A clarification for the privileged

[noracharles]

An emotion is not an opinion. We can not agree or disagree with an emotion, but we can sympathize (feel the same) or empathize (understand or care about the person's emotions).

An experience is not an opinion. We can not agree or disagree with it, but we can believe or disbelieve, or understand the experience being relayed.

An opinion is an opinion, and we can agree or disagree with it, or argue for or against it.

Someone who has a mental health issue and reacts in an unusual way emotionally may have emotions we can't sympathize with. But that doesn't mean we have to disbelieve their experiences, or disagree with their opinions.

Irrational is a not a synonym for wrong, or "thing I disbelieve" or "thing I disagree with."

Sane is not a synonym for right, or "thing I believe" or "thing I agree with."

And a pertinent example:

"Because of my social anxiety, I don't like having my fic archived on public archives, including the AO3" is not the same as "I have political or philosophical objections to the AO3".

When you use mental health to judge who are right and who are wrong in a disagreement, you are not just arguing for your opinion, you are also contributing to the oppression of all people with mental health issues (including those who agree with you about the matter at hand).

Comments

[elf]

I started to reply to this, and then realized I was tangenting in directions that weren't related to your post, so I posted in my journal instead.

The core concept (inasmuch as I have one) was, I don't like "irrational" being used as a euphemism for "irrelevant and meaningless." Especially not when "irrational" is accurate, as if it were some kind of mental toxin that destroys all rights to participate in a discussion.

[noracharles]

I don't like irrational being used as a euphemism for irrelevant and meaningless either. In my usage of the word, emotions, faith, instincts and intuition are irrational, and I think all people are irrational.

The circular argument that you're not talking about your feelings, you're secretly talking about your opinions and just using feelings to guilt me into agreeing with you, so I can just discount your feelings as the smokescreen they are; and your sneaky opinion that you're trying to convince me of is irrational, based on emotion not logic, so I discount your opinion. Ergo, none of what you just said is relevant or meaningful - that circular argument frustrates me and offends me.

And it is irrational ;-)

Thank you for linking to your post. I was not aware of the specialized religious usage of the word "crazy". I do find some overlap with the common faith of my culture in the idea that to understand the mysteries, one must approach them irrationally. Perhaps grok is a better word than understand.

[elf]

Not so much a specific religious use of the word "crazy," as an acknowledgment: Not all of the insane are gods-touched, but all of the gods-touched are insane. Certain spiritual states are incompatible with rationality.

Oz's article, Between Sanity and Madness, explores how some spiritual experiences are treated as signs of mental illness. (The article was contracted for inclusion in a book; it was pulled very late in the publication process.) In a more academic approach, Mental Illness & Spiritual Initiation was written for an abnormal psych class.

'nuff proselytizing, though.

The circular argument is rather breathtaking in its complexity and whirlpool-vortex ability to grab any shred of an "irrational" statement and subject it to the "you are irrelevant" conclusion.

I had not thought of the discourse as "ableist." I think of mental states, emotional states, as matters of spirituality, and consider the dismissal of some states as a gap in spiritual connection. Ableism hadn't crossed my mind because I'm used to people saying, "that thing you think of as a religious matter, it is not, and you are stupid if you think that's important."

And while that's an offensive and bigoted statement, it's not (directly) ableist. I had been initially putting these conversations in my "vaguely religious but nobody except me is gonna notice that" filter. Move *from* that *to* an awareness of modern psychology's concept of "mentally ill" was odd.

In case it hadn't come across--thank you for these posts, for hosting these discussions. Because along with the other good it does, I need the reminders, the perspective from people who don't parse those notions as religious.

[aquaeri]

I don't know if this helps, but I regard "mental illness" as a social/cultural construct. Yes, there are some things we call mental illness that would probably be considered mental illness (or the equivalent category space) in any culture/society, but it gets really fuzzy around the edges and some things Western culture considers mental illness wouldn't be thought of that way in other cultures, vice versa I believe some patterns of behaviour/belief that are thought of as normal in Western culture would be regarded as mental illnesses in other cultures/societies.

I believe this based on my own experience with mental illness (which I of course think wouldn't be, in a different culture), and by analogy with physical illnesses. Anyway, it makes perfect sense to me that "some spiritual experiences are treated as signs of mental illness" - it's all a matter of whose definition of "mental illness" is in play.

[elf]

It helps.

There's "crazy," as in seriously bonkers totally nonfunctional broken-mindedness... and then there's "crazy," as in weird and different and makes everyone nearby wonder what drugs you're on (or off), but not danger-to-self-and-others, not incapable of making conscious choices, not unable to establish & maintain social relationships.

And we don't have a decent set of vocab for distinguishing between the two. They're both lumped under "mentally ill" with a pack of technical terms that even the experts don't consense on the meanings of. (And modern psychology treats all religion as kind of benign delusion, except when you have too much of it and it's considered a dangerous delusion.)

[aquaeri]

Yes, it's kinda funny that "mentally ill" is this big lump of scariness, when we can easily distinguish "physically ill" into subcategories like "in the ICU" or "has well-managed diabetes".

I really enjoyed this review/analysis of 'exporting American mental illness'. I think it added a lot to the article itself.