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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 2 months

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By: Jonathan Haidt

Published: Dec 22, 2023

[Note: this is post #1 of a pair of posts. The second post gives the text of chapter 3 of The Coddling of the American Mind.]

In the days after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, university campuses immediately distinguished themselves as places set apart from the rest of American society—zones where different moral rules applied. Even before Israel began its military response, the loudest voices on campus were not university leaders condemning the attacks and vowing solidarity with their Jewish and Israeli students. Instead, the world saw faculty members and student organizations celebrating the attacks.

Political commentator and Atlantic author David Frum summed up the moral uniqueness of the academy in this tweet, four days after the attack:

Since then, there have been hundreds of antisemitic incidents on campuses including vandalism of Jewish sites, physical intimidation, physical assault, and death threats against Jewish students, often from other students. The response from university administrators has often been slow, weak, or entirely absent.

[ Image. The scene on the exterior wall of my office building at NYU on the morning of October 17, 2023. NYU students had posted fliers about Israelis kidnapped by Hamas. Other NYU students tore them down. Other NYU students posted more of them. ]

Why is the culture of elite higher education so fertile for antisemitism, and why are our defenses against it so weak? Don’t we have the world's most advanced academic concepts and bureaucratic innovations for identifying hatred of all kinds, even expressions of hatred so small, veiled, and unconscious that we call them “micro-aggressions” and “implicit biases”?

Yes, we do, but it turns out that they don’t apply when Jews are the targets,1 and this was the shocking hypocrisy on display in that Congressional hearing room on December 5. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik asked the President of the University of Pennsylvania “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's rules or code of conduct, yes or no?” President Magill was unable to say yes. When the question was asked in various ways to all three presidents, none could say yes. All said variations of “it depends on the context.”

Now, as a social psychologist who studies moral judgment, I’m all for context. Technically, those presidents were correct that students chanting “from the river to the sea” may or may not be advocating killing all the Jews in Israel. Those chanting “globalize the intifada” may or may not be calling for terrorist attacks on Jewish sites around the world. And even if they were, such political speech is protected by the First Amendment unless the speech is made in a context that is likely to incite actual violence, constitutes a “true threat,” or rises to the level of discriminatory harassment. Those three presidents could have said that their universities are bastions of free speech where everyone lives and dies by the First Amendment.

In fact, they tried to say that, and this is why they were so widely pilloried for hypocrisy. Like most elite schools, Harvard, Penn, and MIT have spent the last ten years punishing professors for their research findings and disinviting speakers who questioned the value of DEI. (See The Canceling of the American Mind for dozens of other examples.) As has been widely reported, Harvard and Penn are the top two schools in America for creating terrible speech climates, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

What on earth happened to the academy? As Fareed Zakaria recently asked: How did America’s elite universities go from being “the kinds of assets the world looks at with admiration and envy” just eight years ago, to becoming objects of ridicule today? How did we bungle things so badly?

Greg Lukianoff and I wrote a book that tried to answer that question in 2018, as it was happening.

The Coddling of the American Mind tells the story of how American universities lost their collective minds, beginning around 2014 when student demands for protections from speech seemed to appear out of nowhere, including calls for trigger warnings, safe spaces, bias response teams, and mandatory trainings around language use. The students were supported by some faculty members and some administrators, and their combined force pressured many university leaders to accede to their demands even though, privately, many had misgivings.2

The new morality driving these reforms was antithetical to the traditional virtues of academic life: truthfulness, free inquiry, persuasion via reasoned argument, equal opportunity, judgment by merit, and the pursuit of excellence. A subset of students had learned this new morality in some of their courses, which trained them to view everyone as either an oppressor or a victim. Students were taught to use identity as the primary lens through which everything is to be understood, not just in their coursework but in their personal and political lives. When students are taught to use a single lens for everything, we noted, their education is harming them, rather than improving their ability to think critically.

This new morality, we argued, is what drove universities off a cliff. For a while, the descent was gradual, but at Halloween, 2015, in a courtyard at Yale, the free fall began. Students and administrators espousing the new morality demanded reforms at Yale and, over the next few months, at dozens of other schools. With a few exceptions, university leaders did not stand up to the new morality, critique its intellectual shortcomings, or say no to demands and ultimatums.

You can see the fall of higher ed in data from Gallup. The figure below shows that as recently as 2015, most Democrats and even most Republicans had high confidence in higher education as an institution. (Independents were evenly split). A mere eight years later, higher ed had alienated not just Republicans, but also independents. The trend for Democrats was down as well. The survey was fielded in June of 2023, well before the current mess.

[ Figure 1. Percent of U.S. adults with "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in higher education. Source: Gallup (2023). ]

The good news is that the academy’s free fall is now over. American higher ed hit rock bottom on December 5, 2023 in that Congressional hearing room. Anyone who wants universities to bounce back and regain the trust of the American people must understand this new morality and ensure that it never holds sway on campus again.

