In the Force versus Reason divide, Shame is definitely on the side of Force.

On the Side of Force when people are wrong we Punish them to make them so full of Fear they'll avoid being wrong in the future. The feeling of Shame is what we feel when we Punish ourselves. (Or perhaps what we feel while we await the punishment we expect. Shame is a sort of wincing as we await the blow that we expect to fall.)

Shame can be carried all the way to suicide. In fact it is perhaps an essential component of most suicides.

Whenever anyone ever feels shame they should try to remember it's part of the violent monkey World of Force and dismiss it from their minds.

On the side of Reason, of course we all make mistakes. We constantly make mistakes. In fact our every moment is always to some extent a mistake. We are never acting perfectly. Life is constant failure. And should be a constant process of recognizing failures and continously improving.

But because instead we're in the Force World we can't stand to think that we're constantly failing. All that failing would mean constant punishment. It would mean a sort of mental equivalent of constant wincing waiting to be 'hit' which is the equivalent of punishing ourselves (Shame.)

Rather than do that we for the most part instead become uncritical of ourselves. We become Closeminded.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090523/ap_on_re_as/as_china_suicide_help

"I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interest," Lai was quoted as saying by Xinhua. "They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities' attention to their appeals.".....

The paper said Lai was released on bail Friday but did not give any details. It said he had been on medication for "a mental illness" for decades and had been on his way to a hospital for his pills.

I recall an episode of the Phil Donahue show from 25 years ago. Back then talk shows could still be somewhat intellectual and Phil's show was. He recently had a new show but made the mistake of somewhat questioning the Iraq War; having some people on the show who disagreed with it. His show was quickly canceled with the explanation that his ratings were bad, which was a lie.

Anyway he had an episode about suicide where he had on a lady who had been seriously depressed for many, many years and really just wanted to die. Very quickly a lady in the audience got up to ask (with a look of disgust on her face) why she hadn't just killed herself if she really wanted to die? Clearly she was just an attention seeker. Quite a few people in the audience clapped or voiced their approval.

Then I recall a guy who recently put up a link to a live cam of him killing himself to a discussion board. Most people laughed, told to him to go ahead, etc.

Then I recall linking this to another board, a board that has the word 'compassion' right in it's subtitle. Quickly multiple people come up talking about how you have to watch out for 'drama llamas', people just looking for attention, etc.

This in turn reminds me of quite a few others things, of people responding to others not hiding their pain with disgust, suspicion, etc...

I think that in order to ever truly be happy for a given moment, you have to ignore all negatives. You have to ignore your sufferings and the suffering of others. I don't think it's wrong to have moments when you do this. But i think a lot... most people spend too much time doing this? A lot of people want to ignore the negatives, the suffering way too often. And when someone else doesn't hide their own pain, they often respond with hate.

It's impossible to say to just how much of our time we should spend ignoring the negatives. I do wish that people would spend more time caring about the sufferings of others. And when they've reached the point that they respond with hate or suspicion to people not hiding their pain, they've just gone way too far.

....Beyond trying I guess to justify indifference by dismissing such behavior as "attention seeking", I've then seen a lot of people claim that the person not hiding their unhappiness is either being manipulative or commiting "emotional blackmail". Which... even if it were true I'd really rather err on the side of showing compassion and thus getting "manipulated".

...it sounds strange but I've really seen such behavior a lot. It really seems to be the majority who acts this way in my experience...

I think another concern is that there is an overriding sentiment that we're all supposed to be rugged individualists and that ultimately, just the whole way our society is set-up; the car/TV culture, we really don't have much to do with most other people and there's just not much of a clear selfish reason to be compassionate to these endless multitudes that we aren't really connected to. So most expect that everyone is supposed to hide their unhappiness and be a "rugged individualist" and when someone doesn't, people respond with disgust, because to them, this is a person who isn't properly conforming.

And in a society based on force instead of reason (which I think is largely the reality of this world) the assumption is that this apparent plea for help is a trick. They must just want attention. They're just being manipulative. They're trying to commit emotional blackmail... They should be ignored or perhaps even attacked. At best they think the proper response to any display of unhappines is: "Go see a psychiatrist." As opposed to a nondysfunctional community where the response would be other members of the community simply showing some concern, some compassion, etc.

People then argue that it's dangerous for nonprofessionals to get involved as if any display of unhappiness means deep psychological issues (hallucinations, etc? and in trying to help you might say something that's worse than nothing at all ) as opposed to the reality that this is world where we're all struggling to survive and most of us are bit isolated as compared to the manner in which mankind has lived for many thousands of years. And that most people just could use a few more friends. Although occasionally they may need quite a bit more...

Good post summarizing the stuff I've been thinking about lately

Etc.
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Started trying to actually write fiction yesterday. Descended into deep depression for my troubles, ended up thinking of the levels of suicide. I don't have any normal go-kill-myself-suicide in me. I defeated that I think permanently about 18 years ago. But there is stuff like driving down the road and wishing you might wreck the car and die. (I don't wish that.) There is kind of wishing you'd just get some disease and get the pointless boring absurdity over with. Or, working at a hospital, here and there in the past having wished I was a patient, I have done those a few times. Some kind of creeping suicide. I'm in a good mood at the moment as it's morning. Takes a long day of contemplation (futilely trying to write fiction for example) to reach the point of thinking enough, compiling enough of the pointlessness, etc of it all.

But I won't ever do such a thing. No worries there if anyone happens to be reading this blog (which was essentially meant as a private matter exactly so I wouldn't have to worry about such misunderstandings. Endless misunderstandings possible through reading all this.)

But the blog was ultimately a vague experiment and it can go where it may.

suicide, inventing gods

Once there was a man who had good reason to want to kill himself. The good solid physical reason of agony which stretched off in to the future as far as he could see. But he struggled for years contemplating. "Perhaps he'd some day find a way to heal this chronic ailment and so killing himself would have been a mistake?" Finally, finally he did something very creative, that at least partially eased his mind. He decided that an evil "god" had done this to him. That he was that special, that some god had singled him out as someone that it must be made sure was killed. Certainly this was a dangerous thing to convince one's self of; it opens the door to a number of mental illnesses.

But he thought of this evil god, and it gave him such strength. It became a game to simply survive as long as possible despite his agony. And he did just this for years. And finally he healed his body.

The need for the god was now gone. But he hadn't quite so coherently understood what he was doing. And now when other relatively trivial bad things happened in his life, there again was the spectre of that "god". His anger against this "god" was both impressive and barbaric.

So he realized what was going on and got rid of the god.