@VaultESL - God that’s the worst. I’d feel the deepest urge to shove that food in the person’s face.

@qccan - Truer words were never spoken.

@zunky - *bows down deeply* Thank you. Thank you very much! ^_^

@raindrops23 - Long comments are always good! ^_^ 

Yeah I get what you’re saying with fear of confrontation. It’s something where we definitely differ. I don’t like confrontation either, and there are probably some confrontations I’d avoid at all costs, but if it were a friendship that mattered to me, I think I’d face the fear. I hope so.

But you’re right. I can’t really understand how hard it would be for you to do that, because I’m not you. That’s exactly the point I was trying to get across.  So I apologize in advance if I ever say anything to you like that which is callous or inconsiderate of how your subjective experience differs from mine.

It really is important I think for us to focus on accepting people as they are and not demand that they change just because we think it’s not that hard for them or that it would be better for them. Change can be a wonderful thing but it has to be motivated from within.

Great comment!

@satanz_fave_daughter, @silence_of_words - @wolvenchic -  - I guess the thing is what counts as “going away” or “dealing with it”. I don’t mean to suggest that these disorders are all untreatable like kryptonite. Just that the attitudes toward them are based o nthe assumption that they are characteristically similar for each person that experiences them.  My overall argument in that reagards is, I don’t think, effected by whether I am talking about treatable or untreatable, physical, psychological, or intellectual phenomena.

But yeah I see why what I wrote lead you to think I was saying phobias can’t be treated. I know that in many cases they can be and that in many cases one of the most effective techniques toward those ends is exposure. But I think even those treatments are delicate business all around and you can’t say anything about how strong or weak someone is as a person on the basis of how easy or difficult they will find going through something like that and how willing they are to approach it. Not unless you can gain some objective insight into the character of how someone else actually experiences life.

@bill_onesty - haha! Yeah I’d say you hit the likely response of the government on it’s head. Except I think they’d also have stockpiles of kryptonite secretly hidden away in case you know who goes out of control.

@chanman486 - lol! why thank you! So what’s my grade teach?

@Amy - Wow that was a really insightful comment! And a great article! Thanks for leaving it.

I agree with you about the importance of identifying characteristics over determining whether someone is or is not a label “X”. I’ve found the labeling obsession can lead to a lot of misunderstandings and can damaging to the self-esteem of a lot of children. 

@saxy_grrl - thank you for your replies! Yeah I don’t know what it would be like to live in a really tolerant society. I imagine it would be as different for us today as it would be for  people who lived 200 years ago if they were dropped into the society in the US of today. We are worlds more tolerant today than before in human history. As reflected in most of the responses to this blog entry. But yeah, we’ve just got a really long way to go.

Good luck with you in your quest! I’m sure you can achieve what you want to if you are that determined.^_^

@MackyM - Thank you so much for your oh so politely worded and non-confrontational critiques of my entry. I really appreciate that! ^_^

This is going to be a long response, and I apologize for that in advance. I have a lot to say.

I have no idea why you were rambling on about welfare and heroin as it’s pretty incomprehensible to me how that has even the slightest connection to what I wrote whatsoever. If you have a grudge against the welfare system or heroin addicts feel free to take them up with someone who cares.

But I will defend the superman “analogy” as everyone is calling it, since you are not the only one getting caught up with this idea of causation, physical vs mental and declaring my description to invalid or, less politely, as you say “idiotic”.

Of course my analogy has less to do with what is known about causes and more to do with society’s perceptions and if and when they are morally justified.

Let’s play hypothetical games. Say you’re in a society of Supermans.  Everybody’s a Superman. Except you. Me being a superman, I’ve noticed many times that when people are shot by high caliber bullets they bounce off harmlessly. At most they tickle a little. In fact, maybe me and my Superman friends play games with shooting each other with guns and seeing where the ricochet about and placing bets on it. Now you come along and I say, “Hey let’s play bullet bounce!” And you say “Um no! Bullets hurt. They’ll *kill* me.” 

Am I justified in laughing at you and saying “Oh what a coward you are! They’re just bullets!”  Shall I shoot you against your will? Force you to take for my own enjoyment so that my game can continue on unimpeded?

Or what if it’s not a game. In superman world, people generally jump off the top of buildings. We just do that cuz it’s the fastest way to get to the ground. It’s a real benefit to our way of life to be able to jump off the top of buildings to get to the ground the most efficiently. Let’s say then you insist on taking the stairs. Maybe we, the society, in our all knowing wisdom ought make you jump anyway. 

We have no *rational* reason to believe that you will be hurt by jumping. None but one. We have *your* word for it. And that is evidence. It is evidence that society should take into account and consider. Being dismissive of it is arrogant, especially for non-trained experts who have not done any analysis, or studies.  To say that someone is just pretending or faking or being a wimp about it just because we ourselves don’t share their subjective experience is the phenomenon I’m objecting to. It’d be the same with kryptonite or high caliber bullets or anything else.