The key chapter for understanding the new morality is chapter 3. I recently re-read that chapter and thought it would be of help to those who are struggling to comprehend the enormity of the culture change on so many campuses since 2015. Greg and I explained the transformation as the triumph of a cognitive distortion—binary thinking—such that students learn to slot everyone into one of two boxes: oppressor or victim.3 This mindset is the psychological basis of one of the three “Great Untruths” that we found flourishing on college campuses in the 2010s: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.4 We said that this was a terrible thing to teach students, and we explained why we expected that students who embraced this untruth would damage their mental health. (Subsequent research has confirmed this prediction.)

The central portion of the chapter describes two different kinds of identity politics, one of which is good because it actually achieves what it says it is trying to achieve, and because it brings both justice and, eventually, better relationships within the group. We called this “common humanity identity politics.” It’s what Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela did by humanizing their opponents and drawing larger circles that appealed to shared histories and identities. The other form we called “common enemy identity politics.” It teaches students to develop the oppressor/victim mindset and then change their societies by uniting disparate constituencies against a specific group of oppressors. This mindset spreads easily and rapidly because human minds evolved for tribalism. The mindset is hyper-activated on social media platforms that reward simple, moralistic, and sensational content with rapid sharing and high visibility.5 This mindset has long been evident in antisemitism emanating from the far right. In recent years it is increasingly driving antisemitism on the left, too.

Common enemy identity politics is arguably the worst way of thinking one could possibly teach to young people in a multi-ethnic democracy such as the United States. It is, of course, the ideological drive behind most genocides. On a more mundane level, it can in theory be used to create group cohesion on teams and in organizations, and yet the current academic version of it plunges organizations into eternal conflict and dysfunction. As long as this way of thinking is taught anywhere on campus, identity-based hatred will find fertile ground.

With permission from Penguin Press, Greg and I present a condensed version of chapter 3 in a linked post, here:

What is the victim-oppressor mindset and how did it conquer the academy?

Please do go read that post, and then come back here.

OK, if you don’t want to do that right now, here is the ending of the excerpt, which offers a partial summary. After describing the social psychology of tribalism and ideas about power (from Marx, Marcuse, Foucault, and Crenshaw), we analyze an intersectionalist text in which the author (Kathryn Pauly Morgan) asserted that because men created educational systems, girls and women in those systems today are essentially a “colonized population.” Here is our response:

Morgan is certainly right that it was mostly white males who set up the educational system and founded nearly all the universities in the United States. Most of those schools once excluded women and people of color. But does that mean that women and people of color should think of themselves as “colonized populations” today? Would doing so empower them, or would it encourage an external locus of control? Would it make them more or less likely to engage with their teachers and readings, work hard, and benefit from their time in school? More generally, what will happen to the thinking of students who are trained to see everything in terms of intersecting bipolar axes where one end of each axis is marked “privilege” and the other is “oppression”? Since “privilege” is defined as the “power to dominate” and cause “oppression,” these axes are inherently moral dimensions. The people on top are bad, and the people down below are good. This sort of teaching seems likely to encode the Untruth of Us Versus Them directly into students’ cognitive schemas: Life is a battle between good people and evil people. Furthermore, there is no escaping the conclusion as to who the evil people are. The main axes of oppression usually point to one intersectional address: straight white males. [...] In short, as a result of our long evolution for tribal competition, the human mind readily does binary, us-versus-them thinking. If we want to create welcoming, inclusive communities, we should be doing everything we can to turn down the tribalism and turn up the sense of common humanity. Instead, some theoretical approaches used in universities today may be hyper-activating our ancient tribal tendencies, even if that was not the intention of the professor. Of course, some individuals truly are racist, sexist, and homophobic, and some institutions are too, even when the people who run them mean well, if they end up being less welcoming to members of some groups. We favor teaching students to recognize a variety of kinds of bigotry and bias as an essential step toward reducing them. Intersectionality can be taught skillfully, as Crenshaw does in her TED Talk. It can be used to promote compassion and reveal injustices not previously seen. Yet somehow, many college students today seem to be adopting a different version of intersectional thinking and are embracing the Untruth of Us Versus Them.

So, how well does our analysis from 2018 hold up in 2023? Does chapter 3 help us to understand the recent explosion of antisemitism on campus?

Unfortunately, the analysis works perfectly. Many students today talk about Israel as a “settler-colonialist” nation.6 That is straight oppressor/victim terminology, from post-colonialist thinker Frantz Fanon. It treats Israel as if diaspora Jews were 19th century England or France sending colonists to take over an existing society, motivated by monetary greed. Once that frame is applied, students’ minds are closed to any other understanding of a complicated situation, such as the view that Jews are the original (or indigenous) inhabitants of the land, who had a continual presence there for 3,000 years, and whose exiled populations (many in Arab lands) had nowhere else to go after being decimated by Hitler’s version of common enemy identity politics.7 The French in Algeria could return to France, but if these students get their wish and Hamas gains control of all the territory “from the river to the sea,” it’s not clear where seven million Jews would go, other than into the sea.8

[ Image. Pro-Palestinian supporters march after a rally in New York City, October 9, 2023. Photo by Lev Radin, Shutterstock. ]

Direct evidence of the link between the oppressor/victim mindset and antisemitism was published last week in a poll from Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies and the Harris Poll. The survey was fielded on December 13-14.9 The survey asks about Americans’ beliefs not just about Israel but about Jews in America and on campus as well. I’ll summarize a few of the items, which you can check out in the report, and I'll expand on three in particular, which document the wide reach of the oppressor/victim mindset and its role in causing young people to embrace antisemitism.10

The Harvard-Harris survey found that Americans side strongly with Israel against Hamas in the current conflict––except for Gen Z (here operationalized as the 18-24-year-old age bracket)11, which is evenly divided between support for Israel and Hamas. (See p. 47 of the report.)

