12 Rules For M.A.D. (“Miracles A Dozen”) Recovery: Rule 11

Cultivate Detachment, Or Even Scorn.

“Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen.” , as the saying goes. Probably the single strongest way to attract others & make them thing highly of you is for you to express indifference to them. Indifference should always be the standard, default position or strategy. The Buddhist notion of ‘attachment’ or clinginess is very true. The world tries to detatch us from ourselves & make it the center, as do others; harrassing us constantly & demanding a reaction. That is its greatest trick. You have not known true sanity until you have withdrawn from this constant game played against you into the peace & tranquility of your own mind, in communion with the Eternal rather than the evanescent every day, wearing stimulus of others. The mantra of ‘love, love, love’ blasted everywhere at full volume, (or nowadays, by the Left, tacitly underpinned by the real message ‘hate, hate, hate’) is hardly very conducive to this goal. Furthermore, to see clearly & draw power into oneself, it is necessary to be prepared to actively, to habitually cultivate scorn for what has power in the world & look down upon it from the perspective of the ideal of one’s own values. Fear of power, & association of power with truth, is our greatest folly & precisely the main thing power uses to control you. Do not think you will be rewarded for your servile cowardice. It is a simple fact that the vast majority of accepted opinions are false, even ludicrous, & even if you realize that intellectually, one can still make vastly more progress by cultivating the right emotional attitude as well & ceasing to be bothered by things. Be a high lighthouse on an island amidst the turbulent, shifting waves of others. Cultivate detachment, or even scorn.

12 Rules For M.A.D. (“Miracles A Dozen”) Recovery: Rule 10


Express yourself thru’ garbled poetry when things are too painful even to see clearly.


Sometimes when one is very unwell, the mind no longer follows the legislative Ego. As I said above, one is an out-of-control machine responding to a threat that is no longer present, except for in the mind. At such times, it is not really possible to form definite, solid opinions & rules an act on them. But, in order to even begin to work towards doing so, it can be very helpful to start beginning to express oneself more. In poetry, as opposed to a prose treatise, one merely presents a possible, proposed view of things, based upon one’s subjective, tentative take upon it, letting the opinions & feelings stand in their own dignity, which is precisely what is needed for someone whose mind is very clouded & unable to run in exact accord with an objective reality. In doing this, hopefully if there are any kind people around you, you will get some attention for one’s efforts, which will boost one’s self-esteem somewhat & give others to understand you in a more sensitive light, as someone who feels & has an inner world that deserves & requires taking care of. That in turn will buttress one’s sense of self further, towards the re-attainment of a strong, stable Ego which is able to assert itself objectively again, i.e. True health. Poetry can be a kind of cry to the world, & plea to be viewed a real person, whose thoughts & feelings matter. In a world in which this kind of personal respect for people, especially young people, is becoming increasingly endangered & rare, poetry is perhaps the best antidote imaginable. When you read a poem, you instinctively feel you are being taken into the innermost reaches of a person’s soul, with the reverence that that demands. If that experience is not held as holy & revered by our society, there is little hope left for any of us. If one’s innermost, careful thoughts & words don’t matter, what possibly can matter? As Nietzsche said, ‘the world revolves inaudiably’; it revolves around thoughts. If we cease to pay attention to our thoughts, the pivot of all action &, in the time when technology has conquered Nature, the pivot of all material reality, then everything will fall to pieces. Express yourself thru’ garbled poetry when things are too painful even to see clearly.

12 Rules For M.A.D. (“Miracles A Doxen”) Recovery: Rule 9

Build a framework of core values and belief in your own mind and endeavour to live by them.


