From a societal perspective, the question of mental disease concerns the extent to which a person's imagination / alternative reality imposes a burden on others or otherwise causes harm.
Observe that Progressivism empowers broken individuals to impose themselves on society in a much greater number of ways. The forced accommodation for trans identity is just one. Coddling criminals and malcontents, as is the norm in certain progressive meccas, is no less destructive to healthy society.
The social impact of coddling criminals reveals that the coddlers are just as broken and even more dangerous to society than the people being coddled. What has become apparent is the mentally and emotionally deficient inmates are running the asylum.
What makes Kling and I and other dreamers innocuous is we are conscious of social boundaries and personal limits. We may personally be less productive than we could be. We may offer less constructive benefit to society than is our potential. But we inherently know our limits and what is appropriate to demand others do to appease our dreams.
The sociopaths that dominate progressive politics have no guardrails. They imagine a world free of consequences and they impose that impossibility on others. And then to keep the dream alive they reject all evidence of the harm and social destruction their program causes. These are bad people and it is unclear what if anything will stop them.
It can be said--with only slight exaggeration--that the unifying philosophy of DSM-V is "everyone is weird, and if the weirdness is a problem, then it's a 'disorder'." The DSM has a variety of locutions, "interferes with daily life", "makes if difficult or impossible to ...", but it's basically the same idea. There's a lot of room for judgment.
I'm not a clinician but that's where my mind went in answer to Mr Kling's question. If you yourself or other significant people in your life think the behavior is interfering with your ability to function in society then it's a diagnosis. People we think of as boors and assholes probably score pretty high on a sociopathic index but manage to keep it in check well enough to be annoying (well, maybe more than annoying sometimes) without becoming dysfunctional.
Let me suggest that you try something slightly more “tactile,” such as painting, sculpture, or carpentry. Many people who are internally focused and engage in serious intellectual pursuits have lost touch (sorry ….) with the physical world and would benefit if they returned to it. Good luck.
This subject is outside my zone, but it may be of mild interest to know that during a period of work I spent in Kabul in 2017 ish, the then Deputy British Ambassador to Afghanistan recognised me as an incurable bookworm and told me I should seek out Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. I did so, and it remains amongst hundreds of other unread books on my large shelves. I hereby resolve to read it during the next few months, and will think of this when I do so.
I'm a retired physician. In my 40 year career I've only worked with a couple of people I consider true psychopaths (or sociopaths) and recognized them as such within a few hours of exposure. Both gave off a 'reptilian' vibe and generated a visceral reaction in me, a deep feeling of dread, similar to coming face to face with a predator. Now these two individuals were most likely on the extreme end of the psychopathic spectrum, and one cost the organization a couple of million dollars in legal fees. I've read 4 or 5 books on psychopathy, including Hare's and watched about a dozen YouTube videos. I can say with a fair level of confidence that you are not a sociopath, although the diagnosis cannot be given without an extensive interview, including interviewing childhood friends (did you torture animals, pull wings off flies, etc.) My only advice is to avoid hiring them by doing deep due diligence. If you happen to find yourself working with one of these extreme cases get the hell out and get another job as soon as you can. You cannot cure them. i suspect they are born this way and lack the usual neural connections between the frontal lobe and limbic system, manifesting behaviorally as lack of a conscience.
"What makes the term “sociopath” a diagnosis, and not an epithet?"
Both clinical and vernacular usage describe a person negatively. The difference is that the clinical pathologizing of deviant behavior is taken to absolve the person of blame. Addiction is a disease comes to mind.
If your teacher chastised you for daydreaming too much, you could tell them you have Maladaptive Daydreaming (MD) and the haranguings would probably cease.
"a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience"
I wonder how much of this is contextual to "anti-social". It's good to kill the tribes enemies, wrong to commit murder. Good to engage in certain business practices, wrong to participate in others.
Does "lack of a conscience" work? How wide and deep do your feelings of empathy need to be before you aren't a sociopath?
Maybe it's just "I know it when I see it." I remember reading "Devil in the White City" and that person was clearly a sociopath.
On "lack of conscience" if you haven't checked out Robert Hare's book "Without Conscience", I highly recommend it. He's the guy that developed the Psychopathy Checklist. There's a problem with the terms, though. A lot of "sociopaths" (or people diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder) are actually very emotional, and might have some features of empathy. Hare and others reserve "psychopathy" for the kind of emotionally cold ones with no empathy. You might not be able to tell when interacting with one, but once you know all the details of their life, then I think it's a matter of "I know it when I see it," as you put it.
