Lived Experience Forum

[Techunique]

I am a naturally curious person, I am a spacy person, I am a lune. Sometimes, this combination leads to a very exciting idea, usually an idea that would be very hard to realize because of some limit on financial, legal, social or technological barriers. However I have just had an idea that you all might  help me be able to begin a hypothesis. The front of my mind was thinking about predictive analytics. The back of my mind was thinking of this forum. I spaced for a second and when I focused in again I was just sort of skimming through one of my favorite books. It's called Mad Merlin, by J. Robert King and when I saw  that I was holding it open in front of me, I decided to just read the page I was on. It was a part of the book that is particularly moving to me:

"The keys to your madness?" Loki interrupted. "Oh, give that up, merlin. Without madness, who are you? Without madness, who is Merlin?"

"Who is Merlin?" the old man echoed, defeated. It was a fair enough question. He could not remember what he had done an hour ago, let alone who he really was. He could not remember where he had been, whom he had spoken to. He remembered history as though it had been his own life, and forgot his own life as though it were history. Gods and mortals, myths and ttruths were indistinguishable in his mind. Dreams infused his days. Dreams and nightmares. It was a miserrable state, but the only one he had. "Who Is Merlin?"

I thought for a second, simultaneously of how much I have loved this book since I was a child, and how similar I am to Merlin. Then something just sort of clicked in my head, and I realized that my current self bears an awful lot of resemblance to my childhood's favorite characters. Most of them are Insane, I could list off ten more right off the top of my head. I know that everybody when they are engrossed in a story, whether a movie, or a play, or a book, or a show, or a videogame, what have you will choose their favorite character on some similarity between themselves and that character, real or perceived. So if my favorite chracters from when I was a little kid are a majority of people who reflect nuances of my madness now, Did that mean that some part of my child self knew that I was going to be mad? 

At first I really thought there was no way, but the more I think about it, the more examples I can find of similar ideas already in practice through predictive analytics. we can see things coming from farther and farther away, there are companies that patent the names of chemical medications, that have not yet been invented. We can tell when the peak business hours for any particular business or type of business by observing the subconscious habit of its regular customerbase. We know that a majority of sociopaths wet the bed, engage in vandalism and fire setting, lack empathy and abuse animals when they are children. There are dogs that have been trained to know a person is going to have a seizure before they can feel it coming on themselves.

What if instead of predictive analytics, we had predictive diagnostics? does it seem reasonable to you that any insanity that is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain would probably have an indicator of which chemical would become imbalanced before it happened? 

So, heres how you can help. Go through your favorite childhood chracters, specifically the ones you can remember why it was that you associated yourself with that person. Do as many as you can, the larger the sample size the better and more accurate it will be. See if any themes arise that indicate to you that feel like you may have already, at some level known that you were going to become the person that you now are. Most Importantly, once you are done, come back to this thread and report your findings. As detailed as you can, Whether You Found A Link Or Not! If only the people who find a link come back and report, but there are more of you who do not find a link and you do not report, then I'm going to have a false positive on my hands and this will all be pointless.  Let's see if we can possibly start moving towards reaching kids who are going to be mad, before the time that anybody reached us. I don't know how your life has gone, but mine sure was lonely before I knew what was happening.

[TheVorticon]

I had a go at your experiment @Techunique, although I don't have a formal diagnosis and wouldn't consider myself to have particularly strong symptoms of any particular MI.

The common themes among the characters I liked were - curious, good problem solvers, adventurous, brave, strong, chill. Things that I always wanted (and still want) to be, but don't really live up to. Also a few of them had cool hair, which I definitely don't have.

It was fun thinking about some of my favourite characters though.

[Techunique]

Thanks for trying @TheVorticon!

I would say, seeing as you were the first to step up to the task, that you are at least curious and adventurous. And your ability to draw the theme from a series of unrelated characters (as far as story setting goes) suggests that you're a good problem solver as well, having not met you I can't confirm or disconfirm your braveness strongness or chillness. But I'd lean towards believing brave as it is a very difficult thing to have MI whether diagnosed or not and to continue being here on this planet and contributing to The Grand Experiment (i.e. life) Hopefully we can find a correlation and prove you are brave strong and chill!