# Did Wagner have Borderline Personality Disorder?



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

For well over a century attempts to reconcile "Wagner the horrible human being" with "Wagner the musical genius" have been made so much so that program notes ought to begin with a note on what a terrible person Wagner was before they may get into a description of the brilliance of the piece to be performed. Even Wagner enthusiasts seem to accept this premise before proceeding with apologetics to minimize the "damage".

This article makes a pretty good case for Wagner having BPD: http://www.the-wagnerian.com/2012/08/the-psychopathology-of-richard-wagner.html?m=1

Having personally become involved with somebody with BPD in the past few months, I have done a fair deal of research on this disorder to the point that I think it is absurd to think that Wagner was NOT on the spectrum of having a major personality disorder, elements of narcissism and bipolarism are there, but having dealt first hand with the manner with which BPD sufferers are unable to control their emotions, have an intense and irrepressible fear of abandonment, and either idolize or completely devalue others with no "grey area", the case is strongest I think that Wagner suffered BPD to the point of being obvious. What do you think, especially those with exposure to this disorder in real life (not the easiest disorder to understand if it hasn't been experienced)?

In this case, Wagner deserves more sympathy than scorn.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The guy had personality problems, no question. I've only known one person who admitted to having been diagnosed with BPD, and I was glad to break off that relationship before it got too ugly, or rather just as it was getting ugly. Wagner's case seems plausible to an ignoramus like me. But I've always been more inclined to sympathy than scorn when considering the immense burden of knowing you're possessed by a ferocious genius that's destined to change the face of culture. Yes, he did actually know that. The adage about walking in someone else's shoes before judging? If I put my feet into Wagner's shoes I'd need a ladder to climb out.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

I'm not so sure he was internally convinced of his genius. He clearly alternated between excessive self-reassured ambition and total hopelessness. There's evidence he did not have a well-formed self-identity. In his earlier years he idolized Bellini and Meyerbeer, transcribing and imitating them. After he failed in France, his idolization rapidly gave way to total devaluation of the French, Bel canto, Grand Opera, and Jews as less than worthless: the desecration of civilization itself. From there he developed his "cultural revolution" by adopting and promoting the German identity. The only reason Wagner wasn't a colossal failure is because he found the perfect partner to be co-dependent with a BDP: the enabler Cosima Liszt who lay down at his feet in total devotion and afforded him some personal stability, as well as financier King Ludwig, who was regarded as outright mad at his time but more likely was schitoztypal. It's a thin line between genius and mental illness.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Couchie said:


> I'm not so sure he was internally convinced of his genius. He clearly alternated between excessive self-reassured ambition and total hopelessness. There's evidence he did not have a well-formed self-identity.


Nonetheless, he worked at gargantuan projects like the Ring cycle and his dream theater at Bayreuth with relentless, single-minded determination for decades. It's hard to see him as floundering in uncertainty.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

amfortas said:


> Nonetheless, he worked at gargantuan projects like the Ring cycle and his dream theater at Bayreuth with relentless, single-minded determination for decades. It's hard to see him as floundering in uncertainty.


That might be neither here nor there given the extremely short duration of the mood changes experienced by people with BPD. It's not like major depressive or bipolar disorder characterized by long periods of depression and unproductivity. Supposing Cosmia was there to nurse him from his slumps, he wouldn't have turned to the self-sabotage typical of BPD and could be successful over the long run. People with this disorder can be very ambitious and high-achieving. In the words of my friend, he feels like he constantly needs to be "on the up and up" and has a very successful career in banking.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

One person's "borderline personality disorder" may be another's "outsized personality." Think about Beethoven, for instance, who treated his friends shabbily and often violently, while Wagner usually only bored them to death with his endless monologues, and occasionally a stolen wife here and there...


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

amfortas said:


> Nonetheless, he worked at gargantuan projects like the Ring cycle and his dream theater at Bayreuth with relentless, single-minded determination for decades. It's hard to see him as floundering in uncertainty.


Hallelujah to this. :tiphat:


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Couchie said:


> It's a thin line between genius and mental illness.


This is, of course, old stuff as far as Wagner is concerned. As early as 1872 a Munich psychiatrist concluded the composer suffered from 'chronic megalomania, paranoia......and moral derangement.' Just how he came to these conclusions is unclear. However, I would point out that BPD is not classified as a mental illness, in that it cannot be treated with drugs. It is (as stated) a personality disorder. Just how much we should be sympathetic to Wagner is debatable as our prisons house many people with personality disorders who have committed horrendous crimes. I had to deal with a guy who certainly had a personality disorder and regularly beat his wife up. I must confess my sympathy was more with his wife when I saw her bruises!


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Just a quick, general remark, since I don´t have enough knowledge on Wagner´s biographical details, besides knowing that he surely had some moral flaws, could be a burden to others, etc. - 1) there´s no doubt that some recent examples of psychological diagnosis are going through an inflation period these days, and 2) that their content or scientific validity tends to revised with regular intervals. 

Currently, for example, an incredible share of school pupils here in my country are seen as candidates for a certain diagnosis and special treatment - partly the result of a society increasingly focused on shaping cost-effective and disciplined individuals.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

I think he almost had it. Borderline borderline personality disorder, if you will.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

I have two things to say on this. 

First, I believe all these "disorders" are invented in order to cover up for jerks (real jerks such as the guy in the post above who beat his wife): you cannot be responsible for what you do if it is a disease that prompts you to do it, right? And if it's a disease that prompts you to do criminal acts, then you are not a perpetrator, but a poor victim that deserves compassion. Besides, it helps the doctors rake in hundreds of dollars per hour in counselling and thousands of dollars in pills. It's a huge snake oil industry, basically. 

Second, I also believe Wagner was a far better human being then the absolute majority of the modern "moral apostles". These "moral apostles" are sitting in judgement on a dead man who cannot defend himself any more, while they themselves with all their moral posturing have not produced anything that will inspire their fellow man or make their fellow man happy.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Didn't Bismarck's brainchild Germany have Borderline Personality Disorder, didn't late 19th century Europe as a whole have Borderline Personality Disorder? I think Wagner was just a child of his time...


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Bismarck's Germany was possibly the most in-order state that ever existed. Heck, if they didn't destroy it, we could probably have German colonies on Mars by now!


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Couchie said:


> For well over a century attempts to reconcile "Wagner the horrible human being" with "Wagner the musical genius" have been made so much so that program notes ought to begin with a note on what a terrible person Wagner was before they may get into a description of the brilliance of the piece to be performed. Even Wagner enthusiasts seem to accept this premise before proceeding with apologetics to minimize the "damage".
> 
> This article makes a pretty good case for Wagner having BPD: http://www.the-wagnerian.com/2012/08/the-psychopathology-of-richard-wagner.html?m=1
> 
> ...


I think it is possible that he did have BPD. I am a M.D. not a Psychiatrist but I have seen many BPDs in my career.
Beethoven and Brahms both had problems forming relationships and tended to have "all or none" attitudes towards women but I don't think they were BPD


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

SiegendesLicht said:


> First, I believe all these "disorders" are invented in order to cover up for jerks (real jerks such as the guy in the post above who beat his wife): you cannot be responsible for what you do if it is a disease that prompts you to do it, right? And if it's a disease that prompts you to do criminal acts, then you are not a perpetrator, but a poor victim that deserves compassion. Besides, it helps the doctors rake in hundreds of dollars per hour in counselling and thousands of dollars in pills. It's a huge snake oil industry, basically.


It is a fallacy that just because we have a scientific sounding name for someone's mental problems that it completely removes any personal responsibility, however that does not mean that all the disorders are unreal. Would you rather have someone with severe bipolar disorder completely untreated? Or do you think that all those diagnosed with ADHD have a completely made up inattention problem they are just using as an excuse?


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## dieter (Feb 26, 2016)

TxllxT said:


> Didn't Bismarck's brainchild Germany have Borderline Personality Disorder, didn't late 19th century Europe as a whole have Borderline Personality Disorder? I think Wagner was just a child of his time...


Let's not go down the personality disorder chain too far. If we do we'll totally (rightfully) destroy the reputations of some of the greatest ( Morons) so-called heroes in history: Churchill, Regan, Bush- both of them, Blair, Thatcher, Clinton- both of them, Roosevelt,Macmillan, Ben Gurion, Sharon, Begin, why stop at Bismark?


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

TxllxT said:


> Didn't Bismarck's brainchild Germany have Borderline Personality Disorder, didn't late 19th century Europe as a whole have Borderline Personality Disorder? I think Wagner was just a child of his time...


Since the baseline of "normalcy" is drawn from the greater culture, personality disorders by definition being those clusters of traits that make functioning within in the greater culture difficult or unbearable, it is indeed difficult to transpose diagnostic criteria across centuries and cultures. If we were to cast a diagnostic net based on todays standards to 19th century Germany, we would indeed catch a lot of disorderly fish. But Wagner was clearly exceptional even by the standards of his day, as the accounts referenced in the earlier article argues. Wagner reportedly did have an overwhelming fear of abandonment, losing his father early and having a turbulent relationship with his mother. This is highly characteristic of borderline disorder. What I find interesting is that the theme of abandonment runs in many of Wagner's operas, present in one form or another in Dutchman, Tannhauser, Lohengrin, the Ring, Tristan and Parsifal. In particular, Parisfal experiences his first stirrings of compassion when Kundry relates the story as to how he abandoned his mother and she died from her grief.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Couchie said:


> ...But Wagner was clearly exceptional even by the standards of his day, as the accounts referenced in the earlier article argues. Wagner reportedly did have an overwhelming fear of abandonment, losing his father early and having a turbulent relationship with his mother. This is highly characteristic of borderline disorder.


On the other hand, not one of us grows up undamaged. The hurts of youth pursue us even into old age. The giving of names is useful mainly for insurance reimbursement.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I have two things to say on this.
> 
> First, I believe all these "disorders" are invented in order to cover up for jerks (real jerks such as the guy in the post above who beat his wife): you cannot be responsible for what you do if it is a disease that prompts you to do it, right? And if it's a disease that prompts you to do criminal acts, then you are not a perpetrator, but a poor victim that deserves compassion. Besides, it helps the doctors rake in hundreds of dollars per hour in counselling and thousands of dollars in pills. It's a huge snake oil industry, basically.
> 
> Second, I also believe Wagner was a far better human being then the absolute majority of the modern "moral apostles". These "moral apostles" are sitting in judgement on a dead man who cannot defend himself any more, while they themselves with all their moral posturing have not produced anything that will inspire their fellow man or make their fellow man happy.


Occam's razor tells me that you, a single individual, take comfort in overly simplistic notions of moral agency, rather than there being some global conspiracy of snake oil psychotherapists colluding with psychology researchers.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

KenOC said:


> On the other hand, not one of us grows up undamaged. The hurts of youth pursue us even into old age. The giving of names is useful only for insurance reimbursement.


The giving of names is expedient for targeting effective therapies. Just as identifying vocal fachs means a would-be soprano won't keep happening upon would-be alto roles too low for her voice for some reason.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Couchie said:


> The giving of names is expedient for targeting effective therapies. Just as identifying vocal fachs means a would-be soprano won't keep happening upon would-be alto roles too low for her voice for some reason.


This however based on live examinations and pretty factual, measurable evidence.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> The guy had personality problems, no question. I've only known one person who admitted to having been diagnosed with BPD, and I was glad to break off that relationship before it got too ugly, or rather just as it was getting ugly. Wagner's case seems plausible to an ignoramus like me. *But I've always been more inclined to sympathy than scorn when considering the immense burden of knowing you're possessed by a ferocious genius that's destined to change the face of culture. *Yes, he did actually know that. The adage about walking in someone else's shoes before judging? If I put my feet into Wagner's shoes I'd need a ladder to climb out.


genius is not a excuse for being a xenophobic *** (really? even that word is censored?)


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

Couchie said:


> Occam's razor tells me that you, a single individual, take comfort in overly simplistic notions of moral agency, rather than there being some global conspiracy of snake oil psychotherapists colluding with psychology researchers.


To be fair to the poster, it's a perfectly legitimate viewpoint that personality disorders are merely descriptors and not an illness at all. The whole spectrum of psychiatric disorders are open to this criticism, but things like personality disorders especially since treatment amounts to, essentially, talking the subject out of their own nature and (if that fails) flooding their mind with a blunderbuss of antipsychotics and mood stabilizers - IE making the subject numb to its own nature. To some that is as much of a cure as suicide.

