Freud

This will be a brief post to make a single point.

Debunking Freud is sport in psychology circles, some of which is for good reason. As a result the practices of psycho therapy have progressed to the point we can integrate two approaches which are in some ways opposite each other. 

One is the "uncovering" of early trauma, much or most of which may be completely unconscious (repressed), which when "uncovered" helps us to understand the problem from which we suffer. From a mechanistic point of view, we can't fix a problem until we know what it is. Replacing a tail light won't unclog a fuel system...

The other major component that has been added can be credited to Jung, who added spirituality to the practice of psychotherapy. This takes us from a focus on the individual "parts" to the complete and total "everything", which gives us appreciation of nature in all it's dynamism, and allows the acceptance of life's difficulties without paralysis, and a deep level of comfort with reality as it is. Spirituality in essence is the ability to "see" everything all at once, to be "one" with life force dynamic, and shouldn't be confused with religion IMHO.

The blend of these two modalities is more effective in resolving "neurosis" than either alone. In the simplest terms possible it could be said to be a blend of psychotherapy with a meditation practice. Finding out the "thing" that's wrong, and seeing the operating "whole", at the same time.

But the main point I'd like to make is that Freud's primary contribution is still not widely understood. And it is simply that we are "driven" by instinct not reason.

What does that mean? You know the saying we only use 10% of our brain? And if only we could just use that other 90% we would be, um, what? Some kind of super duper humans?

Well that is not what "we only use 10% of our brain" means. It means we only use 10% of our brain capacity for rational (conscious) "thinking". The other 90% is not just sitting on it's lazy butt, it's super busy all the time 24/7/365 birth to death. Ever had the thought "I better breath now"? That can be helpful at times, but how many of the billions of breaths you take in your life had to be preceded by a conscious thought? A statistical zero.

Yep it takes 90% of our brain to "run the body". This is "the unconscious", the autonomic nervous system, and the place where all of our "instincts" live. The brain and the nervous system are actually one organ, and it is VERY busy all the time, and we are completely unaware of at least 90% of those millions of ongoing processes. (More like 98%.)

So what is the problem of not understanding the main point of Freud's work, that we are driven by instinct not reason? It is the only thing that explains the addiction problem accurately. Or call it compulsivity. Whatever you call it, it becomes nearly impossible to control when we do not understand where it comes from. And therefore it is MUCH easier to control when we do.

It is not our fault that we have instincts and are driven by them. STOP taking on those guilt messages that it's our fault, which are based on an incomplete and incorrect understanding of the instinct complex, which basically is not as complicated as we may think. If "just don't do it" worked there would be no addiction and compulsivity. It is not our fault, and it is not faulty "wiring".

Are instincts bad? They are completely necessary, and a very good thing. If we could "turn off" our instincts like a light switch we'd fall over dead instantly. This is the autonomic nervous system.

Should we genetically modify humans to "fix" our primitive instincts? That would be incredibly stupid, so let's not do that. Do we ever stop to consider how much "science" is incredibly stupid? When we are under the illusion of being driven mostly by reason we are capable of doing incredibly stupid things. An understanding of the overarching instinctual structure is enlightenment. And Freud's basic message to humanity.

And it doesn't have to be difficult to apprehend. The single best text I've come across that explains the addiction and compulsivity problem simply and succinctly is the simple book 

The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force that Undermines Health & Happiness

written by two of the principles of the True North Health Center in Santa Rosa CA, Alan Goldhamer and Doug Lisle. Yes, there is a vegan orientation, if you are not vegan and have no intention of ever being vegan you can completely ignore that part. But read it anyway, it's that important.

Blessings

Artificial Intelligence Expert Kai-Fu Lee and making better choices

Kai-Fu Lee is a pioneering expert on artificial intelligence. Why is AI relevant to human health? One reason is the hope AI will lead humans to make better personal choices. So how close are we to that point? If we need to understand the human brain in order to effectively reverse engineer it to make better choices, how well do we understand the human brain at this point? Well, we've been working on it since 1956, so a good 65 years should have us pretty far along the path, right? But it's only 5% or less according to Kai-Fu.

If you're a regular reader of my blog you may have noticed one of the themes I'm fond of repeating is the immense complexity of biology, particularly in comparison to technology, to which we assign enormous complexity while hardly thinking of biology at all.

