Understanding Psychosis in Western Culture Adherents

AUTHOR’S PREFEACE

This essay is dedicated to the ‘miner’s canaries’ who intuitively sense ‘something amiss’ in the ambient Western culture social dynamic.  By excitedly signalling, with strange behaviour, a warning of dysfunction in the social dynamic, these miner’s canaries succeed only in rallying public response to ‘resolve the problem’, NOT as if it were environmentally induced, but INSTEAD, as if it were internally incipient in the ‘canary’.  Some who ‘speak for the canaries’, like Franca Ongaro-Basaglia of Psychologia Democratica, argue that the ‘assistance’ given them is not so much for ‘them’ per se as for (a) the ‘peace of mind’ of the ‘normals’ (subscribers of the ‘aberrant normality’) who are disturbed by the ‘miner’s canaries’’ behaviour, and (b), to limit the miner’s canaries’ disrupting of ‘normal social functioning’ by such ‘wild and unruly’ behaviours.

As Giordano Bruno said, before they took him to be burned at the stake for ‘heresy’ in the Campo dei Fiori in Rome, in 1600, … ‘The majority has no monopoly on the truth’.  But as it turns out, the majority does have a monopoly on ‘how we do things around here’, and what the majority establishes is not easy to change, as underscored by expressions such as ‘pioneers are those who ‘get arrows up the arse.”

Changing established patterns, even those that may breed dysfunction, tend to be held off indefinitely because of ‘lock-in’ and ‘high switching costs’.  For example, the people ‘we put in charge of change’ may benefit from keeping things as they are.  This is a familiar ‘systems anomaly’ termed ‘suboptimization’ as friend and former ‘systems sciences’ colleague Martine Dodds-Taljaard describes in a paper (authored jointly with György Jaros) entitled The Name of the Devil is Suboptimization’.

The point is that Western culture’s manner of ‘optimizing living conditions’ (for some) tends to be ‘cannibalistic’, benefitting some at the expense of others, hence the derogatory implication of the term ‘suboptimization’ (it is necessarily derogatory if the ‘system’ for which the optimization is performed is a relational feature in the transforming relational continuum.  Of course, change can be undertaken in a manner that comprehends ‘interdependencies’).

The Name of the Devil is Suboptimization’

“The above aphorism, attributed to Kenneth Boulding, points to the inherent weakness characterizing the mindset and socio‐economic, political, educational and managerial practices of Western Industrial society as it developed over the past 300 years. It has its basis in the analytic‐reductionistic scientific paradigm, which, despite the remarkable technological applications it spawned, is inappropriate, conflict‐generating and dysfunctional in a world characterized by global interconnectedness and mutual interdependence …” — György Jaros and Martine Dodds-Taljaard

In other words, in the ‘real world’ of our actual experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum, ‘everything is related’ (or, as the indigenous aboriginals have expressed this; ‘mitakuye oyasin’).   Western culture has incorporated the habit of ignoring this connectedness and it is literally ‘driving people crazy’.   If a person ‘intuits’ what is going on with this suboptimization, and starts emotionally resisting, like the ‘miner’s canary’, things get even ‘crazier’ because that person will be considered ‘crazy’.  The pressure is thus upon everyone to ‘keep their mouth shut’ and go along with the inherently dysfunctional (psychosis inducing) Western culture modus operandi.

“They are playing a game.  They are playing at not playing a game.  If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me.  I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.”  – R.D. Laing

In other words, Western culture is using language and grammar to psychologically cultivate an ‘Invented Reality’ that eclipses the innately relational reality of our actual experience.  We are doing this by intellectually/linguistically ‘wallpapering over’ the reality of our relational experience, with the abstract concept of ‘independently-existing-things-in-themselves (‘beings’), notionally equipped with powers of ‘sourcing actions and developments’.

This language-and-grammar based ‘Invented Reality’ has become the ‘operative reality’ of Western society which is continually cultivating a psychotic ‘normal’ wherein those ‘miner’s canaries’ that attempt to break out of it, are classified as ‘psychotic’ and given chemically lobotomizing ‘medications’ to restore them to the Western culture ‘aberrant normality’.  That which qualifies as ‘normal’ in Western society may be anything but ‘natural’.

Since Western culture ‘lock-in’ has been firmly established and its gatekeepers have been elevated into positions of power over what gets changed, switching costs continue to rise.  As Henri Laborit, author of ‘La Nouvelle Grille’ (the new ‘philosophical framework waiting in the wings’) observes;

‘We’ who explore such topics, cannot easily share them because …  the humanism  implicit in trying to share them is not seen as “a humanism of real worth” since it undermines, besmirches or topples the esteemed icons, pillars of society, founding fathers, and celebrities of the culture-in-place. — Henri Laborit

Nevertheless, Western culture employs the means necessary to sustain ‘lock-in’ to that which (however aberrant) is defined as ‘normal’ behaviour in Western society.  This lock-in to Western aberrant normality persists even as we are experiencing a rising tide of psychosis in spite of the increased incidence of employing medications to stave it off.  The Western culture ‘normal’ is looking more and more like a ‘collective psychosis’, as psycho-social investigators are finding;

“What we call ‘normal’ is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience.” – R. D. Laing

This essay explores the psychosis-inducing workings of ‘Western culture’ and its ‘Invented Reality’.

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My personal experience grounded ‘ philosophical investigations’ inform me that ‘bipolar disorders’ are manifestations of ‘lock-in’ to psychosis-prone modes of cognition that involve ‘high switching costs’ to withdraw from, as would be required for one to ‘re-ground’ in more competent, non-psychosis-prone modes of cognition.  The most globally prevalent psychosis-inducing mode of cognition is otherwise known as ‘Western culture’. (i.e. certain ‘salient features’ of Western culture as discussed herein).

The level 3 (‘nature’) and level 2 (‘nurture’) modes of cognition [as classified in Erich Jantsch’s ‘Design for Evolution’] are both ‘psychosis prone’.  Both of these modes of cognition are based on ‘sorcery’.  By this I mean; — to impute the powers of ‘sourcing’ actions and developments to notional ‘independently-existing ‘things-in-themselves’ (‘beings’); i.e. abstractions such as ‘human beings’, …  is to prepare and pave the path to psychosis.  Western culture’s endemic psychosis is rooted in a belief in ‘sorcery’.  There is no such dynamic as ‘sourcing’ in modern physics ‘reality’, there is only ‘relational transformation’.  This modern physics understanding of ‘reality’ as a transforming relational continuum is also the indigenous aboriginal  ‘reality’, Taoist ‘reality’ and Advaita Vedanta ‘reality’.