And ADHD, as another poster brought up, is equally open to this criticism. There is no proof that pumping people full of amphetamines cures anything within a particular "disorder" any more than it cures that same inattention that we are all prone to, from time to time, when confronted with life's staggeringly dull requirements.

I am not saying one shouldn't or that I don't believe in the benefits of psychiatry - I am just saying that it is too often the case that Western society treats psychiatric treatment as equal to its biological equivalents, hence the over-prescribing of dangerous medications. It's easy to condemn someone when you depersonalize their nature and I don't think this is a scapegoating trick like the poster you quoted - I think it is done precisely because humans _want_ to blame someone. EG: "So you're different fundamentally than I am, you are prone to extremes in mood? It is your fault for not taking medicine to be more like the rest of humanity, then." It is how modern society returns agency to the subject in the age of nihilism, by shaming them for not being "one of us."

As to Wagner, who knows? Probably somebody would have diagnosed him with all sorts of personality disorders, paranoiac disorders, and mood disorders. He was clearly an outlier as far as humans go, nobody would debate that. Maybe being a hyperemotional jerk is the ideal state of man and we're just stuck being plebs, or maybe he really was a bad guy. Either way he left a great legacy to mankind.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

True amusing (?) story about these illnesses. When I lived in Seattle, I read about a man in nearby Renton who was eating breakfast at the bar in a crowded restaurant. Another patron, walking past, brushed against him. He immediately leapt from his stool and began beating the man quite viciously.

In court, his attorney excused his behavior saying that he had "explosive personality disorder." Evidently true (if such a defined condition exists at all) but the judge wasn't buying it, not a bit.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Does it really matter though? Regardless of whether your Renton man's behaviour is in fact excusable by "explosive personality disorder" or that is a made up disorder, the requirement to isolate him in the interest of society remains. If science establishes that people are indeed not truely to "blame" for their actions, the justice system may evolve to be more therapeutic rather than punitive, which is already the trend in the more sophisticated Scandanvian countries. The American justice system is comparatively medieval.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Certainly the United States might have a more "sophisticated" approach -- like sophisticated Norway, where a mass slaughterer who murdered 77 people (many of them children) and wounded 300+ more lives in a pretty nice prison and has recently been back in court complaining that his coffee is served cold.

If he has expressed remorse in the subsequent five years, I haven't seen it. But I'm sure his therapy will return him to society a happy and useful person.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Certainly the United States might have a more "sophisticated" approach -- like sophisticated Norway, where a mass slaughterer who murdered 77 people (many of them children) and wounded 300+ more lives in a pretty nice prison and has recently been back in court complaining that his coffee is served cold.
> 
> If he has expressed remorse in the subsequent five years, I haven't seen it. But I'm sure his therapy will return him to society a happy and useful person.


I recommend you compare Norway's crime rate to the US'. Seems like our Scandinavian brothers are doing rather well.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Wasn't he filing against isolation, which evidently is about as therapeutic as relevant is an argument based on an exceptional case? ; the mods will erase all trace of this and give us again a lesson of etiquette anyways.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Morimur said:


> I recommend you compare Norway's crime rate to the US'. Seems like our Scandinavian brothers are doing rather well.


If the US were filled with Norwegians, I'm confident our crime rate would be far lower. But in fact it's filled mostly with Americans.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Statistically Norway has one of the world's lowest recidivism rates and America has one of the highest. But who cares about scientific methods when you have a flashy anecdote?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Couchie said:


> Statistically Norway has one of the world's lowest recidivism rates and America has one of the highest. But who cares about scientific methods when you have a flashy anecdote?


"Statistically" indeed! One of the basic rules of statistics is that to allow comparisons, samples must be drawn from the same populations.

I see no point continuing this, since it is off-topic and has nothing to do with music.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Because we put a label on something doesn't mean that person is not responsible for their actions. Because we label someone a psychopath it doesn't mean we excuse him when he goes on a killing spree. Some of our greatest surgeons have been labelled as psychopathic personalities because of their ice cold and dispassionate approach when they have someone's life in their hands. Ironically it is this that makes them successful at their profession. It's how we channel our personality. If we label someone with BPD it doesn't mean they are not responsible for how they react or treat people. Wagner being a "nasty little man" (Stephen Fry's phrase not mine) was something as inexcusable as our own character defects. Genius may explain some things but it does not excuse a person, I'm afraid.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Certainly the United States might have a more "sophisticated" approach -- like sophisticated Norway, where a mass slaughterer who murdered 77 people (many of them children) and wounded 300+ more lives in a pretty nice prison and has recently been back in court complaining that his coffee is served cold.
> 
> If he has expressed remorse in the subsequent five years, I haven't seen it. But I'm sure his therapy will return him to society a happy and useful person.


KenOC, I was going to refrain from posting in this thread, but I can't not respond to your straw man, however off topic!

Breivik was protesting in court about being kept in strict solitary confinement for 5 years since he was jailed, thus breaching a ban on "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". Oslo district court found in his favour against the Norwegian state, causing some consternation. The government are considering whether to appeal, the strength of feeling against Breivik's crimes being understandably very high in Norway.

He has expressed no remorse as far as I know, and if he's ever released I should think no-one will be under the illusion that he's being returned "to society a happy and useful person".

In states where the rule of law runs, people are generally released from prison when they've served the sentence given to them. As far as I can see, this all appears to be a reasonable response from a functioning democratic state to a serious dilemma.

Sorrry for going off topic - I'll stop there.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Well yes, I exaggerated for (sarcastic) effect. But the fact is, in court, he did complain about his coffee being served cold -- which I would suspect was done on purpose.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

DavidA said:


> Because we put a label on something doesn't mean that person is not responsible for their actions. Because we label someone a psychopath it doesn't mean we excuse him when he goes on a killing spree. Some of our greatest surgeons have been labelled as psychopathic personalities because of their ice cold and dispassionate approach when they have someone's life in their hands. Ironically it is this that makes them successful at their profession. It's how we channel our personality. If we label someone with BPD it doesn't mean they are not responsible for how they react or treat people. Wagner being a "nasty little man" (Stephen Fry's phrase not mine) was something as inexcusable as our own character defects. Genius may explain some things but it does not excuse a person, I'm afraid.


And you reasoning behind this is ______________? My guess is "it's what I believe because it's what I like".

Human volition has really only been meaningfully (scientifically) studied in the past couple decades. There's some evidence that at least some decision making is unconscious. I would argue that people can only possibly be responsible for that which they are conscious of. After millennia of philosophical babble we're only beginning to truly crack the question of free will and moral agency.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Couchie said:


> And you reasoning behind this is ______________? My guess is "it's what I believe because it's what I like".
> 
> Human volition has really only been meaningfully (scientifically) studied in the past couple decades. There's some evidence that at least some decision making is unconscious. I would argue that people can only possibly be responsible for that which they are conscious of. After millennia of philosophical babble we're only beginning to truly crack the question of free will and moral agency.


I get my reasoning from my observations in having worked with certain of these type of people with personality disorders. Have you? Or are you going by what you have read?


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## Loge (Oct 30, 2014)

I have read archive articles of those who worked with Wagner. They all adored the guy. He was humorous, entertaining and truthful. The people who new him loved him. Remember this was the age before aspirin so you have to forgive eccentricities. Look at the lives of many people in this era and they were weird (though not as weird as today). 

But a lot of his eccentricities come from being German. Just look how Nietzsche treated Wagner, once a friend then a bitter enemy. Just like the young Wagner and Meyerbeer.

At least Wagner never bribed the critics and the Claque, unlike Meyerbeer.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Loge said:


> I have read archive articles of those who worked with Wagner. They all adored the guy. He was humorous, entertaining and truthful. The people who new him loved him. Remember this was the age before aspirin so you have to forgive eccentricities. Look at the lives of many people in this era and they were weird (though not as weird as today).
> 
> But a lot of his eccentricities come from being German. Just look how Nietzsche treated Wagner, once a friend then a bitter enemy. Just like the young Wagner and Meyerbeer.
> 
> At least Wagner never bribed the critics and the Claque, unlike Meyerbeer.


Wagner was indeed a complex man with a personality which many people found magnetic and compelling. He was brilliant, energetic, witty and sometimes wacky, gregarious when not composing or writing, emotionally demonstrative, and, for a homely little man with odd clothes and silk underwear, quite attractive to highly intelligent women. He loved animals, wrote against the use of them in scientific research, and tried (without success) to be a vegetarian. He hated violence, war, and political oppression. He had an enormous personal and intellectual impact on the lives of those close to him, and even those who, like Nietzsche, felt the need to part company with him, continued to pay tribute to him in highly emotional terms. Hermann Levi, the Jewish conductor Wagner chose to conduct Parsifal at Bayreuth (yes, he really did!), was able to get past Wagner's antisemitism and tell his rabbi father that Wagner was a "great man."

I think Wagner's personality was big and outrageous enough to confound our notions of "borderlines." And so was his contribution to music and the theater. Nietzsche, in his late anti-Wagner screeds, asked "Is Wagner a human being at all?" He wasn't trying to be funny, but at a distance of over a century, it's hard not to laugh at the Romantic madness of them both - and, if _Lohengrin,_ _Tristan,_ _Die Meistersinger, Der Ring,_ and _Parsifal_ were the products of it, to be grateful for it.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> *Wagner was indeed a complex man with a personality which many people found magnetic and compelling.* He was brilliant, energetic, witty and sometimes wacky, gregarious when not composing or writing, emotionally demonstrative, and, for a homely little man with odd clothes and silk underwear, quite attractive to highly intelligent women. He loved animals, wrote against the use of them in scientific research, and tried (without success) to be a vegetarian. He hated violence, war, and political oppression. He had an enormous personal and intellectual impact on the lives of those close to him, and even those who, like Nietzsche, felt the need to part company with him, continued to pay tribute to him in highly emotional terms. Hermann Levi, the Jewish conductor Wagner chose to conduct Parsifal at Bayreuth (yes, he really did!), was able to get past Wagner's antisemitism and tell his rabbi father that Wagner was a "great man."
> 
> *I think Wagner's personality was big and outrageous enough to confound our notions of "borderlines." *And so was his contribution to music and the theater. Nietzsche, in his late anti-Wagner screeds, asked "Is Wagner a human being at all?" He wasn't trying to be funny, but at a distance of over a century, it's hard not to laugh at the Romantic madness of them both - and, if _Lohengrin,_ _Tristan,_ _Die Meistersinger, Der Ring,_ and _Parsifal_ were the products of it, to be grateful for it.


People with BPD are sometimes like this. Why they can manipulate and get their way with other people - why they get away with the things they do. If accounts of his life are anything to go by, Wagner obviously used his personality - and his genius - to manipulate and get his own way with people. I don't think Wagner's personality confounds our idea of 'borderlines' - again people with BPD are sometimes gifted people with large personalities - but obviously as we don't know Wagner first hand it is impossible to make any firm assessment beyond speculation.


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## Guest (Jun 18, 2016)

DavidA said:


> Wagner obviously used his personality - and his genius - to manipulate and get his own way with people.


How do any of us get our own way with people?


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

MacLeod said:


> How do any of us get our own way with people?


Begging, wheedling, cajoling, threatening, seducing, bargaining etc. They all work for me! :lol:


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## Guest (Jun 19, 2016)

Barbebleu said:


> Begging, wheedling, cajoling, threatening, seducing, bargaining etc. They all work for me! :lol:


...but not 'manipulating'?

Fair enough!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

We may diagnose famous creative people with this "disorder" or that. But the fact is that creativity on the order of Wagner's - or Beethoven's, or Shakespeare's, or Michelangelo's - requires an extraordinarily focused consciousness and powers of concentration and will, with a mind and a life fiercely centered upon doing the heretofore unthinkable. That is not a condition in which most of us live, or which we may even have glimpsed more than occasionally and in diluted form. In people as high-functioning as these, extraordinary virtues tend to be accompanied by extraordinary (or at least extraordinarily conspicuous) flaws. 

