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Saturday, August 16, 2014 - 7:20pmSanction this postReply
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This raises very deep questions about the fundamental nature of our global village. Celebrities come and go with perhaps alarming regularity and life goes on.  I think of Christopher Hitchens: "You are tapped on the shoulder and told that you have to leave the party. Worse, you are told that the party is going on without you."  The divorce of Beyonce, the heartbreak of Kanye, the final days of Pat Boone...  Who cares?  But with Robin Williams, many people are introspectively wringing their hands.  Me, too.  Of all the cultural icons I never met in person, Robin Williams was with me, within me, in many roles from Mork to Popeye to Doubtfire, to Keating...  So, we all ask a lot of really deep questions that we should have asked a long time ago, and for which I certainly have no answers.  Though I often think of leaving the theater, I am hanging on to this ticket until the movie is over and the credits roll... 



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Sunday, August 17, 2014 - 4:49pmSanction this postReply
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Unfathomable and sad.

 

(CNN) -- Robin Williams was sober but was struggling with depression, anxiety and the early stages of Parkinson's diseasewhen he died, his widow said Thursday.

The diagnosis of the progressive illness was "an additional fear and burden in his life," a person familiar with Williams' family told CNN on Thursday.

 

There is no telling what someone else will find bearable, especially when it is them doing the bearing.

 

 

 

 

 



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Sunday, August 17, 2014 - 5:31pmSanction this postReply
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Fine sentiments Michael and Fred. By the way, I recently watched "Bicentennial Man." While the script gets cluncky in the second half of the film, Williams does a fine job in this robot/transhumanist film.



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Thursday, August 21, 2014 - 6:27amSanction this postReply
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I am number five in line at the library to check out Insomnia. With three weeks to a cycle...  We just had a discussion here in RoR about The Dead Poets Society.



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Thursday, August 21, 2014 - 8:49pmSanction this postReply
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As a cross-over thought since I posted on transhumanism on another thread, I recently watched "Bicentennial Man." The story started well but became a bit uneven and sappy, but Robin Williams did a fine job as a robot who seeks to become human, another version of Pinocchio.



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Thursday, August 21, 2014 - 9:39pmSanction this postReply
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It is so sad. I was struck by how consistent and believable were the many people who said the same things about Robin Williams: That he was a genuinely kind and caring man and that he was always 'on' - always performing even when no where near a stage. With some movie personalities who we see over decades we form impressions of the person under the act, what they would be like without a script and of the stage, and I wasn't the least surprised to hear that he was kind and caring and sincere in wanting to make others happy - he had always seemed to me to be just that.

 

When I was a psychotherapist, there was period where I worked with two different stand up comics... Both young and trying to break in to the business.  I was struck by the radical difference between their inner-self and the projected persona when they were 'on.'

 

One was very sad underneath and the other was stuck in an angry and hypercritical state. It was ssad to see this sharp contrast and great distance between the inner self and the persona they lived in much of the time as a comedian. I mention this because I spent some time thinking about their dynamics and how they might be using comedy to defend against inner demons.

 

It is sad to think that Mr. Williams might have been always 'on', because inside he was bravely fighting to keep from sinking into a deeper depression. Almost as if the laughter and delight he gave to others gave him some joy for the giving and kept the beast at bay. And as if he danced fast enough, it would not catch him.

 

Depression can be like an ulcer in that it can have many different causes and some of them can be psychological and others physiological. Just as psychological stress can result in physical damage to the stomach lining, so psychological depression can manifest as a change in dopamine levels - a physiological manifestation. It is always made worse down the road by self-medication, and I was sad hear about the diagnoisis of Parkinsons - which alters the dopamine levels on its own, as if hearing the diagnosis wouldn't be crushing enough.

 

He really was a unique and extrodinary person.



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Monday, August 25, 2014 - 3:03pmSanction this postReply
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I miss him!  Such a tragic circumstance, I cannot even begin to imagine the mental anguish he had been fighting and finally succumbed to.

 

(Edited by Jules Troy on 8/25, 3:04pm)



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