something you like in there!

    best wishes!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm glad you weren't offended.

    ben_ji81, I felt the same way about the Matrix and not just because it was the perfect role for Keanu Reeves, who is wooden at best. I was tremendously disappointed by the simplicity of the sequels, however.

    BPG, having read your take on the Truman Show and its mirroring of psychosis now I'm all curious about how you would interpret Bruce Almighty, not to mention Man on the Moon, The Mask, Liar Liar, Me, Myself and Irene or any other of the psychiatrically informed Jim Carrey films. :-)

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  5. "As you think, so you become. Avoid superstitiously investing events with power or meanings they don't have. Keep your head. Our busy minds are forever jumping to conclusions, manufacturing and interpreting signs that aren't there.

    Assume, instead, that everything that happens to you does so for some good. That if you decided to be lucky, you are lucky. All events contain an advantage for you - if you look for it!"

    - Epictetus
    (trans. Sharon Lebell)

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  6. I like this Buddhist t-shirt that I saw the other day that said, "I think, therefore I meditate." :)

    The Truman Show freaks me out to. It's what I feel like everyday. People watching me, out to get me, you know, all that good stuff.

    I especially think that the cops are out to get me but even more so the American Central Intelligence Agency.

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  7. Wow!

    I was reading the comments from one of your posts titled Depression versus Unhappiness. z0tl was saying how you, BPG, should sit with a teacher who offers dokusan (in soto) / sanzen (rinzai). So I decided to do a search on "zen meditation" in my area. I found their website, and every month they have a movie night. Guess what they're playing this month!

    Yup, The Truman Show!!

    I think I will try to join them. :D

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  8. Hey Bi polar guy

    Been there done that, God I'm such an ego maniac!! But I used to believe in spirituality, messages, signs... that kind of baloney. I read in a 'pyschic' mag that 'there's no such thing as coincidence' so I took that to mean everything I could relate to ... as a sign specially for me? Pyschic and pyschotic ...are they one and the same? I still don't know....

    ReplyDelete

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