I think our normal perspectives, as people of more ordinary endowment, are apt to make our attempts to talk about the dynamics of such people's lives superficial. Faults are easy to see, certainly easier than virtues; but every life that comes into this rough world sustains itself through acts of heroism that others never suspect. When we look at people's faults, our "disease" model may be useful in a clinical context, but even (or especially) in that context what are manifested in the world as vices are often, at root, ways of coping with the difficulties of life. If we don't know what it's like to cope with being a creative genius in a world which has almost no comprehension of such people and no use for them until they succeed, against all the odds we create for them, in "entertaining" us, we should be very careful with our diagnoses. Wagner may have been as "normal" as Wagner could be.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I have two things to say on this.
> 
> First, I believe all these "disorders" are invented in order to cover up for jerks (real jerks such as the guy in the post above who beat his wife): you cannot be responsible for what you do if it is a disease that prompts you to do it, right? And if it's a disease that prompts you to do criminal acts, then you are not a perpetrator, but a poor victim that deserves compassion. Besides, it helps the doctors rake in hundreds of dollars per hour in counselling and thousands of dollars in pills. It's a huge snake oil industry, basically.
> 
> Second, I also believe Wagner was a far better human being then the absolute majority of the modern "moral apostles". These "moral apostles" are sitting in judgement on a dead man who cannot defend himself any more, while they themselves with all their moral posturing have not produced anything that will inspire their fellow man or make their fellow man happy.


While I know virtually nothing about Wagner the man except that he admired Vincenzo Bellini and disliked Jews or, at any rate Jewish composers, I think there's a lot of truth in what you say here. First of all, I'm a little wary of trying to apply 20th/21st century diagnoses to 19th century figures like Wagner. Second, I agree that we have to be careful when evaluating historical figures, especially figures who lived hundreds of years ago. The ideal thing, I think, is somehow to strike a balance between making absolute moral judgments _and_ evaluating men and women in the contexts of their times. As I say, I know little about Wagner, but another (German) that comes immediately to my mind is Martin Luther, who IMO did some wonderful things and had many on-target theological insights but who, like Wagner, wrote horrible things about both Jews and some of the Christians he disagreed with. Antisemitism makes me sick to my stomach, on the one hand; on the other hand, I wonder how much of Luther's invective was not _deep-rooted hatred_ so much as an extremely hot temper combined with a "dramatic" rhetorical style. My point is that we can't know for sure, nor can we truly "translate" ourselves back to a time and society very different from our own, or know what we -- not as our modern selves but as an actual Renaissance or Victorian person -- would think or do about the same issues. So yeah, some things are just plain wrong in any era, but when dealing with imperfect human beings you also have to look at the context. Too many people totally dismiss certain historical figures based on half-truths or on quotes taken out of context, which is hardly fair.

By the way -- regarding "disorders," when I first heard of the one termed "Oppositional Defiance Disorder" (basically, it's when a kid can't take "no" for an answer), I thought it was a joke!

*Edited to add:* I just read the earlier post which says that the younger Wagner admired the Jewish Meyerbeer, whom he later wrote against. It's interesting, because Luther had a similar trajectory: his first "Protestant writings" were relatively mild and even kind regarding Jews. Something must have happened to change both men?


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

Loge said:


> I have read archive articles of those who worked with Wagner. They all adored the guy. He was humorous, entertaining and truthful. The people who new him loved him. *Remember this was the age before aspirin so you have to forgive eccentricities. Look at the lives of many people in this era and they were weird (though not as weird as today).*
> 
> But a lot of his eccentricities come from being German. Just look how Nietzsche treated Wagner, once a friend then a bitter enemy. Just like the young Wagner and Meyerbeer.
> 
> At least Wagner never bribed the critics and the Claque, unlike Meyerbeer.


There seem to be a lot of quick-tempered Germans.

About the part in bold -- a few years ago when we had a heat wave in our city, my dad wondered out loud if maybe some people in the eras before air conditioning and electric fans were eccentric and depressed because they were in fact _hot_ in their overheated rooms and layers of clothing. And apparently, some historians want to attribute Beethoven's "personality disorders" to the lead that was found in his body after he died!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Bellinilover said:


> By the way -- regarding "disorders," when I first heard of the one termed "Oppositional Defiance Disorder" (basically, it's when a kid can't take "no" for an answer), I thought it was a joke!


Please, please assure us that you are just being creative here!


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## dieter (Feb 26, 2016)

Bellinilover said:


> While I know virtually nothing about Wagner the man except that he admired Vincenzo Bellini and disliked Jews or, at any rate Jewish composers, I think there's a lot of truth in what you say here. First of all, I'm a little wary of trying to apply 20th/21st century diagnoses to 19th century figures like Wagner. Second, I agree that we have to be careful when evaluating historical figures, especially figures who lived hundreds of years ago. The ideal thing, I think, is somehow to strike a balance between making absolute moral judgments _and_ evaluating men and women in the contexts of their times. As I say, I know little about Wagner, but another (German) that comes immediately to my mind is Martin Luther, who IMO did some wonderful things and had many on-target theological insights but who, like Wagner, wrote horrible things about both Jews and some of the Christians he disagreed with. Antisemitism makes me sick to my stomach, on the one hand; on the other hand, I wonder how much of Luther's invective was not _deep-rooted hatred_ so much as an extremely hot temper combined with a "dramatic" rhetorical style. My point is that we can't know for sure, nor can we truly "translate" ourselves back to a time and society very different from our own, or know what we -- not as our modern selves but as an actual Renaissance or Victorian person -- would think or do about the same issues. So yeah, some things are just plain wrong in any era, but when dealing with imperfect human beings you also have to look at the context. Too many people totally dismiss certain historical figures based on half-truths or on quotes taken out of context, which is hardly fair.
> 
> By the way -- regarding "disorders," when I first heard of the one termed "Oppositional Defiance Disorder" (basically, it's when a kid can't take "no" for an answer), I thought it was a joke!
> 
> *Edited to add:* I just read the earlier post which says that the younger Wagner admired the Jewish Meyerbeer, whom he later wrote against. It's interesting, because Luther had a similar trajectory: his first "Protestant writings" were relatively mild and even kind regarding Jews. Something must have happened to change both men?


We tend to forget how rife anti-semitism was all over Europe. George Steiner, in one of his books, mentioned that if one had to predict where antisemitism would become lethal at the turn of the 20th Century, the prediction would have pointed to France, witness the Dreyfus affair. 
Also, I urge people interested in History, or the subject of anti-semitism, to read Nicholson Baker's 'Human Smoke.' Baker quotes a certain rabid anti-semite quite often in the opening pages. That rabid anti-semite is Winston Churchill.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Please, please assure us that you are just being creative here!


It's apparently a real thing, at least according to doctors. I once taught a kid who supposedly had it, though if you asked me I'd have said he was simply a little brat whose parents had never told him "no."


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I have two things to say on this.
> 
> First, I believe all these "disorders" are invented in order to cover up for jerks (real jerks such as the guy in the post above who beat his wife): you cannot be responsible for what you do if it is a disease that prompts you to do it, right? And if it's a disease that prompts you to do criminal acts, then you are not a perpetrator, but a poor victim that deserves compassion. Besides, it helps the doctors rake in hundreds of dollars per hour in counselling and thousands of dollars in pills. It's a huge snake oil industry, basically.


Ah yes, the global conspiracy of lawyers, doctors, psychologists and scientists out to "cover up for jerks". :lol:

Really though, disorders of the emotions exist, and behavioral therapy and psychoactive drugs are not "snake oil".

You need to chill out.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

^ Global conspiracy? No, just a way for therapists and psychologists to make as much money as possible by giving everyone a diagnosis and then offering everyone a pill for it. One of the "disorders" in the latest edition of the list is "grief disorder". The most normal human feeling of grief for the loss of a loved one is now considered to be a diagnosis that needs to be medicated with pills? 

And no, thanks, as an adult human being in control of one's emotions I do not need chemical help in order to deal with reality.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Did Wagner ever unexpectedly woke up confused one day and be perfectly fine the next one?


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## Badinerie (May 3, 2008)

I found out long ago its best not to pry too much about a Hero's life. Too many of them turn out to be normal human beings or be obnoxious to the point of incredulity. Then you cant listen to the music without thinking of the negative personality traits.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Badinerie said:


> I found out long ago its best not to pry too much about a Hero's life. Too many of them turn out to be normal human beings or be obnoxious to the point of incredulity. Then you cant listen to the music without thinking of the negative personality traits.


A hero is someone who is human on a larger scale than others, and great achievements may come at a great price.

Heroism is real, but hero worship is for children. Humans are frail and insecure by nature, burdened with an evolutionary inheritance which makes their highest aspirations difficult to realize. Thinking we are above nature, we do violence to nature, and to our own better nature; imagining ourselves divine, we may become diabolical. Inevitably we fall short of what we try to be, and we rationalize our failures, disappoint ourselves and each other, and leave chaos in our wake.

Those we call heroes deserve, not veneration, but respect for the degree to which they have succeeded in weathering and overcoming life's vicissitudes and their own frailties and fears, and given something fine and beautiful to the world. They deserve compassion too, which we can feel when we realize that they are fundamentally like us and that their struggles are ours. They are not our parents, whom we as infants imagine as ideal beings and aspire to emulate (or our gods, those supernatural parents who demand eternal obedience and punish our failure to practice it). We respect great men because, despite their faults and failures, they have succeeded not in transcending human nature but in harnessing, through intelligence, will, and inspiration, its energies and powers to some great end.

Wagner's greatness is not diminished by his human flaws - or his personality disorders, however we wish to designate them. Those flaws make his achievements all the more astonishing, until we realize that life is woven of one fabric and that the achievements could be bought only at the price of the flaws. Minna Planer never understood Wagner's love for Mathilde Wesendonck, or why she had to let Richard go; Hans Von Bulow, even in his pain, did understand that he had to let Cosima go, that she needed Wagner and that Wagner needed her more than he did. Life is bigger than individuals or their social conventions, and good and evil, tragedy and greatness, are inseparable, the warp and woof of the fabric which is life.

In _Tristan, Meistersinger,_ the _Ring_ and _Parsifal,_ as in all the greatest works of art, the ultimate unity of good and evil, tragedy and greatness, are revealed. Whatever price Wagner and those around him paid, we are the recipients of an immense gift, one that can bring us closer to seeing life whole.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

SiegendesLicht said:


> ^ Global conspiracy? No, just a way for therapists and psychologists to make as much money as possible by giving everyone a diagnosis and then offering everyone a pill for it. One of the "disorders" in the latest edition of the list is "grief disorder". The most normal human feeling of grief for the loss of a loved one is now considered to be a diagnosis that needs to be medicated with pills?
> 
> And no, thanks, as an adult human being in control of one's emotions I do not need chemical help in order to deal with reality.


Well unfortunately they haven't yet developed a pill to cure wilful ignorance and callousness so we'll just have to hope time and experience allows you to one day better empathize with the inner torment of those who do suffer the very real disorders of emotional dysregulation.


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## Badinerie (May 3, 2008)

Couchie said:


> Well unfortunately they haven't yet developed a pill to cure wilful ignorance and callousness


Who would take it, Then compose great music?


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Badinerie said:


> Who would take it, Then compose great music?


It's a matter of record that composers like Beethoven, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky struggled with suicide. Academics have argued pretty successfully that they suffered respectively what would be today diagnosed as bipolar, borderline, and major depressive disorder. If circumstances were even a little bit different we would have had three men with great potential who took their own lives rather than the The Ninth, Parsifal, and the Pathetique. Think about that. How much human potential has been lost to suicide because that option is elected over therapy? "Some people" who think modern psychology involves popping pills while lying on a chaise lounge discussing their mother with a Freudian charlatan just help perpetuate the stigma around mental health which leads to a lot of untreated disorders and unnecessary suffering and death.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

SiegendesLicht said:


> And no, thanks, as an adult human being in control of one's emotions I do not need chemical help in order to deal with reality.


You're not in control of your own emotions, emotions are generated and experienced involuntarily. The control you may learn to exert is your behavior in response to your emotions, such as "counting to 10 slowly" to allow anger to subside rather than violently lashing out. Characteristic of borderlines is that they not only experience extreme emotions in response to even mild provocation (or even non-existent, imagined provocation), but manage them in an extremely unhealthy manner, coping mechanisms often developed during childhood/adolescence in response to the abuse or neglect of parents. Developmentally stunted, they never learn to process emotions in the manner expected of adults which is why they often seem childlike alternating between jubilant cheer, temperamental pouting, or outrageous anger.