T. Colin Campbell the nutritional biochemist who, after a professional life spent working to understand biochemistry, came to the conclusion we will likely never understand biology completely, and that biology is some orders of magnitude more complex than the rest of the universe. Humm. Well, perhaps that's only because we can see biology "up close", and better.

And T. Colin Campbell is no piker, he conducted "the most comprehensive study of human nutrition in history", and wrote the story of it in The China Study, and wrote Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition, and most recently The Future of Nutrition: An Insider's Look at the Science, Why We Keep Getting It Wrong, and How to Start Getting It Right.

His life in nutritional biochemistry brought him to a conclusion that is basically as simple as this: we do not need to understand the cause of disease to understand the cause of health, and reach, through relatively simple diet and lifestyle choices, a radiant level of health most of us in today's world never imagined was possible.

And who wouldn't want that, when laid out in simple and manageable terms?

To understand all the ways we do not yet understand the human brain I'll suggest you watch this interview below with Kai-Fu, which is interesting on many levels, geo-political included. His answer to the question how well we currently understand the human brain begins at 8:15, if you're interested in only that one topic. But the entire piece, about 25 minutes long, is fascinating all the way through.

And BTW, in case it needs to be said, I'm no luddite, I love the digital revolution, which I feel has made me a more informed person in many ways. Digital devices are now "wearable", and will no doubt be enhanced with AI algos soon. What we need to remain aware of, according to Kai-Fu, is that machine learning has to be "taught" by humans what the "right" answers are that will be embedded into the AI algos so that the machine can recognize them amongst all the mountains of data.

And therein lies the potential for all sorts of mischief. One example stands out: the world is trending toward greater authoritarianism, which we quite recently saw even here in the developed west in the way the pandemic was handled with terribly destructive lockdowns and "mandated" pharmaceutical interventions. If we lose control over what goes onto and into our bodies we are living under the thumb of authoritarianism, and no longer free.

https://youtu.be/CSXoi67EKxE

The U.S. Tested 67 Nuclear Bombs in Their Country. Now They’re Dying in Enid Oklahoma.

A good friend who knows I'm from Enid Oklahoma sent this story which resonates strongly with me. Briefly, Marshallese Islanders were exposed to massive US nuclear testing following the WWII. Then, quoted from the article:

"thanks to a treaty signed when the Marshall Islands gained independence from the U.S. in 1986, Marshallese citizens are allowed to live and work in the States. Between 2000 and 2010, the number here grew by 237 percent. This mass migration is driven in part by poverty and lack of services in the islands. But it’s also a legacy of the U.S. occupation and the various damages it left behind."

The entire article can be read here:

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-u-s-tested-67-nuclear-bombs-in-their-country-now-they-re-dying-in-oklahoma

Some 20,000 Marshallese have migrated to the US, and nearly 3000 have settled in Enid. Now, years later, most have type II diabetes and cancer. I'm only in Enid briefly around the holidays, and was unaware of the Marshallese population, but what I can say is the small prairie towns I know of in Oklahoma all have very high rates of obesity and type II diabetes, and the cause is quite simply a bad diet. 

The ironic tragedy is that it can be completely reversed with diet alone. But there is little awareness of it, no one is accurately informing the population it's possible, much less helping with transition.

So the Marshallese in Enid suffer with both radiation poisoning and food poisoning. I would guess 70% of the population of Enid is pre-diabetic or diabetic, with all the other correlated conditions; the various autoimmunes, cardiovasculars, and cancers.

But it's not only Enid. Post industrial health collapse is a problem so vast that the solution, logistically quite simple on an individual level (but complex on cultural and economic levels), remains effectively invisible.

I feel bad for the Marshallese immigrants, they are the "beneficiaries" of a double whammy of US "largesse".

A most interesting retrospective on pandemic censorship

 Anyone reading the actual science in the early stages of the pandemic knew "follow the science" was a lie so obvious to the broader scientific community it could only be protected with censorship. Why did it happen? In my opinion a mania psychology combined with a profit motivated control of the population. Much more is discussed here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlwqqgYAyZs

The number one fruit for your immune system?

This short vid from Plant Based Science London presents a study: