Possibly one of the best DIY self help, brain fix, auto mind penetration for better, more massive mental reconstruction, books ever written
Combining Possibly one of the best DIY self help, brain fix, auto mind penetration for better, more massive mental reconstruction, books ever written
Combining the scientific with the personal emotional to better understand the reasons Other authors might have just focused on the theoretical, neurochemical, brain architecture, epigenetic traits, etc. way, the just psychiatric psychological foundations, or on personal, emotional examples, but by combining the science and knowledge offered by Perry with the wisdom and real life experiences of Oprah, the book reaches new levels of accessibility to help readers find out how broken they really are. And accepting and understanding what caused years and decades of self doubt, fragility, and mental problems is the key to the solution in the form of a fresh, better, and more stable self.
The medical, neurological part of PTSD and trauma manifested and shown with real life examples that might be disturbing and too much for some readers The above mentioned balance stays perfect throughout the whole book, Perry delivers the understandable, broken down science which is spiced and exponentiated by Opray, who is not getting weaker by opening herself up to what happened to her, but stronger by accepting, forgiving, and thereby creating a positive, better, and healthier self. That´s another key element, not believing that one is this body, emotion, diagnosis, or mind, but that´s it´s just the current, changeable state one can form to whatever kingdom or hell one wants to live in. Including another extremely challenging part, not forgiving, but accepting the perpetrators and the impact they had without triggering flashbacks.
The baby makes the child makes the teen makes the adult brain and identity. Understanding that one can get out of her/his skin, break the doom loop, escape the self made mental torture chamber, can just be achieved by reflecting on how the present state of mind has been reached, what made one the person one is. Desillusion of self and ego, something close to enlightenment, might be an a bit too big, unrealistic option for beginners, but the central, most important key element on the way is the same. Accepting that one doesn´t have to be the person, described by adjectives, mindsets, or mainstream psychological traits, one was made and used to be, because change is possible. And just that milestone leads to
Healing and an end of suffering Just by understanding and realizing how miserable one really is, the step towards finally growing scars, on wounds festering for years, can be done. Gratitude, exercise, mindfulness, meditation, Buddhism, perseverance, and discipline are necessary to reach this extremely tricky goal. Social nets and family can help, but the most essential part is to transform and metamorphize from helpless victim or mentally sick and unstable patient who suffers, takes pills, goes to therapy for years, and never dares to dig down to the core of the problems and confront oneself with them, to someone developing auto self repair functions and resilience.
Don´t fight or flight, meditate and find inner peace The key problem, I found in close to all similar works, is to never understand that an untrained monkey mind is an accelerating self destruction train that is getting more and more momentum by changing neural passways, by deepening all problems by conditioning the personality to more fear, fright, avoiding behavior, and mental problems. While awake, the demons, memories, and injuries keep popping up as they wish to, old associations are mixed with the current life and one doesn´t even want to know what happens while sleeping. Of course, perfected mind control and years of practice are a damned hard challenge, but without that tricky psychological workout, one ends with a different, weaker, far less armored, and save brain and mind.
Personal drivel What motivates me to reach these therapy, Buddhism, meditation nonfiction works is mostly an egoistic wish to pimp my mind to perfection, because I have the extreme luck of not having real traumatic problems, just the usual WEIRD first world problems with childhood, parents, family, the usual ridiculous stuff when compared to people who suffered real, long time mental, physical, and sexual abuse. Those might find one of the most successful ways to deal with their issues, to find a better way back to a normal life. Because the more I understand how severely my minor mini traumas influence who I was, am, and will be, the more respect I have for people who find ways out of the abysses of things done to them, so terrible that close to all average people wouldn´t find a way back out of the screaming nightmares haunting them.
Other great, similar books that are dealing with improving ones´ psychic bodys´ defences:
I ask myself in such contexts what influence meditation, mindfulness, and positive psychology might haveNothing compares to natural, self made highs.
I ask myself in such contexts what influence meditation, mindfulness, and positive psychology might have on the neurochemistry of the brain and, in this case, especially on the essential little helpers that make our emotional spectrum so manifold, wonderful, irresponsible, and prone to lunacy.
