Major Explosion in Oslo - Pm's office destroyed

Originally Posted by pibbur
Does it (my finish is somewhat limited beyond yksi and kaksi) say who said that? A very stupid and thoughtless thing to say.

No source is mentioned. Perhaps some norwegean journalist few years back? I dont know it doesnt really matter. I imagine there are always few such people around when somthing like this happens.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
Islamist: 3
Separatist: 160
Left-wing: 45
Right-wing: 0
Single-issue: 1
Not specified: 40
Total: 249

I have reached the conclusion that these statistics are misleading because separatists spawn from the others. Within socialist/communist ideas (left-wing), conservative/nationalist ideas (right-wing) and religion (including Islamist) are separatist ideas, that when taken too seriously lead to separatism.

Understanding separatism thus require us to understand two things;
1. What ideas create the perceived groups
2. What leads to isolation and separation of the groups

Ideas that frequently pump out the message that there is a conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeois, the feminist and the patriarchy, the folk and the immigrants, the Muslims and the infidels, the Christians and the heathens, the whites and the blacks etc, runs the risk of producing separatists for every single person in their ranks that are isolated due to social issues. All of these groups have in common that they will eventually turn on themselves, announcing the "real" and orthodox ideas and pointing out who's loyal and who's not.

Both of these issues needs to be dealt with. Group-think needs to be understood and challenged, not quieted down and claimed to be "madness". Isolation needs to be taken seriously. We are living in the Internet era now where it's possible to live entirely in your own world, without the need to be a part of the society. Segregation may also happen by constructing separatist schools for certain ideologies, ethnicities, gender and other perceived "differences". It happens when unemployment peaks, in areas of too much poverty and conflict. It may happen for many reasons, both due to well-meant practices and due to ignorance.

Originally Posted by JemyM

Both of these issues needs to be dealt with. Group-think needs to be understood and challenged, not quieted down and claimed to be "madness". Isolation needs to be taken seriously. We are living in the Internet era now where it's possible to live entirely in your own world, without the need to be a part of the society. Segregation may also happen by constructing separatist schools for certain ideologies, ethnicities, gender and other perceived "differences". It happens when unemployment peaks, in areas of too much poverty and conflict. It may happen for many reasons, both due to well-meant practices and due to ignorance.

I think that segregation is the major issue here, in terms of national stability. Any sort of legal or cultural segregation gores a long way in producing inequities in the social system which may ultimately result in fanatical/separatists movements.

In societies which desire to keep their culture "pure" segregation is, more often than not, a given, and as the last decade or so has shown, the results are far from perfect. Here in the US, we have had success in absorbing immigrants into the mainstream culture, while still allowing them to celebrate their cultural past. That has never been perfect either, and we have learned from tough lessons, and we still have pockets of problems, and we do have our share of cultural puritans, but i think we, as a society, have become aware that actively isolating people is not, nor can it ever be, a solution. Europeans might have to decide whether the purity of their culture (which sounds strange and potentially dangerous to Americans) is more important than social stability.

I found this interesting..

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/…142721644.html

Anders Breivik apparently had plastic surgery in the past, in an attempt to look more "Aryan".

Seems in keeping with his Templar fantasy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15936276

So Breivik was found to be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, while there's still some hoops to go through odds are that he will be locked up in a mental institution for the rest of his life. IMO that would be the best possible outcome.

Originally Posted by peko
IMO that would be the best possible outcome.

I disagree.

The best possible outcome would have been if his condition had been diagnosed a long time ago and he would have received help to live with this condition within society instead of isolating himself with alternate newsfeeds.

Now one man is locked up and will cost a lot of money to society, an act that will not bring his victims back nor change him into what he could have been before he did what he did.

It's estimated that about 1/4 live with some kind of known non-typical variation of the human psyche. Most go undiagnosed. Many never have more than mild discomfort but still have found ways to adapt and function within the society.

We stigmatize a lot against mental disorders. A person who did nothing but came out as scitzophrenic would suffer social stigmatization which wouldn't have been given to a person who came out with cancer. Most people get scared and do not know how to act and would probably mistrust even if the person claim to function just fine.

Part of the issue is the idea that the mind is just a ghost in the machine, not part of the human body. We like to imagine the brain and it's thoughts as chrystal clear, that perceive the world objectively and apply the normative standard of reasoning before making decisions. We are disencouraged to see the brain as an organ that runs constant risks of not working at it's peak. While we recognize that people have different length, shoesizes, haircolor and eyecolor we are generally poorly uneducated on understanding that a person can also thinks differently than we do.

I believe that if there's a challenge for the next 100 years, it's to be more aware of psychological differences without attacking people. The "act unto others as you would like them to act unto you" must be replaced with "learn to act unto others as they would like them to act unto them".

Another thing we should be aware of are that radical and extreme information needs the educated to speak out against it. We cannot just let it go and say "only crazy people believes in that", because that in itself tells us how important it is to speak out.

I think the biggest issue here is, if a person doesn't ask for help, how do you help them? None suspected anything….. but if they had? would you report someone because you suspect they might have some kind of disorder? What would the cause of action be to help them ? force them to go to a shrink?

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
I think the biggest issue here is, if a person doesn't ask for help, how do you help them? None suspected anything….. but if they had? would you report someone because you suspect they might have some kind of disorder? What would the cause of action be to help them ? force them to go to a shrink?

Have you ever had a friend who told you "nothing is wrong", when everything was wrong? We need to understand the balance between listening to someones own way to express themselves and look at how they behave. Some have better empathy than others but this is also a skill that can be practiced.

