Anthony Bourdain Passes Away

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
And one more thing...

You know, cutting through all the words, all the emotion (mine and others)...my message is really pretty basic, but perhaps it's not clear:

At the end of the day, life is the single most precious thing humans have. It should be celebrated, always. Death is permanent, and never should be considered an acceptable alternative to life.

Amen to that. We exist on the only living planet in the known universe and next to a star that rises over the horizon each day. The seas wash the shores and life teems in abundance. Our three score and ten isn't much compared to the billions of years it took to put us here.

I sometimes wonder if consciousness exists outside of our bodies and has this one shot of being flesh and blood. One go around to feel love and the sun on our skins. Wouldn't it be cruelly tragic to spend eternity waiting for this brief 'life' only to give it up and go back to waiting?

a reply to: Kandinsky

Precisely.

What a shame, and what a waste...for everyone.

a reply to: Kandinsky

Well, I have at least four personal experiences with suicide (thankfully none of them mine).

1. The story I recanted above.

2. My best friend's 16 year old son hung himself in his bedroom to be found by his 8 year old sister. Star athlete by his own choice, with serious collegiate and professional offers. No signs, out of the blue. He left a note.

3. Another best friend with early signs of mental illness and alcohol issues just decided he'd show everyone just how smart they were, got drunk, took off his shirt, opened the window and laid down on his bed. It was -35F below zero outside. He left a note too.

4. A good friend and colleague's 18 year old son came home one night, penned a note and then proceeded to OD on heroin. His wife and 1 year old son were home at the time. Good kid, no indications of previous drug use or hanging with the wrong crowd.

All gone, just gone.

nvm

a reply to: greydaze

yeah not everything is a conspiracy. It aint hard to see the writing on the wall though.

Here's a tweet about the mob boss Weinstien his girlfriend helped call out.

twitter.com...

You honestly think their is nothing suspicious about his death?

How god damn naive are you?

You can't talk about gangsters this way. They killed him for sure.

originally posted by: booyakasha
You can't talk about gangsters this way. They killed him for sure.

Makes total sense. They went all the way to France to hang him and make it look like a suicide. When REAL gansters kill you them make it look like real gansters killed you so other people get the message.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk


There's also the brain damage that comes with regular lifelong drug abuse.

If people only knew how sensitive our brains are. Robin Williams, for instance, evidently exhausted/dysregulated his brains neuromodular systems - specifically the nucleus basalis (what's called "lewy body syndrome") - and this is a far more common cause of suicide than is presently recognized.

If you don't have a functional nucleus basalis, your forebrain can't regulate your brainstem, which must be a very horrifying experience when you feel like you can't control your feelings.

Cause and effect. If people knew, as future humans will (hopefully) know, that you can't simply snort coke and have fun every night and expect your brain to function the way it does at 25 when your 60+, then I imagine they would choose more healthy forms of enlivening themselves.

Age related degeneration essentially exposes our weakest links; and perhaps in the case of Anthony Bourdain, there was some dysfunction in the forebrain regulatory system, as in Robin Williams.

So here is an article in yesterday's WSJ which can be interpreted a couple of different ways...

1. There is a level of acceptance in society today for suicide, and celebrity suicides will drive copycat actions. Translating this into my previous points, there is a 'responsibility' of celebrities contemplating suicide to the people who see them as role models.

2. A role model suicide does cause people to seek help (and this is a good thing).

“When there is promotion and marketing and in some ways acceptance, yeah, it does drive people to reach out.”
-J. Draper

Suicide Hotline calls jump 25% following celebrity deaths

I guess my question is, does it cause them to 'reach out', or does it cause them to contemplate something they wouldn't have contemplated otherwise? I guess either way, the fact they reached out at all is a good thing, but I still maintain my original point that people contemplating suicide have a responsibility to the survivors they leave behind...especially their children.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

"Suicide is for selfish cowards"

I have personally experienced suicide (4) times in my life...the OTHER side of suicide! The survivor's side.

And as the survivor you react with hostility because you are left with unanswered questions, as if the survivor has more claim on an autonomous human beings will.

You sir are a bully if you think that calling the victim a coward will somehow reduce the incidence of suicide or make the survivors feel better.

