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Perhaps I didn't make that post as clear as I could have. The DSM has a negative history and but it doesn't mean that many of the illnesses described in it are not real. Moreover, many of the illnesses in DSM-V are empirically founded so I have no idea what gives you that idea. This still isn't to say that I agree with much of the DSM but to say that the DSM is crap then follow up with mental illness isn't real doesn't make sense. You're simply strawmanning here it seems. Are you saying that some people don't suffer from patterns of thought/activity that cause them distress or impairment in the functioning of their normal daily lives? Have you never heard of social anxiety, irrational fears, PTSD, depression, schizophrenia etc?

You may be interested in "The Medicalisation of Society" by Peter Conrad and "Madness and Civilisation" by Michel Foucault. As for mental illness being real- there are measurable, physical abnormalities in the brains of mentally ill people. Mental illnesses are considered such as they cause the people that suffer from them a deficit in their ability to function in their daily lives. I think questions like this stem from the contemporary acknowledgement of the perverse history of the DSM but distracts from the fact that some people are genuinely suffering due to "invisible illnesses".

Don't compare Chomsky to Sam Harris. Sam Harris is one of the worst(/best?) Sophists out there. As for Chomsky's anti-capitalist stance, it's mostly due to the commodity fetishism and cultural recreation that most Marxists talk about mixed with his own Libertarian vision of anarchy. The Chomsky-Foucault debate on human nature is a great and easy read for some of Chomsky's big ideas.

Hi, this is my first post after my intro- I hope you find it interesting! In one of the current series of lectures I attend at university, we are studying social cognition and the self. An interesting thing that has come up a lot recently is how cultural differences, most notably between East and Western cultures, changes the way we develop our self-concept. In Western cultures, notably US, the self is independent whereas in Eastern cultures, notably Japan, the self is interdependent. These differences in self-construal are then replicated, in a similar manner to how culture replicates itself. Self-construal also affects the level of mimicry behaviours people engage in; the more interdependent, the more they mimic. It's hypothesised that we evolved to form mimicry behaviours in order to increase social cohesion and decrease the risk of ostracisation. These, among many other "socially beneficial" behaviours are mostly automatic- happening below our conscious awareness. I put socially beneficial in quotation marks here as, especially in the case of increased mimicry behaviour caused by perceived social ostracisation, works similarly to conformity. Another interesting bit of theory and research I have come across, which may be similarly relevant, relates to compensatory control theory. This hypothesised that people value personal control in their life as part of their psychological need for structure. Moreover, this need for structure is more satisfied by the social organisation offered by hierarchies compared to "flatter", more egalitarian social structures. As you can see, cultural differences in self-construal, evolutionary beneficial social cognition and intra-psychic homeostatic influences have significant implications or may provide insightful explanations for social cohesion. Do you think this is overall positive or negative, for humanity or just yourself (eg if you have power/status)? Do you agree that the culture you are brought up in significantly affects your self-concept? (eg interdependent self-concept of those who developed in "A-Culture" or other online culture) Can you think of any times in the past when you have perhaps behaved in a more conforming manner in order to avoid feelings of ostracisation? Do you think hierarchical social organisations are artificial or are produced naturally due to individual differences or other reasons? I hope you enjoyed this post and I look forward to seeing your ideas!

Hello everyone, I'm fairly new to freedomainradio having found Stefan's work less than a few months ago but would like to be involved with some online intellectual discussion. First, a long bit about myself so you understand a little more about where my ideas come from. Then, I will put a bit of the books I'm currently reading and recommend a few books from the past. Thanks for reading, I look forward to seeing some ideas that I might otherwise not be exposed to. My situation: I am 23 years old and live in SouthWest UK, currently in my second undergraduate year of study. I am reading Psychology with Sociology and studied maths, further maths, physics and computing in college (16-18yrs old UK). After college, in the NorthWest of England where I grew up, I went to a university there to study Physics but left after a couple of months due to lack of financial support from family or government. I worked on slave wage and drank a lot of the subsequent years away before finally being able to move "down South" and start life again without the damaging influence of my dysfunctional family (which I may discuss in another post at some point). I worked another year and due to moving so far and having no friends, and never clicking with the majority of people I ended up working with, I decided to look at the local university societies for social interaction. That year I also got into taking drugs (just smoking weed, psychedelics and a couple of empathogens but I saw and heard a lot of crazy shit and met some crazy people; eg guns, domestic violence, katanas, machetes, blocks of cocaine, homemade opium and crack). These experiences got me interested in psychology and philosophy as I tried to make sense of how random the turns my life had taken seemed compared to what most people considered "normal". A year after moving to this city, I went to one of the local university open days. I spoke to a professor about the studying I do in my spare time, my previous academic success and how my progress had been halted my circumstances beyond my control. I got accepted as direct-entry, meaning I didn't have to apply through UCAS (meaning I also didn't have to pay the application fee), then quit my fast-food job and hoped that I would get my funding. Last year, I struggled getting back into the academic lifestyle and reducing my drug usage but was fortunate to make some great friends and found that a lot of the maths and statistics skills I'd learned in college, which a lot of people seem to struggle with most in this course, came back to me quite easily. Despite doing fairly and consistently well in all of my exams, I failed the year due to late submission or non-submission of most coursework. I had to take an extra exam and write an essay during summer. On the basis of my essay alone, I was allowed to enter second year of study and also added a minor to my degree- sociology. I discovered my passion for sociology over that summer while studying for my essay, entitled something like "how is scientific knowledge developed?". The first academic term, end of last year, was also a struggle as I tried to catch up on sociology after having never studied it before in my life, apart from a few books over summer, and being fortunate enough to, I think, possess a "sociological imagination". Now, after years of letting myself go, mentally and bodily, I am fit and healthy, free of over 6 years of depression, and full of motivation. Current/Recommended Reading: I won't list university textbooks, however, will mention a couple of books that I have read in my university studies that I highly recommend for anyone/everyone. Currently I am reading: Reclaiming Reality - Roy Bhaskar Only 2 chapters into this monster and it's thoroughly demanding. Critical Theories of Mass Media Then and Now - Paul Taylor & Jan Harris This is fairly easy to read yet provides great stimulation, insight and integrates a lot of major theories. Recommended Reading (off the top of my head): Beyond Good and Evil - Nietzsche Self-Reliance - Waldo-Emerson The End of History - Fukuyama Consilience - E O Wilson Everything Bad is Good for You - Steven Johnson Emperor's New Drugs - Irving Kirsche Chomsky Foucault Debate on Human Nature