The notional ‘independently-existing-things-in-themselves’ that are notionally equipped (by grammar and language) with the ‘powers of sourcing actions and developments (the ‘producer-product’ concept) are the makings of ‘INVENTED REALITY’ .  What one experiences [whether human, wolf, eagle, etc.] begins with the sensory-experiencing of ‘relational forms’ in the transforming relational continuum.  When the Western human uses his intellect to ‘capture the essentials’ of his relational experiencing with language and grammar, he reduces his relational experiencing in the continually unfolding present to the abstract language and grammar terms of ‘things-in-themselves’ [abstractions ‘invented’ by ‘naming’ relational forms in the flow] which he linguistically (and thus cognitively) ‘animates’ by abstractly ‘inventing’ movements with grammatical language’, cognitively setting the invented ‘things-in-themselves’ in motion.

As Nietzsche points out, this entails a ‘double error’ wherein, starting from our experiencing of inclusion in a relational dynamic (e.g. finding ourselves situationally included in a swirling flow) we use language to engender a ‘double error’ that interjects a ‘subject’ that serves as a ‘thing-in-itself’ (‘being’) and imputes to it its own local action ‘sourcing’ powers.  E.g. ‘the whorl whirls’ or, as in Nietzsche’s particular choice of example, ‘lightning strikes’.  By this cognitive double error, we engender the notion of ‘sorcery’ or ‘from-scratch authoring power’.

“Our judgement has us conclude that every change must have an author”;–but this conclusion is already mythology: it separates that which effects from the effecting. If I say “lightning flashes,” I have posited the flash once as an activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the event but is rather fixed, “is” and does not “become.”–To regard an event as an “effecting,” and this as being, that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty.” – Nietzsche, ‘Will to Power’, 531

The ’double error’ is a psychological misimpression termed petitio principii (circular reasoning).  In this case, if we experience relational transformation within the transforming relational continuum  such as swirling winds induced by insolation, we use language and the ‘double error’ to ‘localize’ the ‘sourcing’ of the swirling by ‘naming’ the purely relational dynamic and then using ‘name’ as an abstract ‘thing-in-itself’ to which we can impute ‘sourcing powers’ (thanks to language and grammar);

For example; … ‘hurricane Katrina is growing larger and stronger’ [in developing this abstract thing-in-itself that is notionally sourcing action and development, we cognitively pivot off the relational form in the transforming relational continuum to invent the thing-in-itself by naming it, and then we employ grammar to invent its powers of sourcing actions and development (i.e. we ‘animate’ it, in our intellectual conceptualizing, with language and grammar.).  This is double error by which we start with a relational form or ‘appearance’ in the flow (an ‘apparition’) which is all there is in a transforming relational continuum, and substitute a subject with sourcing power together with an action that the subject sources;

”I have posited the [appearance] once as an activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the event but is rather fixed, “is” and does not “become.”–To regard an event as an “effecting,” and this as being, that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty.” – Nietzsche, ‘Will to Power’, 531

With the uttering of the ‘naming’, … GONE!!! ( … from our intellectual abstraction distracted mind, at least) is the relational form in the transforming relational continuum of our ‘natural-experience based reality’, …  and what has (in Western culture) replaced it, and which is now the primary (cognitive… i.e. ‘intellectually-constructed’) ‘reality’, is the language-and-grammar based ‘thing-in-itself’ notionally endowed with its own incipient powers of ‘sourcing actions and developments’. That is, language and grammar takes us (cognitively) into this ‘Invented reality’ featuring a notional ‘thing-in-itself’ notionally endowed with ‘its own powers of sourcing actions and developments’, …, and this ‘Invented reality’ has not only superseded, in the Western culture acculturated mind, relational-experiential reality, IT HAS ‘BURIED’ IT, … or ECLIPSED IT!

ξ  The three levels of ‘reality’ of the Design for Evolution (Jantsch)

In Erich Jantch’s philosophical investigation, ‘Design for Evolution’, the relational reality of our natural experience is the highest level of reality (1), while the ‘sorcery’ based realities termed ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ are lower level pseudo-ealities (‘nature’ is level 3 reality and ‘nurture’ is level 2 reality).

The lowest level of reality (level 3) termed ‘nature’ is where we use the intellectual tools of language and grammar to INVENT REALITY that is in terms of notional ‘things-in-themselves’ , notionally with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments. [picture the whorl or hurricane that is whipping up the ocean and sourcing flow] This is the reality of political ‘conservatives’ who see actions as ‘sourced’ by ‘independent beings’ who are deemed the ‘fully and solely responsible authors’ of ‘their own actions’.  That is, the actions of the nasty gang of hoodlums source (stir up) disruption in the social collective they are included in (the whorl sources flow) [but, wait a minute, aren’t they included in the social collective, so how does it get split into the guilty and innocent?  Is it our mind that is doing ‘the splits’?].  This lowest level 3 INVENTED REALITY is the most popular reality in Western culture.  The child soldier who rapes and murders is seen as the full and sole source of these violent actions and destructive results.

The next to lowest level of reality (level 2) termed ‘nurture’ is where we INVENT REALITY that is in terms of notional ‘things-in-themselves’, notionally with their own powers of sourcing actions and developments [picture the flow that is spinning around and whipping up (inducing) a whorl as when one pulls the plug to drain the water-filled bathtub].  This is the ‘nurture’ reality of political ‘liberals’ who see the actions of the collective (the flow) as inductively sourcing the actions of the individual (the whorl).  That is, the order of authorship between whorl and flow in level 2 reality (nurture) is inverted relative to level 3 reality (nature).  In level 2, the violent raping and murdering actions of the individual (child soldier) are seen as inductively sourced by the dynamics of the social collective he is included in.  This is a very different ‘reality’ from level 3 ‘nature’ ‘reality’ wherein the perpetrator of rape and murder is seen as an independently-existing thing-in-itself whose actions derive fully and solely from its own internal ‘sourcing powers’ (‘sorcery’).

The highest level of reality (level 1) is the ‘now’ of the transforming relational continuum.  This is the RELATIONAL REALITY of modern physics; ‘the surprise version of the game of Twenty Question’ and; the indigenous aboriginal ‘sharing circle’.  This is a relational reality that is continually unfolding in the ‘now’.

