Baseball And Weltanschauung

There is a discussion that you can find at ARCHN that has been occupying my thoughts somewhat. The link to it is here.

To cut a not very long story even shorter, a point I thought I was making about the way the contents of our minds 'colour' our perceptions of the world was met with a response about statistical modelling of baseball, a post whose relevance I understand about as well as I understand the game itself (if you're interested, in terms of sporting endeavour that would be more than I understand cricket but less than I understand kinky sex). This is the second time a post I've made in that forum has been - as far as I can see - misapprehended, and it's around now that the fear starts to seep in around the edges of my consciousness.

The question is - as the question always is when there seems to be a disjunction between myself and the world - am I becoming ill again? The problem is that you can never tell: mental illness is a sneaky bugger and, contrary to the opinion of an ex of mine (an academic psychologist to boot!), there is no miraculously untouched core of the psyche which sits through the process whispering "you're behaving a little oddly, mate, I think you should chill out and think about getting some help" into your mental ears. I tell you, anyone who invents a brainwave reader with a display that will inform you precisely where you lie on the line from immaculate sanity to "hide the rabbits" is going to make a killing!

But I'm in danger of disappearing up my own anus here (never as much fun as disappearing up someone else's!), so I'll try and wrench this back to ARCHN, and why I don't think I'll be doing more than just browsing the contents there in future. Well, firstly I think I'm too thick to participate actively in the discussions, which is not exactly a welcome conclusion but what can you do? Secondly, and possibly more importantly as far as my own interests are concerned, there is nothing in Objectivism for me, nothing that can help me and much that - potentially at least - can make my lot even worse, but however justified my paranoid wailings turn out to be it's not fair to inflict them on anyone else. And, thirdly, there is the dread prospect that at some point soon all of my mental energy may be devoted to trying to summon the willpower get out of bed in the mornings.

A final word: the sense of humour goes last, and when it does go, you're in deep shit.