Grace, Fall, and Redemption: Mental illness and Our Evolutionary Narrative
Embark with me on a journey delving deep into the relationship between severe mental illnesses and the primal emotions fueling our social interactions.
Embark with me on a journey delving deep into the relationship between severe mental illnesses and the primal emotions fueling our social interactions.
This blog maintains that the emergence of humans six million years ago represented a rare biological “transition” to collective function similar to “eusocial” insects, mainly ants, bees and termites. For the first time, there has been a reliable estimate of how many ants are on earth. This paper illustrates that collective function has propelled both …
Simplifies an understanding of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, language, religion, self-awareness, free will, and the experience of being human for the last three million years.
Or are we undergoing a progressive awakening to our tribe’s ancient mission to transform the power of aggression into the bounty of communion
The known facts of human evolution are interpreted as evidence for theory that, for six million years, our ancestral human species lived within a collective mentality intrinsic to their sole adaptation of coordinating their divided labor, i.e., teamwork.
Everyone is born with a different configuration of three mentalities, and mental health is a balance between all three.
In spite of centuries of traps, poisons and fumigations, no pied piper has ever managed to eradicate this most perseverant of pests.
Human evolution marked a shift from Thomas Malthus’ struggle for scarce resources—fitness, to Adam Smith’s coordination of divided labor—productivity.
The political left is standing on the shifting sands of a philosophical vacuum which I have spent many years filling.
Below is a TED talk by Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist who wrote The Righteous Mind, in which he introduced six belief categories: important issues to Democrats are care/harm, liberty/oppression, and fairness/cheating, whereas for Republicans the most important issues are loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/ degradation. In this video he tells us that openness to new …
Which are Democrats & which are Republicans? Hints: This is red CLICK HERE FOR ANSWER This is Blue CLICK HERE FOR ANSWER
It’s called Darwinism Human nature is determined by: 1) The survival of the fittest (natural selection); 2) Including group selection: There can be no doubt that a tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to give aid to each …
After drafting sections of an essay in the blog, it was finally published in the Montreal Review and can be seen by clicking here. This is the cover letter I sent: For many years the political right has implicitly drawn on the authority of Darwin’s paradigm of life as a struggle for fitness to support …
For a fossil to be designated a hominin there must be evidence of upright posture. However, any orthopedic surgeon can tell you that upright posture produces extreme vulnerability for injuries to the lower back (perennially among the top ER visits), hips and knees, so it is reasonable that the evolutionary advantages of such a costly …
Forth in series: click for first, second, or third There is evidence that, in a period of sharply declining temperatures, a collapse in the ape population occurred at the time hominins split off from apes. My view is that in the context of birthrates falling toward extinction, hierarchical dominance competition became a dangerous waste of …
Second in a series: Click for first or third It is not generally understood that there is virtually no scientific knowledge about how the mind of apes evolved into our own mind. Huge amounts of scientific knowledge about the minds of apes and humans (particularly children) are neatly being stacked upon the cliffs on either …
First of a series: click second Political beliefs both start and end with attitudes toward human nature. The right has long been associated with the Hobbesian view that the natural state of mankind is “warre of every man against every man—Bellum omnium contra omnes” (Leviathan, 1651). Material progress is made possible by business competition permitted …
Since my retirement 10 years ago, Ape Mind, Old Mind, New Mind has been a work in progress. The basic ideas arose from my knowledge of the internal experience of the major mental illnesses directly imparted to me by thousands of my patients in 35 years of practicing psychiatry. The “data” of these composite descriptions …
Some of you might believe that the natural state of mankind is “warre of every man against every man—Bellum omnium contra omnes” (Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651). Here is some hard evidence to the contrary: The most comprehensive and up-to-date lay book on the science of behavior is Stanford neuro-endocrinologist Robert Sapolsky’s Behave: The Biology of Humans …
I have been re-editing my book, and thought that this key juncture might hold together on its own. As mentioned, [Richard] Dawkins popularized the concept that natural selection can proceed at the level of genes. For example, some insects will sacrifice themselves for several of their genetic relatives. This is because it is actually the …
