https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH0lPsfcFug
The focus of psychiatry is to eliminate symptoms.
Commentary: If there is a greater purpose behind these psychiatric symptoms-- e.g, if there is something you need to learn about yourself (that could be being presented to you by these symptoms), perhaps some message from your (innermost) self that you need to receive to follow the path to your existential happiness in the future (this could be a message that is NOT being received through what one would call more "normal emotive states" or is not being presented to you effectively), it follows that by receiving "psychiatric help" to "eliminate" these symptoms, you will be blocked by receiving that message through these means. Or, the intention is to block this possible means of communication by "you" to you, because of the undesirable presentation of these symptoms, or the undesirable short-term effect of these symptoms. Speculative, perhaps, but this is how I experience psychiatric crisis, as a time where I need to receive a message from my higher self to recover my function and purpose in the world. Without purpose, there is no function. This can be a motivation to recover purpose in the world, if one can not function without that purpose.
People are told they need to embrace or accept this story about their experiences. In fact, if you don't accept it, that's seen as a symptom of of your illness, and is pathologized as lacking insight/part of your disease. This is the current narrative that's everywhere.
Commentary: We all need the autonomy and "power" to write our own stories. It's a part of basic human dignity.
Steven argues that psychosis has an ecological function and is ecologically valuable.
Steven tells his story.
"The mind is in a context right now. What is the mind in ecological thinking?
Gaia theory
Earth is a self-sustaining system. Life is co-evolving together. This self sustaining system is intelligent, meaningful, and has a consciousness."
He talks about wasps self-organizing and collaborating to create an incredibly complex structure at a certain "threshold" (or number of wasps), this is called an "emergent property" of the colony and he compares it to creating a larger consciousness. Putting all the wasps together creates this larger consciousness or intelligence. He then talks about traffic in India being self-regulating as an example.
Wild= willed. Self-willing.
Video about plant neurobiology and existing in an other time dimension then we do. Talks about plants as an agent of its own fate and plants in time-lapse.
Steven talks about "chemical signals" and intelligence in plants and says this intelligence goes down to bacteria. He talks about the Gaian systems where there are collaborative relationships between plants and mature/intelligent ecosystems, and communicating root systems, and the origin of complex life/symbiosis.
Nature's design and an apparent intelligence behind the design.
Earth's metabolism, the interdependence of creatures and ecosystems.
Global consciousness gives us free will. Diversity is achieved by giving parts of the system free will and it's more efficient then a top-down consciousness. Part of the system is love/union.
Biodiversity is how the earth stays resilient through massive trauma. "Neurodiversity or diversity of mind follows the same thing" Diversity doesn't mean a thing unless its connected. The relationship is what makes it valuable.
How does psychosis happen in this earth system and how does it function?
The way we think about mind and consciousness is shaped in an environment where we've destroyed our natural habitat.
Everything is "natural" because it came from the earth. No distinction between natural and unnatural
But most of the things that are around us are "dead" We used to-- talking about the earth's consciousness is not a new idea.
Indigenous cultures have beliefs about the earth's consciousness, this is not a new idea
We used to be a part of/surrounded by a living earth. See 25:30. Communicating, networked, diversified, aware, it was willing itself, there was danger in it which is actualy stimulating and exciting, 98 percent of the old growth forests are gone, large fish in the ocean 90 percent of large fish in the ocean are gone, we've converted it to dead things. when you're surrounding by dead things you're in an environment that is not communicating any more, that's about lone objects that's simplified it's controlled; it's boring-- ecological boredom. We are suffering from an ecological boredom.
Rene Descartes. 1600's western enlightenment, his thesis is mind is separate from nature, literally a separate substance. Cartesian dualism. Mind is separate from nature now we can study nature supposedly objectively. Manipulate, infiltrate, and gain information. Necessary step before industrialization, before tearing up everything. The mind is a separate substance, so this affects the kind of environments we set up for learning, separated from nature, isolated, and set up for ourselves. Everything dead around us while we try to learn how to be conscious. This is the new "normal." "Rational nature." Paving over everything isolating trees in little artificial environments. A lot of people don't have exposure to the wild and conceive of nature like this. In this context we've created mental health in the mind (and conceived of mental illness).
What help looks like: Picture of psychiatric emergency room. You can't check yourself out. Denver post, "we need more of these." Failure to see the horror in that room. This is where you go if you want to kill yourself because you're in so much pain, terrified because you're having far out beliefs, this is where you go if you're super ecstatic and you think god is communicating with you for a week and you can't go to your job and everyone's worried about you. The chances of healing in this kind of space are rare. You can see your watch 24 hours a day, leather belts, light fall evenly don't want anything to hide in shadow, watched constantly, soothing colors on the wall. Surveilled/isolated from nature to treat a "wild" mind, strapped down, drugged, etc.
Mental illness as a brain disease. The pictures we see represent the effects of taking psychiatric drugs. Biological psychiatrists. Nancy Andreasen documents brain shrinkage on psychiatric drugs. Recovery rates are bad in the U.S. and western countries that practice western psychiatry. In countries that don't practice there are higher rates of recovery for schizophrenia. Focus on the brain is wrong, as if the starting point is that the brain produces reality so it must be "broken" if your reality is wrong. The brain doesn't produce reality, but it reduces it. Sensory gating. The brain is not a production factory but it reduces things. Psychosis isn't reducing reality as much?
Argues that plants that produce psychosis are evolutionary valuable or "functional" and wanted by the earth because they are still here. Animals partake.
Psilocybin alters brain network connectivity disintegrates the default mode, stops you from doing your default, breaking habits, influences gene expression changes, synaptic plasticity, long term changes in brain. Helps people
Psychoactive plants influence other plants. Psilocybn in the grass range. Plants have serotonin receptors.
Tool for nature. Innovation.
Psychosis: increase in animating spirit. Found in every culture across time. Name another disease that is found in every culture across time. Sex and music are the same. A human trait and its part of what human beings do.
The physiological changes are amplified senses. You're getting more reality coming in. Think or be anew.
"Some beliefs are delusional." Dangerous territory because the majority of Americans believe that a man parted the ocean and that a virgin gave birth to the son of god. You can have community and life out of that experience but not from other beliefs.
Metaphor for psychosis as wildfire. Helps germination and regeneration. Looking at the forest when it's on fire looks terrible, but if you don't allow it to burn it becomes more vulnerable. Psychosis is a process that's burning off to have something new.
Fever analogy. Fever is dangerous, but if you don't allow that process to happen bacteria and viruses stay. The fever isn't the problem, the fever is the solution, the problem was there before. People with diagnosis of bipolar and schizophrenia often have histories of significant trauma.
Accused of romanticizing. (Look at drug ads romanticizing their drugs.) We need to romanticize psychosis more. Romanticizing is flirting with potential. We need to start flirting with the potential of this. Though we don't need to go the direction where we start writing everybody's stories for them.
After 150 years of torturing people to stop psychosis, psychiatrists now want to induce it. Great irony.
The process of psychosis belongs on earth it exists across species. It's not going away, there is no eliminating it or curing it. Commentary: You might as well try to cure humanity.
Psychosis is dangerous and it is a gift, there are dangerous elements and there are gifting elements.
It's a tool of nature, it's not an aberration, it's not something gone wrong in the natural systems.
People who experience psychosis, like all people, need community that validate and value that experience. If someone is in a wild state of mind how can we stay connected and develop community. Intentional peer support. How to build relationships under any circumstances, including really tough circumstances.
