SCIENTIFIC THINKING MENTAL ILLNESS SCIENTIFIC THINKING A SYMPTOM OF MENTAL ILLNESS

Many recent studies have come to the conclusion that today we live in a psychopathic world. The primary trait of a psychopath is his/her soullessness or mindlessness. And it is a fact that the in- dustrial age that we live in today has no soul or mind. Most con- ventional scientists believe human beings are mere “biological ro- bots” with no mind, no soul, no free will and no consciousness.

 

“Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.”

¯G.K. CHESTERTON

 

Whether a connection between genius and madness exists has been conjectured since ancient times, it certainly does look like there is indeed some kind of connection between

madness and genius.

Modern man remains not only uprooted from Mother Nature but also isolated from one another. With no human touch, his only companions are machines. Science separates mind from matter and then the mind from the soul. The science of manipulation is a science which separates mind from matter, people from Nature, people from each other, the body from the mind, and then the mind from the soul. We know that this continuous split, separation and long isolation lead to inevitable degeneration of the separated parts.

We all live in a man-made system that has the effect of radically divorcing all its inhabitants from their feelings; only to realize now that the same type of people had conquered and colonized the world and were able to justify ripping off the resources of all those foreign lands, because they had very little feeling. About the highly mechanized Western society, Wilfrid Laurier wrote: “The Englishman respects your opinions, but he never thinks of your feelings.”

Without a heart you are a dead, soulless creature that does not live. How can people ignore both scientific evidence and their own failing health?

Human organism is a work of artistic spiritual creation into which the capacities for its self- healing are worked into the basic texture of the organism. This is so because the “wisdom in your body is deeper than your deepest philosophy”, according to Nietszche. He wrote: “Anyone who imagines that human physical organism is made up of atoms and cells which function according to the laws of physics and chemistry is seriously mad, mentally ill”.

Since the whole world suffers under this delusion we can only but admit that, for several decades, there is a currently ongoing mass epidemic of profound human insanity – and this will only increase as time goes on. In short, human species is currently digging its own grave, and the very efficient tool, the broad and powerful shovel with which we dig our grave daily is MODERN SCIENTIFIC THINKING. In so many words, it can now be concluded that modern scientific thinking is a symptom of MENTAL ILLNESS.

Modern Science is an idea based on abstract logic bereft of life or soul. It is only a smart methodology for dividing, splitting, isolating and, thus, degenerating-and not for uniting. As a civilization deeply addicted to mechanization and market, the present industrial society and its people are all victims of what may be called

`scientific thinking’. But any thinking or attitude that leads to violence (modern humans are obsessed with competition and war), addiction (modern society is fully addicted to mechanization), stress and other long team degenerative diseases and other misfortunes may be regarded as the symptoms of certain mental illness.

When pure science is found to be indeed the disease of the mind, we can only imagine the extent of damage brought about by corruption of this `pure’ science in the world today. The corruption of science is one of the biggest problems our world has ever faced; it may, indeed, bring about the extinction of human race. Everybody understands in a general way that scientists, like any group of people, are members who are less than ethical, or even downright rapacious. But the corruption of science is a deeper and wider problem than most people suspect; that it is a rot that pervades our entire modern culture and is, in fact, the root of all the evils to which we have fallen heir in the past couple of centuries. Further, the corruption of science is due to the fact that it has been taken over by psychopaths with the support of the “Authoritarian Follower” personality type.

In a way, we do have such a system: social networks. The only problem is that a very large majority of people in our society will not believe 500 people who tell them that something really works because they have tried it in opposition to a single doctor who says “that’s not recommended by the medical associations.” This kind of person who follows the “constituted authorities” rather than empirical evidence is referred to by psychologist Bob Altemeyer as “The Authoritarian Follower” personality type. It is thanks to this type of person that even pure psychopaths in power can get away with the most egregious crimes in all fields of endeavor, from medicine to law, from industry to politics. The Authoritarian Follower believes that those in authority have the right to live by their own rules, and lying, cheating, stealing and murder in high places can thus be tolerated with a shrug of the shoulders. They will also willingly engage themselves in the same lying, cheating, stealing and murder if it is presented to them as necessary to protect their status quo.

