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Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

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Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#51

Post by krapp »

malka wrote: post #49
krapp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>By now, I understand most of my paranormal thoughts are just windows into the unconcious mind. Probably because a scientific framework of mind exists which you have access to, which allows you to accept that what goes on in your mind doesn't always correspond to reality. In a shamanistic society, you might still be led to believe you had magic powers, and that it was all real, and that you had to follow certain ritu…

Both are coercitive, but one locks the individual away, and the other one gives him purpose.

false dichotomy - "locking someone away" is not the only way modern society deals with the mentally ill.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#52

Post by joe_the_user »

api wrote: post #46
benbreen wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed completely. I was sympathetic to arguments like his right up until the time when my brother began acting weird and fell into a downward spiral that ultimately led to a schizophrenia diagnosis. What really sticks out to me is the brain damage-like effects of the disease - not just paranoia and delusions but a total breakdown in verbal and reasoning abilities. What my brother suffers from really is more comparab…

> What really sticks out to me is the brain damage-like effects of the disease Absolutely... there's an incoherence to true (not armchair diagnosed) schizophrenia. The mind falls apart. Traditional shamans and modern ones like McKenna himself might hold ideas that some might find irrational, but their thought patterns are coherent and their reasoning ability is there. They're lucid and can think. McKenna's brilliant…

Given this is on the level the speculative, one thing to consider is that the initial condition of the schizophrenic might be delusion, hallucination and the disintegration of one's sense of reality - and when that happens, the result in a modern society with no support for the phenomena could be massive stress, stress being a factor which many are today blaming for much mental illness.

That is to say that shamanic rituals and such might be a way to prevent those on the cusp of the classical symptoms of schizophrenia from progressing to full-blown schizophrenia.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#53

Post by MrTonyD »

FreedomToCreate wrote: post #4

The evidence he supplies doesn't actually prove the coercion is the cause. There is no scientific data presented, just speculative statistics and linkages to possible causes. The neurobiologist D.F Swaab wrote a book called "We are our brains" that talks about the issues outlined in this article and provides scientific proof to show how various illnesses like schizophrenia can come about. Many of these illnesses have…

But we have constructed our economy in such a way that school is required in order to be successful. So, for many of us, the very fact that education is required to be one of the "winners" is coercive.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#54

Post by Apocryphon »

krapp wrote: post #51
malka wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both are coercitive, but one locks the individual away, and the other one gives him purpose.

false dichotomy - "locking someone away" is not the only way modern society deals with the mentally ill.

Alright, one accords the mentally ill special, positive status, and the other assigns them negative stigmas

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#55

Post by Mz »

joe_the_user wrote: post #52
api wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What really sticks out to me is the brain damage-like effects of the disease Absolutely... there's an incoherence to true (not armchair diagnosed) schizophrenia. The mind falls apart. Traditional shamans and modern ones like McKenna himself might hold ideas that some might find irrational, but their thought patterns are coherent and their reasoning ability is there. They're lucid and can think. McKenna's brilliant…

Given this is on the level the speculative, one thing to consider is that the initial condition of the schizophrenic might be delusion, hallucination and the disintegration of one's sense of reality - and when that happens, the result in a modern society with no support for the phenomena could be massive stress , stress being a factor which many are today blaming for much mental illness. That is to say that shamanic…

As someone who has dealt with some mental health stuff ("crap in my head" /technical term), I can testify firsthand that a) how it gets framed and b) how others around me respond to it make a really huge difference in how it impacts me -- anywhere from "weird, but functional" to "odd source of useful insight" to "losing my shit and I think I shall go play in traffic now."

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#56

Post by jspiral »

PaulHoule wrote: post #12
cryoshon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about the Met-158 mutation? If not, which? I agree that the real culprit is stress-- biological differences to processing and coping with stress are likely the actual mechanism at play rather than generalized "coercion" like the article suggests without providing evidence. Our society is intensely stressful, and provides no real permanent reductions in stress level.

I don't have Met-158 thank god I am not like that crazy killer family from the Netherlands. I am hetero at SNP rs1800497.

Is what you are talking about mentioned in any way here? http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs1800497

I'm not seeing it. Curious to find a reference with more info.

When you say hetero, I would guess you mean (C;T) which doesn't look that rare, i'm guessing i'm misunderstanding.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#57

Post by petra »

FreedomToCreate wrote: post #4

The evidence he supplies doesn't actually prove the coercion is the cause. There is no scientific data presented, just speculative statistics and linkages to possible causes. The neurobiologist D.F Swaab wrote a book called "We are our brains" that talks about the issues outlined in this article and provides scientific proof to show how various illnesses like schizophrenia can come about. Many of these illnesses have…

I agree the evidence do not strictly prove that , but at least, in general , from all we know about indigenous populations , we have good evidence on how one type of society that's conductive to mental health should roughly look like.

And yes, even if mental illness is rooted in biology , we know that some environments cause it to manifest and some environments don't , and since we cannot change biology (and drugs are a very poor solution to such problems ) this means , at least that a big part of the solution is environmental change.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#58

Post by krapp »

MawNicker wrote: post #48
krapp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>By now, I understand most of my paranormal thoughts are just windows into the unconcious mind. Probably because a scientific framework of mind exists which you have access to, which allows you to accept that what goes on in your mind doesn't always correspond to reality. In a shamanistic society, you might still be led to believe you had magic powers, and that it was all real, and that you had to follow certain ritu…

It's all as real as humans are real. Every person has a mind that exists partially beyond the objective reality we all share. Those experiences are real even if they don't represent reality. They affect reality to the extant that humans do. Schizophrenia is dissociation from objective reality. A mind that is disproportionately subjective. An echo-chamber of thought. Even as a disability and not a "magical power" it d…

I can see for miles and miles.

But i'm arguing specifically against the shamanistic point of view in the gp. Should we treat mental illness exactly the same as any other? Absolutely. The stigma behind mental illness, I believe, is a vestige from the days when most people thought such things were the work of demons. People can't accept that someone who thinks and sees the world so differently is just as human as they are. But reverence? No. Being told that you've been touched by God can be a prison of its own.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#59

Post by aarpmcgee »

zwischenzug wrote: post #15

A great book to read in this context: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Sleep-There-are-Snakes/dp/18466... or indeed, any context. It's a fabulous book about the good and bad in societies untouched by civilization, and about one man's attempts to understand a language with no reference points. And his struggle with his Christian mission, ending up in his atheism. It's got everything, and would make a great film.

Terrific book. Was mind expanding for me.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#60

Post by hoorayimhelping »

api wrote: post #24
butterfinger wrote: post #14

Another point that this article does not discuss is that in many of the "less coercive" societies, schizophrenia or related diseases are not seen as a disease or problematic at all. McKenna writes: "A shaman is someone who swims in the same ocean as the schizophrenic, but the shaman has thousands and thousands of years of sanctioned technique and tradition to draw upon. In a traditional society, if you exhibited “sch…

I love McKenna's raps but I really disagree with him here. I doubt he had much experience with actual schizophrenia, which is horrific and debilitating, and I doubt shamans present or past actually had it. Psychedelic drugs induce a superficially schizophrenia-like state but it's transient and may not actually be much like schizophrenia at all. Visionary, trance, and highly imaginative states are not schizophrenia or…

>I doubt anyone with a severe case could heal or make art

Makes me think of Wesley Willis [1] who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and found the only way he could manage it was by making music. Just such a sad and shitty disease.

1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Willis

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