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Percep-shuns

"Percep-shuns" by Canadave

For every person diagnosed with a 'mental illness', there seems to be another disordered person who escapes diagnosis. There has been much resentment with the psychiatric method of diagnosing people meanwhile retaining the prerogative of offering no solution to the problem. While many recover from the more acute 'symptoms' of this or that disorder, explanations of the malady are seldom forthcoming from medical practitioners.

I do not suggest that doctors are to be blamed for my difficulties, and I think complaining patients are sometimes mistaking the baby for the bath water. If blame does belong somewhere, it is for the 'crime' of pretense, that almost inescapable tendency of people to assume things that don't belong. It would certainly be absurd to suggest that a doctor 'owes' us a cure! It is perhaps just as absurd to suppose that diagnoses are meritorious, given that specific causation remains undetermined.

History is full of famous people who were not diagnosed ( but by those close to them, who dared not mention it)! I am thinking of those political and military 'heroes' ( one person's hero is another's nightmare) whose conquest for domination ( in the name of ethnic or nationalist superiority) annihilated thousands, sometimes millions, of human beings. Inspite of their deserved infamy, these people are rarely identified by any psychiatric terminology. Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Julius Caesar, and Stalin come to mind as some of the more outstandingly power mad souls commonly overlooked by medicine. Perhaps this is simply an attempt to not offend fans of these would-be dominators. Equally as likely, I suspect that they are posthumously and silently, diagnosed by modern 'experts'.

The point I am making here is that there are really very few human beings who would be exempt from modern diagnosis if the spotlight of contemporary psychiatry were aimed in their direction. The whole world qualifies as 'mad' to me, these military dictators being but an obvious indication of 'acceptable insanity' in the eyes of some.

If I analyse myself in this writing, it would seem that I may well be trying to exempt myself from particular 'diagnoses' by intimating that "not just I" have it "- a defensive stance indeed-and true, nonetheless!

Humanity suffers its perceptions! I suffer mine. The word 'gnosis' seems to appear in " diagnosis". 'Gnosis' is Greek for 'knowledge'. Knowledge is not 'perception', but outright knowing. Those who 'truly know' are doubted by those who insist that true knowledge is impossible! ( Can you argue for the 'sanity' of anyone who esteems 'real knowing' to be impossible? ) In a world where all opinions are contested by others' opinions, what peace or agreement is likely? Hence, we are confronted with a rather ancient idea ( also Greek): 'democracy'. Rule of the people. This order of political priority inherently rejects the efficacy of human leadership. Presuming that no one is to be trusted, many similarly dubious humans are 'appointed by election' to argue and discern the needs of the multitudes they will never meet! The promotion of democracy counsels us to 'make ourselves heard'- a yelling match of sorts. "Good government; responsible representation; loud citizens". Mobs!

At the bottom of society we have those who are deemed inept- largely because their minds will not align with a generic view of things. At the top of society, 'we' have elected those whose political savvy accounts for their status, whilst their spiritual and intellectual quotients remain untested and undocumented.

I am enjoying the progress of my mental health, which I now see to be an indication of my association with the Divine and the Holy. Despite the super-abundance of churches throughout 'society', my references to 'God' are subject to particular scrutiny... because assorted doctors have deemed me "schizophrenic". (The popular ideas of God 'exhalt' 'Him' as one who is remote and untouchable- but that's a topic for another day!)

Can I afford to seek both the favour of mammon and God? Perhaps part of a 'cure' is to no longer require the sanctions of psychiatry as a tenet of mental health!

submitted to PERCEPTIONS Magazine

and The VOICES Forum (website)

by Canadave