The system made us all as Authoritarian Followers: If you follow the present epistemology created by these strange

`Authoritarians’ carefully, and look at it very closely, something absolutely amazing emerges. Albert Einstein said that our ordinary common senses give us only `naive realism’; that grass is green, rocks are hard, and snow is cold. But physics, if it is true, tells us that this naive realism is all wrong, physics tells us that the reality is quite different, something completely different is actually going on, out there and in here.

Claiming as `authoritarians’, these single- tract minded and genius-type people called scientists and experts, who regard the common sense of common people and the public as naive realism, are capturing and engaging the public mind in some artistic, scientific megalomania and other acrobatics in hi-tech consumerism. For example, after the exposition of special theory of relativity in 1905 and general theory of relativity in 1915 by Albert Einstein there were only just three people in the whole world during 1920’s who could understand these theories, according to Stephen Hawkins’ book The Brief History of Time (1988). Today Einstein’s theory of relativity is the `reality’ of the Authoritarian Follower which the whole

world has to follow blindly, for they say they can prove it `scientifically’

Now, it’s all very well for someone like Einstein, or Niels Bohr, or Feynman, to come up with these ideas, as professional physicists, but what happens when this scientific worldview, this basically Cartesian worldview, is taught to us lesser mortals as part of the culture, and internalized as epistemology, and preached to us as ontology, and integrated into general social cosmology?

This is where it gets really weird, and in the process, leaving us indeed in a highly weird world brimming with many catastrophes reaching tipping points.

For example, when the world is reluctant or incapable of seeing the realities and truths that stay active and problematic – like the truths about the present global warming, toxic pollutions, massive spread of degeneration diseases, genetic catastrophes and other extinction threats – right in our front, our scientist are hunting  for some highly hypothetical `truths’ inside the micro world of atomic particle that is sized less than 1/1,000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000th of a centimeter. An example, in this regard, is the latest Higgs Boson hunt.

Another  latest  scientific  feat  is America’s

`Curiosity’ landing  on  planet  Mars. Again

`hunting’ for some macro truths out there in the macro world of the cosmos (example, the much vaunted Mars and Venus expeditions) our latest hi-tech telescopes keep focusing on stars, planets and other cosmic matters that are lying millions of light-years away from Earth (distance between Earth and Moon is only 1.3 light-second or 385,000 KM).

When you craft science as delusional it becomes more beautiful than art. From the Higgs Boson chase to searching for life on Mars, science is overtaking art in its capacity to expand minds and inspire awe. When the world tries to live by the wits of science, by playing deep game with it, science may succeed in providing the most beautiful and provocative images of `truths’ of our world – not to mention other worlds – and thus capturing people’s imagination by this art of piquing public interest and using it to romanticize.

 

In 1969 man landed on the moon; by 2004 we thought we would be playing golf on Mars. The scientific futurist’s world is a technological prison in the fantasy land. In it, the market- propped up futurists are promising all sorts of virtual world, even robot wife or husband to the willing visualizers. What they claim as

`scientific’ feats/adventures are put on show like soccer/cricket extravaganza the world over. Here, the corporate world seems to employ and exhibit scientists, writers and artists to gain public relation mileage, like circus owners make use of trained animals, artists and magicians to earn sale proceeds from the public by the megalomania and other hi-tech acrobatic shows.

Before trying to find out some hypothetical minutest particle inside an atom that is sized less than 1/1,000,000,000,000,000,00th of a

human hair width (the sort of the much hyped Higgs Boson hunt), we must ask whether we have studied ourselves – human species– fully. It is lately been reported that, of the some odd 15,000 human rare diseases identified as having caused by human gene damage only some 7,000 are reportedly even named, and many are yet to be identified.

