Anti-depressant scandal

I now believe this to be the most accurate summation of my world view at the moment. 

Everyone is different, there is no one size fits all, beware of those who are sure of themselves for we really know nothing at the end of the day. A quick look at history makes this crystal clear, along with my own historical opinion and worldviews which change all the time (think of Robert Anton Wilson's "Prometheus Rising", a book I frequently come back to after "cycles" in my life).

Still, there's something to be said for "trying on" a worldview and exploring it. The problem I guess is that sometimes it affects others negatively....

Brian, could Big Brother have any redeeming features?

Prometheus Rising is just about the greatest practical (If often tongue-in-cheek) workbook on consciousness change that has ever been written IMO.  Big Brother is in many ways protective and therefore useful, but Big Brother will always put himself before everybody else.  We need him but we also need to use him for our own ends and fight him occasionally; such are siblings!

Prometheus Rising is just about the greatest practical (If often tongue-in-cheek) workbook on consciousness change that has ever been written IMO.  Big Brother is in many ways protective and therefore useful, but Big Brother will always put himself before everybody else.  We need him but we also need to use him for our own ends and fight him occasionally; such are siblings!

Great thoughts. 

I also believe that it’s a kind of constant negotiation, a dynamic where both “sides” must consciously determine how much is “enough” from their own perspectives. I think the reason why it is like this, is just simple human hardware; we are a bit limited by the older parts of our brain unfortunately. 

But how odd is it that for all of our wars and horrors, that we can produce such beauty and ideas of immense loving quality? 

Bit of a digression but the dualism of our animal/higher nature is fascinating, especially when some people seem more naturally inclined to it than others, who seem to remain more “animal”. (I’m also aware of how dangerous this line of thinking can be too!)

But how odd is it that for all of our wars and horrors, that we can produce such beauty and ideas of immense loving quality? 

Bit of a digression but the dualism of our animal/higher nature is fascinating, especially when some people seem more naturally inclined to it than others, who seem to remain more “animal”. (I’m also aware of how dangerous this line of thinking can be too!)

May I suggest that the contrast of animal versus higher natures is not the most suitable way of expressing these things. It seems to be more a contrast of good versus evil or light versus dark. 'Animal' to me is a neutral term, it doesn't imply darkness or evil.

A cure to all mental illnesses?

Mikaela Marinis, BS

Jhean Paul Varela Carrero, JD

The NY Times journalists Pam Belluck and Benedict Carey lament that “the mechanisms of the field’s most commonly used drugs […] have revealed nothing about the causes of those disorders” [6]. But why would they? As Beccaria understood, the causes of behavioral and personality categories are unique to the individual, while categorization adopts an abstract form that is disconnected from causality. When people are diagnosed with mental illnesses, causality is largely thrown away, and they might as well be imputed using a legal code. Since each mental illness represents an unlimited number of possible causes, each mental illness must cover an overwhelming tent. Mathematicians have calculated that thousands of possible symptom combinations make up different mental illnesses, such as over 600,000 unique combinations qualifying a diagnosis for PTSD [21].

These diagnostic categories are actively creating generations of people who believe themselves to be mentally ill, from a scientific perspective. It’s undeniable that there are people in the world who are suffering from substantial impairments, or emotional distress. However, our explanatory models are, in many cases, insufficient. Often, the lines that divide legal codes and mental illness diagnostic codes are blurry. In the meantime, likely modeled after the Beccarian system itself, mental illness categories serve largely as legal heuristics.

Such heuristics end up granting prerogatives in front of the State, and deciding who deserves certain work, education, access to certain drugs, financial benefits or a shorter or longer punishment in the criminal system.

Scientists appear to be confused as to why its systems for studying mental illnesses aren’t working, and assume that aimlessly throwing data at the wall will eventually lead them to a cause for their models. But taking a step back to understand the immense social, philosophical, and political web that mental illness represents might shed some light on the problem.

I think that article could have been written more directly, but it contains a powerful truth.

If you don't know how something works, you can't systematically figure out how to fix it. Think of an old-fashioned car - if you don't know that there are several things that can cause the car not to start - bad sparking plugs, flat battery, an empty tank, or air getting into the fuel tubes, then how can you systematically fix the thing?

OTH it is sometimes possible to fix things non-systematically. People used to fix radios by banging them, and I sometimes fix my partner's snoring by giving her a gentle nudge or two!

I think that cuts to the heart of psychiatry and maybe other areas of medicine. It is also another example of the limits imposed by materialism.

I know I have invited another outburst from Silence - but I can't seem to avoid that other than by (paradoxically) remaining silent.

outburst from Silence

That's an oxymoron!

That's an oxymoron!

Or perhaps a koan - like the sound of one hand clapping.

Does anyone know what the science was that justified the idea that depression was caused by a lack of serotonin in the brain?

[Laird]

Does anyone know what the science was that justified the idea that depression was caused by a lack of serotonin in the brain?

From my reading, it was basically just that psychiatric drugs known to target serotonin pathways in the brain in certain ways were effective (in some cases) in alleviating depression. The "scientific" inference followed from that observation. I am not, though, an expert in this field, so don't take that as gospel.

I think that article could have been written more directly, but it contains a powerful truth.

If you don't know how something works, you can't systematically figure out how to fix it. Think of an old-fashioned car - if you don't know that there are several things that can cause the car not to start - bad sparking plugs, flat battery, an empty tank, or air getting into the fuel tubes, then how can you systematically fix the thing?

OTH it is sometimes possible to fix things non-systematically. People used to fix radios by banging them, and I sometimes fix my partner's snoring by giving her a gentle nudge or two!

I think that cuts to the heart of psychiatry and maybe other areas of medicine. It is also another example of the limits imposed by materialism.

I know I have invited another outburst from Silence - but I can't seem to avoid that other than by (paradoxically) remaining silent.

To me the challenge is that we know greed, academic stubborn-ness, and likely to some degree the negative influence of the materialist-atheist faith have compromised medicine to a certain degree. However it seems to me this can just as easily - and has - influenced New Agers and others in the alternative medicine community (with materialist-atheist replaced by varied belief systems).

Even those with the best intentions can be erroneous about the efficacy of their practice. For example even when one person may successfully use psychic healing, their attempts to teach others may not be reality based. There's been suggestions, for example, that the only successful students of Bengston's healing method are people who've been near him physically rather than anyone learning the technique on their own.

Even if we leave out psychic healing or Psi in general, this seems to be a Scylla/Charybdis situation where we have a compromised medical research community and a compromised alternative medicine community.