IT’S GUEST BLOGGER FRIDAY! TODAY’S QUESTION WILL BE ANSWERED BY B. MICHAEL PAYNE, WHO SAYS HE’S A WRITER, MUSICIAN AND COPY EDITOR. (AND I BELIEVE HIM!) IF YOU OR ANYONE YOU KNOW HAS OPENINGS FOR ANY OF THOSE THREE POSITIONS, PLEASE LET HIM KNOW. HE IS OTHERWISE INVOLVED IN BEING TOO SERIOUS OR TOO FLIP, READING HEIDEGGER AND WRITING “YOUR MOTHER’S SO FAT” JOKES. HE ONCE WAS THROWN OUT OF AN ANN COULTER Q&A FOR TELLING HER SHE WAS MUCH MORE ATTRACTIVE IN PERSON THAN SHE WAS ON TV(!). YOU CAN FIND HIS OTHER “WORK” AT B. MICHAEL’S TRULY EPIC SHIT.
I’d like to consider myself a pretty savvy shopper. When Kali offered some suggested subjunctives, I researched my options. It with great speed became obvious that there was only one among the pile to which I could come even asymptotically close to saying no. Since it takes a Hefty® Cinch Sak® Tall Kitchen Bags now improved with Unscented Odor Block® technology-sized bag of hurt to make me decline a physical challenge, I knew the most interesting proposition would lay in a philosophical challenge.
Schizophrenia’s a popular talking point in the biographies of the kind-of-sad and famous: John “Beautiful Mind” Nash, Syd “Wish You Were Here” Barrett, Marry “Todd” Lincoln, “Skip” Spence, Wesley “Rock N Roll McDonald’s” Willis, Kurt “Go For The” Gödel, and Daniel “The Devil and Daniel” Johnston are all sufferers of the mental affliction. Of course, any group that includes both Wesley Willis and Mary Todd Lincoln is a group I’d like to join. And since my passing, cursory idea of schizophrenia includes the fact that it has to do with paranoid delusions, I thought, “Maybe I already have it?”
The Self-Diagnoser’s Guide To Schizophrenia Self-Diagnosis
I googled “schizophrenia test” and clicked on the first result. (I trust those Google algorithms. Or should I? Maybe the algorithms want me to click on the first result, which they’ve selected. Oh dear.) I was presented with a twelve-question quiz.
1. I feel that others control what I think and feel.
2. I hear or see things that others do not hear or see.
3. I feel it is very difficult for me to express myself in words that others can understand.
4. I feel I share absolutely nothing in common with others, including my friends and family.
5. I believe in more than one thing about reality and the world around me that nobody else seems to believe in.
6. Others don’t believe me when I tell them the things I see or hear.
7. I can’t trust what I’m thinking because I don’t know if it’s real or not.
8. I have magical powers that nobody else has or can explain.
9. Others are plotting to get me.
10. I find it difficult to get a hold of my thoughts.
11. I am treated unfairly because others are jealous of my special abilities.
12. I talk to another person or other people inside my head that nobody else can hear.
It seems pretty clear that any self-respecting liberal in America would answer “All the time” to the first six questions. No one else seems to see the importance of universal health care, reasonable gun control laws, and ManBearPig. Answering “All the time” to the first six questions almost necessitates answering the same to question seven. Nine, as well. (Until I move to Canada!) At this point, I’m at 75% “All the time” with three undecideds.
I suppose I should answer “All the time” to question eight (and therefore eleven, because who wouldn’t be jealous of magical/special powers/abilities?) if I consider as magical the somnolent quality of my discursive rambling coupled with my acute and vociferous enthusiasm for the band Guided By Voices. As well, my mother always told me I was special. Ten and twelve seem to be at odds — according to the logical voice in my head — and so two more “All the times,” ipso facto. In the end, then, I’ve answered “All the time” to all twelve questions. It’s now time to click the scoring button and see my results.
I scored a 97!
Based upon your responses to this schizophrenia screening measure, you appear to have some early signs commonly associated with schizophrenia or a schizophrenia-related disorder. Your responses are similar to others who experience early symptoms of schizophrenia or a schizophrenia-related disorder. Because no online test is 100% accurate, please be aware that this does not necessarily mean you do have schizophrenia, only that this particular quiz found sufficient evidence to suggest that you may.
That’s great! I think. A 97 is, like, borderline A+ material, right?
A Brief Pause To Consider What Is Schizophrenia - or - It’s Time To Google Wikipedia
The word “schizophrenia” seems to describe a kind of psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental illness that has to do with seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling, and/or touching things that are not real. Wow. That is a lot of descriptions describing descriptions that have to do with something that might or might not be real, which word I only just barely avoided putting in “scare quotes.” Not to get all just-ripped-a-bong-now-let’s-talk, here, but what exactly is supposed to constitute reality?
Phenomonologically: When I see a would-be paramour, I feel happy; the feeling of happiness isn’t really anything, though and its existence is impossible to prove. When I drop acid and see bonfires in my peripheral vision, I know there aren’t bonfires there, yet they exist as percepts.
Moreover: Taking intersubjective agreement as the capstone to a theory of knowing (because it seems clear that schizophrenia has to do with knowing and not with existing), the assumed total decimation of your faculties for figuring out if something exists creates a circulus vitiosus wherein the assumed total decimation of said faculties is itself a thing whose existence you can’t figure out the reality of. Also, Wikipedia says, “No laboratory test for schizophrenia currently exists,” which further fucks up our (my) self-diagnosis.
Return to the Diagnosis
My online quiz results say that I appear to have “early signs commonly associated with schizophrenia;” but they also say that, ” this does not necessarily mean you do have schizophrenia.” Of course, if I had schizophrenia, that is probably what the quiz would want me to think—that I might or might not have it. It would want to keep me in a prolonged state of ambivalence before the robot/zombie/shark apocalypse rains down upon us. Then again, a 93 is a pretty high score. No one ever reads comments, he just looks for the grade. Lawyers probably wrote the quiz results: After all, who would be more litigious than a group of people who believe that everyone and everything is plotting against them/sneaking into their homes every night to insert bits of sheet metal into their spine to track and plot their movements around town in order to make an instructional diorama for the upcoming alien invasion?
In the end, I can only conclude that it’s either likely that I am already schizophrenic or that I am already schizophrenic in my imagination, and would therefore like to receive my imaginary $1,000,000 in the form of unmarked, unidentifiable currencies of various national origins and denominations delivered to a PO Box located somewhere under the surface of the moon, where they will never, ever think to look.
- B. Michael P.
Me too!
- Kali