I should note that some have rightly criticized the Harvard-Harris poll on methodological grounds, especially for forcing respondents into binary choices, rather than offering a “don’t know” or “undecided” option. When such options are offered many people choose them, sometimes more than half, so the numbers you’ll see below probably overstate the prevalence of antisemitism, in absolute terms. Zach Rausch and I have been collecting all the recent surveys we can find on attitudes toward the Gaza conflict in this Google doc. Many other surveys have confirmed that there is substantially more support for Hamas among Gen Z than among older generations, although some studies find that Gen Z still tilts slightly toward Israel. It is the pattern of responses across questions and generations that I am drawing on, rather than the absolute numbers.

The survey found that Gen Z is not much different than older generations in agreeing that 1. Antisemitism is prevalent on campus (p. 50), 2. Jewish students are facing harassment on campus (p. 50), 3. Calls for “the genocide of Jews” are hate speech (p. 51), and 4. Calls for “the genocide of Jews” are harassment (p. 52).

Yet, despite agreeing with other generations that antisemitism is prevalent on campus, that Jews are being harassed on campus, and that calls for genocide are both hate speech and harassment, Gen Z is evenly divided as to whether campus protesters have a right to call for genocide against Jews. You can see the exact question below the table in Figure 2. As you can see below, all older generations favor disciplinary action as the proper response to students who publicly call for the mass killing of Jews. Only Gen Z does not.

[ Figure 2. “If a student calls for the genocide of Jews should that student be told that they are free to call for genocide or should such students face actions for violating university rules?” Harvard-Harris Poll, December 2023, screenshot from p. 51, with additional annotations by Haidt. ]

Why is Gen Z so tolerant of hate speech and verbal harassment of Jews, when it shows the lowest tolerance for such speech against other groups? The next three items show that the oppressor/victim mindset and common enemy identity politics are at work, but only for Gen Z. One item asked “Do you think that identity politics based on race has come to dominate at our elite universities, or do they operate primarily on the basis of merit and accomplishments without regard to race?” (p. 55). All generations agree that identity politics based on race is now dominant, but Gen Z, which has the most experience with current campus culture, agrees more strongly (69%, tied with those over 65).

The big difference between generations is that only Gen Z endorses this kind of identity politics. One survey item asks: “There is an ideology that white people are oppressors and nonwhite people and people of certain groups have been oppressed and as a result should be favored today at universities and for employment. Do you support or oppose this ideology?” [p. 56]

[ Figure 3. “There is an ideology that white people are oppressors and nonwhite people and people of certain groups have been oppressed and as a result should be favored today at universities and for employment. Do you support or oppose this ideology?” Harvard-Harris Poll, December 2023. ]

Gen Z, and only Gen Z, agrees with the “ideology that white people are oppressors.” The direct line linking this explicit form of common enemy identity politics to antisemitism is found in the responses to the next item: “Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?”

[ Figure 4. “Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?” Harvard-Harris Poll, December 2023. ]

Gen Z, and only Gen Z, agrees. As I said earlier, the absolute numbers would be lower if a neutral or “don’t know” option were presented, so I do not believe that two out of every three Americans in that age range truly believes that Jews are oppressors. But even if half of the respondents chose a third option, the balance of those who believe it to those who reject it would still tilt toward “oppressors,” and more strongly than for any older generation.

In other words: While all generations agree that race-based identity politics now dominates on campus, only Gen Z leans toward (rather than away from ) endorsing such politics, applying it to Jews, and agreeing that we should treat Jews as oppressors—that is, treat them badly and not protect them from hate and harassment because they deserve what’s coming to them.

I should offer a few clarifications.

First, it is understandable that there is an age gradient, with older generations strongly pro-Israel and younger generations becoming increasingly supportive of the Palestinian cause. Older generations were raised by parents who remembered the Holocaust and understood the context within which the state of Israel was created. Older generations remember the frequent attacks on a vulnerable Israel in its early years. Younger generations, in contrast, have only known a strong Israel that occupied Palestinian territory (at least in the West Bank). There are two sides on this issue. I’m on one side, but I understand that there are good reasons for taking the other side. Opposing Israel or hating the Israeli government is not automatically anti-semitism. What concerns me is that anti-Israel sentiment seems to be increasingly closely linked to hatred of Jews and physical attacks on Jews and Jewish sites. Such attacks may seem morally justified, even virtuous, to those who believe that Jews are “oppressors.”