I'd wager a bet that it takes more strength to do the act than to simply survive and fade away.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

she's going to remember that moment, and she's going to resent and hate him for it. When she stands in front of the mirror

And hopefully she will think of what state he was in, what reasons he had to do that act. In other words she will be mature enough to accept thats it not all about her selfish needs.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Suicide is for SELFISH COWARDS!

Perhaps you could call it a deterrent

Coward
noun
1.
a person who is contemptibly lacking in the courage to do or endure dangerous or unpleasant things.

So by its very definition continuing life may be a dangerous thing. See the conundrum?

You've have picked up the pieces and seen the pain in the survivors and no one is berating you for the courage and selfless help you have provided.

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

In other words she will be mature enough to accept thats it not all about her selfish needs.

She's 11 YEARS OLD for Chist's sake!!

What the hell is wrong with you???

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

So a 4 or 5 year old understands why their parents are divorcing and yet an 11 year old will be frozen in time and her future recollections will be defined by the absent father. Man thats a stretch. There is nothing wrong with me.


You have your upbringing where its the manly thing to do at all costs. I really don't think you have a grip of how depression really works. I respect you and we have agreed a lot in the past. I will leave it at that.

peace

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk


As to your last point: Obviously!!!

I say that with no disrespect, but sheer astonishment that such a logical cause-effect reasoning wouldn't - and usually isn't - be recognized as basic common sense i.e. something every human should spontaneously possess.

We live in a world where people don't seem to think facts exist. But since facts exist; and facts account for EVERYTHING that happens - including suicide - it is pretty amazing that we need to emphasize the banal - yet ultra important - fact that suicide causes harm to the people who were personally attached to you.

As someone who studies the brain, and can pinpoint which parts of the brain mediate attachment relations, it is a cruel thing to commit suicide and leave those who are attached to you to suffer with meaning of your action.

If there is anything that should prevent suicide, it is obviously this: you will be hurting the people around you.

This is co-dependence. Responsibility exists in me to those who are attached to me; and the same applies to them vis-a-vis me.

It's sad that some people do not respect this fact.

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight


And what about striving to live with reference to the significance of your existence to other people i.e. attachment relations?

Committing suicide ends your pain; but it adds quite a bit to the pain of those who were attached to you.

You think it takes more strength to eliminate yourself than to persist for the sake of those you care for? Never mind the illusion that depression is a momentary state - and therefore, suicide is something that is always done in haste, not to mention, from a position of intense cognitive delusion?

Help exists. The brain is plastic. People who think suicide is a "real condition" perhaps need to give up their philosophical illusions - or if they have none, gain some real philosophical insight - if they would like to bring their body back to a state of homeostasis with reality.

Hate to sound trite, but things can be boiled down at a qualitative level to: the person who feels that their psychological pain is too great has too little love in them for the people around them.

At a basic brain level, the ancient origins of the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere lies in the corticolimbic 'specializations' of the dorsal (or top) system and the ventral (or bottom) system.

The reason this is relevant is because the top system is projectional, or 'egocentric', whereas the lower system is based in constraint, or 'allocentric'.

Love arises mostly as a consequence of activity at the level of the lower system, usually as a result of reflecting on the constraints that makes things what they are. The projectional system, conversely, merely repeats the past structure of the ego: learning does not happen through the top system, but only the bottom system.

My reasoning goes like this: if my psychological pain is too great, it is perhaps because my constraint systems are focused not on the external stream from world to self (where love originates i.e. it is not emergent from the self; but from the self in relation to an other), but on the internal representation of the self's own egocentric feelings - in other words, with what the projectional (dorsal) system reflexively brings about, that is, its focus on what it fears and finds painful.

If you realize that you are a physical system, you can perhaps appreciate the significance of positive interference. When two waves that are in phase hit one another, a wave that is larger than the sum of both parts results. This is no metaphor, as we now know, since mirror neurons are constantly representing and responding to external (as well as imaginal) events. Mirror neurons, or spindle cells, are neotonous pyramidal cells. They bend and move and flow. They are plastic and they can grow too - forming along the primitive edges of the hippocampal dentrate gyrus.

Thus, a mind too focused on itself is caught in a positive (reinforcing) feedback loop with its own fear-systems; the result is that no new information (deriving from intersubjective 'waves') is allowed to enter the system and so make it more robust in its regulation.