Daydreaming about the past can consist in disciplined exploration of 'what might have been' if someone -- oneself, or someone in one's world -- had chosen differently in the circumstances. Historians, too, do this when they engage in "counterfactual speculation," in the process of making causal judgments. For example, had the King of Italy chosen to suppress the March on Rome, would fascism not have come to power? This is one way of judging whether the King's decision was a necessary cause of fascism's advent to power.
Similarly, daydreaming about the future can consist in exploration of a range of more or less plausible potential sequences of decisions, events, contingencies.
Plausible daydreams are more captivating than fantastical daydreams. Fantastical daydreams suffer from a shortage of constraints (like much science fiction). I doubt that many adults daydream all day long about what might have been, had Godzilla been their best friend.
Optimal daydreaming can help one come to terms with agency, luck, and its limits. We deem daydreaming a free consumption good, which has opportunity costs. But it can be productive, too.
Even when not productive, daydreaming can be a blessing, a kind of freedom of the mind; for example, for schoolchild bored by a poor teacher, or for a prisoner.
As regards your fiction, don't assume publishers will want to change your work. I had two successful novels published by Random House imprints in the 90s. The first was a literary novel. The editor asked me to change only one word. I refused, and he graciously gave in. The second novel was a blatantly commercial novel, a WWII thriller. The editor asked for some rather large changes. I gladly acquiesced, because I guessed that the publishers knew what they were doing in that department. In the end, the changes made to the thriller were all to the good. But although the "commercial" book sold well, it didn't sell nearly as much as the untouched literary novel, which was translated into four languages and sold around the world. Don't assume that publishers are philistines are won't be able to see the merit - if it's there - in your work. Get an agent.
According to Wikipedia: Stenger had one child -- Page. Stenger died in a car accident in 1993, but his wife survived him until 2010.
The idea that he had a daughter named Stegner Stegner was a bit suspicious, but novelists can be eccentric I guess.
Well, there are some bugs to work out in LLMs.
From a societal perspective, the question of mental disease concerns the extent to which a person's imagination / alternative reality imposes a burden on others or otherwise causes harm.
Observe that Progressivism empowers broken individuals to impose themselves on society in a much greater number of ways. The forced accommodation for trans identity is just one. Coddling criminals and malcontents, as is the norm in certain progressive meccas, is no less destructive to healthy society.
The social impact of coddling criminals reveals that the coddlers are just as broken and even more dangerous to society than the people being coddled. What has become apparent is the mentally and emotionally deficient inmates are running the asylum.
What makes Kling and I and other dreamers innocuous is we are conscious of social boundaries and personal limits. We may personally be less productive than we could be. We may offer less constructive benefit to society than is our potential. But we inherently know our limits and what is appropriate to demand others do to appease our dreams.
The sociopaths that dominate progressive politics have no guardrails. They imagine a world free of consequences and they impose that impossibility on others. And then to keep the dream alive they reject all evidence of the harm and social destruction their program causes. These are bad people and it is unclear what if anything will stop them.
It can be said--with only slight exaggeration--that the unifying philosophy of DSM-V is "everyone is weird, and if the weirdness is a problem, then it's a 'disorder'." The DSM has a variety of locutions, "interferes with daily life", "makes if difficult or impossible to ...", but it's basically the same idea. There's a lot of room for judgment.
I'm not a clinician but that's where my mind went in answer to Mr Kling's question. If you yourself or other significant people in your life think the behavior is interfering with your ability to function in society then it's a diagnosis. People we think of as boors and assholes probably score pretty high on a sociopathic index but manage to keep it in check well enough to be annoying (well, maybe more than annoying sometimes) without becoming dysfunctional.
Let me suggest that you try something slightly more “tactile,” such as painting, sculpture, or carpentry. Many people who are internally focused and engage in serious intellectual pursuits have lost touch (sorry ….) with the physical world and would benefit if they returned to it. Good luck.
Ill second that. I am also a person who spends a lot of the time in the head. And best way to get out of it is to do something physical.
I prefer dancing, or sport like activity ( bjj, yoga)
This subject is outside my zone, but it may be of mild interest to know that during a period of work I spent in Kabul in 2017 ish, the then Deputy British Ambassador to Afghanistan recognised me as an incurable bookworm and told me I should seek out Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. I did so, and it remains amongst hundreds of other unread books on my large shelves. I hereby resolve to read it during the next few months, and will think of this when I do so.