Second, the Israeli military response has not been “surgical”; its bombing campaign has killed thousands of Palestinians who are not members of Hamas. Young people, most of whom are on TikTok, are probably more exposed than older people to videos of horrific suffering among Gazans. So again, I don’t criticize anyone for protesting Israel or the war, and I hope that universities respect pro-Palestinian students’ First Amendment rights to speak and protest. But the displays of support for Hamas began even before Israel had responded, and part of what was so shocking in the first week after the October 7 attack was the relatively muted and delayed expressions of concern by university leaders and campus organizations. Whatever has caused today’s campus antisemitism, it was already baked in before Israel’s military response began.

Third, I cannot say how much of today’s antisemitism comes from college classrooms (and K-12 classrooms as well), and how much is driven by social media, particularly TikTok. The rapid transition to the “phone-based childhood” that happened around 2012 is a crucial part of the story, which Greg and I discussed in The Coddling. As I have argued elsewhere, social media has introduced dangerous new dynamics into society, including explosive virality and the fragmentation of shared understandings (i.e., the collapse of the Tower of Babel). But given that today’s campus antisemitism is so closely linked with the oppressor/victim mindset, and given that Greg and I (and many others) have been warning about the dangers of teaching this mindset since before TikTok was created, I am confident that American higher education bears a substantial portion of the blame.

I do not believe that those three presidents, testifying before Congress, were antisemitic in their hearts. But in their heartless and gutless responses to a question about when it violates their campus’s rules for students to call for genocide against Jews, all three presidents validated the now-prevalent campus antisemitism. All three presidents essentially said: Jews don’t count, it’s OK to call for their deaths, as long as it does not “turn into action.”

According to those who embrace common enemy identity politics and its oppressor/victim mindset, all members of victim groups are justified in “punching up,” pulling oppressors down, vandalizing their buildings and symbols, and perhaps even raping their women and killing their children. At least, that is the implication of tweets from various professors who praised the Hamas attack, saying versions of “this is what decolonization looks like.”

Conclusion

In the tweet I quoted at the top of this essay, David Frum pointed out that elite college campuses have diverged from the rest of the country. Frum urged those of us in the academy to reflect upon why college campuses are so rife with antisemitism, in a country that is, according to public opinion data, very positive toward its Jewish citizens. I have tried to do that in this essay, concluding that it is our own fault for embracing and institutionalizing bad ideas, rather than challenging them. I have shown a direct connection between the oppressor/victim mindset and the willingness of many in the current generation of students to espouse overtly antisemitic beliefs (even if it is not truly a majority of them).

American higher education is now in a code-red situation. It’s not just Jewish donors and alumni who are withdrawing their support. As you saw in Figure 1, a majority of Americans had low confidence in higher ed before October 7. In the wake of the December 5 congressional hearings, it is now surely a supermajority, including perhaps most Democrats as well. Efforts in red-state legislatures to constrain, control, or defund higher ed will now find a great deal more public support than anyone could have imagined before 2015.

If they are to regain public trust, university leaders will need to understand the victim/oppressor mindset and how their own institutions are encouraging it. Then they will need to take bold action and make deep changes. You can’t just plant a new center for the study of antisemitism in soil that is ideal for the growth of antisemitism. You have to change the soil, change the culture and policies of the institution.

Greg and I have an entire chapter (13) on how to do that, how to create “wiser universities” by enshrining free inquiry, changing the standards used to hire faculty and admit students, and then orienting students for productive disagreement. A wiser university would make students less susceptible to the oppressor/victim mindset even if they are exposed to it in a few of their classes. I will offer many more ideas in future posts. For now, I list organizations that specialize in improving the culture of universities, and I list essays that offer what I think are good ideas. I’ll keep the list updated for a while, so if you find good essays, please post links to them in the comments.

I close this essay with the quotation that opens Chapter 3 of The Coddling, from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, one of the wisest people I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet:

There is the moral dualism that sees good and evil as instincts within us between which we must choose. But there is also what I will call pathological dualism that sees humanity itself as radically... divided into the unimpeachably good and the irredeemably bad. You are either one or the other.

Universities can and must free students from pathological dualism.

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sonlikesleep · 1 year

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The Sun That Shines And The Moon Reflecting

#original work #art #sun and moon #original art #sketch for etching #dualism #artists on tumblr

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probablyasocialecologist · 8 months

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There is no contradiction in seeing society as both separate from and irreducible to the Earth system as a whole, and simultaneously as a fundamental part of it. To call that approach ‘dualist’ is comparable to denying that your heart is both an integral part of your body and a distinct organ with unique features and functions.

John Bellamy Foster and Ian Angus, In Defense of Ecological Marxism

#nature #dualism

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yeh-kaali-kaali-ankhein · 1 year

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Jeon Jungkook defines duality 😤

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kuroshirosb · 19 days

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🌑🌓 Dualism’s Lunar Cycle : Singularity’s Cyberparadism 🌗🌕

"Do you know the secret of the world?"