ξ

The transforming relational continuum can’t be pictured as ‘something ‘out there”, since we are included in it, but it can be visually alluded to in a ‘fractal movie’ (for example) where one sees the land or ocean as if from an airplane diving vertically into it, and as the diving proceeds, the topographic forms and features grow visually larger, towards the point of filling the entire viewing plane as one dives ‘into them’, but at the same time, new detail emerges of smaller forms within the enlarging forms, which are also growing in size as one continues to dive into them,… revealing smaller forms within them which in turn grow larger as one dives into them, and so on and so forth in a continuing succession, just as if we were looking into a pot of boiling water, and watching the succession of little boils that are continually forming, rising and expanding into big boils that burst while all the while little boils are continually forming and growing and raising and bursting in a continuing succession.  These ‘boils’ have the appearance of ‘things-in-themselves’ but that is just an illusion; i.e. the ‘boils’ are relational forms in a transforming relational continuum.

If the camera in a satellite in a geostationary orbit were to film a village with a fairly small and fairly constant population, for a thousand years, would this not show people emerging and ‘subducting’ in a continual cycling in the same sort of manner as with the boils emerging within boiling water?  relational forms in a transforming relational continuum do not have ‘their own being’ and thus there are, ‘in “real (experiential) reality”, no ‘beings with sourcing powers’ as in the ’INVENTED REALITY’.

How do we get to the INVENTED REALITY from the boiling fluid reality?  i.e. how do we shift the focus to notional ‘things-in-themselves’ that we can photograph and frame each boil?  Are we still studying ‘reality’ when our ‘perspective’ is limited to particular ‘forms’ as if they could be understood as ‘things-in-themselves’ rather than as ‘relational forms in the flow somewhat akin to ‘boils in the flow’?  And how do we switch from one view to the other?  Is it the brain or the lens of the eye and the camera that splits the form from the flow to observe it as if it were a ‘thing-in-itself’ with its own powers of sourcing action and development?… Or is it the brain and the eye in concert?  And what about the sensing of our inclusion within the transforming relational continuum.  How does our psyche/intellect take us from the uni-perspective view that excludes the observer to the omni-perspective view in which includes the observer?

How long does a purely relational whorl in the flow have to be sustained for the observer to categorize it as a ‘thing-in-itself’? [I suppose the answer depends on how long the observer remembers or keeps records of the whorling].  If the whorling is too tiny or if it comes and goes too quickly, it is unlikely to earn a ‘name’ from us humans whose experience is within a certain macro-dimensional sub-reality, however, if it comes and goes sufficiently slowly, relative to the observer’s focusing span, it can earn a name and thus a notional (cognitive) ‘thing-in-itself’ existence status.  In this manner, relational phenomena can be psychologically transformed, with the help of ‘naming ceremonies aka ‘baptism’, into a foreground perspective wherein we can observe notional ‘local, independently-existing things-in-themselve.  That is, inherently relational (thingless) phenomena manifest ‘relational forms’ that serve as ingredients for ‘sorcery’ as in the ‘double error or petitio principii (circular reasoning) that Nietzsche points out is endemic in Western culture.

The Great Red Spot is a persistent high-pressure region in the atmosphere of Jupiter, producing an anticyclonic storm 22° south of the planet’s equator. It has been continuously observed for 188 years, since 1830. — Wikipedia

Once we have established ‘the existence of the Great Red Spot’ by naming it as such, we can then move on to imputing ‘sourcing powers’ to it and speak of ‘it’ growing larger or smaller and further speaking of ‘it’ as ‘moving’ toward the pole etc. etc.   This is the general formula for using language and grammar; (naming [with a noun] to impute ‘thing-in-itself being’ and animating [with a verb] to psychologically endow the notional ‘thing-in-itself’ with its own action-and-development sourcing power) for generating an INVENTED REALITY.

* * * ok, back to the primary topic which can be restated here for a reminder;

My impression is that ‘bipolar disorder’ involves ‘lock-in’ to psychosis-prone modes of cognition that involve ‘high switching costs’ to withdraw from as would be required for one to ‘re-ground’ in more competent, non-psychosis-prone modes of cognition.  This psychosis inducing mode of cognition is otherwise known as ‘Western culture’.

Western culture cultivates and sustains a ‘psychosis inducing mode of cognition’ aka ‘INVENTING REALITY’

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How Psychosis is Induced by Western Culture use of Language and Grammar

The Psychosis-brewing concepts of Western culture ‘Invented Reality’

-Sorcery of actions and developments

-ego belief in authorship (sorcery)

-‘credit’ and ‘blame’ associated with ‘authorship’ of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ actions and developments

-‘forgiveness’ of sorcery of ‘bad’ actions and developments.

*** Nota Bene: ‘Forgiveness’ is a concept that, in order to have meaning, requires belief in ‘sorcery’ or ‘authoring’ of actions and developments.  It is thus a backdoor approach to affirming belief in ‘sorcery’.  If one ‘forgives’ then one is acknowledging the ‘legitimacy’ of the concept of ‘sorcery’ (authorship of actions and developments).  Similarly, the belief in authorship is ‘ego’.  Thus to embrace the concept of ‘forgiveness’ is to embrace the belief in ‘sorcery’ and ‘ego’.

Modern physics, indigenous aboriginal culture, Taoism, Advaita Vedanta DO NOT HAVE THE BELIEF THAT NAMING  A HUMAN FORM CREATES A HUMAN AS THING-IN-ITSELF WITH POWERS OF JUMPSTART SOURCING OF ACTIONS AND DEVELOPMENTS aka ‘SORCERY’.  Yet Western culture has been built on such beliefs.

In the understanding of modern physics and the aforementioned cultures, the human form is a relational feature in the transforming relational continuum (the Tao) with relational influence BUT WITHOUT SOURCING POWERS (all that unfolds, unfolds relationally, as implied in the indigenous aboriginal aphorism ‘mitakuye oyasin’ (all my relations).

‘Sourcing’ aka the notional ‘from-scratch authoring’ of actions and developments is a psychological abstraction created with language and grammar.  It is not supported by our real-life relational experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum.

