Peter Dow

[abdoujaparov]

Which post exactly sparks your concerns ? Can you highlight one of his posts ?

I don't want to assume he has a mental illness... I want to take Peter as a person and not a illness...

[Ed209]

it's a bit like beating your head against a wall this

I am not in a position to diagnose Peter, but I am in a position to say what I think on the basis of the evidence I have seen to try to get some balance into things - it's better than calling him an idiot....

[abdoujaparov]

Unless of course he's not mentally ill, and is actually just an idiot

[abdoujaparov]

Like respect for peoples mental health privacy ?

[feral chile]

full circle

It would be nice if people showed some consideration for others. Peter's been called a mentalist, mental, a lunatic, an idiot etc etc. It may just be that there's more to it than that....

[feral chile]

Possibly.., but Sifi explanation seems more likely...

Edited December 7, 2011 by feral chile

[feral chile]

If you ask me to post evidence to show why Peter is work shy I can do it... He has posted TONS of evidence to back this point up... He basically went as far as to saying he will not work with no other reasoning than he says the work is beneath in. Cast iron work shy....

When I asked are resident expert to back up his claims of possible mental health issues he choose not to reply...

ANY of us could have a mental health issue on this forum. I few poster worry me greatly with some of the crazy shit they come out with. Should we presume everyone on here has a mental health issue and then pussy foot around them ? Is it fair to make this suggestion of them ?

Or do we just respond to peoples opinions and take them at face value...

Our resident expert CONFIRMED there is no way of really telling if Peter Dow has a mental health issue so I believe to raise it is distasteful and depersonalises him. He can't even defend himself against the suggestion as it will just be thrown back at him that he would say that wouldn't he....

If Peter wants to inform us of his mental health state then fine. Otherwise I think its rude to assume or suggest anything.

Edited December 7, 2011 by feral chile

[feral chile]

Can I just point out only one person is offering "expert" opinion... No one else has claimed as such...

[feral chile]

Sifi, for example, has validated his opinion on why Dow is workshy / parasite... You might not agree but he has done it... I took the rest has being something of an insult based his dislike for Dows approach to life and not a medical opinion...

Our resident mental expert offered an expert opinion with nothing to back it up than us taking him at his word that he s an expert on such things... It's usally courtesy on a forum to qoute and explain and not just say my opinion rules on high....

There is a difference.

[russycarps]

"I disagree with Peter Dow's opinions and his lifestyle is somewhat unconventional therefore he must have mental health issues" seems to be the thinking of our resident mental health expert.

Sadly he can't make a full diagnosis as he doesn't have his ducking stool to hand.

[eFestivals]

well I shant be sending you a christmas card, but if there's somethign you've got professional knowledge on that might help shed light on an issue then I'd listen to you

The thing is, your diagnosis is based on difference an naff all else.

There's fuck all that you and that discipline can present to show that refusing to accept society's norms is a sign of mental illness, but that's never stopped the likes of you and that discipline from locking people up on that basis. There's a huge history of doing just that, and shows mental illness by the discipline and disciples and not the diagnosed.

Once upon a time, just getting pregnant outside of marriage was enough, and now it's rightly regarded as the scandal that it was. But all the same, psycho-bollocks has yet to apologise for that and is quite happy to continue down the line of the same baseless diagnosis until it'll all blow up in its face yet again.

It seems to me like your twenty years has seen you only learn half of what you should, tho that's the normal 'high' standards that discipline imposes on its disciples.

[eFestivals]

But that doesnt mean that one shouldnt recognise and treat mental illness - what else should one do with people whose behaviour is harmful to themselves or others?

accept that a person has more right to harm themselves than any outsider has to cause them harm with a baseless disgnosis?

Just a thought, like.

[eFestivals]

He basically went as far as to saying he will not work with no other reasoning than he says the work is beneath in. Cast iron work shy....

with the added reason - that has passed you by entirely - that the first £40k he'd earn would be taken from him as the result of a court order.

That says he's not work shy, just someone who has found himself in a particular position and who has rationalised perfectly that there's fuck all point in him playing a game her's never wanted to play anyway because he refuses to accept the rules of the game - rules of a game he has no obligation to blindly accept anyway.

Not even the self-proclaimed mental expert here can join up the dots to reach the rational conclusion that Dow has. Who's mental?

[eFestivals]

In amongst plenty of uninformed opinions.

which includes the whole basis for labelling people as mentally ill.

People don't have to play the game, but it makes them nutters in some eyes if they won't.

[eFestivals]

Didn't pass me by... Read that and knew it is not the truth...

No court passes court orders that practically stops you from living... While he may owe £40k in damages, the amount that can be taken from his wage on a weekly basis would be much lower. He would only needs to demonstrate to the courts his living costs and then they would deduct much less. So considered and rejected...

He has also offered more reasoning to why he wouldn't work other than the court case. Its all in his previous posts.

Oh, I know they wouldn't take it all - which in fact is a greater motivation to not work, and not a lesser one.

Because it means that after being allowed just a tad more than dole money (which would only cover the extra costs of working, if he was lucky) from the minimum wage job you've suggested he should take, it might be decades before he actually saw some benefit from working.

That fact is lessened by the sort of better job that Dow feels himself qualified for (and which his degree and previous work history shows he is [at one level, anyway]) but which he'd be unlikely to get even if he suddenly chose to suck up to society's rules, because of his past. There's no motivation for him to 'reform' even if he wanted to, not a jot - and so the 'harm' to himself that some are seeing is really a full rational consideration.

Some round here has liked banging on about the dangers of allowing people to harm themselves and believes they are expert enough to diagnose things from a few posts on the net ... yet is unable to recognise that harm comes in many forms, including working for no personal benefit for perhaps decades. Who's mental?