An AU between @kuroshirosb and @antihibikase

During a sleepless, starless night, two tragedies occur in the region of Unova- one boy is caught in a fire at Lentimas' Town's abandoned mansion, and another drowns in the waters under the Marvelous Bridge.

When they wake, however, they find themselves in a familiar region in an unfamiliar world.

Plot Summary:

Following their own accidents, Cheren Piper and Cheren Slater wake and find themselves, and each other, in the region of Sinnoh- except nothing is what it seems.

Parts of Sinnoh are either missing, leading to different places, or consumed by an endless, inky black void. The people of Sinnoh behave strangely, with blurred faces and repeated scripts.

With the help of a bike, a Poketch, and a diary, Piper and Slater traverse Sinnoh's Mystery Zone in an attempt to escape what they realize is an endless dream built on not only their memories, but the other people they share this world with.

Characters:

Piper - Unable to sleep one night, Piper walks through the outskirts of Lentimas Town and finds himself beckoned to a strange house. Upon entering the house, however, it's set ablaze- and he wakes to find himself in the Sinnoh region, where he eventually meets Slater. The more assertive of the two, he braves through the darkness of the Mystery Zone with his partner through the use of a simple bike.

Associated with Darkrai and the new moon. Though he butts heads with Kris, he finds himself specifically antagonized by Nikolai.

Slater - Unable to sleep one night, Slater walks out of White Forest and into the Marvelous Bridge. As he's pondering under the night sky, a strange woman approaches him- and pushes him off the bridge, leaving him to drown. Upon waking, he finds himself in the Sinnoh region, where he eventually meets Piper. The more reserved of the duo, he's often in the backseat with the special Poketch and diary they use to navigate the Mystery Zone.

Associated with Cresselia and the full moon. Despite being Nikolai's object of fascination, Kris seems to have a bone to pick with him.

Kris - A strange girl encountered in Hearthome City, just as Piper and Slater obtain their badge from Fantina. The more antagonistic of the pair, she endlessly pursues and toys with them in an effort to take their places in the real world. Was once a normal girl with a normal life, who was heavily doted on by her uncle Bill- who will do everything and anything in his power to bring her back.

Associated with the third quarter phase of the moon.

Nikolai - A strange man encountered in the Lost Tower, not too soon after the pair meet Kris. Though he's more reserved and calculating, he follows along with Kris' plans to escape to the real world. A wandering scientist cursed with immortality, he's left in near-death after a serious accident cracks his porcelain body- and is left in the care of his mother, Cogita.

Associated with the first quarter phase of the moon.

#Lunar Cycle #<- the full name is too long so we’re just calling it that #Dualism #Cheren Piper #Cheren Slater #Singularity #Kris Kawamoto #Nikolai Colress

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antihibikase-archive · 1 month

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The one who fades has to be you. / The one who stays has to be me.

Art trade with @asheoninactive / @kuroshirosb !!

#Dualism #Ib AU #(( <- Aibou has now been changed to Dualism. <3 The YGO reference is still there but now it's referring to the halves of a whole part.))#((Anyways listen to Dualism of Mirrors by Petit Milady + Flowering by Dareharu. <3))#((THANK YOU FOR WAITING ASHE SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG !!!))#My Art

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fellow-weary-traveler · 11 months

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Let me try this again. Not sure I’ve shared this work on here before. From: http://theprimitiverite.com/portfolio/anima-mundi/

#esoteric #art #pen and ink #tree #nature #hermetica #dualism

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arcadebroke · 6 months

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link

#nisheink #nishe #DUALISM #painting #design #color #style

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 11 months

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“Our minds are all threaded together,” the young Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary at the dawn of the twentieth century, “and all the world is mind.” Meanwhile in Spain, the middle-aged Santiago Ramón y Cajal was birthing a new science that would both greatly expand our knowledge of the brain and greatly contract our understanding of the mind. Over the following half-century, in its noble effort to render comprehensible what William James so poetically termed the “blooming and buzzing confusion” of consciousness, neuroscience would become both a great leap forward and a great leap back. Again and again, its illuminating but incomplete findings would be aggrandized and oversimplified into a sort of neo-phrenology that incarcerates some of our most expansive human experiences and capacities — love and grief, intelligence and imagination — in particular brain regions with particular neural firing patterns.

A century later and half a millennium after Descartes cleaved Western consciousness into its disembodied dualism, we are only just beginning to reckon with the growing understanding that consciousness is a full-body phenomenon, perhaps even a beyond-body phenomenon.

In The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain (public library), Annie Murphy Paul explores the most thrilling frontiers of this growing understanding, fusing a century of scientific studies with millennia of first-hand experience from the lives and letters of great artists, scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs. Challenging our cultural inheritance of thinking that thinking takes place only inside the brain, she illuminates the myriad ways in which we “use the world to think” — from the sensemaking language of gestures that we acquire as babies long before we can speak concepts to the singular fuel that time in nature provides for the brain’s most powerful associative network.