I liked the chapters Domination and Politics the most, because we tend to forget that we are mentally unstable monkey with different nuances of madness from eccentricity to bonkers and completely manipulated by the substances our body produces and how we tend to condition ourselves to react in a way that might be evolutionarily useful. In love and friendship, dopamine can do a good job, but if it enters the meta and global level, it gets tricky to world dominately.
Our brain simply loves to get high and for a long time we couldn´t get good stuff from the outer world ( it must have been terrible) when we were still stonagey and before, but we had those fine centers for own opioids, own cannabinoids, but especially the other hormones that aren´t so fancy. No matter where we look, to the love in our beds, to the digital shopping card, enemies and frenemies at work, what we love and hate about political parties, we are wired to react like animals.
Lieberman is highly entertaining, mixing the hard science with entertaining elements to make it more vivid, transporting it directly into the long term memory, except of course one is too stoned on dopamine and the data transmission affected by too much of whatever emotion. Don´t read angry, nervous, or horny, that´s not healthy for your wisdom!
Epigenetic and nature vs. nurture plays a big role here too, as anyone has a unique backpack of genes, different brain structures, and all those other things we hardly understand, so there is a huge spectrum of how much influence hormones take on ones´ lives, there is everything from lively, emotional, courageous and charismatic to me. Nothing against creativity and flow, but the love, hate, anger, and sex, meh, possibly overrated. Some beer from time to time is another story and makes me autonomous.
What to take along after reading is the already mentioned self mind control optimization and, once again, a healthier lifestyle and a better diet. Because another way I got in contact with dopamine was via sport and dietary change, massively influencing and modifying my body chemistry with interesting side effects muahaha, no it really got better, I swear!
There are huge loads of books that tell one how to be happy, mindful, but not why and don´t show in such immense detail the unbelievable impact of becThere are huge loads of books that tell one how to be happy, mindful, but not why and don´t show in such immense detail the unbelievable impact of becoming the Buddha. Such a cool God, tells one to search for errors in his ideas he calls not perfect, that´s a rare occasion.
Buddhism, neuroscience, psychotherapy,... tell one quite the same as Shawn does, but he does it in such a thrilling, understandable and astonishing way and mixes all approaches together to a laughing amalgam.
Positive psychology is the interdisciplinary idea and new science field of not just using the, often criticized, methods of psychology and psychotherapy, but to substantiate and fuse the good ideas with meditation, mindfulness, introspection, and self(mind)control.
Of course there are limits, horrible things that happened to people can´t be laughed or meditated away, in those cases the self-help has to be accompanied and mixed with psychotropic drugs and therapy. But for each lucky person who hasn´t suffered or is suffering from abuse, violence, illness, mobbing, loss of loved ones, poverty, mental disease,... there is truly no reason to be something else than happy.
Not any other person, a memory, the world; the opposite, adversarial political, ideological point of view consensed in annoying humans, other drivers, whining kids, nagging partners, lazy workmates, parents-in-law, newspapers,... make one angry, unmotivated, hateful, misanthropic, disinterested,... It´s oneself who cuts inside her/his own flesh by letting those outer impulses and past memories and future sorrows occupy the current state of mind and so the chain reaction kicks in.
Anger breeds hate, violence more violence,... What should a toxic person do it she/he recognized that you never get angry, stay calm and friendly, make them even angrier because you openly show them that you just smile at them, don´t care, ridicule them instead by not reacting in a negative manner to their provocations.
Leaving the circle is so easy by first just doing nothing and automatizing and perfecting the mantras and methods of meditation, mindfulness, autogenic training, laughter yoga,… We are creatures of habit and cultivating the dark or light side hundred to thousand times a day forms a life. One can see the last time consequences and whose side they devoted their lives to in elder peoples faces and differentiate if the lively eyes bursting from creativity are outlined by laugher lines or if it are dull eyes with worry lines, making them look like a turned around joker face with huge labial angel wrinkles hanging as deep as possible. Both epic monuments of a life lived happily or miserably.
