tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9804989.post114020995792698585..comments2023-04-18T05:44:04.300-04:00Comments on Songs To A Midnight Sky: Optical IllusionsPrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03970753027686923295noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9804989.post-1140713225360985532006-02-23T11:47:00.000-05:002006-02-23T11:47:00.000-05:00gmakes sense to me:-)g<BR/>makes sense to me:-)Prishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03970753027686923295noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9804989.post-1140711444208083542006-02-23T11:17:00.000-05:002006-02-23T11:17:00.000-05:00intelligent mammalswalking backwards intothe futur...intelligent mammals<BR/>walking backwards into<BR/>the future<BR/><BR/>now you<BR/>see it-- now youGeoff Sandersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00521240779908120960noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9804989.post-1140604547794981852006-02-22T05:35:00.000-05:002006-02-22T05:35:00.000-05:00I lived in Boston right before Alpert and Leary (R...I lived in Boston right before Alpert and Leary (Ram Dass and..can't remember what name Leary went to) were fired because of their experiments with LSD. And no, I'm not sure how it works, either, but as we both are aware, it changes the world as we know it. I never tried it because I knew too many people who had 'bad trips'. I also saw, in my work, one person who did it so much he finally didn't 'come back'. He was rooted in his apartment, insisting that he couldn't walk on the grass because that would hurt it. I happen to believe that all of nature has some level of consciousness and he had tapped into something. The only problem was that it rendered him unable to function. Maybe that's the reason we learn the 'barriers'?? I don't know.<BR/><BR/>The bulk of my years as a psychologist was running treatment units for people with chronic mental illnesses. I remember, too, the furor around those years about how we defined that concept. There's certainly no doubt in my mind that the people I saw heard voices. I never tried to tell them that they didn't. Instead, I worked with them on the idea that they were hearing what other people didn't and that this was what was causing themselves (for the most part) problems, that this was a chemical difference in their brains,etc. Very few people heard voices in a way that didn't hurt them. For certain, people who are seers have heard some sort of voices. The people in hospitals, however, were hearing voices that told them that the waitresses in Howard Johnsons were all talking sexually about them(and they would attack said waitresses and end up in the hospital again), that they had to turn left at a light when they wanted to turn right, that god wanted them to stand on one foot and not move, smear their feces on the walls, hit people, sometimes to kill people, etc.<BR/><BR/>Without getting into the ways to deal with this so that the person's life isn't hampered by these voices, it's clear , yes, that their brains were wired differently and that they were seeing something the rest of us would see or hear, too, were ours chemically wired the same way.<BR/><BR/>It's a fascinating subject.Prishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03970753027686923295noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9804989.post-1140597720895088512006-02-22T03:42:00.000-05:002006-02-22T03:42:00.000-05:00Though I haven't read Huxley's Doors of Perception...Though I haven't read Huxley's Doors of Perception, it comes to mind, among other things. Surely one of the motivations of people who have experimented with chemical travel (shall we say) has been to explore, and push, the boundaries of perception and illusion.<BR/><BR/>A neuroscience student I met years ago said that the way LSD works (for example) is to temporarily and partially reduce the brain's production of the chemical screening agents that normally regulate the amount of information the brain takes in from the senses and the rest of the body. Less is screened out, so more sensation and perception and information get in. Similar to what happens in dreaming, the brain does its best to organize the chaotic flow into something coherent and recognizable, sometimes familiar and logical, sometimes wild and phantasmagoric.<BR/><BR/>I'm no neuroscientist (or any scientist at all) and can't say how accurate the above description is. Though it doesn't seem inconsistent with anything else I've come across on the subject.<BR/><BR/>It's often occurred to me that modern (industrial, technological) societies define "sanity" essentially by majority vote. A person who hears voices that no one else hears might be considered insane, or schizophrenic, or whatever term is used is whatever context. The majority of people (or the institutions of the society) decide the person is delusional because nobody else hears the voices. Does that mean the voices aren't real? They seem real enough to the person who hears them. In an absolute sense, we can't say that the voices aren't real, only that most of us don't hear them, so (by majority vote, in effect) we decide the voices probably aren't real. We vote on what commonly accepted reality is.<BR/><BR/>I'm not trying to oversimplify or trivialize an all to real phenomenon for many people, and the hellish difficulty it can cause in living life. Just saying that I find all of the questions highly provocative. Having worked in the profession yourself, I'm sure you could say much more about all of this.Lyle Daggetthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10731915540520704368noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9804989.post-1140568257847717192006-02-21T19:30:00.000-05:002006-02-21T19:30:00.000-05:00I'll have to see if I can find both or either of t...I'll have to see if I can find both or either of those, Lee. Thanks.Prishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03970753027686923295noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9804989.post-1140565859988358582006-02-21T18:50:00.000-05:002006-02-21T18:50:00.000-05:00This really is fascinating, Pris. It reminds me o...This really is fascinating, Pris. It reminds me of the famous poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" and the famous Japanese short story "In a Grove," where different eyewitnesses to the same crime SWEAR they saw what they saw, but each person has a different recollection. It's interesting also how "vision" alters when the other four senses are taken into account.Lee Herrickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13989557906560291595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9804989.post-1140518874121385412006-02-21T05:47:00.000-05:002006-02-21T05:47:00.000-05:00Hi EllenYes, this does start one thinking.BrianI d...Hi Ellen<BR/>Yes, this does start one thinking.<BR/><BR/>Brian<BR/>I did see that movie. It interested me because, from what I know, they portrayed that sort of experience pretty accurately. In his case, he'd had some 'sight learning' before his blindness, but yes, learning depth perception or just how to see. Very difficult. I don't know if there've been any people who regained sight after being born blind or blinded as infants. It would be a strange world, indeed.Prishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03970753027686923295noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9804989.post-1140497899176569892006-02-20T23:58:00.000-05:002006-02-20T23:58:00.000-05:00Very interesting site, Pris. Have you seen the fi...Very interesting site, Pris. Have you seen the film "At First Sight" (with Mira Sorvino and Val Kilmer)? Based on a true story of a man who, blind from infancy, had his sight restored as an adult and had to go through a difficult process of learning how to perceive distance, depth, facial expressions, etc. -- in effect he had to learn how to look in order to see.Brian Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17182888011015400963noreply@blogger.com