‘Sourcing’ aka ‘sorcery’ is the Western culture psychosis-inducing foundational belief that gives rise to the Western culture abstract concepts of ‘ego’, ‘nationalism’, ‘ownership’, and the overall psychosis-inducing Western culture ‘way of thinking’ based on these abstract concepts.  As Einstein suggested; ‘nationalism is an infantile disease, it is the measles of the world’.  Bohm makes the same point, more generally still, by pointing to the equivalence of modern physics based ‘reality’ with the indigenous aboriginal ‘reality’;

A few months before his death, Bohm met with a number of Algonkian speakers and was struck by the perfect bridge between their language and worldview and his own exploratory philosophy. What to Bohm had been major breakthroughs in human thought — quantum theory, relativity, his implicate order and rheomode – were part of the everyday life and speech of the Blackfoot, Mic Maq, Cree and Ojibwaj.” – F. David Peat, ‘Blackfoot Physics’

The use of ‘naming’ to impute ‘independent existence’ of a relational form or feature can, by way of the abstracting powers of intellection, psychologically ‘split apart’ the ‘named relational form’ from the ‘flow’ (relational continuum) it is ‘making its appearance’ in.  This ‘splitting apart’ of ‘self’ from ‘other’ by way of ‘naming’ can ‘transform straw into gold’ as in the tale of Rumpelstiltskin, whose power is ‘magically’ bound up in his ‘name’  The power in a name is a characteristic belief of Western culture that is not found in the indigenous aboriginal and/or Taoist culture.

Inventing ‘beings’ with notional ‘sourcing powers’ is not the only use of ‘naming’ in Western culture.  Another abstract use of ‘naming’ is to ‘elevate’ a person in social status by re-naming him, ceremoniously; e.g. by tapping him on the shoulder with the magic sword ‘Excalibur’ and saying’ “Arise Sir Lancelot”, or the more modern versions of ‘promoting’ a person by having ‘an authority’ issue an ‘announcement’ or ‘proclamation’ that elevates the designated person in social/status, usually by bestowing a new ‘title’ on him or her.  It is on this basis that Western culture imputes hierarchical values generally, on the relational forms in the transforming relational continuum; e.g;

“The ‘Great Chain of Being’ is a strict hierarchical structure of all matter and life, thought in medieval Christianity to have been decreed by God. The chain starts with God and progresses downward to angels, demons (fallen/renegade angels), stars, moon, kings, princes, nobles, commoners, wild animals, domesticated animals, trees, other plants, precious stones, precious metals and other minerals.  This ‘scala naturae’ is a concept that draws from the writings of Plato and Aristotle (in his ‘Historia Animalium’), which was further developed in the middle ages and reached full expression in early modern Neoplatonism.” — Wikipedia

While the ‘values’ associated with the forms in the hierarchy may have ‘evolved’ within the Western culture social dynamic, the value-hierarchy principle remains characteristic of Western Culture ‘Invented Reality’.

The Western culture popularity of the value hierarchy provided a  ‘socket’ for Darwin’s ‘natural selection’ to ‘plug into’; i.e. the thinking in the Western culture of Darwin’s time was that  ‘it is natural for wealth and business to rule since the ability to accumulate wealth in a competitive environment is the best evidence of being fit to rule’.   That is, this ‘selection of the fittest’ process was already accepted and was being supported by arguments that it was ‘nature’s way’ (propagated mostly by the ‘superior classes’ and the ‘superior races’ who were also the gatekeepers of knowledge [intellectual beliefs] and content propagated through education.

The intellectual ‘trafficking’ of this ‘package’ of abstract psychological concepts that are foundational in Western culture based cognition, elevated the INVENTED REALITY into an unnatural primacy that ‘eclipsed’ natural relational understanding assimilated through inclusion in the transforming relational continuum.

Psychosis thus threatens those living within and submitting to the ludicrous Western culture beliefs   The sensitive ones (miner’s canaries’) who detect the unnatural inversion that puts the discrete/explicit into an unnatural primacy over the relational/implicit, and thus disturb the ‘order of things’ in level 3 reality society with its ‘being’ and ‘sorcery’ based social dynamic, … are ‘encouraged’ to fall back in line with the INVENTED REALITY, with the aid of lobotomizing medications, as necessary.

“The problem of psychiatric illness and its institutions developed in our society primarily as a question of public order. It came into being as a socio-political problem, namely the defense of the healthy and working community from elements that would not conform to its modes of behaviour and rules of efficiency. Isolated care and treatment justified the segregation and internment of the ‘ill’ who were considered less for their illness than their potential as disruptive elements. This focus on abnormality and deviance, especially social disruption, meant that subjective suffering was not addressed – nor were the diverse variables giving rise to psychiatric problems. Despite decades of public concern and specific legislation opposing this approach, scientific theories, professional bodies and institutions have resisted abandoning the provision of a style of care that protects society to the detriment of those cared for.” (Franca Ongaro Basaglia, Int. J. Soc. Psychiat., 1992, 38, p36). see http://www.human-nature.com/hraj/trieste.html 

While the ‘miner’s canaries’ are correct in sounding the alarm that ‘something is seriously amiss’, it is non-trivial for them (all of us are in the same situation) to extract themselves from the ‘double-bind’ they are included in, as the appended ‘Warning’ note attached to an earlier essay on this topic explains.

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WARNING !!!: This essay is NOT recommending that those on ‘lobotomizing medications’ should simply cast them off, … not without developing and installing a competent psychological foundation to serve in place of the Western self-dividing psychological foundation that is the source of the rampant [‘divided self’] psychopathology in Western society.  This is a non-trivial task while one lives and works within a culture that is continually cultivating such psychosis; i.e. one cannot just flip a switch and start understanding ‘reality’ in a new way wherein there is no place for ‘sourcery’, a psychological concept/belief that happens to be the basis of Western human ego that figures largely in the psychosis inducing Western ‘Invented Reality’.

In other words, the Western-acculturated individual who wishes to come off ‘lobotomizing psychiatric mediations’ needs to undertake a ‘psychological reprogramming’ that dissolves/removes the Western culture conditioned ‘sorcery-based values’ as used to credit individuals, nations, organizations [notional named-into-existence things-in-themselves] with the powers of ‘sourcing’ of ‘good’ actions and developments and/or the sourcing of ‘bad’ actions and developments.  Such problematic (dysfunction inducing) knee-jerk ‘good’ or ‘bad’ judgements of notional (naming-instantiated) ‘independently-existing-beings’ on the basis of their ‘sourcing’ of actions and developments must give way to relational understanding wherein ‘sourcing’ does not even come into play.