And because happiness comes with huge health benefits, it´s very possible that the positive grandpa may still be laughing while grumpy old men have already killed themselves a long time ago, by not just opening the doors to their minds for each negative emotion, but their physis for much more illnesses and directly self-induced stress-related health problems.
The nuclear option for pimping, rebranding, fine-tuning, and perfecting grey cells. Atomic also in one regard: As long as it works, it´s perfect down The nuclear option for pimping, rebranding, fine-tuning, and perfecting grey cells. Atomic also in one regard: As long as it works, it´s perfect down to the smallest part, each atom. If it fails, it´s radioactive and self cannibalizing, -destructing- and demotivating.
To exaggerate, we can develop great working, social. and creative habits or destroy ourselves with neuroticism going haywire, find great ways to optimate oneself or madness, just read anecdotal filled pop psychology/science/philosophy books one can read without the danger of the hard work of really changing something or choose the difficult way and this book.
The 1st Law Make it obvious Repetition and consequence, as if it wasn´t so shamefully obvious, is one of the key elements to everything, a skill, foreign language, school, degrees,… and the funny thing is that successful people use learning, creativity, memo-, techniques to perfect their skills, but forget the motivational, critical thinking, analytic retrospection, optimization, meditation-,… techniques, and, most importantly, to recapitulate, criticize oneself, let others criticize oneself, reflect, and develop. There is always some space left toward top performance but without modifying or even changing habits, they won´t be possible and nothing is more painful than stopping a working, well known, perfected, but ineffective habit, using an oldfashioned program, modify a schedule, use knowledge and expertise in a new, complicated, unknown way, etc. The brain is a bit bitchy, nagging, and one´s worst enemy, because it´s a lazy manipulator, not wanting one to do something that means real work for it, trying to make it feel as uncomfortable as possible, wanting easy stagnation instead of sweaty evolution.
The 2nd Law and 3rd Law Make it attractive and easy As if this wasn´t already painful and difficult enough, the self experimental subject now has to implement unused, and thereby for the crying, sobbing, angry brain very painful, new neuronal integrated circuits because, as one knows, reptile stem brain and monkeys social anxiety wants one to run far away from everything new, different, possibly dangerous. Here the inner demons have to been disguised as angels to make the whole agony as attractive as possible, a kind of hopeful masochism. Detecting the deficits has already wasted vast resources of willpower and now one doesn´t even have the legitimation to kill and destroy positive change with anger and negative emotions, but the new mind baby has to be raised next to the rascals one has to be tolerant and sympathetic towards.
The 4th Law Make it satisfying Reaching this point is tricky, as one needs the stamina, perseverance, and resilience not to resign. As the old behaviors often aren´t directly harmful, just unproductive and used, they will come whispering and trying to get a hold of the subconscious mind to develop back towards the beginning. Humans are creatures of habit and whenever one just loses track and motivation for a second, their siren calls will try to lure you into old behaviors whose reminiscences are still lurking behind each screen, interaction, or working process.
And as if all of this wasn´t torture enough, it should come with personal development and vivisecting one´s personality, thoughts, memories, all these things that seemingly aren´t directly related to work, too. Because hidden in the chasms of each simulated reality lies the key to boosting the occupational performance even more by eliminating all the mental corpses of complexes, childhood traumas, anxieties, phobias,… As long they are not overcome, they keep holding one down, interrupting the workflow, reducing concentration, focus, the quality of sleep,… even changing the obvious problems won´t unleash the full potential.
A tip, after I´ve read a few of the most highly recommended DIY self brainwashing mind penetrating behavioral modification endeavor books for dummies, I´ve come to the conclusion that most of the theory, techniques, and schedules can easily be found during a longer google search, a Wikipedia or special wiki and Reddit, Quora walk, just using the essential keywords, bookmarking a few dozens to hundreds of pages of interest, copying the subjectively most essential and useful elements and still begin with the 1st law. But it would at least have cost you nothing.
It´s getting a bit anecdotally and subjective now, even personal (cause people seem to like that stuff for whatever reason) and, of course, misanthropic, so don´t be shy to stop reading here and saving time and eye power that could be focused on reading something profound. Seriously, I´ve warned you.
