Discourse

When I talk about definitions, I think it is important.  For me, at least.

A discourse – a conversation, talk. (apart from other meanings).

Origin: Latin dis – in different directions + currere – run.

An example?  Oh, my goodness!  I often listen to the songs on the www.youtube.com.  And how many times I had encountered absolutely insane conversations!  Most of the time I just don’t even pay attention to what is there.  But once I was asked whether I am aware of the discussions under the clips.  Then I sort of started paying attention.

I picked a clip teaching beginners’ steps for Salsa.  And a discourse jewel on top.  Here it is – a priceless example of meanness and creativity.  And one of the participants had a good point, when he mentioned the importance of definitions.

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Participant 1:

Following your line of thinking, Spanish is actually a retarded deformation of Latin and Arabic.

Notwithstanding the fact that you are unaware of the definition of the words:

1) retarded

2) language

3) dialect

the fact remains that you are neither intelligent, nor insightful, nor useful as a human being. I hereby order you, in the name of the survival of the species, to cease existing immediately.

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I was just wondering what drives those conversations.  Some people would say anger.  But I am beginning to think that it is pure loneliness.  Maybe both.

Quotes on Discourse:

1. “All discourses but my own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome”

(Ben Jonson)

 

2. “Of our thinking it is but the upper surface that we shape into articulate thought; underneath the region of argument and conscious discourse lies the region of meditation.”

(Thomas Carlyle)

 

3. “It’s our tendency to approach every problem as if it were a fight between two sides. We see it in headlines that are always using metaphors for war. It’s a general atmosphere of animosity and contention that has taken over our public discourse.”

(Deborah Tannen)

4. “The only privilege literature deserves – and this privilege it requires in order to exist – is the privilege of being in the arena of discourse, the place where the struggle of our languages can be acted out.”

(Salman Rushdie)

 

5. “Discourse may want an animated “No”

 

To brush the surface, and to make it flow;

 

But still remember, if you mean to please,

 

To press your point with modesty and ease.”

(William Cowper)

 

6. “The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing.”

(Carl Bernstein)

I love Pelevin’s style.  “Dialectics of transitional period from nowhere to nowhere”.

Coming back to my own insanity.  I just realized that today is the day 42.

4^th February, 2010 – 42 for those who remember that 42 is my number.  We’ll see if the number has any significance.  It is always “either…or”  Either it has significance or not.  I am not obsessed with it, but now it tends to jump out.  I guess my eye is trained now to pick 42 out of the crowd.

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.” (Albert Einstein)

 

 

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” (Albert Einstein)

 

“For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.” (Jean Dubuffet)

 

 

“In order to act, you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.”  (Georges Clemenceau)

 

 

“The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness. Look at your 3 best friends. If they’re ok, then it’s you.”  (Rita Mae Brown)

 

 

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”  (Friedrich Nietzsche)

 

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”  (Friedrich Nietzsche)

 

 

“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.”  (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

 

 

“Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.”  (Vladimir Nabokov)

 

 

“Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.”  (Toni Morrison “Beloved”)

 

On Nov. 15, 1934, Virginia Woolf began her rewrite of a novel eventually titled “The Years.”  “Lord! Lord!” she noted in her diary, “10 pages a day for 90 days: three months … now, damnably disagreeable, as I see it will be – compacting the vast mass – I am using my faculties again.  & all the flies and fleas are forgotten.”

Seven years later the flies and fleas and larger plagues drove Woolf, who had fought mental illness throughout her life, to suicide.  An increasing number of psychiatrists, neurologists and geneticists, says an article in this week’s Science Times, believe there’s a link between the genius and madness of artists such as her.  Maybe so.  But as anyone who’s ever read Woolf’s letters and diaries can attest, it’s the link between imagination and self-discipline that got her a place in literature’s pantheon.  Her mind may have had a grasshopper’s fleetness, but her industry was the ant’s.  “People who have experienced emotional extremes, who have been forced to confront a huge range of feelings and who have successfully coped with those adversities, could end up with a richer organization in memory, a richer palette t work with,” said Dr. Ruth Richards, a psychiatrist in Belmont, Mass., which often served as a haven for Robert Lowell, the fine American poet.

At least three fine English poets – Byron, Shelley and Coleridge – also suffered from manic depression or severe depression; and so did the composer Robert Schumann, who starved himself to death when he was 46.  Dr. Robert M. Post, chief of the biological psychiatry branch at the National Institutes of Health, sees the link between bipolar disorder and creativity as “fortunate”, because it is in so many other ways “a devastating illness.”

