Spiritual Emergencies Or Psychotic Episodes?

The more I learn about neuroscience the more I resent my cultural upbringing.

By

Shutterstock
Shutterstock

In 1994 The American Psychiatric Association added “Religious or Spiritual Problem” to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

It is sad to think of what a widespread disease “religious or spiritual problems” are.

Maybe someday they will add “linguistic discrepancy” to the list of diagnoses.

Every human is inherently flawed.

Humans are especially flawed when their behavior contradicts what their culture accepts as normal.

“Being normal is boring,” is something I heard a lot when I was young, especially in art school (not so much in Catholic school.)

Complaining about Catholic school is boring.

But it’s hard not to reflect and be bitter.

The more I learn about neuroscience the more I resent my cultural upbringing.

It’s normal for one to feel resentment towards one’s own upbringing. It is probably better to be reconciled with the past and pursue personal growth with vigilant optimism.

I feel I must “undo” what has been imposed on me by Western civilization.

Many people flee to the East and overpopulate Thailand with similar sentiments.

I do not have the urge to travel. Jet fuel stresses me out. Traveling by plane is a very excessive luxury that the planet can’t afford for too much longer.

By this logic, I should stop drinking Ethiopian coffee too.

Trade and capital are as ancient as language. Maybe/probably even more ancient. The first recorded names in human history were not of kings or queens as one might expect. They are of slaves and merchants. Symbols were called into existence for the use of documenting capital.

What are natural resources to fauna?

Banking food, banking material, nesting, for what? Evolutionary coincidences. Everyone, across all kingdoms, equally aimless—some more misguided than others.

You could consider all of the extinct to have been misguided.

Native Americans misguided for giving into the fur trade, at the cost of contracting smallpox, or whatever deadly infection.

Patient Zero of the Ebola mystery believed to have been a two-year-old, started vomiting and shitting black, before dying something like 72 hours later.

The corpses were so bountiful in 1900 people didn’t know what to do with them. 95% of the Haida population evaporated.

What was I talking about? I was talking about “being misguided.”

There are some people, a lot of people actually, who believe that humans have some sort of purpose or divinity in life, even if it is not packaged as “divinity” or “purpose.” Example: the idea that we are an alien colony mutated from primates and that someday we will find out mother tribe in outer space. These ideas are fun to entertain but I imagine they would be quite taxing if one were to pursue the belief wholeheartedly.

I think it’s important to have skepticism. But not doubt. Faith. But not deliriousness.

I suppose it’s difficult to call the shots / draw the lines.

Collective consciousness is something I’ve heard people expressing zealous attitudes towards. I don’t think it’s that weird of a thought. The idea that a species could be interconnected by invisible communication, which aids its evolutionary advantages, I don’t know. Collective consciousness. It would be something like mirror neurons, maybe. Maybe you consider the internet, or technology, to be some sort of… equal advantage… I don’t know.

The most unattractive thing is preaching.

People loved to be preached too though. Gang mentality. Cult leaders. Presidents.

I just hope we can find a way to live peacefully in nature. But to the killing, conquering, hunting, gaming, raping, would that be any fun?

Nobody can even predict the weather anymore. All they can say is that it is going to be bad. Thought Catalog Logo Mark