_"Wagner was the livest of wires, larger than life in almost every respect. He was described by French writer Édouard Schuré as a "floodtide that nothing can stem," and by Franz Liszt as having "a great and overwhelming nature, a sort of Vesuvius." Even his nemesis, the critic Eduard Hanslick, conceded that he was "the most remarkable of phenomena, a marvel of energy and endowment."

A highly emotional man, Wagner possessed very little in the way of a self-censor mechanism; he was quick to anger, quick to tears, quick to laughter, quick to frenzy. If people caught him on good days, they recounted that "he bubbled with with jokes, wild ideas and comic remarks," was "utterly charming," and that he was "full of fun" with "childlike jollity." He was the life of the party.

But, his volatile temperament often put an abrupt end to the fun. Shuré captures this aspect well:

His high spirits overflowed into a joyous froth of acts of sheer buffoonery and eccentric jokes, but the least contradiction provoked unprecedented anger. Then he was like a caged lion, roaring like a wild animal, pacing the room, his voice growing hoarse and the words coming out like cries, his words striking at random. He then seemed like an unleashed force of nature, a volcano erupting... Everything about him was larger than life."

In one famous example, when no one was paying attention to him at a party, Wagner let out a "brief but piercing" scream, and then announced he was going to read a book to everyone-from start to finish."_
http://wagnertripping.blogspot.ca/2013/03/richard-wagners-personality.html


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

But who cares about the "what ifs"? None of these men have committed suicide. And if they did have that struggle in their lives, it makes them all the more worthy of admiration as strong men who have fought their inner devils and overcome. And if they had the use of modern therapy - who knows if they had given us great music at all? It would be hardly possible to come up with ideas noone had approached before, like these three men did, when you are dazzed and foggy with chemical happiness. Maybe instead we would have had three men with great potential who eventually succumbed to mediocrity, lived their average lives, went to average jobs and died and were remembered no more? But this again is a "what if" that nobody really cares for.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

SiegendesLicht said:


> But who cares about the "what ifs"? None of these men have committed suicide. And if they did have that struggle in their lives, it makes them all the more worthy of admiration as strong men who have fought their inner devils and overcome. And if they had the use of modern therapy - who knows if they had given us great music at all? It would be hardly possible to come up with ideas noone had approached before, like these three men did, when you are dazzed and foggy with chemical happiness. Maybe instead we would have had three men with great potential who eventually succumbed to mediocrity, lived their average lives, went to average jobs and died and were remembered no more? But this again is a "what if" that nobody really cares for.


It is not fun to have a major personality disorder, even if you consider their suffering "worth it" because it produced a product for your own enjoyment. And actually Beethoven and Tchaikovsky's depressive episodes were periods of extended unproductivity. With modern treatment they might have given us a good many more works.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Now, what in that above quoted description of Wagner's personality do you find to be unhealthy or worthy of a diagnosis? How exactly is being "the livest of wires, larger than life in almost every respect" a disorder, much less one producing suffering? To me that sounds like a great persona to have. 

And I am very grateful to those three men for existing, for overcoming their struggles and for providing a world of joy to the following generations - and in some ways an example for me to follow. If anyone deserved their suffering to be relieved - it is them (again a "what if" situation). But not by drugging them up.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

DavidA said:


> I get my reasoning from my observations in having worked with certain of these type of people with personality disorders. Have you? Or are you going by what you have read?


I don't know why working with "these types of people" would have been particularly enlightening as to human volition unless your "work" was performed specifically to that end at the cutting edge of research in conjunction with neuroscientists, experimental and developmental psychologists. The obsession with "personal responsibility" is really derived from the Judeo-Christian ethic (sorting people into heaven and hell becomes rather untenable without it). In the pragmatic sense I think it is really rather uninteresting. The justice system really should be framed around societal safety and harm reduction and lowering recidivism, not the barbaric Judeo-Christian notion of justice via suffering and punishment.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Now, what in that above quoted description of Wagner's personality do you find to be unhealthy or worthy of a diagnosis? How exactly is being "the livest of wires, larger than life in almost every respect" a disorder, much less one producing suffering? To me that sounds like a great persona to have.
> 
> And I am very grateful to those three men for existing, for overcoming their struggles and for providing a world of joy to the following generations - and in some ways an example for me to follow. If anyone deserved their suffering to be relieved - it is them (again a "what if" situation). But not by drugging them up.


It obvious from his and other's writings that Wagner not only suffered a great deal internally, but caused many of those around him to suffer as well.

He did not keep friends easily. The Ring never would have been completed, and Bayreuth and Parsifal never would have happened had Wagner not been fortunate enough to find two other mentally unstable but compatible-enough people able to support and dance his deranged tango with him in the longer term, Ludwig II and Cosima Liszt.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Couchie said:


> I don't know why working with "these types of people" would have been particularly enlightening as to human volition unless your "work" was performed specifically to that end at the cutting edge of research in conjunction with neuroscientists, experimental and developmental psychologists. The obsession with "personal responsibility" is really derived from the Judeo-Christian ethic (sorting people into heaven and hell becomes rather untenable without it). In the pragmatic sense I think it is really rather uninteresting. The justice system really should be framed around societal safety and harm reduction and lowering recidivism, not the barbaric Judeo-Christian notion of justice via suffering and punishment.


The psychologists we work with stress the benefit of the realisation of human responsibility. The old adage of 'he can't help it' is not helpful. Too view personal responsibility as you do really does not help anyone. It is not at all pragmatic I'm afraid. Psychology aimed at societal safety and harm reduction and lowering recidivism is actually based around the realisation of personal respeonibility. Sorry if it overlaps with the Judeo-Christian ethic you appear to misunderstand; it is not based around suffering and punishment but rather redemption.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

DavidA said:


> The psychologists we work with stress the benefit of the realisation of human responsibility. The old adage of 'he can't help it' is not helpful. Too view personal responsibility as you do really does not help anyone. It is not at all pragmatic I'm afraid. Psychology aimed at societal safety and harm reduction and lowering recidivism is actually based around the realisation of personal respeonibility. Sorry if it overlaps with the Judeo-Christian ethic you appear to misunderstand; it is not based around suffering and punishment but rather redemption.


Sorry, but I made the point of saying neuroscientists, experimental, and developmental psychologists, ie. people concerned with discovering the true nature of reality and fact, not clinical psychologists concerned primarily with what is therapeutically expedient.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Couchie said:


> Sorry, but I made the point of saying neuroscientists, experimental, and developmental psychologists, ie. people concerned with discovering the true nature of reality and fact, not clinical psychologists concerned primarily with what is therapeutically expedient.


Have you worked in this field? IU'm trying to work with reality not theory.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

DavidA said:


> Have you worked in this field? IU'm trying to work with reality not theory.


Have I worked in the research of human volition? No.


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## Guest (Jul 7, 2016)

Couchie said:


> The obsession with "personal responsibility" is really derived from the Judeo-Christian ethic (sorting people into heaven and hell becomes rather untenable without it).


Well it might be an 'obsession' for someone who's obsessed with it, but whether it's an obsession or not, I fail to see how it's 'really' derived from the Judeo-Christian ethic...or even if it matters that it does. Can you demonstrate that my belief in personal responsibility is an obsession, or what it's derived from?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I'm amazed to see personal responsibility been looked upon in derogatory terms. I've always looked on it as one of the foundations of a decent society that people take responsibility for their own actions rather than blaming it on somebody else


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> Well it might be an 'obsession' for someone who's obsessed with it, but whether it's an obsession or not, I fail to see how it's 'really' derived from the Judeo-Christian ethic...or even if it matters that it does. Can you demonstrate that my belief in personal responsibility is an obsession, or what it's derived from?


I'd even question the idea that the whole of the "Judeo-Christian ethic" is about "sorting people into heaven and hell." To hear certain Christians talk you might think so, but in Judaism there are no clear teachings on the afterlife, and traditional Protestantism has always asserted that "heaven" is not "earned" through one's works (which would lead to the trap of doing good works only for personal reward, and not because your neighbor needs them). Even a recent Pope stated that we can't really know if _anyone_ is in "hell." But more to the point: surely "taking personal responsibility" is something that transcends the Judeo-Christian ethic. It's just not healthy for a society when people make a habit of blaming someone or something else for their harmful actions.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Christianity posits the idea of the individual immortal soul, and the religion is quite preoccupied with the destiny of one's own soul in the "afterlife". Now there are a few strands of Christian thought that don't blame you if you end up in the unpleasant place (ie. Calvinism), but most Christians believe your destiny is a matter of personal responsibility. If it wasn't, then the people burning in hell is the responsibility of God... quite an unpalatable God! Now hell might not be a literal place of burning sulphur, but (Universalists aside) Christianity is all about afterlife Option A (good) and Option B (bad!!!) and an emphasis on the personal responsibility to choose Option A.

Christians usually can't separate their moral responsibility from their legal responsibility, many are theocrats where in an ideal world the legal system perfectly reflects their moral sensibilities. But really we may hold people *legally responsible* for whatever we should like to shape society in whichever desirable direction we choose, and the question of whether they are "morally responsible" is a mere obsession of people preoccupied with worrying about souls and supernatural entities.


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

DavidA said:


> I'm amazed to see personal responsibility been looked upon in derogatory terms. I've always looked on it as one of the foundations of a decent society that people take responsibility for their own actions rather than blaming it on somebody else


Get out of here old timer! If you can't find a group of people to blame your problems on then you don't belong in the modern consortium.


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

Couchie said:


> Christians usually can't separate their moral responsibility from their legal responsibility, many are theocrats where in an ideal world the legal system perfectly reflects their moral sensibilities. But really we may hold people *legally responsible* for whatever we should like to shape society in whichever desirable direction we choose, and the question of whether they are "morally responsible" is a mere obsession of people preoccupied with worrying about souls and supernatural entities.


This is the cancerous altruism that has given us modern day politics because it doesn't jive with reality and requires patrician levels of cognitive dissonance. And I'm not even a Christian!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Couchie said:


> Christianity posits the idea of the individual immortal soul, and the religion is quite preoccupied with the destiny of one's own soul in the "afterlife". Now there are a few strands of Christian thought that don't blame you if you end up in the unpleasant place (ie. Calvinism), but most Christians believe your destiny is a matter of personal responsibility. If it wasn't, then the people burning in hell is the responsibility of God... quite an unpalatable God! Now hell might not be a literal place of burning sulphur, but (Universalists aside) Christianity is all about afterlife Option A (good) and Option B (bad!!!) and an emphasis on the personal responsibility to choose Option A.
> 
> Christians usually can't separate their moral responsibility from their legal responsibility, many are theocrats where in an ideal world the legal system perfectly reflects their moral sensibilities. But really we may hold people *legally responsible* for whatever we should like to shape society in whichever desirable direction we choose, and the question of whether they are "morally responsible" is a mere obsession of people preoccupied with worrying about souls and supernatural entities.


I think to argue with a statement that is so ill informed is pointless.


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## Guest (Jul 8, 2016)

Couchie said:


> most Christians believe your destiny is a matter of personal responsibility.


Take Christianity and destiny out of the argument - since the world is full of people for whom these are of no significance - you are still left with an idea that people may be held personally responsible for their actions.



Couchie said:


> the question of whether they are "morally responsible" is a mere obsession of people preoccupied with worrying about souls and supernatural entities.


Not at all. What is it about the consideration of morals that leads you to draw such a narrow conclusion?


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> Take Christianity and destiny out of the argument - since the world is full of people for whom these are of no significance - you are still left with an idea that people may be held personally responsible for their actions.


And from where do your people GET their idea of personal responsibility? Full responsibility? 100%? We are perfect moral agents? The child taught to feed himself by stealing and the child taught to feed himself by working are 100% equally responsible for theft? Where does that idea come from? Not a sophisticated understanding of behavior or how behavior is generated by the brain. The fact that the simplistic notion of personal responsibility might be easily intuitively derived by barbarians unaware of the unconscious brain but such is not so easy for the most knowledgeable psychologists and neurologists who study the brain surely gives you some pause? Some neurologists are quite convinced free will is a mere illusion and we have none at all. Without free will, how do we have responsibility? Science sometimes discovers that what is intuitive to humans is not how things really are.



MacLeod said:


> Not at all. What is it about the consideration of morals that leads you to draw such a narrow conclusion?