One of my main advantages is that I am naturally neurotic, a bit of still under control and productive, not negative elements of perfectionism, some might say soft OCD, but who listens to people, pedantic; a bit antisocial, and cold, rational, things very helpful when implementing new behavioral patterns because one doesn´t care about whatever other people think.
I am a bit biased here, because I have the, depending on the standpoint, positive or negative tendency to overachieve and excessively focus on one thing for weeks and months up to 12 or 14 hours a day, obsessive might be an understatement, let´s call it possession instead. Afterward, it´s often difficult to say how the final results, ideas, solutions paths developed, but conditioning oneself to combine focus and flow to hard fun and gamification, optional collaborative learning, yuck, might be a good alternative to just partying hard.
This leads me to the extroverts that might face massive deficits in this regard, as they have the unfortunate tendency to spent much unproductive time with other people, leading to excessive, exponentially growth of sympathy, friendship, contact, dangerous pheromones, endorphins, territorial alpha behavior,… manipulating logical thinking, in the worst case not just resulting in friendships, but love, relationships, and kids bringing the distraction in your home, permanently, reproducing and multiplying it and giving it names, all things that make one ineffective, cost time. So start avoiding people, feel cold, sad, and dead inside; and whenever you are doubting, compare what the introvert vs extrovert forever achieving score lists brings in comparison, all science and technical evolution that is human history vs all BS, war, extremism, tradition, all evil isms. Doesn´t an empty, lonely life seem a small price for helping primate progress? Don´t forget thanking me for ruining your socialization with these stupid tips, lol.
But seriously, social life is another prime example of habit, one becomes the people she/ he is in regular contact with and attracts more of these people, a dynamic one should not underestimate, and they all feed on you lifetime by craving for your attention, just compare how much one can get from articles and books in comparison to real life drivel filled with small talk, redundancies, errors,..., heck even the better memorization and internalization of content by social contact can be achieved with sophisticated learning techniques. To continue the isolationist standpoint (joke), it´s of course meanwhile absolutely unnecessary to make anything face to face and not in home office, VR, AR, psi transfer remote perception,... the technological singularity in general makes it more and more useless to leave the home castle.
Of course, nobody really knows exactly, so that all research can just be based on assumptions, theories, hypothesis,... that are mixed with actual braOf course, nobody really knows exactly, so that all research can just be based on assumptions, theories, hypothesis,... that are mixed with actual brain science, evolutionary psychology and well, large field studies. Just in theory, because no scientist gets the millions of funding to base her/his ideas on hard, provable facts so that we doubtfully enter the minefield of subjective assumptions.
The subject is fascinating both in humans and animals and how it may evolve in the future with our senses changing and how women's´ minds and their ability to select and choose may develop in combination with AR, VR, genetic testing ("Give me your probe or leave, I won´t waste time dating someone who is a potential horrible genetic match." "Yes, Ma´am." "Don´t call me that and where are you going?" "You said you wanted a sample of..." Not that, you perv idiot, just a saliva sample." "Oh, I see. Well, then..." "Not anymore!") and bio-digital fusion, is interesting.
Most of the book focuses on animal behavior and concludes that it have always been the females who made a species successful in preventing catastrophes by choosing carefully and mindfully. That might have been one of many reasons that evolution pimped brains and upgraded males, but Miller should have clearly differentiated that is was one of many, unknown driving forces and that is is impossible to name a clear favorite. To define horniness as the only motivation for art, science, charity, humor, interest in upbringing, humanities, everything, seems very far-fetched and I would say that many give a f*** (hoho, wordplay alert) and are just interested in the subject itself, not the groupies.
There are some funny theories, not related to this book but worth mentioning in this context, about that nature might tend to make more experiments with the intelligence of males because it might get fatal when women where, well, as dumb as some men. I don´t know any numbers and this is so close to gender racism that there might never be any long-term studies done, but I love the picture of a kind of Gaia entity who orchestrates all evolutions and thinks: "Doesn´t matter if many of the males are too stupid to survive, they aren´t important for the survival of the species, so I will instead fix the minimum intelligence for women to avoid problems." To get highly subjective, I have really met much more stupid men than women and about the same amount of both species, so maybe there is really something behind it, who knows, duh, "look, primary and secondary sexual characteristics, beer, sports and hordes of befriended males with lovely group dynamics, must go, it hardly ever ends in small disasters or world wars if we do that."