Human beings just love their beliefs. Yes they do. Nowadays, we tend to be made to feel guilty for having any real beliefs, or have done, since the gospel of ‘relatavism’. The emphasis on the insistence that ‘everyone has a right an opinion’, & that somehow all opinions are equally ‘valid’. This is really the death of opinion, & with it the death of the human soul. Because an opinion which someone is not able to hold forth as ‘the right’ opinion, they do not really have the courage to even fully assert. It is just a collection of words they bandy about, giving them no real grip on reality or confidence in themselves & their own moral quest. This is not at all ‘moral’; it is just weakness & leaving oneself prey to be dominated by others, by those evil enough to keep you fooled in this way. Building a framework of core values, in which one truly believes, i.e. which stem from an honest assessment of reality, & are in touch with one’s own inner conscience & feeling, rather than just rationalizations & justifications of one’s behavior handed down from on high… is one of the most empowering things that a person can ever do, & will forever give them pride & dignity amongst their fellows & all life’s challenges. Most mental illness, especially among the young, stems from personal insecurity & doubt, a feeling that one doesn’t even really have the right to exist. If one can align oneself with the True & the Good (as Jordan Peterson says), that is an absolutely fantastic & almost bullet-proof antidote to that most essential malady which can turn a mouse into a lion over a period of a few weeks. The most essential thing is to justify one’s own existence, and true ‘self-worth’ is not achieved by the flattery of others; its rather achieved by becoming immune to the opinions of others by deciding to become an active agent for Good. Furthermore, the ability to justify oneself intellectually & morally to one’s fellows is just about the most powerful tool for success in the whole world. Even most Presidents can’t do it, but if you can do it better, you can be President if you want; because being President is all about making others believe in oneself by the power of argument & the word. If you can follow your own own rules & logic in action as well, that will give you Character; a permenant feeling of solidity, achievement & effectiveness in action that radiates from your innermost being to all those around you. It is also very helpful to try to delineate between those beliefs that are real, & really govern one’s actions, & those which are just for social display & don’t really play an active part in own’s behavior at all & simply clog up the system. So occasionally try to root out the latter a little or be more honest or clear-minded about one’s own deceptions &/or padding. As Jordan Peterson says, lots of so-called ‘atheists’ still believe in God at some level, but that is just one obvious example. On the other hand, lots of ‘Christians’ don’t actually apply their so-called faith to their life at all. Such ideas are often more like fixations that confuse the mind, & obsess precisely because they are so confusing & ‘mysterious’, rather than solid beliefs of any real worth. Take the idea that ‘Jesus died on the Cross for my sins & I am saved from Hellfire by believing in Him’ – this is to a considerable extent just a piece of tomfoolery that obsesses & captivates precisely due to its incomprehensibility. To people with no proper intellectual training, nonsensical ideas appeal because they seem precisely the most difficult ones to refute – if you can’t even understand clearly what you’re saying, & no one else can either, as well as having absolutely no basis in experience, that evasiveness makes them seem almost impossible to refute, especially to non-philosophers. Like all madness, it can be quite intimidating to others & gives the appearance of being deep, in the ‘lets not even go there’ kind of sense. That can be handy too though. For instance, being considered too clear a thinker can itself be dangerous; remember, the ‘fool’ retains the element of surprise & chance of being under-estimated. Finally, one of the most important things to bear in mind (may sound hilarious coming from me! — but shouldn’t, so much anyway) is consistency, or rather, harmony & integrity in one’s beliefs, actions, values & character traits. What will work for one person, will not always, in fact rarely work for others, because in others it will be merely grafted on artificially, & be out of place & ungainly in the new context of the other person’s traits, undermining both them & the new attempt at adaptation. Attaining to Ultimate, Universal values requires much more abstraction than most peeps are willing or capable of, so usually its best for most people not even to attempt it – otherwise you get stupid, intolerant religious (including secular, pseudo-religious, of course.. I always use the word ‘religious’ in a wider sense) dogma & strictures inflicted on everyone, which do not belong to & are totally out of place on most of the people they are inflicted upon.

(A relevant out-take from previous section of this book: Learn to allow for and tolerate exceptions. Every rule has its opposite exception. The task of education is not to just teach the rules, but — even more crucially – how to identify the exceptions…since these ‘exceptions’ are very often the strongest and most valuable instances.)

Build a framework of core values and belief in your own mind and endeavour to live by them.

