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A Quick Hello From One Who Has Healed

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Re: A Quick Hello From One Who Has Healed

Postby TheLord » Tue May 26, 2015 6:19 am

VioletAasA wrote:Go take a f. nap.


Do not abuse me on public forum and let's not derail the thread with your agenda. ( I didn't report you this time)
Last edited by TheLord on Tue May 26, 2015 6:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: A Quick Hello From One Who Has Healed

Postby Truth too late » Tue May 26, 2015 6:19 am

realityhere wrote:Are we just doing all this as scientific inquiry for ourselves or for a greater purpose? I think it's for a greater purpose, asking that age-old question, where do we come from?


It's going to get interesting pretty soon. Humankind has discovered 99% of what it knows in just the last 100 years or so. Moore's Law (computing power will double every 2 years) has held true. Today, we're at "the knee of the curve" where an exponential graph goes vertical.

There is a growing "transcendence" movement that believes within the next 20-30 years computational capacity will equal the human brain and we'll be able to "offload" our memories to a computer and live forever.

That crystallizes the question: are we merely organic matter with no spiritual dimension? If a computer could act upon your memories in the way you do, making similar judgments based upon your past experience, etc. Would that really be you?

We're going to know more about the spiritual realm soon. Maybe with quantum computing they'll find wormholes and stuff into other dimensions/universes which will explain what we take as spiritual sensation. If not, that "transcendent" stuff is gonna start looking like Book of Revelation "mark of the beast" stuff. The "upgrade" to computer life might not be optional. The whole premise of evolution is survival of the fittest. If a few of these guys "upgrade" to robotic/quantum capability, they're gonna run simulations in their minds that would take decades for you or I, and rapidly conclude biologic life is unsustainable and a threat to these clean, shiney do-dads.

But, it's interesting to think you could unload your mind to a computer and "exist" forever. Would you want to live forever? (Not me. I don't like how I feel.). But, if our thought processes are computer processes, it seems like the disturbed thoughts could be identified and "fixed."

Would that still be you? Would thought-process "surgery" become like cosmetic surgery and we all gravitate to a single ideal personality? A "super intelligence?"

It's going to get interesting very soon. All this stuff's going to be on the table.
I never seen you looking so bad my funky one / You tell me that your superfine mind has come undone (Steely Dan, Any Major Dude)
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Re: A Quick Hello From One Who Has Healed

Postby VioletAasA » Tue May 26, 2015 1:21 pm

TheLord wrote:
VioletAasA wrote:Go take a f. nap.


Do not abuse me on public forum and let's not derail the thread with your agenda. ( I didn't report you this time)


Like father like son.
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Re: A Quick Hello From One Who Has Healed

Postby TheLord » Tue May 26, 2015 1:28 pm

If your agenda is done now can we get back to the OP?

I am still waiting for OPs response to different posts, hopefully will soon get reply from him.
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Re: A Quick Hello From One Who Has Healed

Postby VioletAasA » Tue May 26, 2015 1:41 pm

TheLord wrote:If your agenda is done now can we get back to the OP?

I am still waiting for OPs response to different posts, hopefully will soon get reply from him.


You are derailing the traid.
Again.
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Re: A Quick Hello From One Who Has Healed

Postby TheLord » Tue May 26, 2015 2:54 pm

You hv said some of the most interesting things. But I think your thing about dog sensing, having sixth sense will be outright rejected by Ns. True narcissism is opposite of true spirituality. True narcissism is very close to fake spirituality.

Truth too late wrote:
Akuma wrote:Most people that I've met on my religious journeys didn't really [want to] test the reality of their beliefs.


You make a lot of good points. I've seen excesses too (including my own). But, must everything be non-falsifiable in order to be believed or helpful?

For example, I personally witnessed a dog experiencing a sixth sense, knowing something without seeing it (the passing of his pack mate). I can't prove how that happened. It was something beyond physical processes subject to reality testing. It's not something I heard, embellished by someone else. I saw it with my own eyes.

It could be that such things are simply a physical reality we haven't discovered yet.