To take everything with a grain of salt and to not criticize authors who dare to risk to make hypotheses that could become true is important in this case. The problem might be that there are inherent dangers if one of those ideas gets too much media or even public attention and is misused or misinterpreted for one´s own agenda.
It´s ingenious by Miller to interpret models of society, politics, and economics depending on his thesis, and mind games integrating evolutionary biology and psychology in sociology and history could be played much more often than just the isolated historical, psychological or political interpretations alone. It also shows how unscientific especially political theory and economics are, how weak the foundations must be that it is so easy to reliably question and reinterpret them without the possibility to negate it. An expert can cherrypick parts of those theories and built whatever she/he wants out of them, make epic battle disses or praises. Try to do this with an engine or in medicine, it will explode or kill the patient.
It´s so funny that we eliminated natural selection and that now everybody is lying even more, because an ape or primitive human couldn´t fake smartness, success, etc. or get detailed tutorials by nasty pick-up artists and immoral personal coaches. No wonder women had to develop defense mechanisms against so much deception, falsehood, and virility. The best and most valid security for a women might be, as mentioned, gene tests, as long as males don´t have the option to manipulate their saliva, blood, etc. to seem fitter, but the evolutionary arms race of males trying to fake and delude women into mating may go on forever until we evolve into entities. And it might even continue then when it comes to creating new AIs. Why does anything in my reviews has to evolve to transhuman, superhuman, immortal status...
I am highly biased and tend to jay to evolutionary and to meh at psychology, but try to stay objective. I truly don´t write far too wordy and adjectively reviews to seem smart and attractive to potential female mating partners. Damn it, Miller debunked me. Sigh. By the way, now that it doesn´t matter anymore, I am a 35 year old Austrian...
Of course, all of our behavior, interactions with family, friends, and colleagues, love life,… is based on old primate group dynamics and Wright showsOf course, all of our behavior, interactions with family, friends, and colleagues, love life,… is based on old primate group dynamics and Wright shows all aspects of our existence under this aspect, including Darwinism and many great speculations about how the past could have shaped the present and how unaware we tend to be regarding our roots because of our ever so big, fancy brains.
Women and men The main motivations of male and female animal and human courtship behavior and its different short and long time motivations are described in witty and thought-provoking detail and one might find oneself with the one or the other „That´s it.“ while reading.
Birth of ethics and moral It´s such a tricky question to say at which stage of development an animal has the intelligence and empathy to be able to anticipate the feelings of other gang members and if morality should be seen as an element that is just possible under those requirements. As long as instincts, no higher thinking and cruel, but for the survival of the pack essential, group dynamics are the driving forces of the brain, talking about true evil spirit and all higher emotions, in general, would be a bit far-fetched.
Chimp dictator vs bonobo hippies But in chimps and in us, there are so many examples of thresholds, conflicting biological and sociological structures, and close to impossible to solve mind games. For instance, the chimps organized their society like a dictatorship, which enabled them to fight wars against other groups of chimps and to keep the population docile. That´s the reason why the peaceful bonobos have no chance against chimps, just as a pacifistic state has no chance against a warmongering god-emperor.
Technology changes the game forever But as soon as culture, technology, and civilization kick in, the old structures of power that enable the rise to world domination become dysfunctional and do more harm to the whole state than a change to democratic, fair, and sustainable government and economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_D... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_H... Those states build their inner stability, education, welfare systems,… on the softy ideas of fairness, collegiality, sharing, and morality instead of technocratic or sick ideologic principles. It seems, as if there is an emancipated, progressive, open-minded government, the people are, gosh, happy!
Wrights progressivity rocks Wright has written 3 of the, highly subjective, most inspiring, and important books I´ve ever read and I couldn´t choose which one to prefer; the description of the origins of faith in the evolution of god in The Evolution of God, one of the best descriptions of how to build a better society in Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment or this marvel of showing how primitive we are thanks to the core of our physiology and it´s hairy history.
