I can relate sic. Depression can be a glorious gift, i suppose, if you know how to use it.

living in new york city, it is like visiting a different primitive culture everytime I go out to buy cigaretts

oo ee oo ah ah..

Think of it this way: Insanity = the degredation of the mind based on the will to self-destroy. The first thing i mentioned these primitve folks WEREN'T doing is killing themselves. So maybe they are degraded by a will to self-destroy, but they haven't taken it as far as syaing crazy crap like "Death beofre dishonor!"

in·san·i·ty ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-sn-t)
n. pl. in·san·i·ties
Persistent mental disorder or derangement. No longer in scientific use.
Law.
Unsoundness of mind sufficient in the judgment of a civil court to render a person unfit to maintain a contractual or other legal relationship or to warrant commitment to a mental health facility.
In most criminal jurisdictions, a degree of mental malfunctioning sufficient to relieve the accused of legal responsibility for the act committed.

Extreme foolishness; folly.
Something that is extremely foolish.
Synonyms: insanity, lunacy, madness, mania, dementia
These nouns denote conditions of serious mental disability. Insanity is a grave, often prolonged condition that prevents a person from being held legally responsible for his or her actions: was judged not guilty for reasons of insanity. Lunacy often denotes derangement relieved intermittently by periods of clear-mindedness: yelled wildly in a moment of utter lunacy. Madness often stresses the violent aspect of mental illness: a story about obsession and madness. Mania refers principally to the excited, or manic, phase of bipolar disorder: prescribed drugs to control the patient's periods of mania. Dementia implies mental deterioration brought on by an organic brain disorder: underwent progressive stages of dementia.

using the literal definition is only arguing semantics which is totally useless.

i just fail to see how insanity is blatent self destruction...

that's how I'm defining it. When someone is insane, it almost always ends up bad. Where's me evidence? Call it experiential. And I didn't say insanity was blatant self destruction, ont he contrary, it can be quite subtle, but it always screws you over.

hmm... really? how about Barney? that guy is a little out there... or Andy Kaufman? you saying he caused his own cancer?

insanity is only destructive because we only hear about the mass murders... what about the mass huggings?

Nope, those people who are "mass-huggers" as you're calling them tend to be self destructive because of their tendency to avoid reality and real solutions, saying, for instance, that hugging is a solution to life's problems and dodging their emotions.

the connection between self destruction and reality is dubious at best... most people aviod reality to HELP themselves (psychological devices such as repression)

and repression, in the end, only hurts you!

here's my evidence that mental disorders can be just fine for people to carry on successful lives...it seems the most common are bipolar and depression...

http://www.nami.org/update/update3.htm#famou

my favorite poet tennyson http://www.healthyplace.com/communit.../paems/people/

presidents lincoln Abraham Lincoln (16th US President)
suffered from severe, incapacitating and occasionally suicidal depressions http://www.sage.edu/divisions/psych/...s/p101ch13.htm and boris yeltsin...http://depression.about.com/gi/dynam...2Fyeltsin.html

http://www.frii.com/~parrot/dead.html

so mental disorders have inspired many people to go above and beyond their mudanity to achieve greatness...it's dependent on the person how they deal with their disorder!

*sigh* you're missing my point entirely.

Nope, I have to disagree with you there, it's not a curse if you choose it and almost every religion has told us the solution along with quite a few philosophers.

Greed, one of the principle driving forces of humanity, if we do away with greed we do away with unhappiness.

We're unhappy when we don't get our own way or things don't work out the way we'd like them to.
If it wasn't for greed for what we don't have (or for that matter, what we do have) we wouldn't be unhappy when we don't get it or lose it.

That's a very interesting arguement to use in a Philosophical discussion

I'll have to remember that one

and this is just now astounding you what is your point guy?

and dear fero...i have everything i need, and want for nothing material...so how can greed be a factor in my search for the "perfect happiness" perhaps only in death is that state ever achievable. For all intents and purposes i should be happy...but there's just something not quite adding up...and why i've decided to figure out emotional issues...is there some reason that man is never satisfied? i don't buy the greed arguement, because not all who are unhappy are so because they're greedy.