1. Welcome to NoFap! We have disabled new forum accounts from being registered for the time being. In the meantime, you can join our weekly accountability groups.
    Dismiss Notice

Don't you think having dementia or Alzheimer's is like being enlightened?

Discussion in 'Off-topic Discussion' started by TheWigglesSentToSpace, Aug 14, 2021.

  1. TheWigglesSentToSpace

    TheWigglesSentToSpace Fapstronaut

    5
    61
    13
    After all you can't remember anything- all your regrets all your desires wiped away. You are living totally in the present.
     
  2. You're also confused about everything and experiencing a lot of fear. No, I would rather be dead.
     
    HelperX, Delhi1996, Taylor25 and 3 others like this.
  3. TheWigglesSentToSpace

    TheWigglesSentToSpace Fapstronaut

    5
    61
    13
    Being enlightened is like being dead. Fear can be part it too. You can feel fear, but underneath there is a part of you where it doesn't matter.
     
  4. I guess. All I know is I refuse to suffer with dementia and I will never allow myself to be put in a nursing home. Once I reach the age where I'm rapidly declining physically/cognitively and there is no hope for recovery, I plan on ending my life. I hope that time is still many decades away but I would much rather go out on my own terms rather than spend my last years in such a state of decline and feableness. Sorry if that sounds depressing but I really don't think it is. I'm actually somewhat hopeful that dementia will be cured by then but I'm not counting on it.
     
    Taylor25 and Melkhiresa like this.
  5. isn't beimg enlightened more like knowing everything? seems like the exact opposite to me
     
    Melkhiresa likes this.
  6. FirefromAbove

    FirefromAbove Fapstronaut

    321
    1,884
    123
    No, it's hell.

    Pray you never have it.
     
  7. vikingsarehere

    vikingsarehere Fapstronaut

    34
    115
    33
    Nop.
    The popularization of new age movements is for the most part to make you a docile slave, I suppose having dementia serves the purpose of your masters as well but I don't think you will enjoy it.
     
  8. Meshuga

    Meshuga Fapstronaut

    2,125
    3,828
    143
    I've seen multiple relatives go from vibrant, kind, delightful, insightful, and happy people to sad, confused people who literally have to wear diapers. In early stages they know they are missing something and try to play along to be part of life. In later stages, they understand almost nothing, they don't comprehend cause and effect, they don't know why anything happens or how to get what they want. They get overwhelmed, they need to leave but they can't plan on where to go or how. Every once in a while a song or an emotional shock snaps them back to clarity, and they see their own mindprison from the outside and know they will soon return. They dread it, and claw for enjoyment, to soak in as much knowledge, to share as much as they can, in the few desperate moments they have as themselves.

    Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia are not enlightenment. Neither are they romantically cool, like the goth or the emo kids used to think. It's a disease that dims the light of a person's soul, until it finally goes out.
     
    amaranth, Lilla_My and CarP like this.
  9. As someone who was literally an emo in the 2000s, I don't remember any goths or emos thinking dementia was cool.
     
    CarP likes this.
  10. I've worked at a dementia ward. Trust me, you're better off dead. I probably would've killed them out of mercy if it was legal.
     
  11. FirefromAbove

    FirefromAbove Fapstronaut

    321
    1,884
    123
    I've worked in one too long and now I think I'm developing it myself lol. I am enlightened.
     
    CarP likes this.
  12. Always Keep Going

    Always Keep Going Fapstronaut

    169
    275
    63
    There are healthier "means" to focus yourself on the present. Calling upon a mental disease, particularly for those in dotage, does not do very much, for your actual progression of thought is feeble and worrying.

    In place of simple thought or some other form of such that someone who practices varied meditation may experience, there will be confusion and confusion only. A lost sense of self, and an overwhelming state of forgetfulness. You never want to lose your conscious stream, you'd honestly be better off dead.
     
    CarP likes this.
  13. Then stop getting shit-faced lmao
     
    CarP likes this.
  14. FirefromAbove

    FirefromAbove Fapstronaut

    321
    1,884
    123
    Fuck no.
     
    The Cowboy likes this.
  15. It's the worst horror imaginable. Have you ever seen or listened to the experiences of people who have seen it up close. It's utterly horrifying.
     
    Lilla_My likes this.
  16. Meshuga

    Meshuga Fapstronaut

    2,125
    3,828
    143
    I never thought they literally believed mental illness was cool, but the ones I knew would frequently speak of it in a positive and/or hyperbolic context. "That's insane," "he's demented," "she's psycho," etc. I also got the sense some romanticized depression. Glorifying the "doomed love" scenario like Edgar Allen Poe's "Annabell Lee," wallowing in the "nobody understands me" emotional state while making no attempt to be understood, or to relate to people outside the clique. Of course this isn't exclusive to a goth or emo aesthetic, it's just the specific form of expression, but I digress.

    To go back to actual dementia and enlightenment, it's not that a demented person no longer wants anything, or that their desires grow less complex. It's their ability to communicate those desires that is compromised, and it's a state of frustration and misery.
     
  17. This is certainly true. It definitely wasn't healthy but emos did commonly romanticize depression and it wasn't unusual for some of them to romanticize self harm and even suicide. I guess to a certain degree a lot of mental illnesses were romanticized, I just don't remember dementia ever being one of them. Hell, I was somewhat guilty of it too, even though I really did have mental health issues. I guess if you romanticize your own struggles, it helps you feel a little better, even if it is kind of delusional.
     
    Meshuga and CarP like this.
  18. TheWigglesSentToSpace

    TheWigglesSentToSpace Fapstronaut

    5
    61
    13
    I think it's the culture that pathologizes dementia that makes it scary... it's not inherently scary. If you are in a loving supportive environment where there is no pressure to remember there will be no fear, no desire to be more than who you are in that moment. But as family members or society as a whole we pressure these people to function like we do. That is a very ableist thing to do. And because we do this we create a lot of unnecessary anxiety in people experiencing memory loss.
     
  19. gordie

    gordie Fapstronaut

    199
    868
    93
    Not accusing anyone of this in the thread, but this is bugmanism’s logical end. “Wouldn’t life be better if I was brain dead and couldn’t think?” It’s enlightenment if you think Marvel movies have equal artistic value to a piece of classical music, or you think Banksy is “deep.”
     
  20. TheWigglesSentToSpace

    TheWigglesSentToSpace Fapstronaut

    5
    61
    13
    Having dementia isn't being brain dead. It's just an inability to remember things. It has similarities to the state of enlightenment because of it's relationship to the past. In dementia, the past is often forgotten. In an awakened or enlightened state, the past while remembered, ceases to have any actionable power over the present. So yes the two states are different but they approach the same point. Dementia could be said to be a pathological approximation of the state of enlightenment.

    In my own case my grandmother suffered from dementia for several years before she eventually passed on. While it was painful to see how she forgot about all of us, she actually became a kinder, more loving and more intensely alive person because of it. Before her dementia she was very opinionated and very bigoted. She was the kind of person that would yell at the tv all the time because she passionately hated this person or that person. There was a lot of poison there but when she had trouble remembering things that all disappeared. I don't think it was only because she forgot. I think it was because her state forced her to see beyond her conditioning and she realized that she was more than her mind, that she was the awareness behind that mind and that all the stuff she got so angry about didn't really matter in the end. So she was able to to let it all go.

    I'm in no way saying having dementia is being enlightened. I'm just intrigued by the similarities. And I think having dementia can push you to an awakened state if you work with it.
     

Share This Page