When I consider how 90% of human knowledge was acquired in the past 100 years, I'm more inclined to humbly contemplate what I don't know rather than engage in "regularity chauvinism" about what I do know. That is driven home when I consider how scientists are close to developing quantum computing which will solve problems in 10 minutes that would take a million years using today's computers. Who knows what they'll discover when they turn that on. Especially when they believe the power of quantum computing comes from using parallel universes to perform calculations(!)

To me, it moderates my narcissistic mindset to consider how I don't know everything.

I agree that the intolerant, dogmatic, exclusive religiosity may contribute to narcissism. ("I'm connected to the Big Guy. I'm special. I must kill those who spread false doctrines in order to save the souls of other special people."). But, I don't get that the OP is doing that. He could be using his spirituality as a substitution for real, vulnerable, one-on-one relationships. I guess I could do the same thing when I contemplate the Large-Scale Structure of the universe.

But, either of those activities are subordinating as well because they acknowledge my (and his) insignificance in the scheme of things. It can even be relaxing to realize I can't know everything. That I'm not in control of everything. That there may be a destiny or some attribute of me that exists beyond the physical me I can see. He may get the same thing from demoting himself to helping more people than he can help, who have more problems than he does. That in itself is vulnerability. Maybe the best he can do right now?

It can put things in context, such as when I feel I'm not getting mirrored the way I need to be. Ponder where we exist in the known universe and it's almost funny that I need to see myself a certain way. That I'll give people the silent treatment because they didn't help me with my inner lie.

I suspect there is some narcissistic supply I get from thinking about those things. Satisfaction from stimulating my intellect. But, I think it's also humbling. I can't make a mirror large enough to see myself in that stuff. I give up! :)

I get the impression the OP could be doing something similar. Living for something larger, demoting himself, re-prioritizing values (spending 10 hours a week on the street helping others rather than commuting in his car, frustrated, alone, pursuing material possessions and never fitting in, never being good enough.).

Reducing spirituality down to only narcissistic maladjustment could itself be an expression of regularity chauvinism?

(Again, this is a thought provoking discussion. Don't take me as being defensive or argumentative. Nor am I going to sell all my stuff and join the OP in Seattle.).
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Re: A Quick Hello From One Who Has Healed

Postby Truth too late » Tue May 26, 2015 11:24 pm

TheLord wrote:True narcissism is very close to fake spirituality.


That's a great way to put it. An N is either god to himself (objectifying himself), or finds spirituality/religion as a way to hear what they want (objectifying god). I could be doing the latter combining science and spirituality. I can understand god! 8)

I just realized something funny. When I wasn't self aware I disliked "New Age" spirituality which generally believes we're all gods, we should avoid others who conflict with our harmonics (the vibe), all paths are equivalent. I liked a more exclusive, judgemental view of spirituality (black/white thinking, my uniqueness). I also liked the condescension of helping the less fortunate rather than shunning them as being incompatible with my path (such "lessor" people were a perfect source of supply to me, maintaining my sense of uniqueness).

That's funny because I would have said New Age was more narcissistic and selfish. So, it really is about the person and what they get from their other-worldly philosophy.
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Re: A Quick Hello From One Who Has Healed

Postby Truth too late » Wed May 27, 2015 2:03 am

TheLord wrote:You hv said some of the most interesting things. But I think your thing about dog sensing, having sixth sense will be outright rejected by Ns.


I'm glad you find it interesting. I just thought of another, more relevant example of the undeniable reality of a psychic/spiritual/other-worldly realm:

Hans Berger invented EEG (brainwave recording) in the 1920s after questioning whether the brain emits thoughts that can be received by others. Two decades earlier he experienced a near-death incident which his sister immediately sensed miles away, and instructed their father to inquire about via telegram.

What is now a mainstream medical tool was inspired by what appears to be an irrefutable example of spiritual (extra physical) activity. His invention was ridiculed, but finally accepted in the mid 1930s. He advanced our understanding of the physical world -- but we still know nothing about what he was trying to discover.

