Hacker News Reader

Comment by montenegrohugo | Hacker News Reader

What if you grow up around insane people? What if you are daily surrounded by people with faulty reasoning and illogical, biased conclusions? Would you not adopt these neural mechanics too?

You are a product of your environment, and if your environment is insane, you will be too.

View on HN

Autonomy and self direction in chaotic environments are important. Having a strong value system as a foundation for which to make decisions on is essential. It's essential that this value system is not compromised, because loss of identity, loss of self, loss of autonomy, loss of direction. Chaotic environments comprising of selves direct the individual self when values are lost. It's important to have a soul, and a heart. It's important to avoid judgement for differentness, or sameness. Everything is important when something has been lost.

There's only so much a singular self can handle from an environment that is chaotic. Insane is generally not a nice word. Social environment in relation to individual.

It could just as easily be the opposite - seeing insane people could make you less likely to go insane because you see how damaged they are and avoid it as much as you can. Ultimately it still boils down to you and your own brain, not anyone else.

I am vehemently against that notion.

If your only point of contact is people who speak spanish, you will never learn english. If your only point of contact is people that think that the world is flat, then most likely you will grow up believing the same. If everyone around you is insane, then it is exceedingly like you will be too.

Again, my belief is that you are a product of 1. Your environment and 2. Your genetic programming. And humans are social creatures, if the people that surround you are all in a certain way, you will probably tend that way too.

Your argument depends on a huge, untenable set of assumptions. Insanity is not comparable to languages or beliefs, they are severe dysfunctions, some or many of them genetically linked. Non-dysfunctional children raised in such an environment will certainly adopt odd behaviours thinking it's normal, but it's a huge stretch to say they will actually somehow adopt insanity.

> Insanity is not comparable to languages or beliefs, they are severe dysfunctions, some or many of them genetically linked.

I don't know man, I'm not exactly for the idea that insanity is a "social construct", but after reading this paper (http://hci.ucsd.edu/102b/readings/WeirdestPeople.pdf only the first two pages are the actual paper), I'd say that a lot of behavior in different cultures would be legimitately called "insane" in ours.

And besides that paper, there's also this meme flying around that "schizophrenics used to be shamans", although I don't know how believable that is.

Anyway, my point being, even insanity isn't exactly definable. Although I do agree stuff like a rabies infection, extremely severe aggressive and psychotic disorders would likely be considered "insane" in all cultures.

What separates Insanity from normal healthy individuals is the ability to cope with normal society. If you believe you must wash your hands 20 times a day that's a problem even if you have nothing biologically wrong with you.

Except for people who do work that requires them to wash their hands that often (or more), and people who live in cultures where that is part of some daily religious ritual, and...

Actual hand-washing 20+ times for 2+ minutes each every day is extremely rare. Sanitizing for 20 seconds is a different story. Further, doctors don't do this on their days off which ends up being really important.

In the first case you would severely irritate the skin and end up with noticeable medical problems. Which IMO is a reasonable line for sanity in terms of day to day impact based on belief vs reality.

That said, sure there is something of an exception for religion.

The fact that science as a discipline exists is a distinct counter example to this view. Without some degree of flexibility in humanities belief structure we as a species would never change at all, which is quite obviously not the case.

>Ultimately it still boils down to you and your own brain, not anyone else.

Are you really suggesting one's social environment has no effect on one's social behavior? Because that is obviously false.

No, sorry, I'm suggesting mental illness comes down to your own brain. Social behaviour is different and definitely influenced by others.

There is also no proof that mental illness is solely produced by the brain and not at all influenced by the social environment

Reply on news.ycombinator.com