Prof: I'll ask you a question: why do you think humans are often led to suicide?
X: because it has too many problems.
Prof: and why do you think he has these problems?
Me: because of the company.
Prof: how sorry?
Me: the company. In my opinion this is the cause of all the losses that have occurred in recent years.
Prof: and here you are wrong. Take a person with depression for example, he kills himself because it is the depression that leads him to do this.
Me: yes ok, here we are, but before thinking about depression, wouldn't it be appropriate to think about the causes of all this?
X: in what sense?
Me: have you ever wondered why a person often resorts to suicide? Take this person suffering from depression for example: at first he had a good job, a house, a wife, children, everything in short. One day he is summoned by the director of the company where he works to inform him that due to various problems, unfortunately, layoffs are underway and among these there is also his name. Initially, the man remains a little upset but in the end he thinks that in one way or another he will find another job to feed his children. So he strives to find it. A day goes by and nothing.
Two days and nothing.
Three, nothing.
Four, nothing.
A month goes by and still nothing.
Children need things for school. The clothes for the holidays, because you know, we are boys.
The refrigerator is empty.
The bills are payable.
And that's where the real problems begin. The wife has her own needs. Children are teased at school because of their clothes, their worn out pens.
At that point, man feels a prisoner of hunger, of the desire for money, of the fear of a still uncertain tomorrow.
The wife leaves him.
The money isn't there yet.
There is no light at home, no water, no electricity.
The children do not speak to him. Friends despise him or at least treat him as if he were junk.
The man is alone.
He drinks.
It gets drunk.
He's out of money.
Society doesn't help him.
Friends don't care.
The children hate him because it is only because of him that they are targeted by their peers.
He falls into depression, a severe depression.
Is tired.
Alone.
Weak.
He kills himself.
This is what society is. We are society and if today the word "society" is synonymous with "suicide" the fault is ours alone.
Prof: exactly
ZUCKERBERG is aware that Instagram is dangerous to the mental health of teenage girls. The social media of photos with filters, bought by Facebook for a billion dollars in 2010, seems to have devastating effects on the psyche of many teen-agers. According to research, commissioned by Mark Zuckerberg's own company, one in three girls with an Instagram account develops perception disorders of their own body. And even all the groups analyzed spontaneously accused social media of causing them anxiety and an increase in depressive tendencies. A disaster. Especially if placed in a potential context: some time ago, in fact, Facebook has long toyed with the idea of proposing a version of Instagram for children under 13. ZUCKERBERG was fully aware of the damage Instagram created to teenagers, while pushing for an app dedicated to under 13s.
This research on the effects of Instagram was done by the Menlo Park company, revealed by the WSJ, and shows that Zuckerberg's company is aware that photo social can lead to eating disorders and depression. But it does nothing to fix it.
There are artists who paint what they see, others who paint what they remember or what they imagine. Our brain changes in the face of reality but, at the same time, it is capable of changing it: a "different" brain must therefore have a different relationship with reality.
In art this "process" can lead to the creation of new realities, which will only partly depend on "sensorial information"; our brain, in fact, does not necessarily need the continuous "information flow" coming from our senses. Dreams, memories that "revive" in mental images and also representations "simply" created by our mind testify to this event.
In this sense, art amplifies reality, creates a new "mental channel" capable of opening up to new experiences. The visual stimuli, real or evoked by memory, which excite the nervous system of the artist at the moment of the creation of the work of art, transformed by his hand into colors and shapes, will stimulate the nervous system of the observer. The work of art must be able to arouse in the observer's brain sensations and emotions that have been present in the artist's brain [Maffei L., Fiorentini A., 1995]. Approaching a work of art, looking at it, perceiving it, understanding it and appreciating it, implies the involvement of many brain structures and the activation of very specific mechanisms, starting from the functioning at the basis of visual perception, to those involved in the so-called "psychology of see ", in the aesthetic and emotional experience. This refers not only to the emotion felt by those who enjoy a painting but also to the creative moment that involves the artist to create his work.