This ‘cultural reprogramming’ may not come easily for many long-time Western culture adherents, since one’s culturally ingrained valuing of one’s ‘divided self’ on the (egotist) basis of one’s powers of sourcing actions and developments that the social collective may judge to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (and reward/punish accordingly) is not so easily ‘shaken off’.  There must first be a shift in values from good or bad sorcery to the cultivating of resonance/dissonance (purely relational concepts that are the flip sides of a single coinage).  For example, in the flow of congested freeway traffic, the individual driver may cultivate harmony by simply ‘backing off’ and swerving or changing lanes relative to others (a relations-transforming dynamic) or likewise by ‘accelerating’ for this same purpose’, both of which actions may be induced by opportunity to transform the relational dynamic one is situationally included in, in such as manner as to transform impending/unfolding relational dissonance into relational harmony (reminiscent of the ‘Bodhisattva ethic’ of Buddhism).

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SUMMARY:

The ‘REALITY’ of our relational experience within a transforming relational continuum is something we experience only in the unfolding ‘now’ (the Tao).  It is not possible for an individual to have the ‘synoptic view’ that could give us many eyes as would be necessary to understand the experience-based reality of a relational form in a transforming relational continuum.  Meanwhile, the synoptic view is the sort of view we can reach for in ‘the surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’ and in the indigenous aboriginal ‘sharing circle’.  This approach is unlike the ‘single perspective’ view of Western culture which, when shared as a language-and-grammar based ‘intellectual construction’, furnishes us with an Invented Reality’ which may serve to coordinate the actions of a collective whose members agree to use it as their ‘operative reality’, but which is innately incomplete, misleading and the source of psychosis in those who not only employ it as their ‘operative reality’ but eclipse their access to the relational reality of their/our actual relational experience by believing it to be ‘true reality’.

There is a problem in ‘sharing’ (trying to share) this view that ‘Invented Reality’ is Blocking out our Actual, Experiential Reality within the Western culture that is accepting the former as their ‘operative reality’.  This has been expressed by Henri Laborit as follows;

‘We’ who explore such topics, cannot easily share them because (a) they do not fit into the typical dinner conversation format of our present culture, since to express them takes a lot of relational connections that can’t fit into a rapid-fire repartee, and (b) because the humanism  implicit in trying to share them is not seen as “a humanism of real worth” since it undermines, besmirches or topples the esteemed icons, pillars of society, founding fathers, and celebrities of the culture-in-place.

  – Henri Laborit, ‘La Nouvelle Grille’

Laborit’s remarks are ‘on target’ in that there are no grounds for either ‘sourcery’ or ‘hierarchy’ in the relational reality of our natural relational experience.  This means that there are no grounds for the dispute between ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’ over whether the ‘child soldier’ who kills and rapes is (a) fully and solely responsible for sourcing such violent actions, as in the ‘nature’ view, or, (b) the child soldier’s violent behaviours are being inductively sourced by the dynamics of the social collective he is situationally included in, as in the ‘nurture’ view.  Neither the ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’ views ‘make sense’ in the modern physics and indigenous aboriginal and Taoist or Advaita Vedanta reality, since they are both founded on the abstract concepts of ‘being’ as imputed by ‘naming’ and ‘beings-with-sourcing-powers’ as imputed by noun-and-verb grammar.

The unfolding relational dynamic wherein rape and murder are manifest is understood, in modern physics, indigenous aboriginal culture, Taoism and Advaita Vedanta, in terms of relational dynamics which have become dissonant.  Since ‘relations are all there is’ (mitakuye oyasin), and forms such as humans are ‘relational features in the flow’ aka ‘appearances’ or ‘apparitions’, they have no locally instantiating powers of ‘sourcery’ of actions and developments.  Violence in the relational social collective is innately ‘relational’ and thus purely ‘appearance’ as in Nietzsche’s ‘lightning’ example, or as in the ‘whorl’ in the flow example.

With language and grammar and the cognitive capacity to employ these to render imagined imagery comes the Western culture ability to ‘Invent Reality’ in terms of ‘beings’ with action and development sourcing powers. The perceived actions and developments may be seen as constructive in which case those perceived as ‘sourcerors’ will be acclaimed and celebrated.  The perceived actions and developments may be seen as destructive in which case those perceived as ‘sourcerors’ will be denounced and reviled..  This is where the nonlinear dynamics of ‘lock-in’ and ‘high switching costs’ come into play, since ‘the new framework’ which removes the abstract concept of ‘sourcery’ also removes the notion of ‘good sourcerors’ and ‘bad sourcerors’, in effect, dethroning those who have been praised and rewarded in Western culture for their ‘sourcing’ of ‘good deeds’ and liberating from prisons and exiles, those who have been denounced and punished in Western culture for their ‘sourcing’ of ‘bad deeds’.  There are no such binary judgements in a ‘relational reality’ as in ‘mitakuye oyasin’ where the powers of ‘sourcery’ are not even on the radar screen of cultural understanding.

The ‘learning circle’ provides a means for the community that understands emergent events as inherently ‘relational’, to address the relational origins of dissonance in the social dynamic, as implicit in ‘mitakuye oyasin’

♠.♣.♥.♦

Complications (that could be useful to ‘Keep in Mind’) Associated with ‘Western culture ‘Invented Reality’

-1- ‘Sharing’ need not be either ‘benevolence’ or ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ based.  (both of which assume identifiable ‘sourcerors’).  In the indigenous aboriginal culture, as in modern physics, there is no concept of ‘local sourcing’ (there is only relational transformation).

Chief Maquinna of the Nootkas (who lived in what Western culture calls ‘British Columbia’) expresses the indigenous aboriginal cultural view wherein there is no such power as ‘being’ -based ‘sourcery’.  That is, a natural outwelling of nurturances that become available to an individual or tribe such as a bumper crop of edible plants, as perceived in a worldview wherein one understands oneself as a relational feature in the transforming relational continuum, is NOT understood in the sense of ‘sourcery’ as in Western culture where ‘one’s land’ or ‘property’ is seen as an extension of oneself and one’s notional ‘powers of sourcery’; e.g. the ego-driven statements of the ‘land-owner’ who proudly claims that he and his family (‘sourced’ aka ‘produced’) a bumper crop of wheat.