People who claim to be 'spiritual' (as Bourdain, apparently, claimed), particularly the 'self-focused' spirituality which puts feelings above reasoning, are definitely being led astray by new age fantasies like "you create your own reality", or "the external world is the creation of your mind". Because this claim is wrong - and doesn't acknowledge the fundamental bidirectionality of things (self to world; world to self) the singular focus leads to a projectional system that is way too egocentric (hence Bourdain's reputation of being an inconsiderate, intemperate bully) and as a consequence of this projectional systems external 'thrust', the mind, when it feels off, or dysregulated, cannot recruit an allocentric focus based on a sober recognition of the self's "neediness" for interpersonal recognition. Hence, denial of ones own need not only prevents allocentric openness to being dynamically supported by others, but also prevents such a cognitive recognition by feeding into the projectional system how much the "self hates" ideas like neediness, togetherness, or vulnerability. Think about it: if Bourdain couldn't tolerate those tiny little things that others did which prompted him to become a person reputed to be a "bully", then how could he ever find the dexterity within his brain-mind to regulate his irascible and stochastic feeling states? The two vectors occur through the same mind-brain, yet they are conceptually dissociated in the mind of the thinker.

Satanism is a mental virus. Basically any conceptual system which focuses on 'rebellion' will likely hurt the rebelling mind in the end, since a mind which emerges through a dynamical system, built from infancy onwards by 'connection' with the environment, is systematically 'broken down' by its own hyper-idealistic fantasy that because the projectional egocentric system can feel so "full of itself", that it is indeed, or in fact, that stable, or that "full", as opposed to, for instance, a situation comparable to a car: a car that is full can go fast - but it would be idiotic to think that the driver shouldn't be aware of the need for gas stations along the route to refill itself; in other words, a car without fuel - without a recognition that car+refueling depot = unit, is delusional. Similarly, a person who thinks that they are self-sufficient is delusional, and as a corrolarly, suicide is a bit easier when the self delusionally thinks that other selves wont be crippled by the knowledge of a close friend (or family members) suicide.

a reply to: Astrocyte

"Obviously" as to which part of the post?

Suicide rates have increased 60% in the last 45 years. To say that has been as a result of celebrity effect or desensitizing through mass media is open to debate.

The above figure is actually a 1.4% increase per annum.

it is pretty amazing that we need to emphasize the banal - yet ultra important - fact that suicide causes harm to the people who were personally attached to you.

I have never claimed as such in this thread.

these were my words.

And as the survivor you react with hostility because you are left with unanswered questions, as if the survivor has more claim on an autonomous human beings will. You sir are a bully if you think that calling the victim a coward will somehow reduce the incidence of suicide or make the survivors feel better.

As someone who studies the brain, and can pinpoint which parts of the brain mediate attachment relations, it is a cruel thing to commit suicide and leave those who are attached to you to suffer with meaning of your action.

Painful yes. Do you think the person committing suicide in their despair sets out to be cruel to the survivor?

Even after notes are left behind can the survivor ever truly understand.

Does meaning come from the "other" or what we interpret as the outside and we ascribe meaning to?

The moral law is only that I know myself as a free person.

it is obviously this: you will be hurting the people around you.

That is self evident. Does the pain felt by those behind surpass the pain that the tortured soul is undergoing before committing the act?

You will say the pain is momentary for the suicide while the survivor feels pain for an eternity.
Bear in mind that the suicide is acting against all self preservation all survival instincts and physiological constraints at that moment albeit for a short time but nevertheless leading to oblivion of the Self.

This is co-dependence.Responsibility exists in me to those who are attached to me; and the same applies to them vis-a-vis me

I'm unsure what you mean; co dependence is viewed in a negative light by some.

a reply to: Astrocyte

And what about striving to live with reference to the significance of your existence to other people i.e. attachment relations?

If you rely on your significance to your "other" giving you meaning then that can just as easily be taken away from you.
eg Divorce, Fly-in Fly-out workers, long term hospital patients.

You again also place emphasis on "striving" and looking at it clinically. The Clinician cannot act without a "patient"
The psychologist cannot exist without the "mental patient"

Only when we are free of pain can we "strive" effectively. The trick is to walk the fine line of helping the distressed overcome that moment of despair and allow the plasticity of the brain to take a hold.