If you don't have moral responsibility to a personable God, then who do you have responsibility to? Society is all that remains. The framework becomes socialist, and the notion of individualistic moral responsibility irrelevant, except to those obsessing about individual souls and hellfire, etc.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

Couchie said:


> And from where do your people GET their idea of personal responsibility? Full responsibility? 100%? We are perfect moral agents? The child taught to feed himself by stealing and the child taught to feed himself by working are 100% equally responsible for theft? Where does that idea come from? Not a sophisticated understanding of behavior or how behavior is generated by the brain. The fact that the simplistic notion of personal responsibility might be easily intuitively derived by barbarians unaware of the unconscious brain but such is not so easy for the most knowledgeable psychologists and neurologists who study the brain surely gives you some pause? Some neurologists are quite convinced free will is a mere illusion and we have none at all. Without free will, how do we have responsibility? Science sometimes discovers that what is intuitive to humans is not how things really are.
> 
> If you don't have moral responsibility to a personable God, then who do you have responsibility to? Society is all that remains. The framework becomes socialist, and the notion of individualistic moral responsibility irrelevant, except to those obsessing about individual souls and hellfire, etc.


As far as the child situation is concerned, the Judaeo-Christian tradition holds that very young children are not fully responsible for their actions because they have not yet reached the "age of reason"; they cannot yet fully comprehend the difference between right and wrong. So a child younger than the age of reason (which I believe differs according to the religious tradition) would not be held morally accountable for theft in the same way that an adult would be. There, then, is a "religious" acknowledgement of the scientific fact that a child's mind is not the same as an adult's mind.

While I don't understand much of what you write about neurology and socialism, I did want to say this: even in the absence of a personal (not "personable") God, I would think that human beings would have "moral responsibility" to _each other_: i.e. an obligation not to harm each other, not to infringe upon each others' rights.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Bellinilover said:


> As far as the child situation is concerned, the Judaeo-Christian tradition holds that very young children are not fully responsible for their actions because they have not yet reached the "age of reason"; they cannot yet fully comprehend the difference between right and wrong. So a child younger than the age of reason (which I believe differs according to the religious tradition) would not be held morally accountable for theft in the same way that an adult would be. There, then, is a "religious" acknowledgement of the scientific fact that a child's mind is not the same as an adult's mind.
> 
> While I don't understand much of what you write about neurology and socialism, I did want to say this: even in the absence of a personal (not "personable") God, I would think that human beings would have "moral responsibility" to _each other_: i.e. an obligation not to harm each other, not to infringe upon each others' rights.


Theres no self-consistent "Judeo-Christian tradition". Martin Luther called the Pope the Antichrist. Thomas More dismissed Protestantism as heresy. John Calvin *did* insist that babies, unelect and totally depraved, burned in hell. John Wesley found this unpalatable and founded Methodism. Christianity is just a mishmash of ideas and every Christian makes God in his own image to the extent of his knowledge and upbringing.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Couchie said:


> Theres no self-consistent "Judeo-Christian tradition". Martin Luther called the Pope the Antichrist. Thomas More dismissed Protestantism as heresy. John Calvin *did* insist that babies, unelect and totally depraved, burned in hell. John Wesley found this unpalatable and founded Methodism. Christianity is just a mishmash of ideas and every Christian makes God in his own image to the extent of his knowledge and upbringing.


Please do a bit of proper reading about what people actually believe rather than just collecting some random ideas that suit your own prejudices. Your theology seems as many misinformed as your psychology.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

Couchie said:


> Theres no self-consistent "Judeo-Christian tradition". Martin Luther called the Pope the Antichrist. Thomas More dismissed Protestantism as heresy. John Calvin *did* insist that babies, unelect and totally depraved, burned in hell. John Wesley found this unpalatable and founded Methodism. Christianity is just a mishmash of ideas and every Christian makes God in his own image to the extent of his knowledge and upbringing.


How is any of this relevant to the topic of this thread, or even to my own last post? You bring up Calvin's ideas about _babies_, whereas I was attempting to address your claim that Christianity holds _children_ responsible for sin in exactly the same way it holds adults responsible for sin. I made the point that personal responsibility -- and by that I mean owning up to one's own actions, being willing to make up for wrongs done to others, respecting others' property and dignity - is the best thing for _any_ kind of society, but you never addressed it.

I see what your object is: you're trying to prove the Judeo-Christian tradition a fraud, so that you'll then have a basis for your claim that "traditional" ideas about personal responsibility are invalid. And the object of all this is...what? To prove that Wagner the man should not be evaluated in the usual way? I'm going to bow out of this thread now, as any interest I ever had in its alleged topic is now gone.


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## Guest (Jul 9, 2016)

Couchie said:


> And from where do your people GET their idea of personal responsibility?


_My _people? Let's not get possessive about this. I was simply observing that there are people out there (neither yours nor mine) who are not Christian, yet hold to the idea of personal responsibility.



Couchie said:


> We are perfect moral agents?


I don't know...are we?



Couchie said:


> The child taught to feed himself by stealing and the child taught to feed himself by working are 100% equally responsible for theft?


They are equally responsible for the choices they make, if not for the circumstances they find themselves in. As for 'theft', that's a moral judgement that is not theirs but someone else's.



Couchie said:


> Where does that idea come from?


Where does what idea come from?



Couchie said:


> Not a sophisticated understanding of behavior or how behavior is generated by the brain. The fact that the simplistic notion of personal responsibility might be easily intuitively derived by barbarians unaware of the unconscious brain but such is not so easy for the most knowledgeable psychologists and neurologists who study the brain surely gives you some pause?


I'm sorry - I don't understand this bit.



Couchie said:


> Some neurologists are quite convinced free will is a mere illusion and we have none at all.


I don't doubt that some are. Does that make it so? Have the majority of neurologists now established that this is actually so?



Couchie said:


> If you don't have moral responsibility to a personable God, then who do you have responsibility to? Society is all that remains. The framework becomes socialist, and the notion of individualistic moral responsibility irrelevant, except to those obsessing about individual souls and hellfire, etc.


Not at all. It's quite easy to separate the notion of 'moral' responsibility from any religious source (though perhaps we'd need further discussion to establish what we mean by 'moral' - so far, you've focused only on 'responsibility'). As for 'the framework becomes 'socialist', is that a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? By all means correct me if I read you wrong, but it seems you want to avoid the directives of both Christianity and Socialism and argue that as we have neither free will nor moral responsibility, we are simply helpless agents of biological imperatives instead. Can you explain what the consequences are for 'society' and 'the individual' when the two come together? You might like to consider how, for example, a school should be run if all its children are helpless puppets to their neurological drives

On a personal level, the implication is that you can't help your love of Wagner, so any claim that you might make to his greatness cannot depend on an active choice over other lesser composers.


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## Oreb (Aug 8, 2013)

I think it's a stretch to diagnose RW with BPD. His ability to maintain deep focus over years on projects is simply inconsistent with the very chaotic and impulsive bridge-burning that people with that condition are known for.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The meaning and importance of "moral responsibility" seems obvious, but it has no objectively quantifiable social implications. 

The problem of "free will" - its existence and its extent, in general or with respect to specific human actions, has never been solved, and we aren't going to solve it here. People act based on what their minds tell them, and what their minds tell them is based on their previous understanding and on the influence of their emotions, which can be powerful enough to override reason. We have limited access to the cognitive and emotional lives of others - and even sometimes of ourselves - and judging what we "should" be capable of is never fully within our capacity. We don't need the science of psychology to tell us this. 

Nevertheless, in society we have to take responsibility for our own behavior and we have to hold others responsible for theirs. What is "responsibility"? It means accepting the fact that actions have consequences, which can be natural or human-made: do something stupid or offensive, something unpleasant will result, and we will be expected to pay for our transgression. This is an idea of critical importance, and it must be inculcated in us early, both for our capacity for self-regulation and for the maintenance of social order. 

How we feel toward offenders is irrelevant to judging the social impact of their behavior. We don't make people responsible by rendering personal judgments. Moral indignation is our personal affair.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> It means accepting the fact that actions have consequences, which can be natural or human-made: do something stupid or offensive, something unpleasant will result, and we will be expected to pay for our transgression. This is an idea of critical importance, and it must be inculcated in us early, both for our capacity for self-regulation and for the maintenance of social order.


I'm skeptical of any claim that such-and-such is necessary to "maintain the social order". It's merely an appeal to tradition. It was once after all necessary to seek out and destroy witches in order to "maintain the social order" because most of society's problems were caused by the craft of witches in partnership with the Devil. The red is particularly suspect. Retributive justice (ie. punishment) is born of the idea that two wrongs make a right, that society ought to respond the experience of suffering with more suffering. Under the threat of suffering ourselves we are told not to make others suffer. This is an extrinsically imposed threat that might be necessary to keep barbarians in line (read the Old Testament), but a truly evolved and sophisticated society would understand intrinsically why to not cause harm for its own sake. Does any intelligent and emotionally healthy man not commit crimes just because he's scared of going to jail, or because he understands rationally and experiences first hand through sympathy and empathy how crimes create suffering which ought to be avoided for its own sake?

We have ourselves a society that produces psychopaths. It seems there are several lazy people within this thread who take shelter in the barbaric notions that demons have taken up residence in our psychopaths, rather than turn the looking glass upon themselves and contemplate how society might actually cultivate and enable psychopaths by maintaining such barbaric notions in the first place. A psychopath may be deficient in empathy because he was genetically predisposed to a brain incapable maintaining a proper balance of serotonin. The culture of bullying in schools is pervasive and society largely looks the other way. Society loves guns and a movie without violence is no movie at all. Is it a surprise then that we have school shootings? Is this a "moral" failure of the psychopath or a perfectly natural production of our ignorant and barbaric culture still getting moral guidelines from thousands-old books of collected tribal hearsay? Why bother studying, collecting evidence, and reasoning when you can just burn witches?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couchie said:


> I'm skeptical of any claim that such-and-such is necessary to "maintain the social order". It's merely an appeal to tradition. It was once after all necessary to seek out and destroy witches in order to "maintain the social order" because most of society's problems were caused by the craft of witches in partnership with the Devil. The red is particularly suspect. Retributive justice (ie. punishment) is born of the idea that two wrongs make a right, that society ought to respond the experience of suffering with more suffering. Under the threat of suffering ourselves we are told not to make others suffer. This is an extrinsically imposed threat that might be necessary to keep barbarians in line (read the Old Testament), but a truly evolved and sophisticated society would understand intrinsically why to not cause harm for its own sake. Does any intelligent and emotionally healthy man not commit crimes just because he's scared of going to jail, or because he understands rationally and experiences first hand through sympathy and empathy how crimes create suffering which ought to be avoided for its own sake?
> 
> We have ourselves a society that produces psychopaths. It seems there are several lazy people within this thread who take shelter in the barbaric notions that demons have taken up residence in our psychopaths, rather than turn the looking glass upon themselves and contemplate how society might actually cultivate and enable psychopaths by maintaining such barbaric notions in the first place. A psychopath may be deficient in empathy because he was genetically predisposed to a brain incapable maintaining a proper balance of serotonin. The culture of bullying in schools is pervasive and society largely looks the other way. Society loves guns and a movie without violence is no movie at all. Is it a surprise then that we have school shootings? Is this a "moral" failure of the psychopath or a perfectly natural production of our ignorant and barbaric culture still getting moral guidelines from thousands-old books of collected tribal hearsay? Why bother studying, collecting evidence, and reasoning when you can just burn witches?


Well, your skepticism will not maintain social order. Only a sense of responsibility will. If there is no expectation that wrongdoing must be paid for, what's your solution? Hysterically comparing people here to witch hunters?

Psychopaths are not created by disciplining our children, or fining embezzlers, or locking up rapists.


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## Guest (Jul 14, 2016)

Couchie said:


> It seems there are several lazy people within this thread who take shelter in the barbaric notions that demons have taken up residence in our psychopaths,





> Why bother studying, collecting evidence, and reasoning when you can just burn witches?


I note your preference for soapboxing over engaging in evidenced and reasoned debate with other contributors here. Why bother receiving when you can just transmit?


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> Well, your skepticism will not maintain social order. Only a sense of responsibility will. If there is no expectation that wrongdoing must be paid for, what's your solution? Hysterically comparing people here to witch hunters?
> 
> Psychopaths are not created by disciplining our children, or fining embezzlers, or locking up rapists.