That is, the understanding of ‘mitakuye oyasin’ is that ‘we are all related’ in the manner of relational forms in a transforming relational continuum.  Without the sense of ‘ownership’ that comes with ‘sourcery’, it makes no sense to ‘bank’ or ‘personally hoard’ the bounty of nature as if it were ‘sourced’ or ‘produced’ by oneself, as in Western culture where one’s land is seen as an extension of oneself.  As Maquinna observes;

“Once I was in Victoria, and I saw a very large house; they told me it was a bank and that the white men place their money there to take care of, and that by-and-by they got it back, with interest. We are Indians and have no such bank; but when we have plenty of money or blankets, we give them away to other chiefs and people, and by-and-by they return them, with interest, and our hearts feel good. Our potlatch is our bank.”

That is, for peoples who understand themselves as included in the transforming relational continuum, there is neither ‘ownership’ nor ‘sourcery’.  These abstract concepts are the artifacts of Western culture language and grammar.  Clearly, the farm crops are not ‘sourced’ by the farmer; that is a cognitive impression deriving from the constructions of language and grammar aka ‘Invented Reality’.

-2- ‘Ego’ is the sense of ‘self’ that attributes to itself the power of ‘sourcery’.

Western culture Invented Reality breaks into parts and divides up relational features in the transforming relational continuum by using language and grammar to ‘name them’ and cognitively ‘animate them’ (in the psyche or intellect).  This (cognitively) splits the world of our senses into (a) a foreground of ‘beings’-that-source-actions-and-development, and, (b) a ‘background’ or ‘environment’ that serves as an ‘operating arena’ for the ‘Invented Reality’ foreground dynamic’.  Since, in the modern physics and indigenous aboriginal understanding of the self as a relational feature in the transforming relational continuum, there is no such (inhabitant-habitat) split, Western language and grammar, supported by the abstract concept of ‘sourcery’, gives rise to the ‘divided self’.  [The undivided self is the relational form in the transforming relational continuum, which is at the same time BOTH inhabitant AND habitat].

The ‘ego’ is a Western culture cognitive concept that stems from a belief in ‘being’-based (thing-in-itself-based) ‘sourcery’ wherein the inhabitant-thing-in-itself sources actions and developments exploiting the habitat-thing-in-itself and/or the ‘habitat-thing-in-in-itself inductively sources and animates ‘inhabitants’.

Whereas the abundances and scarcities that arise in the world are understood in indigenous aboriginal culture as relational phenomena within the transforming relational continuum, they are understood in Western culture in the context of ‘being’-based ‘sourcery’ so that the individual’s ego [the notional seat of ‘sourcery’ in Western culture] may swell or shrivel because of this belief in ‘sourcery’.  That is, there are NO SUCH THINGS as ‘beings’ with ‘sourcing powers’ in the reality of our relational experience.

Given that the Western psyche is ‘set up’ for psychosis by its belief (supported cognitively by language and grammar) in the self as an ‘independent being’ that is notionally, the fully and solely responsible ‘sourcer’ of its own actions and developments, the experiencing of a drought in ‘sourcery’ (notional ‘personal accomplishments) can fuel depression and shrivel the ego, particularly as the Western culture adherent ‘low producer’ compares himself to the proud and confident ego-inflated ‘high producer’, who is widely recognized in Western culture as the ‘sourceror’ of such remarkable bounty.  The ‘highly productive sourceror’ not only claims for himself the bounty associated with his ‘extended self’ (lands, properties) based ‘sourcery’, but is showered with gifts, honours and adulation by admiring fellows who have also fallen into the trap of believing in ‘sourcery’.

There is no such thing as ‘sourcery’ in the reality of our actual experience in the transforming relational continuum.  The belief in sourcery is aberrant cognition.

-3-  If your measure of yourself is by way of your (notional) ‘sourcery’, you are inviting psychosis as associates with inflated or deflated ‘ego’

The stunted and starved ego (again, the ego is the psychologically deemed fount or wellspring of sourcery) may start to ’cause trouble’ within a Western culture ‘divided self’.  Those who are acculturated in the indigenous aboriginal culture, Taoism etc. where reality/understanding is ‘relational’ and where the belief in ‘sourcery’ does not arise, the problems of either inflated egos or deflated egos do not arise; i.e. ‘egos’ derive from a belief in ‘sourcery’.

For those Western culture adherents with egos in desperate need, it is not at all obvious why there is this feeling of inflation or deflation that ‘borders’ on psychosis, and in those with troubled egos, there may be a search for an ‘injustice’, perhaps in early life, that has been crippling the ego.  An event such as ‘rape’ which the indigenous aboriginal would understand as ‘relational violence’, may be seen in a Western acculturated person as being particularly damaging to the ego, and there may be a felt need for ‘ego-rehabilitation’; i.e. to ‘deal with the issue’ that has never been ‘dealt with’ and ‘laid to rest’, but has been buried by the passage of time (superficial forgetfulness).

This sort of psychological destabilization deriving from the ‘ego’, originates in the ‘belief in ‘being’ – based sourcery’. In the indigenous aboriginal culture, as in modern physics, there are only ‘relations’ (which can be harmonious and coherent or dissonant and dispersive) and there are no ‘beings’ aka ‘things-in-themselves’ with inbuilt powers of ‘sourcery’ as in Western culture popular beliefs (supported by Newtonian science).

However, in the indigenous aboriginal culture, injuries are understood as arising from relational dissonance rather than from ‘beings’ with powers of ‘sourcery’.  Thus the healing is not in seeking out and dealing with ‘undealt with’ injuries coming from others and their powers of sourcery, but by way of ‘sharing circles’ or ‘healing circles’ which can transform relational dissonance and restore social relational harmony.  That is, the problem is always seen, in the indigenous aboriginal culture, as relational in origin while the Western concept of ‘beings’ with powers of sourcing (either positive or negative) actions and developments is language-and-grammar based abstraction that is not grounded in relational experience.

-4- The concept of ‘forgiveness’ is cognitive ‘trickery’ that gives backdoor access to the abstraction of ‘sourcery’.

While the ‘old age’ approach to dealing with unresolved (notional) ‘sourcery-based issues’ may be to seek justice to ‘clear up’ such ‘unfinished business’ that may be darkly and silently disturbing the psyche, the ‘new age’ approach is ‘forgiveness’.  Both approaches are based on belief in the ‘reality’ of the damage an individual’s spirit or ego SOURCED by an event in question.