I'm a retired physician. In my 40 year career I've only worked with a couple of people I consider true psychopaths (or sociopaths) and recognized them as such within a few hours of exposure. Both gave off a 'reptilian' vibe and generated a visceral reaction in me, a deep feeling of dread, similar to coming face to face with a predator. Now these two individuals were most likely on the extreme end of the psychopathic spectrum, and one cost the organization a couple of million dollars in legal fees. I've read 4 or 5 books on psychopathy, including Hare's and watched about a dozen YouTube videos. I can say with a fair level of confidence that you are not a sociopath, although the diagnosis cannot be given without an extensive interview, including interviewing childhood friends (did you torture animals, pull wings off flies, etc.) My only advice is to avoid hiring them by doing deep due diligence. If you happen to find yourself working with one of these extreme cases get the hell out and get another job as soon as you can. You cannot cure them. i suspect they are born this way and lack the usual neural connections between the frontal lobe and limbic system, manifesting behaviorally as lack of a conscience.
Confessions of a Sociopath is a book by an alleged sociopath. Maybe a lone counter example of someone who openly identifies as such. Fascinating book.
http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Sociopath-Spent-Hiding-Plain/dp/0307956644/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371329503&sr=1-1&keywords=confessions+of+a+sociopath/marginalrevol-20
Yeah, Sam Vaknin is another. The documentary about him, "I, Psychopath" is pretty chilling at times.
"What makes the term “sociopath” a diagnosis, and not an epithet?"
Both clinical and vernacular usage describe a person negatively. The difference is that the clinical pathologizing of deviant behavior is taken to absolve the person of blame. Addiction is a disease comes to mind.
If your teacher chastised you for daydreaming too much, you could tell them you have Maladaptive Daydreaming (MD) and the haranguings would probably cease.
Sociopath:
"a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience"
I wonder how much of this is contextual to "anti-social". It's good to kill the tribes enemies, wrong to commit murder. Good to engage in certain business practices, wrong to participate in others.
Does "lack of a conscience" work? How wide and deep do your feelings of empathy need to be before you aren't a sociopath?
Maybe it's just "I know it when I see it." I remember reading "Devil in the White City" and that person was clearly a sociopath.
On "lack of conscience" if you haven't checked out Robert Hare's book "Without Conscience", I highly recommend it. He's the guy that developed the Psychopathy Checklist. There's a problem with the terms, though. A lot of "sociopaths" (or people diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder) are actually very emotional, and might have some features of empathy. Hare and others reserve "psychopathy" for the kind of emotionally cold ones with no empathy. You might not be able to tell when interacting with one, but once you know all the details of their life, then I think it's a matter of "I know it when I see it," as you put it.
Some thoughts in defense of daydreaming:
Daydreaming need not involve fantasy.
Daydreaming about the past can consist in disciplined exploration of 'what might have been' if someone -- oneself, or someone in one's world -- had chosen differently in the circumstances. Historians, too, do this when they engage in "counterfactual speculation," in the process of making causal judgments. For example, had the King of Italy chosen to suppress the March on Rome, would fascism not have come to power? This is one way of judging whether the King's decision was a necessary cause of fascism's advent to power.
Similarly, daydreaming about the future can consist in exploration of a range of more or less plausible potential sequences of decisions, events, contingencies.
Plausible daydreams are more captivating than fantastical daydreams. Fantastical daydreams suffer from a shortage of constraints (like much science fiction). I doubt that many adults daydream all day long about what might have been, had Godzilla been their best friend.
Optimal daydreaming can help one come to terms with agency, luck, and its limits. We deem daydreaming a free consumption good, which has opportunity costs. But it can be productive, too.
Even when not productive, daydreaming can be a blessing, a kind of freedom of the mind; for example, for schoolchild bored by a poor teacher, or for a prisoner.
>>On the other hand, if I find an agent and a publisher, they'll try to make it commercial, so they'll change it
You could agree to some changes and decline another, couldn't you?
I recommend you not depend on ChatGPT for anything outside your own area of expertise, and double check that. Hell-Man amnesia.
As regards your fiction, don't assume publishers will want to change your work. I had two successful novels published by Random House imprints in the 90s. The first was a literary novel. The editor asked me to change only one word. I refused, and he graciously gave in. The second novel was a blatantly commercial novel, a WWII thriller. The editor asked for some rather large changes. I gladly acquiesced, because I guessed that the publishers knew what they were doing in that department. In the end, the changes made to the thriller were all to the good. But although the "commercial" book sold well, it didn't sell nearly as much as the untouched literary novel, which was translated into four languages and sold around the world. Don't assume that publishers are philistines are won't be able to see the merit - if it's there - in your work. Get an agent.
A daughter named "Stegner" Stegner? Did ChatGPT-4 nod?
Angle of Repose....I still have burned into my consciousness the image of a man methodically pulling up rose bushes with his bare hands.
*Life is but a dream*