12 Rules For M.A.D. (“Miracles A Dozen”) Recovery: Rule 8


Recognize the ability for and embrace change (express and evaluate the axioms of behavior and belief that have carried you this far)

It is necessary to embrace both the past & the future. Clearly, for someone whose mood is perpetually very low, much change is needed. Therefore, the first thing is simply to focus on this most fundamental fact, and allow it to happen. As has often been said, unhappiness and absence of change is usually the result of some kind of emotional resistance or other. Also simply not realizing that it is possible, i.e. Viewing oneself as one has been told one is by others, as a fixed, known quantity & ‘essence’. As we grow up, our parents, teachers, Dr.s etc, place various labels upon us, which we erroneously, in our innocence, take to be something deep, when in fact they are just meaningless words that have nothing to do with what we really are. It is crucial to comprehend that, at bottom, we are not ‘schizophrenic’, ‘depressed’, bipolar’, ‘ADHD’, etc., etc., etc…. at bottom, we are merely energy, & we can manifest in almost anyway we like, & we are defined simply by how we manifest, in the phenomenon that we make up from moment to moment, not according to some ‘essence’ that we don’t properly understand but that is supposed to be revealed to us in the words that other people put upon us. Again, as I have said earlier in this book, a phenomenological approach to ourselves & the world is the beginning of wisdom; simply observing phenomenon, ‘the surface’, & recognizing that that is perhaps the most important thing. Inattention to the surface, to the phenomenon itself, & prioritization of the opinions of ‘experts’ over it seems to be the root of much, perhaps most, ignorance & suffering, especially of younger people. Once we begin to pay attention to the actual phenomenon itself, to what is, according to a more Heideggerian method, we can soon begin to work on it & change it for the better, & sift the truly real from the fabricating lies. There is in fact, in some sense, an underlying nature different from the surface as it appears to others, (hence why the behaviorists are so wrong-headed), but that nature is more akin to a realm of untapped possibility & freedom, thru’ judicious use of the imagination & learning to rationalize one’s existence more, rather than a realm of terrible circumscribed limitation as supposedly revealed by psychiatric diagnosis. (In this sense, the LGBTQ community have some truth to their position, in that freedom is at least as essential to our nature – to human nature – as even our sexual nature, so the ability to define or create one’s own sexual orientation/ gender is in many respects a legitimate part of that. But if we can define & create our very sex, surely we should at least be able to define & create our own personality as well, which by definition is largely a product of & co-extensive with our own long series of decisions, (i.e. at least partly willful actions ) without being unduly limited by psuedo- medical quackery ‘diagnoses’!) When one becomes very mentally ill, due to heavy external pressure, one becomes like a machine obeying certain rules that one doesn’t understand. One is constantly panicking, & acting in such a way as to supposedly avoid the potential threat, even if the actual threatening object has been largely removed & now only exists in one’s imagination. I imagine this might be called PTSD (Post-traumatic-stress-disorder), or a form of it. It is what psychiatry caused me to have for 12 whole years. The way that I eventually solved & dealt with it was by an immensely difficult, laborious, & slow process of defining what the heck I was doing & learning to re-imagine alternatives, i.e. Elaborating the ‘axioms’ on which my machine-like action was running. In general, it is only by making explicit our own assumptions that we can begin to revise them & change them for the better, so this is an absolutely crucial part of improving one’s mental health. For example, a person who has always been depressed, or been depressed for a very long time, may simply assume ‘this is how life is’. In order to begin to heal, the first thing they have to do is begin to question that assumption and entertain the possibility that life can be immensely joyful. Another example would be someone who believed or who had got into the habit that the opposite sex was just for sex, & that the possibility of finding a real soul mate or emotional union did not exist. Until they address this fundamental assumption that has somehow protruded into their consciousness due to our vulgar popular culture, their relations with the opposite sex (& their sex life) are always going to be extremely limited compared to the potentially sublime feelings of love & deeper relief of which human beings are eminently capable, but often suppress. There are many other common examples which it could be very beneficial to go into, but probably far too many; so always question your assumptions, & try to work out what they might be, & how they might be limiting you unnecessarily. Recognize the ability for and embrace change (express and evaluate the axioms of behavior and belief that have carried you this far)

12 Rules For M.A.D. (“Miracles A Dozen”) Recovery: Rule 7

Direct Your Fear Of Threats And Sense Of Enmity Outwards On Real, Well Defined Targets & Fully Assess Your Environment For Hazards.