FORGIVENESS ENDORSES THE ABSTRACT CONCEPT OF ‘SORCERY’ AND BURIES FURTHER INQUIRY INTO THE LEGITIMACY OF THE CONCEPT OF ‘SORCERY’.

E.G. THE RESOLVE WHEREIN ‘THE HARM THAT ‘HE CAUSED ME’ (‘THAT HE SOURCED’) IS NOW FORGIVEN IF NOT FORGOTTEN, BLOCKS FURTHER INQUIRY INTO THE LEGITIMACY OF THE BELIEF IN ‘SORCERY’ (the cognitive belief in ‘being’-based ‘sourcing’ of actions and developments’.

In the indigenous aboriginal reality and in modern physics, there is no ‘being’-based ‘sourcing’ of actions-and-developments (again, ‘beings’ are abstract concepts cognitively ‘incarnated’ by ‘naming’ and ‘animated’ by grammar.

FORGIVENESS (FORGIVING A NOTIONAL SOURCEROR OF HARMFUL ACTION OR DEVELOPMENTS) IS AN AFFIRMATION OF THE SOURCEROR-BASED ‘INVENTED REALITY’

Should we ‘forgive’ James Wilkes Booth for assassinating Abraham Lincoln? That is, was Booth’s action the source of Lincoln’s death?

“In the book ‘Causality and Chance in Modern Physics’ Bohm argued that the way science viewed causality was also much too limited. Most effects were thought of as having only one or several causes. However, Bohm felt that an effect could have an infinite number of causes. For example, if you asked someone what caused Abraham Lincoln’s death, they might answer that it was the bullet in John Wilkes Booth’s gun. But a complete list of all the causes that contributed to Lincoln’s death would have to include all of the events that led to the development of the gun, all of the factors that caused Booth to want to kill Lincoln, all of the steps in the evolution of the human race that allowed for the development of a hand capable of holding a gun, and so on, and so on. Bohm conceded that most of the time one could ignore the vast cascade of causes that had led to any given effect, but he still felt it was important for scientists to remember that no single cause-and-effect relationship was ever really separate from the universe as a whole.”

If we want to ‘jump the gun’ and ‘forgive’ James Wilkes Booth for ‘sourcing’ the death of Lincoln, we will at the time be convicting him of ‘sourcing’ the death of Lincoln.  That is, ‘forgiveness’ is a back-handed way of invoking ‘sourcery’.

-5- The ego stands behind not only ‘sourcery’ by an individual but also ‘sourcery’ by any name-imputed thing-in-itself being.

Those who are Western culture acculturated are prone to ego-inflation and ego deflation through the belief that everyone has the power of sourcery, and those individuals who are most sensitive and caring, and who give without expectations of ‘getting anything back’ may find themselves in trouble (psychologically) when immersed in a Western culture collective that sees ‘sourcery’ as defining ‘who a person is’.  If the individual’s spirit is solidly rooted in the purely relational understanding of ‘mitakuye oyasin’ wherein the abstraction of ‘sourcing’ does not even enter the mind, there is no bother about everyone around you laying claim to being the ‘sourcerors’ of all manner of actions and developments as if such actions and developments are the fruits of their ‘sourcery’.  Nationalism (see Einstein’s above quote) is exemplary of the egotistical pride that arises from ‘sourcery’ attributed to a notional ‘thing-in-itself’ created by ‘naming’; i.e. ‘the Western concept of ‘nation’.

Individual and national ego derives from ‘naming’ which imputes ‘being’ to the abstract ‘thing-in-itself’ entity created cognitively, by ‘naming.  The abstract thing-in-itself cognitively created by ‘naming’ is cognitively infused with the power of sourcing action and development by language and grammar.  This ‘sourcery’ serves the cognitive constructing of an ‘Invented Reality’.

Western culture has an inbuilt problem with ego and the belief in sourcery in that ‘the big sourcerors’ have inflated egos and ‘the little sourcerors’ have troubled egos.  The troubled ego may go in search of a reason, such as some soul/spirit-troubling event in their youth that was ‘covered over and not dealt with’ that is short circuiting their powers of sourcery. [NOTE THAT THIS IS A WILD GOOSE CHASE SINCE IT IS SEARCHING FOR THE REASONS WHY ONE’S POWERS OF SOURCERY ARE SHRIVELLING WHEN SUCH POWERS OF SOURCERY DO NOT EVEN EXIST.  YET THE SOCIAL PRESSURES ARE ENORMOUS WHEN ONE LIVES WITHIN A CULTURE THAT EXPLAINS ALL ACTIONS, DEVELOPMENTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS IN TERMS OF THEIR ‘SOURCERY’ BY NOTIONAL ‘INDEPENDENTLY-EXISTING BEINGS (THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES) DEFINED BY NAMING.

Sourcery is a game that everyone must play in Western culture because it is foundational to the Invented Reality of Western culture.

“They are playing a game.  They are playing at not playing a game.  If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me.  I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.”  – R.D. Laing

When one is immersed in a social collective, that includes family and friends, where everyone is playing theWestern culture ‘Invented Reality’ game, it is non-trivial to pull out of it, not simply because one may risk alienation from one’s friends and family, but because one’s cultural conditioning has cultivated within one an ‘ego’ that feeds on ‘sourcery’ and the cultural recognition that associates with it.

If one is instead born and raised in the indigenous aboriginal culture (and manages to avoid being ‘coopted’ into Western culture), one DOES NOT understand oneself as an ‘independently-existing thing-in-itself’ with innate powers of sourcery of actions and developments, as for example, in Christian belief; e.g;

“Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts.

1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

1732 As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.” – Vatican Archives, The Catholic Catechism

This abstract, absolutized view of the human as an ‘independently-existing thing-in-himself with his own powers of sourcery COGNITIVELY SPLITS APART THE HUMAN AS INHABITANT FROM THE WORLD AS HABITAT, and this departs radically from the view of the world as a unum wherein the human is a relational form in the transforming relational continuum (as also in modern physics, and as in indigenous aboriginal culture).

In this understanding, inhabitant and habitat are ‘one’; e.g. human forms are ‘appearances’ (Schroedinger) or ‘apparitions’ in the transforming relational continum, as with ‘whorls in flow’ (they are not ‘two separate things’ just because we give them two separate names; i.e. ‘naming’ is an intellectual exercise that creates a new thing-concept which human intellect/cognition may accept as yet another cognitive object to include in constructing an Invented Reality‘, but our relational experience based understanding is not obliged to capitulate and put such [level 3] abstraction into an unnatural precedence over the [level 1] relational reality of our natural relational experience of inclusion in a transforming relational continuum.

