There are actually a few topics I was thinking of today. The first is that of schizophrenia. A frequently used colloquial term to describe a severely crazy person is "schizo", which, of course, is short for "schizophrenic", as I'm sure most of you are all well aware. Though this term is often used incorrectly, as it usually doesn't appropriately modify the subject (the subject usually not displaying symptoms of an actual schizophrenic), I don't believe linking "crazy" to "schizophrenic" as interchangeable adjectives is a smart move. Many people, throughout the past and the present have become outcasts, solely based on one thing: their differences from the norm. It has clearly been documented that people have destroyed entire cultures based on their religion, their skin color, their traditions, etc. In the United States, equality, to an extent, has slowly gotten closer and closer to achievement in some aspects, while getting farther away, in the very attempt to achieve it. Equality, by no means, exists yet. Either something is equal or it isn't. You couldn't say that seven partially equals one or that, since Abraham Lincoln freed the twos through sixes, seven is closer to equaling one now than it had in the past.
I still see racism everyday. I see it in both extremes. I see blacks who hate whites. I see whites who hate blacks. I see blacks who hate other shades of blacks. I see whites who hate tans. I could continue this list for years. I also see whites who will go out of their way to be nicer to a black person because that person is black and vice versa. Slavery doesn't exist anymore in the United States, at least not on a scale that it had years ago. My generation, as well as my parents' generation, generally realize how ignorant racial discrimination is. I'm proud to be part of this generation. I will not like a white person because he or she is white. At the same time, I will not hesitate to dislike a man or woman of another race if they have wronged me in some way, for fear that I will be accused of being racist. I'll hate everyone before I pick and choose races to like and dislike.
As time has proceeded, we now see past cases of racial and cultural oppression as a catastrophe. This tells us that the ways of past generations were generally ignorant and immoral. At least when I see a car that has a "JESUS" emblem on the right side and a swastika on the left, I know the person is clearly what many people would refer to as a "schizo". Worshiping one Jew and wishing an end to the rest never made any sense to me.
Basically, what I wanted to establish is the fact that many people have been and continue to be oppressed because of their differences. Racial discrimination is one of thousands of examples. I wanted to focus more on the portrayal of schizophrenics by many and how it differs from mine. In the same way whites felt it was okay to use blacks as slaves, people use schizophrenics as icons of crazy people. This an example of a superior-inferior relationship. It has been said that, genetically, every person on this planet is over 99% similar to any other person on the planet. What this means is that, no matter how different attributes may seem inside or outside a person, less than only one percent of that person is different from you, even when the person has a psychological "disorder" such as schizophrenia.
Imagine two people. One is green. One is orange. The green person has grown up in a society that has only exposed him or her to things that are green. The orange only knows orange things. Neither society has ever interacted with anything outside their color.
Once Oscar received his passport, he hugged and kissed his family and friends goodbye and set off in hope of exploring a foreign and friendly land. He was hoping for anything that wasn't orange. He had never seen anything that wasn't orange. Flying over the orange ocean under the orange clouds in the orange sky, he wondered if and when he would find anything. He decided to fall asleep and hoped that, when he awoke, he would find a new place, a place that wasn't orange. He awoke several hours later on a beach. It turned out that his bubble had crashed into another bubble... a green bubble...
He exited his flying bubble, pushed the sides together until it contracted to the size of a gumball and placed it in his pocket. He wiped off the excess slime that bubbles had always left on people after travel. It was more than he had ever seen before since the most he had ever traveled was within the boundaries of Orangea. After all the slime was off, he looked up and saw a person staring at him in bewilderment. Oscar soon realized nothing around him was orange anymore. It was a color he had never seen before. This color, of course, was green. Oscar appeared bug-eyed in shock for a moment, but instantly smiled the biggest smile he had ever smiled and put his hand out to shake the green person's hand. The green man did not understand this gesture, but looked very curious. He looked around to see if anyone else was watching and he walked a little closer to Oscar. Oscar gently grabbed the green man's hand and shook it. "My name is Oscar. What's your name?" The green man smiled and replied "My name is Greg." Oscar became a little shocked. He understood Greg, but the way he spoke sounded as if he had been gargling milk. This was odd to Oscar, but he was happy that he had found something new. They spent several hours on the beach, talking with one another, appreciating one another's likenesses and differences. Greg had always been a curious one, as well. Greg showed Oscar how to greet people in his land, Greenada (Greenland was already taken by a real-life example). This was to gently tap right feet together.
Greg's family members had been spying on this whole situation for several minutes before they approached Oscar and Greg with furious anger. They began to scream at both of them, more at Oscar, for they did not want to understand or accept his existence. Oscar found it difficult to understand loud yells with the whole gargling sound. This instantly distanced the two colors and created a language barrier. Suddenly, a green man with a green high-hat urged everyone to be silent, looked at Oscar, who was beyond frightened, and asked him for his reasons for being in his country. Oscar gave him a twenty minute speech about how he always dreamed of another place different from his own and how he was very fond of this new color he had never seen before and how he had always known there was more to life than just orange and he was so happy to be right. This high-hat wearing man was the Lime Minister of the country and was actually exactly the same way Oscar was when he was a child, but his family would not allow leaving. The Lime Minister smiled, pleasingly, and said "Welcome to Greenada!"
It took Oscar a while to get used to everything. He fell in love with a girl named Geraldine and they had a brown child named Beth. Oscar and Greg became best friends and decided to be partners in exploration. The four of them set off for Orangea. It took a while for everyone there to accept Geraldine or Greg. It especially took a long time for them to get used to Beth, but they knew she was their family now. Eventually, people from Orangea were going to Greenada and people from Greenada were going to Orangea, exchanging ideas, goods, customs, etc. Oscar and Greg spent the next few years seeking new land and they found lands of all different colors including purple, yellow, red, blue and many others. Pretty soon, every country had people of every color and all different mixes of colors.
There was one land, however, that Oscar and Greg had never visited and were never prepared for what they had encountered when they landed in Schizoslovakia... Upon exiting their brown bubble, which was the result of the fusing of both bubbles, they noticed a life form they had never encountered before. It had no color and it had no consistent shape. They were like amoebas, constantly shape-shifting. Oscar and Greg, in any other situation, would have reached out their hands and feet with a warm introduction. However, since the Schizoslovakians were so different, they assumed they were severely ill and decided to take the entire population of Schizoslovakians and placed them in a hospital in Orangea, where they could get better. Since the doctors had no idea what to do, they assumed the entire race was crazy and were all suffering from a terminal disorder.
Not all stories have happy endings. Perhaps I took that way too far and I suppose I might have seemed to have exaggerated a bit, but, in reality, this is no exaggeration at all. With every form of life, there is inevitably some form of evolution, not just in the physical, but in the behavioral. The behavioral evolves much more rapidly than the physical. In this case, discrimination is undergoing a new evolution. I don't believe it's better than previous steps throughout the history of the evolution of discrimination, but it is slightly different from previous types. In this case, many people believe that schizophrenics are undoubtedly insane, because they have an incorrect perception of the world. Who's to say they're wrong? Maybe they're the only ones who see the right way. Maybe we're both right. How would we ever know and who could ever rightfully claim the throne of judgment on the issue? Someone who feels that anything different from them is inferior. There's the answer. When someone cannot comprehend something, they should indulge in the positive essences of life and try to comprehend instead of simply writing all differences off as inferiority. We are all separate human beings. We're all individuals. What's wrong with having our own individual realities?
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