Schizophrenia, Sin and the Self (Owen Barfield)

[SanteriSatama]

I would say the daemon here may be the freezing cold weather ...

Well, the ice daemon does hang about in Canuckistan for half the year, yet doesn't seem to have profound psyche-altering influence over the vast majority of folks I know. They just dress imperviously in lots of weather-resistant downy insulation.

The ice daemon is inviting to introverts trying to get away from the busy-body extroverts. Extroverts feed from the inter-personal social network and remain social construct for the most part. Introverts reach towards the Source to feed directly from it. Which can appear as crazy trip for the normative social network.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Ice daemon appears in many guises ...

[David_Sundaram]

Barfield explores the phenomenon of modern mental illness, such as Schizophrenia, and how it reveals a fundamental alienation of the 'self' from the surrounding world and from the true Self in all of human society, with the Schizophrenics being the ones who are most aware of the alienation. Moderns experience this alienation as varying forms and degrees of insanity, while our ancestors experienced it as "sin". The former feels it is something that is happening to them, while the latter felt it was something they were actively involved in and, therefore, needed to take responsibility for.

I get (at least I think I do) what Barfield talked about. What I talked about included that (I think).

[AshvinP]

I would say the daemon here may be the freezing cold weather ...

Well, the ice daemon does hang about in Canuckistan for half the year, yet doesn't seem to have profound psyche-altering influence over the vast majority of folks I know. They just dress imperviously in lots of weather-resistant downy insulation.

Maybe they just haven't been tested enough yet. At the turn of 20th century, Russia and Northern Europe produced a shit ton of profound thinkers.

[AshvinP]

I get (at least I think I do) what Barfield talked about. What I talked about included that (I think).

Barfield's take was more metaphysical. He was not identifying 'sin' with 'selfishness', although the latter can be a manifestation of the underlying metaphysical sin. Another manifestation of that same sin could be extreme self-hate and lack of self-confidence and assertion of one's will.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I would say the daemon here may be the freezing cold weather ...

Well, the ice daemon does hang about in Canuckistan for half the year, yet doesn't seem to have profound psyche-altering influence over the vast majority of folks I know. They just dress imperviously in lots of weather-resistant downy insulation.

Maybe they just haven't been tested enough yet. At the turn of 20th century, Russia and Northern Europe produced a shit ton of profound thinkers.

Hey, maybe only a couple of hundred years of windchill factor since confederation isn't quite enough, and the likes of McLuhan, Norhtrop Frye, Jordan Peterson, are just the beginning

[David_Sundaram]

I get (at least I think I do) what Barfield talked about. What I talked about included that (I think).

Barfield's take was more metaphysical. He was not identifying 'sin' with 'selfishness', although the latter can be a manifestation of the underlying metaphysical sin. Another manifestation of that same sin could be extreme self-hate and lack of self-confidence and assertion of one's will.

In my view, conditions such as 'extreme self-hate', 'lack of self-confidence', etc. as well as their 'opposites', such as 'other-hate', 'grandiosity', etc., which many 'psychotics' (those diagnosed'labelled as 'schizophrenics's just being a sub-group thereof) are all consequences of 'selfishness', by which I mean regarding one's 'self' as being 'more important' (for want of a better descriptive) than other 'selves' in one's environment.

Clearly you just want to talk about Barfield's view, however.

[SanteriSatama]

Barfield's take was more metaphysical. He was not identifying 'sin' with 'selfishness', although the latter can be a manifestation of the underlying metaphysical sin. Another manifestation of that same sin could be extreme self-hate and lack of self-confidence and assertion of one's will.

I don't know what Barfield means by 'sin' (Greek hamartia means simply error), but any case sounds like Christian projection - alienation from God - than what can be applied to animistic cultures in their own terms.

We could at least hypothesize that instead of the dualistic subject-object reflective mechanism, tribal highly egalitarian community is more like the reflective mechanism of Indra's Net. Decentralized network instead of top-down class society, and the mechanism of ego-individual as internalized possession by class society.

Shaman disease starts typically with a deep plunge into the Archetypal Below, where are the deep fears to be faced, Origins of phenomena to be learned, etc. It's not abandoning or alienation from the social sphere of Indra's Net, but radical opening of deeper and higher reality than the planar social network. The deep mistake (sin!) of organized religions like monotheism is to take only the higher feel-good aspect, turn it into hierarchic top down social institutions and give into fear and feed it into collective fear, which projects the lower realms (which we associate with Nature) as sinful, hell, and with materialistic version of monotheism, mental disorder.

[AshvinP]

I get (at least I think I do) what Barfield talked about. What I talked about included that (I think).

Barfield's take was more metaphysical. He was not identifying 'sin' with 'selfishness', although the latter can be a manifestation of the underlying metaphysical sin. Another manifestation of that same sin could be extreme self-hate and lack of self-confidence and assertion of one's will.

In my view, conditions such as 'extreme self-hate', 'lack of self-confidence', etc. as well as their 'opposites', such as 'other-hate', 'grandiosity', etc., which many 'psychotics' (those diagnosed'labelled as 'schizophrenics's just being a sub-group thereof) are all consequences of 'selfishness', by which I mean regarding one's 'self' as being 'more important' (for want of a better descriptive) than other 'selves' in one's environment.

Clearly you just want to talk about Barfield's view, however.

Yes, well, I did start the thread with direct excerpts from Barfield's essay. You stated his view was "included" in yours and I pointed out why that's not accurate. Simple.

As for your view, there is no choice as to regarding one's 'self' as 'more important' than other 'selves'. I call that the wisdom of creative evolution. A person who is not first motivated to provide for their own needs and orient their own habits of thinking is useless to everyone else.

[AshvinP]

Barfield's take was more metaphysical. He was not identifying 'sin' with 'selfishness', although the latter can be a manifestation of the underlying metaphysical sin. Another manifestation of that same sin could be extreme self-hate and lack of self-confidence and assertion of one's will.

I don't know what Barfield means by 'sin' (Greek hamartia means simply error), but any case sounds like Christian projection - alienation from God - than what can be applied to animistic cultures in their own terms.

'Sin' means to miss the mark, which implies to set a goal, aim at it and then miss. We all sin (hence original sin) but we improve our aim when we become conscious of that which is throwing it off (confess and repent).

A lot of what you disagree with for cultural reasons ends up sounding like 'projection', doesn't it? Anyway, Barfield was aiming his criticism of 'sinful' behavior entirely within Western culture. Hence his example of the "white man's guilt".