The solution is already being implemented! The barbaric retributive system is slowly being replaced by a preventative and rehabilitative system in the more sophisticated cultures. The natural and cultural-systemic causes of mental and emotional disorders are under the heavy study of psychologists and neurologists. I recently watched a documentary on CBC that researchers in Toronto and Germany are starting to undertake the serious empirical study of pedophilia and why some adults are attracted to children and how to help them before they harm children. Some people don't want to understand such things, they prefer ignorance, they just want to demonize what they don't understand and burn the witches to save society. Some trusted, vaulted institutions even come to aid the horrific conduct of pedophiles, sheltering such people and covering-up the abuse that they do.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> I note your preference for soapboxing over engaging in evidenced and reasoned debate with other contributors here. Why bother receiving when you can just transmit?


Sorry but I asked you where the societal notion of "personal responsibility" comes from if not the Christian ethic, which enjoyed complete hegemony in Western society up until the past few hundred years or so. You complained about the possessive use of "your people" in order to evade the question. You chopped up my post into little sentences and asked cute questions while ignoring the substance of the combined text. You stated "it's quite easy to separate the notion of 'moral' responsibility from any religious source", which is patently absurd because our culture today evolved out of one of total Christian hegemony. You think that because a person today is atheist they are isolated from the influences of Christianity baked into the culture over the past 2000 years? In short, I didn't find your post worth the time to respond to. If you want to present a paragraph of focused response I'll be happy to respond. Bellinilover on the other hand voluntarily withdrew from the thread, to make any response to her post pointless.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

I all for a rehabilitative and preventive system. However, diciplinary action should always be taken and it should be in direct proportion to the severity of a crime. If an individual inflicts pain and suffering upon another, the perpetrator should suffer twice as much.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couchie said:


> The solution is already being implemented! The barbaric retributive system is slowly being replaced by a preventative and rehabilitative system in the more sophisticated cultures. The natural and cultural-systemic causes of mental and emotional disorders are under the heavy study of psychologists and neurologists. I recently watched a documentary on CBC that researchers in Toronto and Germany are starting to undertake the serious empirical study of pedophilia and why some adults are attracted to children and how to help them before they harm children. Some people don't want to understand such things, they prefer ignorance, they just want to demonize what they don't understand and burn the witches to save society. Some trusted, vaulted institutions even come to aid the horrific conduct of pedophiles, sheltering such people and covering-up the abuse that they do.


Sure, study human behavior, investigate causes, seek prevention, try to rehabilitate. Meanwhile, teach children that they are responsible for their actions, they have the power to accept responsibility, and that if they incur a debt to others they will be be required to pay it. Learning to accept that is called maturing. It is not a "Judeo-Christian" prejudice, it's just correct thinking, necessary for the formation of character and for the social order. Teach people that offenses are "not their fault," that no one can help doing whatever they do and being whatever they are, and see what you get. Just please confine your experiment to your private laboratory.


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## Guest (Jul 15, 2016)

Couchie said:


> Sorry but I asked you where the societal notion of "personal responsibility" comes from if not the Christian ethic, which enjoyed complete hegemony in Western society up until the past few hundred years or so. You complained about the possessive use of "your people" in order to evade the question. You chopped up my post into little sentences and asked cute questions while ignoring the substance of the combined text. You stated "it's quite easy to separate the notion of 'moral' responsibility from any religious source", which is patently absurd because our culture today evolved out of one of total Christian hegemony. You think that because a person today is atheist they are isolated from the influences of Christianity baked into the culture over the past 2000 years? In short, I didn't find your post worth the time to respond to. If you want to present a paragraph of focused response I'll be happy to respond. Bellinilover on the other hand voluntarily withdrew from the thread, to make any response to her post pointless.


OK. No 'chopping this time'. I'll respond to the substance of the combined text (though I should point out that in taking the trouble to consider particular parts of the post I was responding to, and seek some clarifications, it's odd that you call it evading the question).

On the basis of my understanding of what you posted, there is no merit in what you say about me, about 'my people' (since you don't say who 'my people' are, it's difficult to make any sense of the point you are making) about Christianity (which you merely caricature), about the idea of personal responsibility (which doesn't fail the test of validity just because it may have evolved from a religion).


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Couchie said:


> I'm skeptical of any claim that such-and-such is necessary to "maintain the social order". It's merely an appeal to tradition. It was once after all necessary to seek out and destroy witches in order to "maintain the social order" because most of society's problems were caused by the craft of witches in partnership with the Devil. The red is particularly suspect. Retributive justice (ie. punishment) is born of the idea that two wrongs make a right, that society ought to respond the experience of suffering with more suffering. Under the threat of suffering ourselves we are told not to make others suffer. This is an extrinsically imposed threat that might be necessary to keep barbarians in line (read the Old Testament), but a truly evolved and sophisticated society would understand intrinsically why to not cause harm for its own sake. Does any intelligent and emotionally healthy man not commit crimes just because he's scared of going to jail, or because he understands rationally and experiences first hand through sympathy and empathy how crimes create suffering which ought to be avoided for its own sake?
> 
> We have ourselves a society that produces psychopaths. It seems there are several lazy people within this thread who take shelter in the barbaric notions that demons have taken up residence in our psychopaths, rather than turn the looking glass upon themselves and contemplate how society might actually cultivate and enable psychopaths by maintaining such barbaric notions in the first place. *A psychopath may be deficient in empathy because he was genetically predisposed to a brain incapable maintaining a proper balance of serotonin. *The culture of bullying in schools is pervasive and society largely looks the other way. Society loves guns and a movie without violence is no movie at all. Is it a surprise then that we have school shootings? Is this a "moral" failure of the psychopath or a perfectly natural production of our ignorant and barbaric culture still getting moral guidelines from thousands-old books of collected tribal hearsay? Why bother studying, collecting evidence, and reasoning when you can just burn witches?


The problem with arguing with you on this is that you appear to be so misinformed. Psychopathy is a personality disorder not a mental illness. Most psychologists would dismiss the idea it is a genetic disposition . It far more likely to do with attachment and other issues which happen from a very young age. This doesn't mean that the person is not responsible for their actions as tends to be the case with mental illness. You appear to get your idea of psychopathic behaviour from movies like 'Dirty Harry' in which the villain was a gibbering maniac. I can tell you that psychopaths are not like that at all in real life! They often appear some of the most controlled people there are. Why research has shown that people of psychopathic tendency make good surgeons or stock brokers! 
One quote: Criminal psychology researcher Robert Hare stresses that a clear distinction is known among clinicians and researchers between psychopathic and psychotic individuals: "Psychopaths are not disoriented or out of touch with reality, nor do they experience the delusions, hallucinations, or intense subjective distress that characterize most other mental disorders. Unlike psychotic individuals, psychopaths are rational and aware of what they are doing and why. Their behavior is the result of choice, freely exercised."
As I say to guys I come into contact with: "Your background may explain why you are like you are but it does not excuse what you did nor is it an excuse for remaining as you are. You have a choice."
Actually, your argument appears to be based not on rational research or reading of psychology but on your seeming hatred of the Judaeo-Christian position. Whatever our position on that, most people - religious or not - would agree that teaching personal responsibility is a good thing and is the basis of a decent society.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

DavidA said:


> The problem with arguing with you on this is that you appear to be so misinformed. Psychopathy is a personality disorder not a mental illness. Most psychologists would dismiss the idea it is a genetic disposition . It far more likely to do with attachment and other issues which happen from a very young age. This doesn't mean that the person is not responsible for their actions as tends to be the case with mental illness. You appear to get your idea of psychopathic behaviour from movies like 'Dirty Harry' in which the villain was a gibbering maniac. I can tell you that psychopaths are not like that at all in real life! They often appear some of the most controlled people there are. Why research has shown that people of psychopathic tendency make good surgeons or stock brokers!
> One quote: Criminal psychology researcher Robert Hare stresses that a clear distinction is known among clinicians and researchers between psychopathic and psychotic individuals: "Psychopaths are not disoriented or out of touch with reality, nor do they experience the delusions, hallucinations, or intense subjective distress that characterize most other mental disorders. Unlike psychotic individuals, psychopaths are rational and aware of what they are doing and why. Their behavior is the result of choice, freely exercised."
> As I say to guys I come into contact with: "Your background may explain why you are like you are but it does not excuse what you did nor is it an excuse for remaining as you are. You have a choice."
> Actually, your argument appears to be based not on rational research or reading of psychology but on your seeming hatred of the Judaeo-Christian position. Whatever our position on that, most people - religious or not - would agree that teaching personal responsibility is a good thing and is the basis of a decent society.


You are the one misinformed I'm afraid. You apparently work with clinical psychologists and think yourself an expert. Clinical psychologists do not advance our understanding of the brain. They treat patients. What we are discussing is a matter of experimental psychology and neuroscience.

1. EXPERIMENTAL PYSCHOLOGY: Twin studies show genetic predisposition to psychopathy: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2242349/
2. STRUCTURAL NEUROSCIENCE: Meta-analysis of 43 brain imaging studies reveals prefrontal structural deficiencies in antisocial populations: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2784035/
3. MOLECULAR NEUROSCIENCE: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment: http://www.pnas.org/content/107/40/17433.full.pdf

Number 3 goes direct to my point that empathy is largely a matter of brain chemistry which in turn influences moral judgement. This is obvious to anybody who has taken an empathogenic psychoactive drug such as MDMA.

This is not based on my hatred of the Judaeo-Christian position. There's nothing special about the Christian position in this regard it is only the one relevant to our particular culture. Virtually every barbaric culture intuitively believed in higher powers which reward good behavior and punish bad behavior while presuming man responsible for his choices. No knowledge is needed to arrive at this position, no investigation or study, no real understanding of how the brain produces thought and action. The only thing barbaric man understood was that he could apparently make choices, and he believed even natural phenomena such as volcanoes, famine and disease to be choices made by higher powers. But free choice is just intuition, and like how earlier man universally believed the earth to be flat, and that time is not relative, what is intuitive is not necessarily how things actually are.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> Sure, study human behavior, investigate causes, seek prevention, try to rehabilitate. Meanwhile, teach children that they are responsible for their actions, they have the power to accept responsibility, and that if they incur a debt to others they will be be required to pay it. Learning to accept that is called maturing. It is not a "Judeo-Christian" prejudice, it's just correct thinking, necessary for the formation of character and for the social order. Teach people that offenses are "not their fault," that no one can help doing whatever they do and being whatever they are, and see what you get. Just please confine your experiment to your private laboratory.


LOL this reminds me of an article I read, something along the lines of "Neurologists convinced free will doesn't exist, but would like us to continue to believe it does anyway".

I haven't proposed teaching children they're not responsible for anything. Sound social policy is a matter separate from scientific inquiry. Personal responsibility may be an evolutionarily fit idea. It is quite another matter however to pretend to truth, to "correct thinking", and deny the fabric of reality altogether and discard the idea of investigation, evidence, and reason. A society that at least acknowledges the genetic and societal impacts on the actions of its worst members is I believe a more compassionate one that would produce fewer such members in the first place than a society which prizes ignorance and simple thinking, believes criminals are merely "evil" moral failures, and prescribes spilling more blood in response to spilled blood. That doesn't cultivate a kind society.


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## Guest (Jul 15, 2016)

@Couchie
Who knew opera could be this interesting.
Anyway, I'll confess I've only scanned that final link and I soon found a quote to indicate a common problem (?) I have, that maybe you can shed a little light on?
Thus: "Specifically, we show that the neurotransmitter serotonin directly modifies subjects’ moral judgments and behavior by means of enhancing aversion to personally harming others." I see how this works in the experiment, but what about in real life? How can one tell if "good behaviour" promotes serotonin production OR if increased serotonin (for whatever reason) promotes "good behaviour"?


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

dogen said:


> @Couchie
> Who knew opera could be this interesting.
> Anyway, I'll confess I've only scanned that final link and I soon found a quote to indicate a common problem (?) I have, that maybe you can shed a little light on?
> Thus: "Specifically, we show that the neurotransmitter serotonin directly modifies subjects' moral judgments and behavior by means of enhancing aversion to personally harming others." I see how this works in the experiment, but what about in real life? How can one tell if "good behaviour" promotes serotonin production OR if increased serotonin (for whatever reason) promotes "good behaviour"?