In the name of looking for truth and realities and in finding solutions to problems, modern science has unleashed several million chemicals since the Industrial Revolution which are in common and “uncommon” use in the world today. Among these perhaps as much as about 1,000,000 are causing gene damage (mutations) about which we are largely ignorant even though these chemicals are millions of times bigger than the so-called Higgs Boson. It has been estimated that more than 50,000 chemicals are in common use in the United States alone. At this very moment, many of these chemicals are working and contaminating our cells – including the cells of the man-on-the-street, the cells of the very scientists, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Nobel Laureates, the religious heads and so on – and causing different sorts of degeneration diseases. There has been a lot of hype about the new technological magic bullet that will suddenly `provide’ all solutions. The scientists insisted they were creating a better world. “Better living 

through chemistry,” they said a few decades ago. And now, a generation later, we are dealing with a collapse of life on our planet so large and so disastrous that it is being called the sixth great extinction of life on our planet. The world of “science” has given us atomic weapons, GMOs, vaccines, toxic synthetic chemicals, pesticides and psychiatric drugs. It has used innocent people in deadly medical experiments and unleashed widespread genetic pollution on our world through the careless proliferation of genetically modified organisms. Science has, as for a few examples, irradiated our bodies, drugged our children and polluted our spaces with spent uranium nuclear waste, electromagnetic cell phone broadcasts which impoverished our genetic future with the incessant burden of DNA-damaging chemical contamination.

Pure science and mental illness: Now let us consider the `science’ of the genius mind or the mental state of the so-called `’extra creative people’’. Beneath the surface of the world, are the rules of science. But beneath them, there is a far deeper set of rules—a matrix of pure mathematics which explains the nature of the rules of science and how it is way we can understand them in the first place. In his one- off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians—Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing—whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led them all committing suicide

The association between mechanical creativity and mental illness is sort of a cliché— but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to it. There has been a rather large amount of research into the connection, and a large number of biographical accounts of famous creative people who also suffered from mental illness. But the neurobiological details are emerging only slowly. After all, our understanding of the biological roots of either creativity or mental illness remains fairly rudimentary.

Most big-brained scientists are a touch on the eccentric side. Sir Isaac Newton believed in alchemy, spent months in darkened rooms while researching light, and poisoned himself with mercury as a result of his many experiments.

Electronics boffin Clive Sinclair’s childhood bedroom was a mess of wires, amplifiers and radios. And Professor Colin Pillinger, inventor of the ill-fated British space probe Beagle II, boasts the sort of facial hair that would leave Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s Caractacus Potts feeling distinctly ordinary-looking.

Almost the same is the case with the late Paul Dirac. The British physicist regarded by many in the world of science as Albert Einstein’s only real equal was one of the strangest men – painfully shy, compulsively odd and never one to use a sentence, when a word or, ideally, a very long silence would do.

He turned down a knighthood because he didn’t want people using his first name, wore disguises to shake off the media, hated any fuss and – despite being the youngest ever co-winner

of the Nobel Prize in 1933, aged 31 – had no interest in publicizing his work, which he felt could be expressed only mathematically. ‘To draw its picture is like a blind man touching a snowflake,’ he once said. ‘One touch and it’s gone.’– Read more: http:// www.dailymail.co.uk/ f e m a i l / a r t i c l e -1 2 4 0 9 0 9 / T h e –

extraordinary-love-affair-British-scientist- Paul-Dirac-chatterbox-divorcee.html#ixzz3 D0BQL2JY)

Shakespeare’s tragic plays, Mozart’s sublime symphonies, Einstein’s revolutionary theories – how did these geniuses create such magnificent and highly `’original works?’’ Were their brains different from those of ordinary people? Whether these revolutionary theories and “original works” have any significance to nature or natural way of thinking is altogether another matter. Using modern neuroscience together with first-person accounts of creative breakthroughs from artists and scientists such as Mozart, Henri Poincaré, and Neil Simon, The Creative Brain (by Nancy Andreasen) illuminates where extraordinary creativity comes from.