This also ties into what I said about the growing Transhuman movement.[1] Also the exponential curve of knowledge/technology going vertical. Less than 100 years ago Berger discovers brain waves. Today, companies are developing implantable chips to read (and inject) electrical activity within the brain. They've already experimented on cats, seeing what a cat sees while it watches a television western. (Disturbing to me was that it looked like cats "fill in the blanks," substituting cat faces for human figures on the screen, forcing reality to match their ability to comprehend. Could we be doing the same thing with spiritual or extra-dimensional reality? We can't comprehend it so we anthropomorphize it?).

This stuff is going to get real very quickly.

Something I read recently: the brain exists for survival only. It has shrunk by 10% over the last 20,000 years as humans have learned to cooperate, use tools, cultivate land. Having a large brain is an unnecessary expense when survival is not at stake. (The brains of domesticated animals have shrunk similarly.).

We can't biologically evolve fast enough to keep up with the shift from mental achievement to technological. For example, we don't need as much brain to coordinate going to the library after work, searching through the card catalog, making an inter-library loan request, remembering to go back two weeks later. We just open a new tab in Google and search for [url=history of postcards in india]"the history of postcards in India."[/url]. We don't even have to remember what we read. We can always go back with equal ease.

This ties into the transhumanist view that the jump from biological to technological "life" will be evolutionary, but abrupt. A replacement. An immediate step into domestication?

It's scary because it's coming fast. But, interesting. What if we're like that cat superimposing cat faces on the western movie it's watching on TV? What if our biologic limitations preclude us from seeing a spiritual dimension? We project our palsied understanding on what we see? Could living within a computer (with a quantum brain, capable of learning in 10 minutes everything the human race has learned in 10 million years) be a spiritual existence? Omniscience? Immutable (existing as a basic form of fundamental and indestructible matter: electrons and photons)? Omnipresent? Able to clone yourself? Transport yourself at the speed of light?

I'm not optimistic about how that's going to turn out. But, it seems undeniable there is something more out there. I think it's going to become evident over the next 20-40 years. Either a miraculous metamorphisis into a new "being." Or, an apocalypse (a super-intelligence that engages in genocide. Man's quest for spiritual-like attributes gone awry.).

I've just about talked myself into selling all my stuff and moving to Seattle with the OP. :)

[1] In earlier posts I mistakenly referred to it as transcendental. That's unrelated. There is an excellent movie called Transendence which is about a transhuman experiment. I got the words mixed up.
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Re: A Quick Hello From One Who Has Healed

Postby Akuma » Wed May 27, 2015 4:50 am

Truth too late wrote:
Akuma wrote:Most people that I've met on my religious journeys didn't really [want to] test the reality of their beliefs.


You make a lot of good points. I've seen excesses too (including my own). But, must everything be non-falsifiable in order to be believed or helpful?


I'm not saying we should base all of our life experiences on double-blind randomized studies.
What I am saying though is that when we do have a problem, we can be sure that if there is a solution if either comes from the work of experienced craftsmen or from the work of science. This was actually what I told the Buddhist community when I left, that there simply isn't a problem at all with which I would go to a religious figure or to a spiritual belief and actually get help.

For example, I personally witnessed a dog experiencing a sixth sense, knowing something without seeing it (the passing of his pack mate). I can't prove how that happened. It was something beyond physical processes subject to reality testing. It's not something I heard, embellished by someone else. I saw it with my own eyes.


I was in an online prayer circle once, doing Medicine-Buddha for a person at the other end of the world who was in a hospital and I had a vision of the person having a heart failure, I heard the beeping, I heard the tumult of the doctor reviving her. So after I finished the ceremony I went online to see if anything happened. Turns out - the person had a heart failure and was revived.
But the mere presence of phenomena that we cannot explain doesn't mean they exist in a way that we believe they do, or that we can make use of them. Like - I can put water on the oven and turn it on, the water boils every time. But I dont have cool visions every time I meditate, and I certainly cant produce remote viewing on will - in addition the studies that have been done in those regards all turned out negative or in the placebo range, so the question is why do people still grasp onto that stuff?
I came to drop religion off when I did a little experiment back when I was nearing the conclusion that Buddhism doesn't know a way to enlightenment. The idea was rather simple, namely when there is truth behind it, it will stand eventhough I don't believe. So I stopped believing for a week and I never returned to believing.
From that experience I gather that belief is like a magnetic pull, you put it in the centre and then concepts are drawn to it and assemble around it, they start to fit into certain holes, the fitting itself is misinterpreted as having to do with a reality not with a natural pull of the belief and sooner or later you have so many concepts, equivalences, apparent syncronicities etc. that you totally forget that it was you who put this pull there in the first place.
A most obvious example for this is numerology, it was displayed nicely in Darran Aronofkys "Pi", where the protagonists math teacher tells him that "if he concentrates on a number, becomes obsessed with a number, he is going to see that number everywhere".

But, either of those activities are subordinating as well because they acknowledge my (and his) insignificance in the scheme of things. It can even be relaxing to realize I can't know everything. That I'm not in control of everything. That there may be a destiny or some attribute of me that exists beyond the physical me I can see. He may get the same thing from demoting himself to helping more people than he can help, who have more problems than he does. That in itself is vulnerability. Maybe the best he can do right now?


Well this is an interesting and I guess often overlooked aspect of the narcissistic disorders, namely that it creates stress when you feel you are the only being truly alive, responsible for everything, possibly evaluated by externalized superego structures etc. But I think its kinda the crux of the issue, that if you are actually a pwNPD the powerless state creates even more stress. pwNPD - like pwBPD btw - have a black-and-white setup in their minds which creates enormous anxiety when faced with the black side of it. You can't just switch into that and accept it or reduce it imo.

I get the impression the OP could be doing something similar. Living for something larger, demoting himself, re-prioritizing values (spending 10 hours a week on the street helping others rather than commuting in his car, frustrated, alone, pursuing material possessions and never fitting in, never being good enough.).


The funny thing is that people always create their own systems. If you honestly study Buddhism for example what you discover is that Buddhism doesn't teach unity with God, Buddhism doesn't teach superstition, eternal life, unity with everything or all that mumbojumbo. It teaches Anatta - nothing has a self or soul, everything is an inconstant stream of impersonal particles and ultimately everything is beyond knowing. And enlightenment is realizing this as fact which for them sets the stage for the consciousness to stop accumulating matter - a kind of permadeath.
So from both this and the psychological perspective, "something larger" is really just "something else", it's subjective and in his case self-contradictory.
And again - spirituality isn't needed to help others. This forum f.e. isn't based on faith as far as I can see, but still people write here.
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Re: A Quick Hello From One Who Has Healed

Postby Truth too late » Wed May 27, 2015 6:15 am

Akuma wrote:And again - spirituality isn't needed to help others.


I thought we were discussing whether it was harmful. Necessity implies exclusivity, projecting one's values onto others. ("You can't be well without spirituality.").

Akuma wrote:if there is a solution it either comes from the work of experienced craftsmen or from the work of science. This was actually what I told the Buddhist community when I left, that there simply isn't a problem at all with which I would go to a religious figure or to a spiritual belief and actually get help.


Going back to the increasingly anticipated (or dreaded) ability to "offload" human minds (neural networks) to computers capable of processing faster than a human mind, if you could do that and eliminate the biologic copy, would that be you in the literal "being" sense of existence, self-awareness, etc?

I'm having trouble understanding if you believe:

  1. There is no spiritual side of life. Forming values from consideration of the non-existent is unproductive -- likely counterproductive.
  2. There may be an undiscovered part of the physical world (which people commonly identify as "spiritual" or super-natural), but because it can't be proven or understood, it can't productively (reliably) contribute to one's values.

Either view is fine. It seems like the question of "cloning" to a machine focuses how real #1 would be. :)

From my perspective, as long as #2 is an option (and it is to me, considering what I witnessed myself, and the story of the discovery of EEG) I can't say it's as delusional as going through life with a mind open to something that doesn't exist. I couldn't say as you did that "something larger" is just "something else." The fact that it is still not understood in this day and age when so much has been discovered puts it on the "something exceptional" scale.

If there are other choices, please explain. I'm not trying to box you into a false choice. The above two are what I could gather.

I suppose there is a #2a which would say, "because it can't guide values in a reliable way, it will cause more harm than good." I wouldn't agree because that would sound equally exclusive and projecting as "nobody can have legitimate values without spirituality." I think it depends on the person.
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