[MORE]

#The Marginalian #mind #brain #bodymind #Body Alive #science #dualism #full-body #books

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charmedreincarnation · 11 months

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What is dualism?? I’ve never heard of it

In essence, dualism is the belief that there are two distinct realms of existence – the physical, material world made up of matter and energy, and the spiritual world made up of consciousness and intellect. Dualism is a way of looking at the universe and believing that while the physical and material world is real, it has no ultimate meaning or purpose.

But I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of non-dualism which is the opposite of that. It’s starting to be talked about on tumblr and I don’t know enough outside a philosophical and religious sense to talk about it’s applications! but at @multiversebaddie and @awarenesscreates talk about it I Believe :)!

#law of assumption #manifesation #manifesting #my asks #dualism

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zafyrus-owo · 6 months

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Standing up after disassociating for a while with a shitty character playlist playing on your headphones. feels like walking a puppet around.

Clearly, proof of the dualism of mind and soul

#philosophy #dualism #196 #r/196 #deep musings idk

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inkintheinternet · 16 days

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The Dark Street of Psychosis and Schizophrenia

By Arjuwan Lakkdawala

Ink in the Internet

Recently I did extensive research on the Internet about one particular subject, it was because I could see its tsunami like effect rippling through the entire world. The subject is 'Mental Health or Psychology.'

The results of the search were most disheartening. Official statistics from the World Health Organization to every other scientific institute were saying the same thing: "worldwide rise in mental health crisis." What this translates into is that the world is collectively going crazy.

The questions that arise from such statistics, is what is causing this alarming mental decline or disturbance? How should we deal with sufferers or treat them? And what are the risks of us devoloping a mental disorder or our children, and how can we protect our sanity?

Now to have the best understanding about the human psyche, so that we can have acute awareness, and make informed beneficial decisions, should we have to deal with the mental health crisis in anyway.

We have to go back in the history of psychology.

We know this much that Neanderthals and Denisovans were innovative thinkers from the primitive tools they made to the cave paintings.

Discoveries have revealed that we are still learning about the cognitive abilities of pre-historic humans, for example a new book 'The Language Puzzle' by archealogist Dr. Steven Mithen, states that language may have been developed 8 times sooner than was previously thought. That is 1.6 million years ago, rather than 200,000 years ago.

The point of this is that we can be certain man was always cognitive and not an ape.

So now let's fastforward from pre-historic times to the time when philosophy was first recorded in ancient Greece.

Greek philosophy is said to be the very early prototype of mental wanderings that were not based on needs of the day.

In the 17th century the idea of dualism was introduced by French Philosopher Rene Descartes, it is significant as it separates the behavior and actions of a person based on stimulations from the body or environment, from the thinking of the mind that stems from consciousness.

These two aspects are the toughest challenge of psychology to this day. Because of how the effects of environment and society could influence a person's thinking as opposed to internal biological causes. Which is causing the mental disorder, and which has a greater affect on the patient's psyche at any given phase.

In the centuries that followed and even after psychology had emerged as a science apart from physiology and philosophy in the mid-1800s.

There was debate about what constituted a mental disorder, what was the pathogenesis (origin of the mental problem)

What form of treatment would be effective, and how to avoid causing the patient unnecessary suffering by trial and error.

It turns out and not surprisingly that the "pathogenesis - Greek: patho 'suffering' genesis 'origin'" of mental health disorders are one of the most elusive to trace, and hence, the proper treatment very difficult to define.

The first time that a mental condition was recorded to have a biological pathogenesis, was in the curious case of the "general paralysis of the insane." The 1897 discovery was made by the neurologist Richard von Kraftt-Ebing and his assistant Josef Adolf Hirschl.

The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in 1885 had reported a great surge in the insane. It is said that so much as 1 in 5 patients entering asylums had "general paralysis of the insane."

What the neurologist and his assistant had discovered was that this was the later stages of syphilis. A biological ailment that could manifest in dementia and delusions as untreated syphilis can damage the brain.

While this was a formidable stamp on the connection of a mental disorder and a biological cause. It was generally misleading, as it solidified to a great extent the belief that a mental ailment would be the result of physical defects in the brain. Many scientists of the time would examine brains in autopsies and search for imprints of the mental problem the deceased had, but there were none in most of the cases.

As I explained from ancient times up to the mid-1800s scientists were still having so much difficulty in fully distinguishing consciousness from the physical brain. Needless to say this had delayed the progress in the field of psychology.

Sigmund Freud founded the theory of psychoanalysis. Freud and his colleague Pierre Janet were studying patients with hysteria, seizures, and other physical symptoms with mental disorders.

Psychoanalysis was considered the first major step towards the complex study of the human consciousness and as Freud pioneered the 'unconsciousness.' He theorised that the unconsciousness could manifest into dreams and mental disorders, and was the root cause of conscious psychological problems, the dilemmas in the unconscious mind would have to be brought to the conscious mind in order to treat the patient.

In 1904 Sigmund Freud published 'The Psychopathology of Everyday Life' exploring minuscule details of human behavior, which he thought were symptoms of the workings of the psyche.

While this may have been true, but not every detail could be the result of an unhealthy mental condition.

