[1572] in Depressing_Thoughts
Isolation/Alcohol
whycare@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (whycare@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Wed Oct 17 20:34:59 1990
Warning: Avoid situations which may lead to long periods of isolation
such that you may loose feedback from your environment. (Examples of
feedback: words not origination from your own mind (text, someone
else's spoken word), a clock, and basically anything that noticeably
changes with time.
I believe that much of whatever intellectual ability I had has been
killed off by having lived in a situation in which I had essentially
isolated myself from both human and environmental contact (about half
a year now). Of course, I probably wouldn't have been in such a
predicament if I had lived in a psychologically supportive environment
during my childhood such that I would not have wanted/needed to live
that way. Actually, my present isolated situation is psychologically
much like that I experienced in childhood, which is probably why I've
regressed to it...because it is assuring and familiar. Unfortunately,
this regression is not conducive to the furtherance of my intellectual
development and that realization, among others, is a reason for my
wanting to die, because I really don't want to be a vegetable but I
can see little way around it since I've gone down so far already.
Basically, living in a situation during childhood in which you are
likely to be exposed to a large variety of experiences and to a
supportive environment during childhood produces optimistic, outgoing
individuals. At least, that's my explanation for why I'm not like the
people I know who seem optimistic for the most part. I emphasize that
it's the combination of the two factors: 1) Being exposed to a large
variety and depth of experiences 2) Being in a supportive environment
that counts. Anyone lacking in either of these seems to have a much
larger chance of growing up depressed or not being able to cope very
well with life.
In my experience, people who think that that idea is nonsense are
those who seem to have had both factors intact from birth. They seem
to take those factors for granted because for them, they ARE granted.
Moral: If you want to raise happy, self-actualized children, make sure
that both of the above factors are intact in their environments. It IS
you who controls how they will turn out. It's important to consciously
realize what you are doing to them.
Also, don't drink alcohol if you want to save your brain. The people I
know who engage in such activity seem less mentally acute than the
people who don't. Of course, the people who engage in such activity
usually don't realize what they are doing to their brains at the
moment, because they can't compare themselves to other people untilafter they have killed their brains. And even then, they might not
realize that they are less mentally acute because of their alcoholic
habits. But maybe people's use of alcohol is just an indicator of
something else that is fundamentally unstable in the person's
background.[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[A[
