Definition of delusion - APA

The American Psychiatric Asssociation defines "delusion" as the following:

"A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary."

As any clinician can attest, delusional patients often suffer from religious delusions.

Nature has me thinking...

about the oppressive nature of city living, how it deadens our senses, and impoverishes our soul.
How it turns ours our day-to-day living into day-to-day dying, into a relentless grind from which the the mind, the body and soul has no escape.

It makes me think deeper about our overall societal, economic, and cultural infrastructure that keep the masses oppressed with hopes of a better, shinier future when nothing could be further from the truth. How can societies as a whole have a better future without some degree of solidarity: recognition of the exploitative forces which then translates into collective action. If we don't allow suffering to speak in the first place, how can we even ever dream of achieving a better future?

It is as if everyone is sleepwalking into catastrophe while the corporate elites, and wall street oligarchs suck the blood out of everyone's livelihood. But we are ah-so-busy to even notice it, right?
Let's just keep lullying ourselves with our "weapons of mass distraction." Keep those ipods, cell phones, computers, tv sets plugged in people. It just must be all those shiny, bright screens that might be blinding us, after all.

How Science Can Determine Human Values: Sam Harris Book

I took a copy of Sam Harris' Book with me on vacation; I knew I'd need an oasis of rationality amidst the irrationality.
The main premise of the book is that science and science alone (that's right - get off your asses scientists!) can determine peaks and valleys of the human moral landscape. For the longest time, scientists have remained silent on how values guided by science, and not religion or hardened supersititious beliefs, can determine the well-being of earthlings.

In the end, religion has failed to maximize our well-being. Beliefs predicated upon irrational thought do not give rise to societies that are happy, confident, equal. Religious societies do not flourish as irrational thoughts/beliefs have real, irrational consequences. How we ought to behave morally falls within the purview of science.

Reading Sam Harris' new book, to quote Lawrence Krauss, has been akin to "drinking water from a cool stream on a hot summer day. He has the rare ability to frame arguments that are not only stimulating, they are downright nourishing."

Misery, Inc

Funny name for a subject heading, but I've had these words on my mind since venturing out of my apart hotel to visit the veggie/fruit bazaar of the week. I overheard a young British girl talking to her puppy in a sweet, tender tone, and it did strike me as unusual. I realized how accustomed I have become to the distant, belligrent behavior of Turkish people that her innocent behaviour struck me as out-of-this-world. It is definately a dog-eat-dog world here; altta kalanin cani ciksin misali. It would be down right naive to suggest that the US is not free of the dark side of humanity, but with money, one can easily isolate herself/himself from fellow beings. I've done so for the last three years. Otherwise, it is too much to bear as a sensitive melancholic.

I've had the word "discrimination" on my mind as well. Discrimination, based on class, gender and yes, skin color is well and alive. The vast majority of its people are unhappy. It doesn't take years of sociological training to observe that discriminaiton lends itself to misery. Inequality breeds unhappiness.

Part II

Here is another pearl of wisdom I've been longing to insert into my blog:

There does not seem to be a great deal of disparity between an uncivilized and civilized woman, but a world of difference between a civilized man versus uncivilized man. Uncivilized man is no more than a shaved ape.

I try to balance the excess of negativity about humans with the lightness the natural world offers. I swam in the deep waters of Akyaka, eyes wide open beneath the sea, observing friendly fish. I run in the forest, dodging sexually-repressed Turkish men between the ages of 18-25, taking note of turtles, lizards, different varieties of spiders, and large size insects with protruding eyes, and lips. No kidding, insects have faces! They are adorable. I should have studied the world of insects instead of concentrating my efforts on the study of human mammals.

I will see if I can post photos of forms of life in this Gulf at a later date. Animals are certainly worth it. But they are to be experienced directly with all our senses, not just to be read about.

Animals whom we have made our slaves, we do not consider our equal.
Charles Darwin

Turkey

I've been in Turkey for exactly a month now.
It has been an emotionall taxing process for me. The first three weeks I felt somewhat physically ill from culture shock. One of the first things one finds shocking is the level of gender inequality. Patriarchy in this country, just as any Islamic country, reigns supreme. Men, of all ages, roam the streets usually in groups of three, four in that boastful, confident taking charge of everything and anything in their way. Women are almost always with family, or with boyfriend/spouse. It is a rarity to encounter a strong, independent woman, alone, confident free. By all mannerisms, it is clear that women are socialized and conditioned into being passive, uncritical vessels for the needs of men- perhaps even the greatest cheerleaders of patriarchy.

Surely, had it not been for the Turkey's revolutionary leader Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s, and 30s, women's rights would have fared worse. I am not an expert on the issue at hand, but I'll venture to say that Turkey would have had precisely the same fate as its Middle Eastern neighbors.

I realize more than ever how fortunate we are as Western women to have the rights (and consequently respect/dignity that comes with rights - men in Turkey treat women with as much respect as the poor dogs in the street), but we certainly have a long more way to go in equality.
With the present state of affairs in the US, achieving true equality seems more fantasy than reality.

All is not bad. I am presently sitting atop a balcony overlooking mountains whilst my ears pick up the songs of crickects. There is a lone cat slowly making her way to the cement home across from the cobbled street. Tonight the chirping of crickets is interrupted by a distant, and yet loud enough, sound of drums which is typically played in Turkish villagean weddings. I can't rejoice; I am thinking of the limitations, obligations, responsibilties, oppression that await the bride.