Another hypothetical, since you seem hung up on the idea that there is great benefit gained by people facing “irrational” phobias. Imagine that instead of Kryptonite being a very rare stone, what if it was *everywhere*? Buildings are build out of Kryptonite. Streets are paved with it. Now is ok to tell Clark Kent that he has to face his irrational fear of a rock that has shown no evidence of having any harmful effect in all the years it’s been in use? I mean he gets huge benefits now from facing that fear, He can walk on streets and enter into buildings! Otherwise he has to fly around all the time and live in the country! Maybe we shouldn’t even just tell him he *should* do it. Maybe we should drag him out and push him into one of those kryptonite buildings. And I mean sure he’ll put on a big show of being hurt and crawling around but he’s just a big crybaby faker.  After he gets used to it, it’ll all be better. 

Are we justified in believing this? Up until the point Clark goes into Cardiac Arrest and we have incontrovertible evidence that the rock is causing a real risk to his well being, are we justified until we have that conclusive evidence?

And heck maybe we should still not believe him after he went into Cardiac Arrest! I mean it still *could* all be in his head. Maybe he psyched himself out so much and built so much anxiety and tension that he made himself have such an extreme panic attack that he had a heart attack!  I mean what a wimp. Loser. Gosh we should just forget about him and have nothing to do with the boneheaded coward.

There are two important distinctions often made throughout human history that are quite irrational. One is the mind/body distinction. That is to say that something that is mental is less substantive and less *real* than something that is purely biological.  The distinction has been the cause of many historical mistreatments in medicine and psychology.  

It’s inherently flawed. The reason is simple to. Mental afflictions are physical too. The brain is a part of the body. And whatever you are thinking or feeling, there is a *physical* explanation for it that is as real as a wound or a broken limb.

The second is more recent: the genetic/non-genetic distinction. This is a very important distinction for the purpose of determining what directions in which science should progress to pursue in discovering or determining treatment options. Sometimes genetic disorders require a very different strategy for treatment than non-genetic.

But it’s a lot less useful for matters of social judgement or justice.  To the individual whether or something is rooted in a deep seeded early childhood social trauma or is caused by biochemical reactions due to certain hormones they were exposed to, or is the result of an actual genetic variance  is rather academic. In all *three* cases the phenomenon may feel subjectively as if it is so ingrained that it is a part of who they are. In all three cases changing may well seem to the patient to be virtually impossible. And in all three cases, and many more, it is difficult for someone else who has not experienced the same phenomenon to be able to understand what it is like for that person.

History has shown us numerous examples of judgment intolerance that have been proven to be irrational by developments in science. Once upon a time people thought most diseases were a matter of moral “weakness”. Disorders psychological and physical both were a matter of someone not being true to “God” and being punished for it. Still a great many societies still have misconceptions like that.  

My argument is about the morality of judgments very much akin to this historical perspective. I’m not arguing about whether people should or should not try to change or compensate where change is impossible. That’s going to depend on the person and the circumstances and the particular affliction at hand. What I am arguing about is that moral judgments against a person for not having succeeding in changing or compensating are invalid by virtue of not having sufficient justification in the absence of the ability to perceive someone else’s subjective experience.

You seem to have associated with me with people who think that people should be excused for their harmful actions because of psychological impairments. That is in no way what I believe.

People do have a responsibiltiy to deal with whatever aspects of their personality impact their interactions with the world and still act morally and still work to achieve their own happiness.  A psychological disorder or a physical impairment is not an excuse for doing something that causes harm to others (except in the narrow case where the disorder actually imginges upon the subject’s ability to tell right from wrong). Society should punish entities the same in those cases. Nowhere in my entry do I suggest otherwise. 

But in so doing you have to be very careful to make the distinction between punishing the act and punishing the person for who they are. The latter I think is morally unjustified.

If through some weird chain reaction of events because someone was claustrophobic their actions caused someone to die, that doesn’t mean that claustrophobia is evil or unjust and needs to be irradicated. I could easily create a scenario where *not* being claustrophobic could cause harm. Rather, if the individual could have prevented the harm and let it happen anyway, whatever the reasons, then *that* is what the person did wrong. And that’s what should be punished.

I have to say I was quite offended. Not by your objection over these matters which I am happy to argue with you about, but with your need to insult readership of this blog, first with the pseudo-intellectual line, and later accusing a reader of teaching her children to be failures. You of course have a right to say whatever you want, but that is hardly conducive to a polite and reasonable debate. It suggests a desire to resort to insults and grandstanding rather than logical argument. So if this response seems somewhat antagonistic toward you, that is why, and I apologize for it. My goal is only to argue against your specific points and not make it personal.

But anyway, thanks for commenting! I’m glad that someone objected to what I said. Life would be a little too boring if everyone just agreed. So for being the first person to have ever brought controversey into this blog, I commend thee! And I shall forever be eternally grateful to you. Be well and enjoy your time on xanga.