Most people with "disorders" works perfectly fine in the society. Such individuals haven't neccessary done anything wrong, they just can't fit social norms. Even "healthy" have their ways to control stress and express their emotions through socially accepted means. The difference is that people with disorder often needs only limited support to function and be able to contribute and function normally. However, thanks to the social stigma around these problems, people will not ask for help even when they need.

It needs to be socially/culturally accepted to have such problems and "come out" with unique needs. There needs to be a better awareness in general about what such issues mean to live with. It needs to be accepted that everyone knows someone who have problems and you might even be one of them, but they might not confess this to you. But we also need to make sure that having a disorder is very human, not unnatural.

Why is it that we see going to the doctor to be a healthy behavior but going to the shrink is seen as a sign of being unhealthy?

Originally Posted by JemyM
Have you ever had a friend who told you "nothing is wrong", when everything was wrong? We need to understand the balance between listening to someones own way to express themselves and look at how they behave. Some have better empathy than others but this is also a skill that can be practiced.

I totally agree here.

Even if you don't follow a single social norm it doesn't mean you are mentally ill. Your brain might be clear and full of compassion anyway.

I don't think anyone wants a society where you'd be taking into mental health care because you are different ?

It is only if a person think they have a mental problem themselves that looking for help would have any use.

It is actually the same for a physical doctor, you might refuse to go there because you don't think you are sick. Finally you might be so sick you can't protest if someone calls the emergency number. In which case it might very well be too late.

There are people who commit suicide after telling everyone hat "things are okay".
Remember the football/soccer trainer of Wales ?

I think the point about the best possible outcome was post-tragedy.

Obviously, we should help each other - and people should help themselves. It's not about responsibility - to my mind - but about mutual benefit.

However, before humanity as a whole is willing to stop living in denial - there's no way to get there. This goes for the people suffering as well as those in a position to help.

But I suppose babysteps can work, if we're willing to wait hundreds of years.
It just means a shitton of suffering for a shitton of people while we wait.

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
Even if you don't follow a single social norm it doesn't mean you are mentally ill. Your brain might be clear and full of compassion anyway.

What does it mean to be ill? One important factor is the level of distress your interaction with the society around you brings to you. If you feel bad about things that others see as the norm, then we can speak about disorder. Dis-order by not being able to work with the order.

Diagnosis doesn't mean ill. This is important. For many, knowing yourself is a very important part of being able to function well. But that also means accepting the aspects of the self that are different than the norm.

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
I don't think anyone wants a society where you'd be taking into mental health care because you are different ?

One should learn about our differences to increase our autonomy (by learning how to live with oneself), not decrease our autonomy (by locking people away).

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
It is only if a person think they have a mental problem themselves that looking for help would have any use.

It is actually the same for a physical doctor, you might refuse to go there because you don't think you are sick. Finally you might be so sick you can't protest if someone calls the emergency number. In which case it might very well be too late.

So when a person do not seek help. Shouldn't we do anything? One way could be to encourage a person who needs help to seek help without insulting that individual.

I would disagree that handing a mass murderer 3 hots and a cot, along with 24 hour personalized attention for the rest of his years is somehow even a moderately good outcome, let alone the best one, but having that discussion around here is pretty pointless.

@JemyM- I'm curious about that study that 25% of the population has a "non-typical variation". Who did that study? Oh! The people that would personally benefit from millions of new customers if people actually accepted the hypothesis. Well OK then. We're seeing the same situation from the medical community, where they "discover" a new malady every other day, give it a name, plaster it on people that were perfectly functional before they were told they're sick, and then charge them thousands to fix a problem that wasn't a problem until somebody created a name for it.

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness View Post
It is only if a person think they have a mental problem themselves that looking for help would have any use.

It is actually the same for a physical doctor, you might refuse to go there because you don't think you are sick. Finally you might be so sick you can't protest if someone calls the emergency number. In which case it might very well be too late.

So when a person do not seek help. Shouldn't we do anything? One way could be to encourage a person who needs help to seek help without insulting that individual.

Even if you do encourage if the individual thinks nothing is wrong with him/her why would they listen to you and seek help? The biggest problem when you are mentally ill is usually to realize it yourself. The more other people would push such a issue the more in denial you'd become, thus encouraging someone to search for help might have the opposite effect in increasing their denial.

You do have a point that trying make being mentally ill into something normal, reducing peoples fear into visiting a shrink might change the denial face somewhat. The strangest thing is that a lot of people who are completely normal go to the shrink thinking they have a problem, while those who have do not visit there…..

Originally Posted by dteowner
@JemyM- I'm curious about that study that 25% of the population has a "non-typical variation". Who did that study? Oh! The people that would personally benefit from millions of new customers if people actually accepted the hypothesis. Well OK then. We're seeing the same situation from the medical community, where they "discover" a new malady every other day, give it a name, plaster it on people that were perfectly functional before they were told they're sick, and then charge them thousands to fix a problem that wasn't a problem until somebody created a name for it.

Tell a victim of Breivik who survived that all there is to psychology is making cash and fame.

Anti health-science is Retarded with capital R.

Did I say "all"? Nope, sure didn't. There's probably some fancy latin in your textbooks to cover that, but I won't ask you to look it up this time.

I was discussing the 25% study, just as I stated. There's a difference between cancer and "restless leg syndrome (RLS, to make it sound even more ominous)". Somehow, I'm guessing there's a difference between Breivik-nuts and "25% non-typical", too.

His evaluation isn't set in stone. I think he'll receive atleast another diagnosis.

Yeah, there's been a lot of back and forth in the media due to the evaluation. Also, it's not actually vital to the case - in a court of law, they can still decide to overlook the "recommendation" from the psychologists.