The link is not really between serotonin and good behavior, but serotonin and empathy. Increased serotonin leads to increased empathy which leads to good behavior. It is clear that experience is the mother of empathy. If your friend loses their child you will no doubt experience a great deal of sympathy, but it is not until you have lost a child yourself will you truly understand their pain and have the experience of empathy. The serotonin channels are first established in a newborn by his genetics so that role is undeniable. It is not difficult to see either how an abused child, denied by his parents an emotionally healthy childhood, takes refuge in unhealthy and desperate emotional coping mechanisms, might never develop a healthy regulation of serotonin feedback, and is unable to later experience empathy for others. When you do not feel or understand the pain of others, there will no doubt be an impact on behavior because there is not that negative feedback encouraging you not to harm others.

Hey - we're getting into Parsifal now!


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## Guest (Jul 15, 2016)

Er, OK not good behaviour but the question remains: does the chemical create or increase the behaviour/mental disposition or the other way round? (In "real life")


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Think of that remarkable process by which feelings, memories, and ideas stir in one's mind and thought is produced, words are spoken, words are heard by others, which create in the minds of others their own new mix of feelings, memories, and ideas, forever altered! They in turn produce new thoughts, ideas, and words, and return the favor. Actions are taken based on these thoughts and feelings. In this framework humans are a complex network of cells in which the individual becomes a node, a node which is the product of all the other individual nodes he has ever heard or come into contact with and shared ideas and experience with. Should we blame the murderer for his actions, or is the blame really with his circumstances, and all the people involved in putting his mix of thoughts and ideas in his mind which eventually lead him to his thoughts of murder and action? This is a blow to individualism, and the people who profess to the currency of individual souls and obsess over where souls go after death do not like it.


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## Guest (Jul 15, 2016)

Well that's several cans of worms there, I'm not addressing those issues, "just" the physiology / psychology one of which is the horse and which is the cart. Or is the horse actually sitting in the cart, eating a carrot?

(I probably agree with you about the node idea: Indra's net).


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

dogen said:


> Er, OK not good behaviour but the question remains: does the chemical create or increase the behaviour/mental disposition or the other way round? (In "real life")


It goes both ways. Think about sex. Sex leads to the chemical release of dopamine which is highly pleasurable. But it is with the expectation of pleasure from dopamine that we partake in sex in the first place.

When we witness the suffering of others, serotonin has us feel their suffering also. It is then with the expectation of avoiding the feeling of suffering ourselves that we avoid causing suffering to others. Kind of self-serving when you think about it! I believe mirror neurons play a role also so probably more complex than I'm letting on here.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Couchie said:


> Should we blame the murderer for his actions, or is the blame really with his circumstances, and all the people involved in putting his mix of thoughts and ideas in his mind which eventually lead him to his thoughts of murder and action?


Until solutions are found, blame and convict the murderer.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Couchie said:


> You are the one misinformed I'm afraid. You apparently work with clinical psychologists and think yourself an expert. Clinical psychologists do not advance our understanding of the brain. They treat patients. What we are discussing is a matter of experimental psychology and neuroscience.
> 
> 1. EXPERIMENTAL PYSCHOLOGY: Twin studies show genetic predisposition to psychopathy: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2242349/
> 2. STRUCTURAL NEUROSCIENCE: Meta-analysis of 43 brain imaging studies reveals prefrontal structural deficiencies in antisocial populations: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2784035/
> ...


My opinions are based on real life not some opinion trawled off the Internet.


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## Guest (Jul 16, 2016)

Couchie said:


> Should we blame the murderer for his actions,


S/he should be held responsible, yes. "Blame" is something more, implying a consequential retribution that isn't necessarily appropriate.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> S/he should be held responsible, yes. "Blame" is something more, implying a consequential retribution that isn't necessarily appropriate.


I disagree that blame implies "consequential retribution", it is merely the assignment of responsibility. I might blame you equally if you spill your drink on my shirt as I would if you murder my daughter. My expectations for retribution are very different between the two. Consequential retribution is implied by the severity of the offense in the context of the society's conceptualization of justice and appetite for vengeance. Barbaric cultures tend to have higher expectations of retribution, ie. getting your hand cut off for stealing, torture prior to being executed for murder, etc. I think you've split a hair here to comment on the matter of retribution rather than the matter of responsibility.


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

That there are_reasons_ a person does something - be they ethical, logical, or even brain chemistry - does not mean moral agency does not exist.

Or at least you'd need to do a little more work to show that the latter follows from the former. I don't believe that any thinking person over the majority of recorded history would say that genetics don't play a role in behavior. In fact it was bloodlines that determined social structures and ruling classes for the majority of that recorded history and for that specific reason. The concept of moral agency is a liberal western ideal as much as it is a religious one, perhaps rooted to some degree in a Christian tradition when it's found in Christian nations but it is found in other nations and cultures as well.

In contrast, some religious traditions are rooted in the kind of philosophical determinism that follows from Couchie's critique of moral agency just as that view is rooted in scientism. If one wants to find a sympathetic religious tradition to the idea that one cannot be blamed (but still punished) for one's own misfortune or misdeeds then you're in luck! It's the biggest game in town today, insha'allah!


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Couchie said:


> It goes both ways. Think about sex.


I'd much rather engage in sex than think about it. How about you?


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## Guest (Jul 19, 2016)

Couchie said:


> I disagree that blame implies "consequential retribution", it is merely the assignment of responsibility. I might blame you equally if you spill your drink on my shirt as I would if you murder my daughter. My expectations for retribution are very different between the two. Consequential retribution is implied by the severity of the offense in the context of the society's conceptualization of justice and appetite for vengeance. Barbaric cultures tend to have higher expectations of retribution, ie. getting your hand cut off for stealing, torture prior to being executed for murder, etc. I think you've split a hair here to comment on the matter of retribution rather than the matter of responsibility.


Would you also blame me for rescuing the drowning girl from the river? Go and look the word up; what you call splitting hairs, I call more nuanced use of English. In any case, I answered your question, which is all I'm required to do, but I added a short explanation of my thinking.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

bz3 said:


> That there are_reasons_ a person does something - be they ethical, logical, or even brain chemistry - does not mean moral agency does not exist.
> 
> Or at least you'd need to do a little more work to show that the latter follows from the former. I don't believe that any thinking person over the majority of recorded history would say that genetics don't play a role in behavior. In fact it was bloodlines that determined social structures and ruling classes for the majority of that recorded history and for that specific reason. The concept of moral agency is a liberal western ideal as much as it is a religious one, perhaps rooted to some degree in a Christian tradition when it's found in Christian nations but it is found in other nations and cultures as well.
> 
> In contrast, some religious traditions are rooted in the kind of philosophical determinism that follows from Couchie's critique of moral agency just as that view is rooted in scientism. If one wants to find a sympathetic religious tradition to the idea that one cannot be blamed (but still punished) for one's own misfortune or misdeeds then you're in luck! It's the biggest game in town today, insha'allah!


Um, most adherents to "scientism", as known as physicists, subscribe to the prevailing interpretation of quantum mechanics as being non-deterministic. Further, brain dynamics, those billions of neurons firing along trillions of connections almost certainly carries with it a stochastic element. We could muddy stuff up further and throw chaos theory into the mix for good measure. The stochastic element is likely a reason that human brains are capable of creating novel mixes of symbolic thought called "creativity" and digital computers simply processing symbols according to a set of algorithms are not.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> Would you also blame me for rescuing the drowning girl from the river? Go and look the word up; what you call splitting hairs, I call more nuanced use of English. In any case, I answered your question, which is all I'm required to do, but I added a short explanation of my thinking.


I wouldn't blame you, but I might praise you. Both are acknowledgements of responsibility, one confers disapproval and one approval. That's another matter entirely from retribution.

blame
blām/
verb


1.
assign responsibility for a fault or wrong.
"the inquiry blamed the engineer for the accident"

synonyms:hold responsible, hold accountable, condemn, accuse, find/consider guilty, assign fault/liability/guilt to, indict, point the finger at, finger, incriminate; More

praise
prāz/
verb1.
express warm approval or admiration of.
"we can't praise Chris enough-he did a brilliant job"​
synonyms:​commend, express admiration for, applaud, pay tribute to, speak highly of, eulogize,compliment, congratulate, sing the praises of, rave about, go into raptures about,heap praise on, wax lyrical about, make much of, pat on the back, take one's hat off to, lionize, admire, hail, ballyhoo; formallaud
"the police praised Pauline for her courage in confronting the thieves"​
​ret·ri·bu·tion
ˌretrəˈbyo͞oSH(ə)n/
noun


punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act.
"employees asked not to be named, saying they feared retribution"

synonyms:punishment, penalty, one's just deserts; More


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Man’s moral compass is no longer necessary or even relevant. Almost every minute of our lives, almost every action we take, are controlled by machines – the clocks we live by, the traffic signals that control whether we stop or go, our viewing on TV and computers… Morality is now the province of machines, which have displaced man as the moral measure of sentience. And that’s a real load off our minds! Eloi-R-Us.


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## Guest (Jul 19, 2016)

Couchie said:


> I wouldn't blame you, but I might praise you. Both are acknowledgements of responsibility, one confers disapproval and one approval. That's another matter entirely from retribution.


So not hair-splitting after all?


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

Couchie said:


> Um, most adherents to "scientism", as known as physicists, subscribe to the prevailing interpretation of quantum mechanics as being non-deterministic. Further, brain dynamics, those billions of neurons firing along trillions of connections almost certainly carries with it a stochastic element. We could muddy stuff up further and throw chaos theory into the mix for good measure. The stochastic element is likely a reason that human brains are capable of creating novel mixes of symbolic thought called "creativity" and digital computers simply processing symbols according to a set of algorithms are not.


I am not sure randomness inherently implies a non-deterministic worldview, but you see to know more about the prevailing philosophical notions of neuroscientists than I do so I will defer if that is what you are saying. My prior post was referring to, without quoting, what you posit in this post with regard to free will:



Couchie said:


> And from where do your people GET their idea of personal responsibility? Full responsibility? 100%? We are perfect moral agents? The child taught to feed himself by stealing and the child taught to feed himself by working are 100% equally responsible for theft? Where does that idea come from? Not a sophisticated understanding of behavior or how behavior is generated by the brain. The fact that the simplistic notion of personal responsibility might be easily intuitively derived by barbarians unaware of the unconscious brain but such is not so easy for the most knowledgeable psychologists and neurologists who study the brain surely gives you some pause? *Some neurologists are quite convinced free will is a mere illusion and we have none at all. Without free will, how do we have responsibility? Science sometimes discovers that what is intuitive to humans is not how things really are.*


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Couchie said:


> Um, most adherents to "scientism", as known as physicists, subscribe to the prevailing interpretation of quantum mechanics as being non-deterministic. Further, brain dynamics, those billions of neurons firing along trillions of connections almost certainly carries with it a stochastic element. We could muddy stuff up further and throw chaos theory into the mix for good measure. The stochastic element is likely a reason that human brains are capable of creating novel mixes of symbolic thought called "creativity" and digital computers simply processing symbols according to a set of algorithms are not.


Wow! Thank goodness! I know now that if I mug an old lady, drive at 90 mph through a restricted area or rob a bank, I can tell the judge to let me off because I had no moral responsibility! It was all due to neurons flying around in my brain!


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

DavidA said:


> Wow! Thank goodness! I know now that if I mug an old lady, drive at 90 mph through a restricted area or rob a bank, I can tell the judge to let me off because I had no moral responsibility! It was all due to neurons flying around in my brain!


Juries judge matters of fact, judges judge matters of law. Morals have nothing to do with a conviction in a court of law. Morals may play a role in what laws we decide to have, but we may instead make laws from the evidence some laws are good ideas that lead to pleasant results. Societies with lots of reckless driving and theft are not pleasant. Morals may also figure into what we do with criminals when convicted. Criminals who drive recklessly obviously lack good ideas about why you should drive safely. We can give them good ideas rather than hanging them: ie. explain why driving the speed limit is good and explain you're gonna lose your licence if you fail to comply. Again, you're obsessed with "moral responsibility", i.e. prescribing "sin" because it's the ancient method derived by those obsessed with souls.


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## Guest (Jul 20, 2016)

Couchie said:


> Again, you're obsessed with "moral responsibility", i.e. prescribing "sin" because it's the ancient method derived by those obsessed with souls.