Sigmund Freud's theory had established the study of psychology as a whole new branch of science. We would think brain autopsies and procedures would be considered irrelevant after such dramatic progress in psychology.

It wasn't.

Unfortunately mental disorder patients were going to face their worst era of great torture and downright mutilation of the brain.

The lobotomy was introduced in the late 1800s and picked up pace in 1935 up to the start of the 1950s. It is a grotesque procedure were nerves in parts of the brain believed to be carrying the thoughts causing the mental disorder are severed.

The intention of the procedure was not to restore sanity, but to put patients in a state of calm. Patients that were violent or had symptoms of schizophrenia were the ones mostly subjected to lobotomy.

It had mixed results with some patients becoming calm, but losing interest in life or having any energy. To other patients dying or relapsing.

An invasive approach is still taken in the case of patients with severe mental disorders, and where other treatments failed. The procedure is called 'Psychosurgery'.

Electric Shock Therapy or Electric Convulsive Therapy (ECT) was first developed in the late 1930s, like the lobotomy it was a severe approach to vulnerable patients who had lost their sanity partially or completely. ECT causes an induced controlled seizure.

I read reports that there were cases where ECT was administered to patients without their consent because they were considered unable to give consent.

Prior to ECT induced seizures for treating mental disorders were caused by oral administration of medication.

Scientists don't know exactly how ECT works, but it is believed to give relief to patients suffering from psychosis, mania, catatonia, schizophrenia, and is still in practice.

A new study published on 27 March in the Nature journal, states that a very strong electrical current in the brain hits the cells and their DNA snaps, and is then repaired, this according to the study is observed when long term memories are made. It could be that when the DNA are repaired, the process encodes information about the electrical current and this forms the memory.

So perhaps the ECT causes relief by damaging DNA in the brain that stores the memory responsible for the mental disorder.

As researchers made discoveries scientists learned about brain chemistry, and then medications were developed to treat mental disorders by pharmaceuticals

There is talk therapy which is what psychologists are qualified for, and then there is psychiatry in which medication could be prescribed. Prevention is better than cure in either case.

We as adults that have had a good, cultured, ethical, and educational upbringing usually are mentally stable, even if we suffer emotional distress or anxiety.

The risks could be to adolescents and teenagers who are still developing and get exposed to negative influence or traumatic experiences at home, school, or social media. OCD (impulsive-compulsive disorder) and PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) along with intrusive thoughts could be the lethal triggers of psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder (maniac depression.)

Intrusive thoughts are common and happen almost to everyone. People who don't have mental disorders know to dismiss these thoughts and not focuse on them. Sufferers of OCD and PTSD or patients with dementia, Parkinson's disease, or Alzheimer's may not be able to avoid the Intrusive thoughts that could amplify their trauma, anxiety, fears, phobias, eventually leading to complete detachment from reality and the various severe manifestations of mental disorders. In cases like these talk therapy would probably fail, and medication, ECT, and invasive treatments like psychsurgery could be required.

So the influence the next generation gets could entirely define their mental health and their future. The news and statistics I'm reading are not encouraging as mental crisis is on the rise like never before.

I have a podcast Mind Supply, if you liked this article then you might like the podcasts as I talk about social issues.

Arjuwan Lakkdawala is an author and independent science researcher.

Twitter-X/Instagram: Spellrainia Email: [email protected]

Sources:

Verywellmind: The Origins of Psychology

From Philosophical Beginnings to the Modern Day

Kendra Cherry, MSEd

Updated on November 29, 2022

Fact checked by

Adah Chung

The New Yorker: The Troubled History of Psychiatry

Challenges to the legitimacy of the profession have forced it to examine itself, including the fundamental question of what constitutes a mental disorder.

By Jerome Groopman

Medical News Today: What is electroshock therapy?

Mass General Brigham McLean: ECT Treatment: A History of Helping Patients

Medically reviewed by Heidi Moawad, M.D. — By Lauren Martin on June 30, 2021

Nature.com - Memories are made by breaking DNA — and fixing it

Nerve cells form long-term memories with the help of an inflammatory response, study in mice finds.

Max Kozlov

National Institute of Mental Health: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Healthline: Intrusive Thoughts: Why We Have Them and How to Stop Them

Medically reviewed by Bethany Juby, PsyD — By Kimberly Holland — Updated on May 20, 2022

NHS: Overview - Psychosis

Britannica: Sigmund Freud

Austrian psychoanalyst

Actions

Written by

Martin Evan Jay

Fact-checked by the editors of encyclopaedia Britannica

Britannica: lobotomy

surgery

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Also known as: frontal lobotomy, leucotomy, prefrontal leukotomy

Written and fact-checked by the editors of encyclopaedia Britannica

Ancient Origins: Language Developed 8 Times Earlier Than Previously Thought, Says New Book

National Institute of Mental Health: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

#Arjuwan Lakkdawala #science #nature #biology #ink in the internet #psychosis #schizophrenia #maniac #bipolar disorder #psychiatry #psychology #history of psychology #ancient greece #Sigmund Freud #dualism #lobotomy #ect

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brother-hermes · 11 months

Text

IT TAKES TWO TO DISCUSS UNION

Ladies and gentlemen,

Let’s do like Bob Ross and start painting

Our own happy little Trees of Life.