Some researchers, especially psychologists and neurophysiologists, have been fascinated by the possibility of studying the properties and characteristics of the brain that are part of the evaluation of a work of art and the pleasure it can give; persuaded by the idea that the understanding of these cerebral mechanisms, together with the knowledge of the events of the life of an artist and of the culture of his time, can favor a greater "knowledge" and appreciation of the work and of those who created it.
A work of art is born from the combination of what the artist experiences "visually" and how he interprets what is communicated to him from the outside world. Both the acquisition of visual information and its internal processing can be altered by pathological causes.
The effects of serious mental illnesses, often altering the artist's perceptive and emotional abilities, can affect his pictorial expression and testify how the painter's life story becomes an integral part of his work.
All this emerges in the paintings of some great painters in particular moments of their life.
Francisco Goya (1746-1828) was suffering from an encephalopathy, due to lead poisoning (an element then present in the Francisco Goya, Detail "Cronus devours his children" Madrid, Prado Museum of pigments of various colors), which caused him deafness and personality alteration. At first his illness hindered him in all activities and was the cause of a deep depression; nightmare figures populated his paintings when he began to paint again.
The depression that afflicted Michelangelo (1475-1564) was of psychic origin. In painting the face of St. Bartholomew while showing the knife to the Judge, the artist brought a painful self-portrait into the folds of the skin of martyrdom Michelangelo Buonarroti, Particular "Last Judgment" Rome, Sistine Chapel. The perceptual, emotional and expressive systems of other great painters have been, more dramatically, altered by severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and manic-depressive syndrome.
Gruesser et al., (1988) described the abnormal perception of faces as a particular disorder characteristic of schizophrenic patients. The faces observed by these patients could quickly change their expression, assuming more and more the appearance of a monster: the mouth opened highlighting the protruding canines, the nose and eyes became larger, the pupils dilated. Some drawings or paintings reported by patients with schizophrenia highlight this particular characteristic and show, while communicating the suffering and perceptual distortions of this terrible disease, how "madness" can, in some cases, suggest a "brilliant" artistic creativity.
Deformations of the faces, anxious and frightened faces, obsessive expressions seem to reach the limits of pathology in the painter James Ensor (1860-1949). The artist's canvases begin to be populated with bizarre figures until they reach the apotheosis of James Ensor, "Christ's Entry into Brussels" Malibu, Getty Museums overcrowding in what is considered his masterpiece: Christ's Entry into Brussels .
The strange figures in the painting may seem the result of hallucinatory visions but, at the same time, they draw on a supernatural reality; the mask with the rice takes on an ambivalent value because its use allows, through transvestism, to modify what is hidden behind it.
Once again the boundaries of pathology, such as those between "reality" and "hallucination", become blurred and painfully distinguishable.
And then other mad artist like:
The depression of Monet, and De Chirico.
Modigliani's alcoholism,
Rousseau's masochism,
Schiele's pedophile tendencies.
The paranoid critical method of Dalì, exhibitionist and histrionic, who proudly claimed: "The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad".
What do you ask the people of this society? To be efficient, brilliant, beautiful. What’s so much about the women of this time? The trick. Because women always have to be perfect. They always have to be beautiful to be noticed and to be considered. women can never forget in their lives that they must always be beautiful. If they do not show themselves at their best they are considered witches, mussels, zombies. In short, women are always required to take care of their appearance. And women spend a lot of money to buy make-up products. They spend a lot of money going to the gym. To make destructive diets. Women are required to have an image always suitable for their role as females. If they don’t show this picture of themselves then they’re lesbians, or crazy, or depressed. A woman who neglects is considered depressed. If you don’t reflect the current fashion model then you are out of every pattern and therefore out of every round of friendships and stay alone. If you don’t talk about all the topics women talk about, then stay alone. Women themselves marginalize you, women themselves are the cruellest throws at other women.
THE PRODIGY OF IDEAS 