Tuesday 31 December 2013

The Scent of Cray Cray

What are the triggers of fat people's self-acceptance? Science, reason, logic? Clearly diet's don't work, self hatred is pointless (it only means you'll hit a point where you have to go into reverse) and punitive etc.,

Is it being loved and supported by family, friends, a significant other? Discovering that you are desired by potential lovers? Feminist analysis of how the position of women takes a toll on how they perceive their own bodies. Humanism and so forth?

All these. 

The other could be catching the scent of cray cray. Or, fat phobia is actually unhinged.

Now, this terminology may be upsetting for some people.

We make basic errors of reasoning all the time. One of them has been to identify craziness as purely in the symptoms of mental disorder. This I think is an error. "Craziness", biochemical imbalance in the brain and/or nervous system, produces certain symptoms; mania, hallucinations, incoherent addled thinking, mood disorder, delusions-not being able to tell reality from fantasy.

It is not the only possible creator of many if not all of those symptoms though. That's may also be why sane people are called crazy, rather simply using mental illness as an insult.

Wrong thinking, that is uninterrupted and continues on and on. Ideas that should be rejected by our basic critical faculties, but are instead accepted and extrapolated from can if persisted with produce symptoms more usually associated with underlying imbalance. Even if you have none.

Hence terms like "wing-nut" for those who's political or religious views are an implosion of any discernible kind of rationalism.

Now, the habit of calling the sane on their crazy has been deemed stigmatizing those with mental or intellectual disorders. I've no pressing desire to revive calling sane people this 'c' word on the basis of them being genuinely batso in some specific area or areas. It must be said though that this assumption is incorrect.

It also must take some responsibility for the recent and swift conflation of criminal mass killings for instance as the product of mental illness. Indeed, it has almost made evil and madness interchangeable. I've always felt this was the beginning of a lot of modern stigma against the mentally ill. Along with other things that aren't mentioned.

The madness of sane people can be worse than that of those who's symptoms are from an underlying biochemical imbalance. Their sanity makes them more able to act on their deranged thoughts more effectively. They are less likely to be stopped by intervention of others as the disabling effects of internal imbalance tend to derail someone who's mind is not functioning properly. There may well be a lack of intent too.

There is of course overlap. Wrong thinking of all kinds, often brains scrambled by trauma can add to momentum dragging someone toward mental crisis and be reflective of it.

But there's no doubt, that we can all become unbalanced by pursuing lines of irrationality way beyond all reason and there needs to be a way to acknowledge this. Reserving this only for those who are unwell, further others their experience.

I've learned more about mad logic from those advancing the 'obesity' construct than I ever have from someone who's mind isn't working properly.

For years, like many, I accepted what I was told about being fat. About that being my direct deliberate choice, despite knowing it wasn't. I accepted what and who that made me, despite their being little evidence that it was, I thought it must be.  I acted on that. I harmed myself in different ways. Yet never did it occur to me to question it, I saved that for looking at others, I didn't think of them in the way I thought of myself.

Only when I finally got a real sniff of the sheer unhinged nature of what investing in the construct of 'obesity' does to people's minds, did I come to my senses somewhat. You know the scent I'm talking about?

Ever been near a really volatile person who's holding it all in? Your animal senses feel they kick off at any moment. Have you smelt that edge? That's the smell I'm talking about. The feeling that if this takes off, it won't be easily stopped and take down much in its path.

When perfectly decent people started to saying, yes, fat people deserved to die because they were fat. That was the final awakening for me, that's when I had to face the fact that no, this wasn't right after all.........

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