Overcoming a ’bout of psychosis’ while still a Western culture adherent is a non-trivial process, since the standard ‘cure’ is certainly NOT to address the Western culture built-in-psyche-splitting of ‘sourcery’ and ‘Invented Reality‘, but to administer lobotomizing drugs to reduce the conflict between the relational/intuitive and rational/mechanistic cognitive approaches, demoting the former from its natural (inclusional) primacy and leaving the latter in charge (i.e. putting rational intellection which supports ‘sourcery’ into an unnatural precedence over relational intuition (understanding as in ‘the surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions).  This inverted precedence of the rational over the relational (i.e. reality levels 3 and 2 in an unnatural precedence over reality level 1) puts the experient right back into the ‘Divided Self’ mode that they were trying to ‘re-integrate’ in their psychosis; i.e. to facilitate their Divided Self’s pursuit of reunification.

The problem is captured by the fact that our social dynamic is often called a ‘rat-race’ because of the assumed ‘reality’ of ‘sourcery’ and the associated ‘Invented Reality’ wherein ‘ego’ (the splitting of one’s undivided self, retaining only the rational, sourceror aspect) is celebrated and rewarded or denigrated and punished.  This leads to psychosis which is ‘cured’ in the psychiatric ward by situating the experient within warmly relational (‘therapeutic’) supportive environments (unlike the  standard ‘rat-race’ Western culture environment).  However, once ‘cured’, the experient is returned to the ‘normal Western culture ratrace’ (i.e. ‘normal’ as in ‘standard’ but in no way ‘natural’) i.e.;

“What we call ‘normal’ is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience.” – R. D. Laing

The fact that the ‘healing’ of a Western culture induced ‘divided-self’ ‘breakdown’ is secured in an empathic social-relational dynamic while the psychosis is induced by inclusion within the ‘rat-race’ is not lost on the ‘miner’s canaries’ who have been through the cycle of breakdown and recovery many times; e.g. the following view of an ‘experienced’ psychiatric patient as conveyed to me while I was visiting her psychiatric hospital ward;

(In the following, I have used the word ‘epigenetic’ meaning environment-induced to avoid the Western culture default assumption that ‘mental illness’ asserts itself from within the interior of the individual).

I recall a conversation with a psychiatric ward patient who was recovering from her sixth suicide attempt which this time, put her into a two week long coma. She said; “every time, after a few weeks in here, they say I am cured. Sure I am cured, for living in a highly empathic society such as the psychiatric ward tends to be, but I am not cured for going back into society which is a rat race made even tougher by my being marked as a defect and a loser. See, this bus pass is marked ‘handicapped’. I tried to get off handicapped and go on ordinary welfare even though it was $300. less but they wouldn’t let me.” She also expressed the view that society was moving in the opposite direction of ‘more empathy’.

Patty’s observations support the view that ‘mental illness’ is an epigenetic syndrome that science is misconstruing as a biological illness. In fact, the term ‘biological illness’ is a reflection of how ‘out of touch with reality’ that the science of biology continues to be by modeling the ‘organism’ as an ‘independently-existing material ‘system-in-itself’ that resides, operates and interacts with other such ‘independent systems’ within an abstract absolute space and absolute time measuring/reference frame that is regarded as an ‘operating theatre’.

CLOSING THOUGHT IN THIS SERIES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS

‘There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival ‘knowing’; the more affects we are able to put into words about a thing, the more eyes, various eyes we are able to use for the same thing, the more complete will be our ‘concept’ of the thing, our ‘objectivity’.– Nietzsche

It seems to me as if the understanding of ‘reality’ that makes most sense is the reality of ‘the sharing circle’ (wolf, slitherers, winged ones et al included) as suggested also by the ‘surprise version of the game of Twenty Questions’.

Of course, there seems to be a lot of ‘lock-in’ with ‘high switching costs’ on the road to an ‘omni-perspectival Design for Evolution.

♠.♣.♥.♦

Footnote:

Western culture is essentially a cultivator of schizophrenia for the reasons discussed in the above essay.

As R.D. Laing, author of ‘The Divided Self’ observes;

“What we call ‘normal’ is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience.” – R. D. Laing

Ontological security becomes impossible for the relational form as ‘apparition’ that Western culture recasts in the divided self terms of ‘whorl’ and ‘flow’ or ‘inhabitant’ and ‘habitat’ where the former must prevail over the latter or be prevailed over by the latter [as in the ambiguous ‘false dichotomy’ of ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’.

Those who most obviously manifest Western culture induced psychosis are the sensitive ‘miner’s canaries’ aka ‘identified patients’.  These ‘Identified Patients’ do not arise simply within a ‘dysfunctional family’ but are characteristic of the ‘dysfunctional Western culture social collective as a whole’.

IDENTIFIED PATIENT:

The term emerged from the work of the Bateson Project on family homeostasis, as a way of identifying a largely unconscious pattern of behavior whereby an excess of painful feelings in a family lead to one member being identified as the cause of all the difficulties – a scapegoating of the IP. 

The identified patient – also called the “symptom-bearer” or “presenting problem” – may display unexplainable emotional or physical symptoms, and is often the first person to seek help, perhaps at the request of the family. However, while family members will typically express concern over the IP’s problems, they may instinctively react to any improvement on the identified patient’s part by attempting to reinstate the status quo

What is the exit strategy for ‘the identified patient’?   The ‘identified patient’ or ‘miner’s canary’ is not allowed to change the psychosis-inducing system she is situationally included in, but she may be able to work with others to cultivate a supportive relational matrix that will supplant her spiritual dependency on the psychosis-inducing Western culture ‘normality’.  Ideally, this support matrix or ‘sharing circle’ will be ‘rich in diversity’ (omni-perspectival) as suggested by ‘mitakuye oyasin’ and ‘who shall speak for wolf?’, and as also suggested by Nietzsche;

There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival ‘knowing’; the more affects we are able to put into words about a thing, the more eyes, various eyes we are able to use for the same thing, the more complete will be our ‘concept’ of the thing, our ‘objectivity’.– Nietzsche

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