Acclaimed brain scientist Nancy Andreasen proposes that, due to enriched connections between certain areas of the brain, geniuses are able to tap into the unconscious mind in ways that most of us can’t. She also explores the link between creativity and mental illness, and she shows how all of us can enhance our creative potential through mental exercises. Clearly and accessibly written, The Creative Brain is a fascinating investigation into the mystery of human genius.

Medicine has suspected a link between madness and creativity for centuries. Artist Vincent Van Gogh provided ample anecdotal evidence when he lopped off the lower lobe of his left ear in 1888 and gifted wrapped it for a prostitute he loved. Author Ernest Hemingway, long plagued by depression, may have done the same when he took his own life with a shotgun in 1961. These cases provide insight into the dynamic relationship between mental illness and creativity, but no rational explanation.

Creativity is akin to insanity, say scientists who have been studying how the mind works. Brain scans reveal striking similarities in the thought pathways of highly creative people and those with schizophrenia. Both groups lack important receptors used to filter and direct thought.

It could be this uninhibited processing that allows creative people to “think outside the box”,

say experts from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute. In some people, it leads to mental illness. But rather than a clear division, experts suspect a continuum, with some people having psychotic traits but few negative symptoms.

 

Mechanical Creativity and Mental Illness Some of the world’s leading artists and theorists have  also  had  mental  illnesses—the Dutch

painter  Vincent  van  Gogh  and American mathematician John Nash (portrayed by Russell Crowe in the film A Beautiful Mind) to name just two.

Mechanical creativity is known to be associated with an increased risk of depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Similarly, people who have mental illness in their family have a higher chance of being creative. Associate Professor Fredrik Ullen believes his findings could help explain why. He looked at the brain’s dopamine (D2) receptor genes which experts believe govern divergent thought.

Here he found highly creative people who did well on tests of divergent thought had a lower than expected density of D2 receptors in the 

thalamus—as do people with schizophrenia. The thalamus serves as a relay centre, filtering information before it reaches areas of the cortex, which is responsible, amongst other things, for cognition and reasoning. “Fewer D2 receptors in the thalamus probably mean a lower degree of signal filtering, and thus a higher flow of information from the thalamus,” said Professor Ullen.

UK psychologist and member of the British Psychological Society Mark Millard said the overlap with mental illness might explain the motivation and determination creative people share. Mark Millard writes: “Creativity is uncomfortable. It is their dissatisfaction with the present that drives them on to make changes…. Mechanically creative people, like those with psychotic illnesses, tend to see the world differently to most. It’s like looking at a shattered mirror. They see the world in a fractured way…..There  is  no  sense of conventional limitations and you can see this in their work. Take Salvador Dali, for example. He certainly saw the world differently and behaved in a way that some people perceived as very odd.”

Psychologists have discovered that creative people have a gene in common which is also linked to psychosis and depression. They believe that the findings could explain why “geniuses” like Vincent van Gogh and Sylvia Plath displayed such destructive behavior. The gene, which is called neuregulin 1, plays a role in brain development but a variant of it is also associated with mental illnesses  like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Researchers from Semmelweis University in Hungary recruited a group of volunteers who considered themselves to be very creative and accomplished. To measure creativity, the volunteers were asked to respond to a series of unusual questions. For example: “Just suppose clouds had strings attached to them which hang down to Earth. What would happen?” They were scored based on the originality and flexibility  of their answers. The volunteers also completed a questionnaire regarding their lifetime creative achievements before the researchers took blood samples.

The report concluded: “The results show a clear link between neuregulin 1 and creativity. “Volunteers with the specific variant of this gene were more likely to have higher scores on the creativity assessment and also greater lifetime creative achievements than volunteers with a different form of the gene.” The head researcher Dr Szabolcs Kéri said that this is the first study to show that a genetic variant associated with psychosis may have some beneficial functions. He said: “Molecular factors that are loosely associated with severe mental disorders but are present in many healthy people may have an advantage enabling us to think more creatively.” The study was published in the journal Psychological Science.