“In conditions of peace, the war-like man attacks himself.” Men in particular, but also women, are warriors by nature, germinating from closed societies that were at constant warfare with their neighbours for thousands, if not millions of years. Without an external enemy to brace themselves against & test their strength, they become utterly & Hellishly lost. It is imperative for the healthy man to hold as holy his aggressive, warlike instincts & direct them outwards towards real threats, of which there are many. Ideally, one would hope that this ideal was tempered with the ideal of making peace & love with his fellow citizens & mankind in general, but such idealism is only healthy with the framework of fundamental vigilance & animosity. Friendship & brotherhood are something that the strong man extends willingly to those who treat him with love & respect in turn; they are not something that a mouse earns by his disarmed, vulnerable lack of weapons. Finding a good enemy can be the savior of many a man lost in internal introspection & doubt. That is just about the only good & health-giving aspect of psychiatry; it offers itself as a very obvious enemy & threat that produces a certain kind of inadvertant resolution in its victims by opposing the thing that is claiming to ‘care’ for them, thus making us Whole & united against our predator if this predator doesn’t chemically destroy us, ruin our lives & confuse us too much first. We clearly see this approach to mental health by a lot of people today, who are simply not honest enough to admit it. Most of the Left, and increasingly the Right, are as individuals largely sustained in their mental equillibrium only by their opposition to one another, which gives them a sense of validation & the dignity of moral crusader & warrior. Again, this links in to what I said in the previous rule; a lack of ‘problems’ can itself be the biggest problem of all. As had been said countless times, man fears boredom more than almost anything else. I would personally suggest we thus make it a matter of pride to direct our wits & spears to battling this most intimate, ultimate & spiritual of foes, rather than resorting to primitive bloodshed to entertain ourselves like chimpanzees. But, others seem to disagree. The world is full of dangers, of real predators that can ruin your life & yet people often pretend don’t exist. The nature of reality is Darwinian; it is eat & be eaten. The most important thing when you are young is to make sure you are safe, & not think that the world is just some kind of giant playground & or safety net there to entertain your reckless behavior. So, scan your whole social environment for predators, & feel very lucky if you can remain in one piece. Many, many are not nearly so fortunate; all my fellow iatrogenically mutilated psych. victims, for instance. Do not over-extend yourself; do not be ungrateful; do not be indignant, especially over trifles; life is a life-death struggle, & you deserve to be happy for just being alive. Why forsake this natural gift of reality available at all times through judicious use of the imagination, in order to busy yourself with petty concerns that make a laughing stock of yourself, demeaning this fundamental gift of life, as if life needed to be supplemented by trinkets & petty, petty little victories of one’s own irate ego against one’s fellows? You are better than that, you are more than that, & if you treat oneself & others with such contempt, it will be because you are deceiving yourself as to the real threats all around you & leaving yourself into a rude awakening & unnecessary, tragic disaster & the most bitter & sorrowful & eternal gnashing of teeth. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Your worse fears may well be quite accurate, & you would be a fool not to pay attention to them for the sake of average-everyday complacency. Imagine how serene, what clarity of mind you would feel if you made a definite effort to clearly delineate the imaginary from the real threats & kept them constantly in mind to guide your action to razor-like focus & perfection. Your fears can mostly be over-come, even the fear of death, but only by facing them & understanding the reasons you have them – by preparing for the future & bad outcomes, we make it much, much easier to deal with when & if they occur. Do not let others give you false assurances; examine the world, not just from a narrow empirical, everyday point of view, but, extending outwards to an entire social, & then logical & metaphysical, a far grander point of view, because for all you know, Hell may well exist & on your present course you may well be destined for it (but do you need to be? Are you going to still be so aggrieved & distraught that your friend has cuter outfits than you do, when you have eternal damnation to try to avoid?). Let that sink in. So.. direct your fear of threats and sense of enmity outwards on real, well defined targets & fully assess your environment for hazards.