Where are the goddamn PHILOSOPHERS?
Idiot headless-line:

Susceptibility to mental illness may have helped humans adapt over the millenia.

I didn't bother to read the brainless article. Headline is enough.

If we still had any philosophers, they would instantly recognize the category error. Philosophers would instantly see that a definition is NOT an innate characteristic.

"Mental illness" is NOT an inherent property of people.

"Mental illness" is a very recent set of criteria, and the criteria are always changing. Up till 10 years ago, homosexuality was a "mental illness". Now disapproval of homosexuality is a "mental illness".

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Over the millenia, humans have been able to adapt well because



It's tautologous. When you have a wide range of talents and tendencies and tastes, new niches can be filled by previously underused skills, and new problems can be solved by previously underused tendencies. A species with no variability has no way to adapt.



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Over the millenia, every culture had norms and brackets for acceptable behavior.

These norms exist because



Civilizations that SUCCEED have one thing in common. They make ROOM and make USE of a wide range of behaviors. They attempt to sacralize or utilize the outer ranges that would otherwise ruin the civilization. Channel violent men into warriors. Channel sneaky people into salesmen. Channel introverts into night watchmen. Turn loss into profit, turn death into life. Make more life, more beauty, more value.

Repeating the perfect description in sharia:

The Almighty has created this world as a trial and test for man; every person has therefore been made to depend on others for his living. No one in this world can live independently as regards his needs and requirements. A person of the highest rank turns to the most ordinary to fulfill them. In other words, every single person has an important role to play, without which this world cannot continue.

This role depends upon his abilities, intelligence and inclinations as well as upon his means and resources, which vary from person to person. In fact, it is because of this variation that a society comes into being. Consequently, laborers and workers, artisans and craftsmen, tillers and peasants are as indispensable as scholars and thinkers, savants and sages, leaders and rulers. Every individual is an integral component of the society and contributes to its formation according to his abilities.

By creating various classes of people, the Almighty is testing whether the big and the small, the high and the low create a society based on co-operation and respect or create disorder in the world by disregarding the role each person has been ordained to play.

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Civilizations that FAIL do the opposite. They treat most variation as witchcraft or criminality or "mental illness".



They remove most of our talents and tastes and tendencies from workforce participation and lifeforce participation. The unused people are shoved out into the wilderness or killed or imprisoned or kept on the dole. The first two disposal methods are relatively cheap, so a culture that uses those methods will simply lose adaptation. The latter two are horribly expensive. Cultures that use the latter two disposal methods are rigidly nonadaptable AND bankrupt.

Labels: Make or break, Natural law = Sharia law, skill-estate

  ¶ 7:28 AM