I'm not sure it's David who's obsessed.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Couchie said:


> Juries judge matters of fact, judges judge matters of law. *Morals have nothing to do with a conviction in a court of law*. Morals may play a role in what laws we decide to have, but we may instead make laws from the evidence some laws are good ideas that lead to pleasant results. Societies with lots of reckless driving and theft are not pleasant. Morals may also figure into what we do with criminals when convicted. Criminals who drive recklessly obviously lack good ideas about why you should drive safely. We can give them good ideas rather than hanging them: ie. explain why driving the speed limit is good and explain you're gonna lose your licence if you fail to comply. Again, you're obsessed with "moral responsibility", i.e. prescribing "sin" because it's the ancient method derived by those obsessed with souls.


Good, I'll bear that in mind when I rob the bank tomorrow! :lol: or your house!

You yourself appear to be obsessed with telling other people what they are obsessed with. You condemn others for judging yet you yourself hand out judgments left, right and centre on other people.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

There's really no point in further discussion with people who take issue with the style and surface of a post while ignoring the substance of its point in order to avoid challenging their cherished worldview. It's like snapping a twig off a tree and thinking you have chopped it down at its trunk.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Now, now. No one here is to blame. Let's all shake hands and blame everything on Wagner, that old borderline rotter!


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## Guest (Jul 21, 2016)

Couchie said:


> This article makes a pretty good case for Wagner having BPD: http://www.the-wagnerian.com/2012/08/the-psychopathology-of-richard-wagner.html?m=1
> 
> [...]
> 
> In this case, Wagner deserves more sympathy than scorn.


Returning to the OP, the 'substance' if you will, the article offers interesting thoughts, and prompts further reading on BPD. From a respected charity in the UK...

http://www.mind.org.uk/information-...lity-disorder-bpd/causes-of-bpd/#.V5Bc0TUxn26

What becomes clear for the layman is that diagnosing 'illness' on the basis of behaviours rather than physical symptoms (which can also be challenging) has inherent problems. I don't mean that mental health professionals don't do a good job or are just hazarding guesses, but my perception of someone else's personality is coloured by my own personality. To give a simplistic example, if I am so reserved that I never show emotion to anyone else in public, someone else's mild displays might seem stronger to me than to someone who is himself prone to sharing how they feel. In other words, we are all on a spectrum - just at different positions, neither 'normal' nor 'abnormal' (and certainly not good or bad) - and where we are impacts on how we perceive where others are.

The question of 'sympathy' or 'scorn' is legitimate.



Couchie said:


> The giving of names is expedient for targeting effective therapies.


This is also true. However, the giving of names can't also be seen as absolving responsibilities. Accounting for the causes of behaviours is important, but consideration needs to be given to whether there are any consequences.



Couchie said:


> If science establishes that *people *are indeed not truely to "blame" for their actions, the justice system may evolve to be more therapeutic rather than punitive,


I would hope for a justice system which balances the best outcomes for the perpetrator, the victim(s) and for society. Alas, too much emphasis is given to the needs of society, especially the mob, and retribution too often dominates over restoration. Deterrence is, I think, overrated.

But couchie, here's where your analysis goes slightly off the rails as you extend consideration for those with a named disorder to all of us. By all means make a case for 'some people in certain circumstances' but I see no justification for absolving us all of responsibility for our actions.



DavidA said:


> Because we put a label on something doesn't mean that person is not responsible for their actions.


No, but it might mean we give consideration to treating that person differently.



Couchie said:


> I would argue that people can only possibly be responsible for that which they are conscious of.


And how do we determine what it is that people are 'conscious of'? By observing them and listening to what they say. Fair enough, but not all speakers are reliable witnesses to their own lives.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Couchie said:


> There's really no point in further discussion with people who take issue with the style and surface of a post while ignoring the substance of its point in order to avoid challenging their cherished worldview. It's like snapping a twig off a tree and thinking you have chopped it down at its trunk.


It always amuses me that people who write like this invariably show by their statements the same faults as they condemn in others. I think the psychologists call it 'projection'.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

DavidA said:


> It always amuses me that people who write like this invariably show by their statements the same faults as they condemn in others. I think the psychologists call it 'projection'.


Oh really? Kindly quote one substantive post you've made in this thread which demonstrates an honest inquisitiveness.


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## Guest (Jul 23, 2016)

Couchie said:


> Oh really? Kindly quote one substantive post you've made in this thread which demonstrates an honest inquisitiveness.


In the face of your provocation about people's obsession with souls, 'honest inquisitiveness' can be difficult to sustain.

Instead, you might consider whether there is any merit (if not inquisitiveness) in my previous post.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> What becomes clear for the layman is that diagnosing 'illness' on the basis of behaviours rather than physical symptoms (which can also be challenging) has inherent problems. I don't mean that mental health professionals don't do a good job or are just hazarding guesses, but my perception of someone else's personality is coloured by my own personality. To give a simplistic example, if I am so reserved that I never show emotion to anyone else in public, someone else's mild displays might seem stronger to me than to someone who is himself prone to sharing how they feel. In other words, we are all on a spectrum - just at different positions, neither 'normal' nor 'abnormal' (and certainly not good or bad) - and where we are impacts on how we perceive where others are.
> 
> The question of 'sympathy' or 'scorn' is legitimate.


I would think rather of personality disorders as being mere "diagnostic categories" useful for targeting therapy. These categories become useful after necessity, nobody proactively goes to a psychologist to be screened for disorders, they are sought out as the result of such individuals' suffering, and often after inflicting suffering upon others. In this simplistic deconstructed framework it is quite like any other illness I suppose. The only reason we take issue with cancer is because it causes suffering and death. If it didn't, if all cancers were totally benign, it wouldn't be regarded as a disease at all but rather a normal phenomenon occurring within homeostasis. Such is the case with personality disorders. At worst, being reserved in public might put you at risk of being perceived as boring. The BPD on the other hand leaves a wake of emotional suffering and sometimes physical destruction wrecked upon themselves and others.



MacLeod said:


> But couchie, here's where your analysis goes slightly off the rails as you extend consideration for those with a named disorder to all of us. By all means make a case for 'some people in certain circumstances' but I see no justification for absolving us all of responsibility for our actions.


Ultimately the brains of disordered people, no matter how disorderly, receive stimuli and information, process it, and output words and actions the same as anybody else's. The only difference is that their actions or words deviate sufficiently, objectionably, and consistently from the norm so as to be identifiable and categorical. I believe you are putting the cart before the horse. The brain, by one generational mechanism, produces objectionable and pleasant behavior. It's not that the tainted brains of disordered people casts doubt back onto the function of the brains of healthy individuals. It's that we have brains, and they produce both disordered and healthy behavior in the first place. Attempts to absolve a select group of moral responsibility (ie. the very young and mentally disabled) while preserving it for the larger "norm" is an issue of theology for soul-people, attempting to reconcile the hideous doctrine of hell with the inherently perceived innocence of babes who sometimes die before they can know Christ. Ultimately they defer the question to ignorance, ie. "for God to judge".


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## Guest (Jul 30, 2016)

Couchie said:


> Attempts to absolve a select group of moral responsibility (ie. the very young and mentally disabled) while preserving it for the larger "norm" is *an issue of theology for soul-people*, attempting to reconcile the hideous doctrine of hell with the inherently perceived innocence of babes who sometimes die before they can know Christ. Ultimately they defer the question to ignorance, ie. "for God to judge".


It's an issue for all of us - not just "soul-people" (I'm not a 'soul person').

I'll go back and check, but I think we started with the idea of 'personal responsibility' and not 'moral responsibility'. Those are quite different beasts.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> It's an issue for all of us - not just "soul-people" (I'm not a 'soul person').
> 
> I'll go back and check, but I think we started with the idea of 'personal responsibility' and not 'moral responsibility'. Those are quite different beasts.


It appears to the gentleman concerned that anyone who talks about 'moral responsibility' is a 'soul person' who is rooted in mediaeval beliefs.


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## Guest (Jul 30, 2016)

DavidA said:


> It appears to the gentleman concerned that anyone who talks about 'moral responsibility' is a 'soul person' who is rooted in mediaeval beliefs.


couchie made the reasonable point a while back that if you are raised in a culture where a religious tradition has been one of the essential contributory factors (eg Christianity in the UK) it is possible that one's moral compass cannot be detached from that tradition.

I disagree, however. Unlike couchie, I take personal responsibility for the choices I make, and am able to select what I will from the moral, religious, social, intellectual menu on offer. Doubtless, my raising as a 'modern enlightened Renaissance liberal' (just throwing a few potentially recognisable epithets together for show) is itself evidence that I can't shrug off my upbringing. But just because I hold to the value of 'love thy neighbour as thyself' does not mean that I also accept all the rest of the Christian doctrine and traditions that can accompany it.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Couchie says"to reconcile the hideous doctrine of hell with the inherently perceived innocence of babes who sometimes die before they can know Christ."

Such will end up purgatory at best. If you object to this, I suggest a stiff e-mail to [email protected] which may, or may not, have positive results. God has not been responsive to e-mails for the past thousand years or so, for whatever reason.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Just to go back to the original OP question - Did Wagner have Borderline Personality Disorder? - who knows? Nobody can know for certain and everything else is speculation, and when a thread starts to get out of hand and miles away from the premise in the way that this one appears to have, then it's time to call a halt to proceedings, I feel.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Barbebleu said:


> Just to go back to the original OP question - *Did Wagner have Borderline Personality Disorder? *- who knows? Nobody can know for certain and everything else is speculation, and when a thread starts to get out of hand and miles away from the premise in the way that this one appears to have, then it's time to call a halt to proceedings, I feel.


Just to answer that one - no! I'm reading a book about the conductor Thomas Beecham, who comes over as a highly talented but self-obsessed man, wanting nothing but to fulfil his own ambitions no matter the cost to others around him. Of course, he was a very great conductor but I wouldn't have wanted to be too close to him outside of his conducting. Wagner was probably the same sort of man.


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## Guest (Jul 30, 2016)

DavidA said:


> Just to answer that one - no! I'm reading a book about the conductor Thomas Beecham, who comes over as a highly talented but self-obsessed man, wanting nothing but to fulfil his own ambitions no matter the cost to others around him. Of course, he was a very great conductor but I wouldn't have wanted to be too close to him outside of his conducting. *Wagner was probably the same sort of man*.


That counts as exactly the kind of speculation that barbebleu is objecting to. I don't agree with barbebleu, however, that all is speculation. Reading the article cited in the OP, I can see some merit in the question.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I believe that in order to calm him down, doctors recommended that he compose and then frequently watch Götterdämmerung. Basically the Prozac of his day.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> That counts as exactly the kind of speculation that barbebleu is objecting to. I don't agree with barbebleu, however, that all is speculation. Reading the article cited in the OP, I can see some merit in the question.


In all fairness the article cited in the OP is also speculation. We simply are not close enough to the man to know, but I would say not. In any case the question raised is whether somehow Wagner was responsible for the way he behaved. I would answer the same as I would Beecham - Yes!


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## Guest (Jul 30, 2016)

DavidA said:


> In all fairness the article cited in the OP is also speculation. We simply are not close enough to the man to know, but I would say not. In any case the question raised is whether somehow Wagner was responsible for the way he behaved. I would answer the same as I would Beecham - Yes!


There is a qualitative difference between the very simple speculation that you offered in post #137 and that offered by an article which offered direct evidence from contemporary reports of the man, his behaviour and his words.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> There is a qualitative difference between the very simple speculation that you offered in post #137 and that offered by an article which offered direct evidence from contemporary reports of the man, his behaviour and his words.


The problem is it is still speculation. Like the Munich psychiatrist I quoted earlier who in 1872 concluded the composer suffered from 'chronic megalomania, paranoia......and moral derangement.' He was coming to it from a far nearer perspective than the article quoted by the OP. But it is still speculation. The thing is that Wagner's personality has been analysed for years but any conclusions will inevitably be speculative as we are not near enough to the man to make definitive judgments.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

MacLeod said:


> If you want to draw the attention of the moderators to this thread, you'll almost certainly need to use the report function or send them a PM. They don't read every post in every thread.


I honestly can't be bothered. Maybe I've got Borderline Apathetic Disorder!

Apropos of nothing I remember seeing a nice quote that touches on the idea of personal responsibility. "Laws are pointless because good people don't need them and bad people don't obey them."


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Several posts were deleted from the thread due to members commenting negatively on each other rather than discussing the thread content. Some other posts were deleted because they quoted deleted posts.


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