I have seen studies that suggest it takes 6 weeks for new "wiring" to take hold.

It is a topic fraught with dilemma.

Psychiatry has helped enact laws that chain free will at the discretion of the medical field. Chemical straight jackets.
Prisons disguised as hospitals.

a reply to: Astrocyte

its focus on what it fears and finds painful.

We glibly say " snap out of it " or " things will only get better ". I agree that to stay in a dark place will ultimately only make you darker.

Satanism is a mental virus. Basically any conceptual system which focuses on 'rebellion' will likely hurt the rebelling mind in the end,

1 You are confusing Satanism with Luciferianism
2 A mental virus? Is it contagious?

I'm curious how you went from Bourdain claiming to be spiritual to Luciferianism.

particularly the 'self-focused' spirituality which puts feelings above reasoning, are definitely being led astray by new age fantasies like "you create your own reality"

This must be spread by the mental virus you speak of.
I have a hard time following you when you use words such as above, especially in light of your other threads where you equate religion as mythology

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

Obviously with reference to this part of his post:

there is a 'responsibility' of celebrities contemplating suicide to the people who see them as role models.

This is logically obvious, or what we would mean by 'common sense'.

My response was more so focused on my feeling of amazement for how people can be made to look at things in a "just" sort of way, without value for cause and effect in their living. Without spontaneously or reflexively 'focusing' and realizing the significance of our actions on others.

I know we don't function this way for partially deliberate reasons. Our environments and our daily practices make us numb to what seems obvious to people who aren't under those same constraints.

Painful yes. Do you think the person committing suicide in their despair sets out to be cruel to the survivor?

Of course not. There are two sides - two views. Hence, the 'ideal' response is always the one which allows you to see both in their complementary significance and not one at the expense of another.

So, for example, I understand how horrifying it can be to suffer and not have the resources - the epistemological or psychodynamic means, to regulate yourself. I have been at the edge and have personally experienced what sort of conditions need to be met to experience such a situation. It is largely ignorance, and, more than anything, an unwitting self-absorption.

Our brains are perched at the 'edge of chaos', which in the interpersonal world of humans means "reciprocity", I do for you and you do for me; I, or egocentricity, is already an ingrained habit of all organisms, so the real human uniqueness derives from the pleasure we get from cooperating and benefiting - emotionally, materially, and spiritually - in our cooperation.

If you stick to the idea of homeostasis, and balance, you cannot help but see in the act of suicide an extreme state of egocentric impulsiveness. It is an act which can happen; and when it happens it is tragic, because we can always still imagine an alternate reality where it didn't happen, and the person, holding out, or benefiting from a chance interaction, was brought from the edge of his despair (males usually go through with it).

I'm unsure what you mean; co dependence is viewed in a negative light by some.

Co-dependence is the actual state which created you, so if you dislike it, wouldn't it make more sense to chalk it up to your developmental history, and not fetishize your conviction as "real", as in, "substantive". It seems sadomasochistic to insist on a view that has nothing going for it, and is more or less fanatic in its religiousity - its faith in what is irrational.

To me, the ethic of "its just a perception", should take priority over your whimsical idealism. For me, I have #ty perceptions all the time; everyday; dozens upon dozens of times. I note their occurence; understand their nature i.e. their logic within developmental time, and even the logic of evolution, and accept it for what it is. This is how you mentally process negative affective experiences - you note them (right brain) as having occurred and having affected you (this is letting right brain energy seep into left brain cognitive perceptual attention). This smooths out the imbalance between the hemispheres, and hence, 'relaxes' the stresses moving through your system.

But what happens if you hold the philosophical fiction of being a disembodied "eye", like the grey alien metaphor? Thats like a bulwark within your brain-mind, preventing the left hemisphere, and in particular, the ventral corticolimbic systems, from representing and correlating affective experience with psycholinguistic awareness (in the left brain).

Why do you think the myths of the past, created by egomaniacal shamans, are more coherent or sensible than the collective effort of millions upon millions of humans laboring under the name of 'science', to figure out reality in a way that is supported by the empirical evidence i.e. no free passes to the maniac who thinks he's special.