What would we be without our cognitive biases producing replication crisis The dark side of evolutionary biology/psychology is that other biased journalists, authors, politicians,… can easily use it to make their papers, ideologies, economic five-year-plan, fit to whatever they want, entering the realm of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replica.... That´s a huge problem of many fields of science, but the worst collateral damage is the deliberate misinterpretations of authors who clearly define their ideas as theories, which brings entire fields of knowledge in disrepute, culminating in the danger of nobody daring to publish new, interesting hypothesis.
Utilitarianism in forms like in Scandinavia is nice, but if the selfless genes are unable to perform right because of the negative, epigenetic pressure in failed states and dictatorships. Nothing can help except to rebuild those societies from the scratch.
It´s interesting, if one gets a score of over 90 percent or even, let´s just say, hm 98,8 percent, the person would say that this is close to absoluteIt´s interesting, if one gets a score of over 90 percent or even, let´s just say, hm 98,8 percent, the person would say that this is close to absolute. No matter if it is a test, a comparison or whatever. But as soon as it goes like "You know, those missing 1,2 percent are the difference between you and a sh$§trhowing chimpanzee, the person goes like WTF and so on. So, as I always say, we are naked apes and each emotional and brain reaction that is explored in monkeys gives deep insights into our collective and individual nature. The knowledge could lead to a better social design from international organizations to small villages with just a hand full of houses.
Checklists are great, so let´s put monkeys vs humans on a kind of partner finding match list with the same interest. Violent without reason against the own people which harms the whole society? Check. Manipulate and lie around anything that comes just a mile close so some sexy time? Done. The tendency to despotism, genocide and determination wars? Getting closer to a full match. Same emotional reactions concerning love, fear, hate, etc? Got it, monkey owned. Excuse me, but could someone please explain the difference to me again? I mean, even the throwing sh$3 thing seems to be matching, be it verbally or in some rare cases, ahem.
Both the neurological and social development are so closely related that the functioning systems kept growing inside our heads and got probably a little bit modified regarding impulse control, subtleness and intelligence, but nature didn´t change much in this running system. Take away food, shelter and punishment and we are again where we were millions of years ago, extremely dangerous group raiders with an integrated attitude to madness. This is especially funny, because there are no lesser intelligent animals, especially biological very similar mammals, that have the same rate of lunatics that naturally occur because something like a human brain can´t be constructed or civilized without some damage. When there are millions of rabbits, deer, mice or cows, their behavioral anomalies are so few compared to when one puts a few million people together in one place.
One implication is, that like bonobos and chimpanzees, human society has different attitudes depending on the social structure. And as both humans and monkeys keep evolving, many new variants may grow out of the few concepts with the main difference that humans could form an environment for many experiments and plentiful family and social structures instead of the few monocultures we see today. With each acceptable ideology, that doesn´t include harming, discriminating or erasing other groups, many experiments would be possible with volunteer groups of environmentalists, futurists, etc. that want to try out something new. How to prevent them from going the way of sects and extremists might be a tricky topic, but at least the indoctrinated way of how to live would fall apart.
A huge misuse of anthropomorphism has been the tendency to think that we great humans should project our superior properties onto other, "lower" animals instead of considering that it might be that many animals are much smarter, complex and emotional than we thought or wanted to think. Just because human communication got overcomplicated with language, mimics and stuff that doesn´t mean that communications that are based on smell, varying sounds or just hormones aren´t as good, effective and a sign of higher intelligence instead of just instincts, as thought for a long time. With the help of neuroscience and biological markers, the truth can be shown. Tragically, the bad and wrong science of the past was used to discriminate animals and other humans that were both deemed inferior.
The work is primarily focused on apes, but let´s think about other animals, for instance, pigs, cows and chicken or, if they are on the dinner table and the imagination is too irritating, dolphins, octopi, crows, well, anything that has the intelligence and/ or social life to feel. And here comes the cornucopia of ethical, philosophical and sociological questions regarding both our connection to and behavior regarding many animals. Let´s say a scientist would find out or has already found out a long time ago that especially the tortured animals in the meat factories have not just more complex feelings and higher intelligence than supposed but understand the whole context of their situation at each moment.