Today, I invite you to embark on a transformative journey into the depths of polarity, where the dance of Chesed and Gevurah unfolds, revealing profound insights about the nature of existence. Prepare to explore the enchanting tapestry of creation,

With one simple instruction in mind:

“We can’t discuss Aleph without Bet.”

It sounds like one of those simple Simon Things to say but I’m not being vague. Let us start with Aleph in relation to chesed. Here we find the sacred name El, A singular name for God, resonating with the divine light of loving kindness.

El stands as a luminous gateway, bridging the celestial realms with our human understanding.

It reminds us of the radiant illumination that burst forth on the first day of creation, as the Infinite spoke, "Let there be light!" This divine essence, Chesed, the boundless loving-kindness, ignites our hearts and leads us towards compassion.

But as we delve deeper into the cosmic play, we encounter Bet.

Bruh! Moshe started Genesis with Bereshit Bara ELoHIM for a reason.

See the name ELoHIM, which also represents Gevurah, the divine attribute of strength and restriction Is plural.

Well, in Genesis it’s used as a singular because it acts like one but that’s a whole different can of worms.

When it comes to Gevurah, It’s because on the second day of creation that ELoHIM,

with its firm presence, separated the waters above from the waters below,,

It’s a glimpse at the cosmic dance of the supernal triad—Keter, Chockmah, and Binah—as the celestial currents that intertwine with the earthly realm,

In that sense that everything is held together by the enigmatic forces of dark matter and energy.

This essentially

introduces a profound division—

touching on tzimtzum and the necessary restriction that harmonizes the dance of polarity.

Through this act, ELoHIM urges us to embrace both the expansive loving kindness of Chesed and the discernment of Gevurah.

It is through the interplay of Chesed and Gevurah that we uncover the true depths of insight, and navigate the currents of divine revelation.

In the Psalms of King David, we find echoes of the connection between Gevurah and ELoHIM. As David sings, "The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof. Clouds and darkness are round about him: righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne."

These verses beautifully capture the awe-inspiring presence of ELoHIM, the divine power that governs with righteousness and judgment.

In our human experience, we often grapple with the notion of fairness, questioning why life doesn't always appear just, and yet, deep within us resides a natural aversion to passing harsh judgments, for we sense the intricate interplay of polarities and the unfolding of divine wisdom that transcends our limited perceptions.

So, my friends, as we venture into the realm of polarity, let us honor the sacred dance between Chesed and Gevurah, symbolized by the letters Aleph and Bet. They represent the profound interconnectedness of the universe and the rich tapestry of our own existence.

Let’s contemplate their meaning, and from that contemplation, allow ideas and insights bloom.

Can you discuss one without two?

I’ll wait…

You with me now? Alright…

Without Bet, we cannot discuss Aleph, for Aleph represents the unity and oneness of the divine, while Bet signifies duality and the beginning of the manifested world.

This division introduces a profound polarity, illustrating the necessary restriction that harmonizes the dance of existence.

Imagine, if you will, the dance of existence. The swirling interplay of unity and duality, resonating throughout the cosmos.

This dance is not confined to the grand stage of the universe alone, but reverberates within the deepest recesses of our own being.

As you sit in quiet contemplation, allow your inner dialogue to embrace the dance of polarity.

Observe the thoughts and emotions that arise, the ebb and flow of light and shadow.

For it is in this theater of the mind that we find the fertile ground for profound realization.

By meditating upon the interplay of Aleph and Bet, we open the gateway to union, a transcendence of the apparent duality. Embrace the paradox, the tension, and the harmony within, and witness the profound integration of your own existence.

Now then, fellow travelers, as we turn our gaze to the outer world,

let us approach it with the wisdom born from inner exploration.

As you navigate the intricate web of relationships and experiences, see the dance of polarity reflected in the tapestry of everything.

Embrace the diversity of perspectives, the interplay of light and dark, and the inherent tension within the grand symphony of existence.

Like I can’t hear you unless you

speak.

This is why we should cultivate a deep sense of empathy and understanding, and recognize that unity and duality are not adversaries, but partners in the cosmic dance.

Let that awareness guide our actions, your interactions, and our connection to the world.

As we harmonize with the dance of Aleph and Bet, we become agents of unity, weaving threads of compassion, love, and acceptance into one and all.

This spiritual journey of self-discovery

Is a collective awakening.

That’s the lesson within the realms of polarity.

It’s that transformative power to unite the seen and unseen, the known and unknown, that unfold into a dance

Amidst the symphony of life.

May you walk the path of harmony, honoring the divine qualities of love and discernment within your own being, and radiate their transformative power into the world.

Embrace the dance, embrace the journey, and embody the unity that permeates all creation.

Cuz it’s all love.

#mysticism #chesed #Gevurah #polarity #divine union #kabbalah #writing #spirituality #inner transformation #wisdom #philosophy #esoteric wisdom #dualism #moving beyond #all is one

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