[eFestivals]

I take your point about his earning potential being less but he also has to take responsibility for his actions as well surely.

He is - just not on the basis you'd like him to.

His responsibilities start and end with the effect of his actions onto himself. He suffers the consequences of his choices, and if he's happy with those - and it appears that he is - that's it, there's nothing else to say.

I fully get that you'd prefer that he'd take a wider view of his responsibilities (those to society at large), but there's nothing that forces him to and so he's able to choose to ignore them if he wishes.

And when you consider that he doesn't subscribe to the rules of that society anyway (and he doesn't have to, does he? Or are we to all be mindless robots?), then it makes perfect logical sense for him to not support a system that he doesn't support. Lenin did nothing different, even Churchill did nothing different - were they mentally ill too?

Just about everyone chooses not to buy into some of what society says that we all should do (choosing to vote, as a simple example), so it's not like he's doing anything that others don't - the only difference is the parts he chooses to reject against what others might.

We are individuals. We are feel to make individual choices. The consequences are ours alone.

[eFestivals]

I accept what you say... but if you want to rub up against the grain of society then you can expect condemnation, ridicule and ultimately a strong dislike for your actions. And that is what Dow is mostly getting in this thread (ignoring the mental health side track which only one person is pushing).

yep, spot on. I wasn't trying to suggest anything different, I was merely saying he's a right to make his own choices and to suffer the consequences of those choices. If he's happy with that, there's nowt wrong with his thinking.

Of course, he won't be completely happy with everything around that, because society is not ordered in the way he'd like it to be - but that's something different again, and at the end of the day make him no more mentally ill than (say) someone who wishes that their job paid them more than it does.

The whole idea that people who do something which is harmful to themselves are nuts is what is really nuts. It's an idea that only works for those who subscribe to psycho-bollocks by them picking and choosing what to include and exclude for the power it allows them to exert over their socially-determined targets. It's subjectivism and not science.

[eFestivals]

"The judge said Mr Dow had demonstrated quite clearly that he was incapable of accepting any decision that went against him"

We're all likely to have things we're unlikely to accept the righteousness of.

The judge is speaking out of turn. The judge was considering only what was put in front of him to consider, and not "any" aspect of Dow's life.

Dow sees the legal system as "Queen's justice", and so unlawful from democratic principles - and there's no logic that can knock that idea down. So he's of course not going to accept any judgement by that "Queen's justice" is he?

Edited December 8, 2011 by eFestivals

[eFestivals]

It does appear that he enjoys his condition of isolation, and ultimately encourages it

he's got a lot emotionally invested in it all tho. He can't change his mind on it without having to admit that he's been wasteful of his own life.

Last night on TV I saw an ex-squaddie interviewed, who'd lost a leg in Iraq or Afghanistan, and is soon going to lose the other due to some complication. He was saying that the war was worth it - but he would do, wouldn't he? He's not going to admit to himself that it wasn't, because then he also has to admit that his horrific injuries have been for no reason.

No one is going to tell that soldier that he's suffering mental illness.

[eFestivals]

but it's a bit different.

it's really not - it's him having done things that are detrimental to his life, and he's clinging to the part that gives what's happened a rational justification.

It didn't occur to me for a second that he was in denial, or mentally ill...

That's not what I was particularly thinking either - but it's nothing different to Dow in the overall scheme of things, the only difference is in the actual events for each.

Because soldiering is considered by society to be a good thing, the same "bringing harm to yourself" psycho-bollocks ideas are never put against soldiering as they are against the likes of Dow who does things outside of society's accepted norms.

An even weirder one than soldiering is with bankers. They've ruined the world's economy, and the world's response to that is to put the exact people who hold the greatest responsibility for that ruin in greater positions of power vis-a-vis the economy than they had when they ruined it.

I was going to follow that with "you couldn't make it up", but then I realised that's *exactly* what psycho-bollocks does - make it up.

[eFestivals]

The solider could still think it was worth it as much as he might think it was a waste... I suppose...

Yep - if he could step away from himself and look back on himself, he could conclude either depending on his political view of things .... but being personally in the position he is, there's an incrediably strong motivation to self-justify the position he's now in.

I'm not trying to diss that solider by the way, I completely understand why he takes the view that he does.

The purpose in raising it was to show how transient and weak many of the ideas of psycho-bollocks are. It's not a science, it's a sociological view without any scientific basis that only 'works' if everyone has the same view of society - and we know that we don't.

That's not me saying that there's no such thing as mental illnesses, I believe that there are. But we've no meaningful way of defining them, as the inconsistencies in how the ideas are applied gets to show.

[eFestivals]

wouldn't most soldiers have the same view, whether they've lost limbs or not?

Yep. Everyone self-justifies their actions - that's my point.

It's exactly for that reason that Dow clings onto feeling hard done by over his masters degree and what happened around it. In his more realistic moments he might admit to himself that he's been dumb, but overall he's likely to cling to the view he has and refuse to accept different views.

And so what appears to be paranoid and delusional behaviour to someone looking from the outside and working from society's norms is only really the self-justifying process that everyone does.

[fred quimby]

Alternatively Peters paper could be revolutionairy and the authorities and CIA are trying to hush him up. At this very moment he is being chased by dark suited men in fast cars while he avoids them on his raleigh copper. I've seen these types of things in the movies so they must be true

[fred quimby]

And so what appears to be paranoid and delusional behaviour to someone looking from the outside and working from society's norms is only really the self-justifying process that everyone does.

[eFestivals]

Or a spoilt brat, possibly a baby killing spoilt brat

Could be. A spoilt brat self-justifies no differently to anyone else.

And so do those who talk psycho-bollocks. They're no less likely to throw off their baggage than Dow is.

Edited December 8, 2011 by eFestivals