The work of this outstanding author should be read and spread by everybody, because it opens new, interdisciplinary fields of both natural sciences and humanities and leads to a better understanding of both real and human nature and could help to stop repeating the construction errors and behaving like aggressive alpha males after a few million years of a wild, human adolescence and become adult and wise instead.
Finally, let´s try a self-test that is prooving all theories right. Look, I made this funny, for the sake of your mental sanity censored, list of emotions that would completely control me with full intensity if I wouldn´t be such a highly developed, smart super-duper alpha predator (meditation and mindfulness really help a tiny little bit): bored, stressed, happy, hungry, evil, scared, tired, excited, hungry again, dishonest, sensitive,...
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real-life outside books:
The book covers a very wide range of topics, from the description of legal and illegal synthesized drugs, natural drugs, history of drug use, and it´sThe book covers a very wide range of topics, from the description of legal and illegal synthesized drugs, natural drugs, history of drug use, and it´s influence on human evolution and history.
Alternative ideas of how something might have developed are always interesting and in this case, two interesting questions come to mind. First how the whole human and before primate evolution, biochemistry, neurological functions, brain development, etc., might have been shaped by coincidence or by consciously consuming certain herbs, plants, berries, mushrooms, etc and second, how this might have influenced the development of all kind of faiths and beliefs.
You are what you eat, even if you are just a tiny rodent. That gets more interesting with bigger mammals and very exciting with primates, because a few hundred or thousands of years of consuming, especially during pregnancy, might have some impact. Much fresh seafood mixed with some vegetables and barely any red meat is something different than much carbohydrates, etc. That´s just the normal food and as everyone interested in what is the best fuel for ones´ engine knows, much depends on it.
And now take ten thousand or even more years in which apes and human ancestors consume certain mushrooms, herbs, fruits, weed, etc., just because of its effects on the mood or the hallucinations or, most probably, as many animals do, instinctively with a not understood sense or if certain health problems occur and they have memorized the cure. Or just because they wanna get high, probably it´s one of the many reasons why we are so weird.
A key element of faith might be that both, drugged shaman, witch doctor, god-emperor, whatever, and the believers experience real hallucinations, highs or, in the case of not so hard stuff, euphory and extreme happiness. No matter if they get secretly drugged by the shamans before a session or the witch doctor floats the room with psychoactive smoke, if they take it together in a ritual, they get welded together by this experience. Founders of sects could find many inspirations by getting high and getting in contact with whatever their already damaged, possibly already mentally ill and sober voice-hearing and vision seeing, minds wanted to imagine. This was often combined with climbing very high mountains, which gives extra weakening to the brain by a lack of oxygen so that the sh** can kick in like hell.
The future development can be used for boosting health and longevity by improving the nourishment of the body with as much precious and not hallucinogenic elements of all holy and healthy herbs from around the world, a kind of organic wonder powder from dozens or even hundreds of everything the planet can provide. The options for pimping epigenetics and brain development are the bigger topic, because they may lead to different brain evolutions, depending on what a culture, nation or government prefers to feed to its citizens. Of course, that´s already happening with each traditional diet.
Some questions kept rotating in my drug hating mind (works best when sober, although the brain is a vicious traitor who intrigues against us, look, a beer commercial, damn it ):
Did some civilizations destroy themselves by overuse of drugs? How do natural substances and all those new food chemicals react with each other, let´s say a dietary mix of natural food with many ingredients, pure industry food with many additives and chemicals and some psychoactive substances out of both categories? What could genetic engineering make possible, like combining the positive or mind-altering aspects in one single plant? A cancer-preventing superweed that makes the memory better, helps to stay slim, growing muscles without exercising, hulking out,… What surprising results may the interdisciplinary field of ethnobiology find in the future both about our past development and the coming influences of what we are consuming right now, looking at you, eating or high reader. What about medical and therapeutical applications?
Mario the lone bookwolf
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