To be mad is not necessarily to be creative, or there’d be Shelly on every street corner.  And to be creative is not necessarily to be mad, or Shakespeare would not have been a monument to shrewdness and adaptability.  But to be creative is almost invariably to be diligent – and, manic – depressive or no, to swing high, swing low.

Source: Editorial published in the New York Times, October 15, 1993.

From “Psychology. An Introduction. 8^th edition” by Jerome Kagan and Julius Segal  (page 488)

When people have recurrent episodes of depression like the one just described, the disorder is called unipolar disorder.  But there is another severe affective disorder – known as bipolar disorder, and referred to in the past as manic – depression – in which the lows typically alternate with exaggerated highs.  Most of us, of course, know that our mood can shift – sometimes for no apparent reason – from bright and joyful to dark and sad.  For those suffering from this disorder, the emotional pendulum swings wildly from intense excitement to deep melancholy, at first with long time intervals in between, but later with frequent and abrupt shifts from his to low (Goodwin & Jamieson, 1990).

A recent study of people with bipolar disorder estimates that more than three million Americans have the disorder (National Depressive and Manic – Depressive Association, 1993).

My comment:  when I read this in the year 2000, to be precise when I studied this book to take the proficiency exam at DeVry, I was depressed, as always, since the age of 10 and I did not take any antidepressants.  Maybe I was not always depressed, but more often than not.  The whole three years at DeVry for sure.  But I was not diagnosed.  In 2005, when my depression made me dysfunctional to the point that I could not do anything with my life but to seek help, then I was diagnosed as having depression and I was prescribed anti-depressants. 

 

Little did I know, that it would lead to mania.  Drug induced, mind you.  So, my first episode happened in December 2005 – January 2006.  I did go to see a Psychiatrist # 2 (the Psychiatrist # 1 who gave me the bloody drugs disappeared without a trace).  I told him I might be bipolar.  He did not believe me.  “Do not rush with the diagnosis”, I was told.  In May 2007, when I was doing the JVS program I had my second episode.  And that was when the whole hell broke loose. 

 

I will tell that story eventually, just give me time.  It is painful to write about it, but living this life was always painful.  Coming to grips with whatever happened to me is really worth it.  For you, my reader, it might save some pain in the future.  You are not alone.  Your situation may not be the worst.  And for those who in the different category (sane and good boys and girls), it might be just hilarious bordering on ridiculous.  Read it, if you have ever been depressed, on drugs, diagnosed with bipolar or were treated in a hospital, chained to a bed.  Well, back to the book…

Like unipolar depression, it appears to be on the rise – as shown in Figure 10.4.  Bipolar affects men and women equally, and sometimes appears during childhood.  Unfortunately, childhood or adolescent onset predicts more treatment difficulties and increased social disability.  The disorder often can be managed fairly well with drug therapy, but people often delay seeking treatment when early symptoms appear, and the problem is often misdiagnosed.

Bipolar disorder magnifies common human experiences to larger-than-life proportions.  Among the symptoms are exaggerations of normal sadness and fatigue, joy and exuberance, sexuality and sexuality, irritability and rage, energy and creativity.  To those afflicted, it can be so painful that suicide seems the only means of escape: about one of every four untreated for the condition actually does commit suicide.

In the manic phase, people with this disorder ten to be talkative, restless, aggressive, boastful, and destructive.  They develop a feeling of intense well-being and even ecstasy.  Sexual and moral inhibitions disappear and life is one uninterrupted “high”.  The manic person needs little sleep and is filled with abundant energy and grandiose notions.  Soon, however, most manic individuals plummet back to the depressed phase, becoming so gloomy and hopeless that they are immobilized.

As far as the ancient Greeks, society has believed that the artistic temperament is often touched by divine madness.  In recent years evidence has accumulated linking mood disorders to creativity (Jamison, 1993).  From the melancholy Lord Byron to the suicidal Sylvia Plath, biographies of celebrated poets, musicians, and artists have attested to extreme moods in creative people.  Here is how writer Virginia Woolf described her divine inspiration:

“As an experience, madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at: and in its Lava I still find most of the things I write about.  It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does” (Woolf, 1978).

            Despite the links between creativity and bipolar disorder, it is important not to glamorize or trivialize the disorder.  In fact, most sufferers are not great creative geniuses, and most talented artists are mentally stable.  Modern medicine can today offer relief to those who endure the ravages of mood.  In the past, artist who were in the clutches of this devastating disorder had nowhere but their art to seek solace.  A further discussion in the Psychology and the Media box entitled “Making Art of Madness” (to be continued.)