If we can accept all these questionable premises, that creative people are basically

`sick’ because they have inherited defective brains which make them think in crazy ways, then we have the outline of the `biosocial theory of creativity’: some of us are born to be more creative than others, which is what we suggest through the use of the label “gifted,” anyway. The use of “genius”, according to the theory, is still mediated by social factors—the creative person may never be brought to the proper outlets for his creativity, which is why many deviants (gang members, etc.) turn out to be highly creative people. But his potential is dependent on biologically discoverable traits, and from this biological viewpoint, other questions might logically follow. Are men more creative than women? Are some “races” more creative than others? Are creative people chromosomally different, could they be detected by a DNA sample? Would this mean that eugenic fostering of creativity might be desirable?

Man versus Modern Man: As a social analyst and critic, I was very much swayed by these kinds of developments, including the impending catastrophic crises, since long. As a permanent solution to these catastrophic problems of mankind, I had advocated the extreme imperatives of empowering the LAYMAN—man of Nature being guided by common sense rather than certain bizarre abstract logics–and foresaw the growing prospect of the LAYMAN REGIME in the world through my first book `Story Of Man: Layman’ in 1990. As part of free Nature, Layman is full of potential if he is given the full freedom in society, and it will go a long way in readily finding solutions to all the crises the world confronts today. The analyze and forecasts of `Story Of Man: Layman’ in 1990 indeed proved prophetic by the later global developments.

Actually, most of us are LAYMAN and most of us would agree that being a layman is no small deal. Only layman or common man–AAM ADMI in Hindi and whom Rousseau called the “Noble Savage”–represents the sane, uncorrupted and natural inheritance and lineage of the human species. It is the industrial civilization that temporarily corrupted and contaminated us. It is in this context Sir Kenneth Clark wrote in Civilization, “Machines, from the Maxim gun to the computer, are for the most part means by which a minority can keep free men in subjection.” Layman indeed signifies freedom and lives freely in free world. 

‘VINAASH KAALE VIPREET BUDDHI’

There is a famous proverb in the ancient classical Sanskrit language – ‘vinaash kaale vipreet buddhi’ – meaning, when one’s destruction time is soon to arrive,   one thinks negatively, or, thinking wrongly at a time of crisis, or, bad ideas lead    to bad fortune, and the like. This concept may apply to the naturally evolving mankind since millions of years to ‘modern’ mankind by suddenly reversing its direction of evolution to be scientifically or mechanically-controlled condition which has been a highly contradictory process of the last few hundred years and which is now causing all sorts of catastrophic crises that are today threatening    the imminent extinction of mankind itself. This drastic change in human evolution was brought about by the sudden reversal of man’s long dependence     on  the age-old natural intelligence  (wholistic/generalized/deductive science) to the compartmental/analytic/inductive second-hand intelligence , namely modern science which is developed – no, not inside the brain of human – outside the human knower, that is, hi-tech systems and machines. . (More on this topic discussed in Chapter 6: Birth of Machine and Death of Man)

 

Layman, as a silent spectator of marching time, represents the silent billions of the world, be they in the first, second or the third world.

But then why can’t man change the system, or at least, demand change in no uncertain terms? The answer is as simple as it is alarming: man has no voice today; man has no market (value) today. It is because almost all mass media have become the “voice” of the market and almost all modern leaders and celebrities (experts) have become the “boys” of the market. Leaders are found worthy or wanting – conveniently by the corporate clique. And the forces behind them remain intact and permanent because the hi-tech systems and the market forces seem to reign above people and democracy. And, in the process, they have made humans to follow them mechanically as Authoritarian Followers – indeed the followers of the sick minds.

(More on this topic discussed in Chapters 11: Immature Civilization Builders and Psychopathic Societies)