The psychotic breakdown of the West LINK FIXED

[UndercoverElephant]

I have just posted an article on my website/blog. I have a new book coming out -- it is now finished, and being edited, and hopefully will come out early next year. The article, and the book, views the collapse of civilisation as a society-level version of the sort of psychotic breakdown experienced by many individuals as the reality of collapse becomes undeniable to them. Myself included, although for me that was a very long time ago.

https://www.geoffdann.co.uk/the-psychot ... n-society/

[BritDownUnder]

I am getting gibberish when i click that link. Not that I suggest you write gibberish but see below.

Looks like a programming language designed to put young people off learning programming languages.

function wpss_get_ckf(e){var t=document.cookie.split(";");for(var s in t)if(t.hasOwnProperty(s))if(-1!=t[s].indexOf(e+"="))return decodeURIComponent(t[s].split("=")[1]);return""}function wpss_set_ckf(e,t,s,n,i,_){var c=new Date;c.setTime(c.getTime()),s&&(s=1e3*s*60*60*24);var r=new Date(c.getTime()+s);document.cookie=e+"="+escape(t)+(s?";expires="+r.toGMTString():"")+(n?";path="+n:"")+(i?";domain="+i:"")+(_?";secure":"")}function wpss_init_ckf(){var e=wpss_get_ckf("JCS_INENREF"),t=wpss_get_ckf("JCS_INENTIM"),s=new Date,n=s.getTime(),i=document.referrer;e||wpss_set_ckf("JCS_INENREF",i,1/24,"/"),t||wpss_set_ckf("JCS_INENTIM",n,1/24,"/")}wpss_init_ckf();jQuery(document).ready(function($){var f="form[method='post']";$(f).submit(function(){$("<input>").attr("type","hidden").attr("name","WP55T3S7XJS2").attr("value","7H5W8K53HX").appendTo(f);return true;})});

[UndercoverElephant]

I am getting gibberish when i click that link. Not that I suggest you write gibberish but see below.

Please try again.

https://www.geoffdann.co.uk/the-psychot ... n-society/

[Ralphw2]

Old folks these days don't even recognise Javascript when they see it (hopefully it is javascript, I am a bit rusty )

[UndercoverElephant]

Old folks these days don't even recognise Javascript when they see it (hopefully it is javascript, I am a bit rusty )

Time for a new website for me. Wordpress is just too much of a pain in the backside, and I need to completely rethink my website anyway. I am moving to Squarespace.

I'd be interested in your thoughts on the article.

[Ralphw2]

OK I have read the piece, and of course I agree with the problem, that Western civilization and now global civlization is in deep overshoot and doing irreversible damage to the planet and biodiversity etc. In your classification I definitely fall into the "eliminative materialists", and as such I have problems with your use of terms like psychosis. I also find your right brain left brain model disappointingly out of date in this discussion. I see what we experience as consciousness as 'simply' the monitoring , interpretation and categorization programming routines that have evolved in the neural pathways of our brains. We evolved as social animals, so developing a theory of mind was an essential element of that. Our consciousness grew exponentially as we developed language, when we combined theory of mind with self awareness to learn that particular sounds, signs or gestures had particular meanings which we shared with other humans around us. Many aspects of all this is new programmed into our genes, but as we prospered, more and more of this became cultural, passed down from generation to generation.
have
A popular theory of mind back in the 90s was that of cultural memes, which are described as the virtual equivalent of genes, atoms of cultural belief that exist, spread, evolve and eventually die out in our brains in analogy to computer viruses or more accurately automatons in a computer game of life. groups of memes that are sufficiently self -reinforcing build up and become cultures, and eventually civilizations. Ones that are net beneficial to their hosts survive, ones that are in the long term detrimental either evolve or go extinct. I like this model, even if the term meme itself has evolved to be mean something very much more banal.

There is no doubt that we live in a civilisation based on a set of memes that have now become deeply mal-adaptive to us, their hosts. We need to develop new memes, new stories, new theories of mind if you prefer, which will lead us humans to behave in a less destructive and suicidal way. Our monitoring circuits (rational thoughts) are increasingly at odds with the memes that we have learned , absorbed, and fixed in our memories as children. There is strong evidence that the ages 6 to 10 are critical to the setting of beliefs and philosophies of life in the growing mind, and are hard to shift after this age. This conflict is what you call psychosis, I still to steer away from terms which imply a physiological (chemical) imbalance in the brain.

The problem is that civilisation scale memes are as sophisticated as real material viruses and have attack strategies and defensive mechanisms to prevent them from being eradicated from their host brains, triggering physiological feedback in the form of emotions, fear, anger etc., when necessary. Religions are very good at this, especially the ones eternally judged to be cults.

I have watched my adopted children grow up, very different genetically from me, with very different early life experiences , trauma, neurodivergent traits, and what is externally described as mental illnesses. My younger one was clearly on a very different level of comprehension from the age of 3, although we only got society to recognise her as autistic (as a convenient label ) at the age of 16. She now lives in an almost entirely emotional level, where her behaviour is almost entirely dictated by her physiological state, even though she can and often does talk entirely rationally and with enormous self-awareness and empathy and insight into the brains of other people.

My elder child could not have been more different, distant, angry, sometimes violent, apparently with illogical thought processes, using very formal and old fashioned language , yet asking insightful philosophical questions from teenage years. Now living more or less independently, and showing a moral code of behaviour and self awareness my father would have been associated with, even if still struggling with ADHD and probably autism.

My own state of mind is currently passive. I still claim to care about the future direction of the human species, but I see no way of avoiding collapse. I chose to adopt in stead of procreate, and hoped to pass on my understanding and cares to my children. Unfortunately I ended up with two young minds who, through no fault of their own, are not capable of hosting the memes I wish to preserve. I have recently been through another medical phase of our inevitable slow decline, during which I was in too much pain for serious throught. I only have two surviving bleod relatives, and I am not physically or emotionally close to either. My brother was probably the single human being who I was the most mentally attuned to , we rarely spoke because we didn't need to, we were so similar that we automatically understood what was important. I miss him deeply. I live my life on the simple level of tread lightly on the earth, or as lightly as my current social and physical needs allow.

Please excuse my erratic typing, my vision isn't what it was before my (2nd) detatched retina,

[UndercoverElephant]

Thankyou for the feedback. Yes, it does sound like you're in the eliminative materialist camp, and the book I have written has potential readers like you in mind. It is a very detailed attempt to convince you that something is fundamentally wrong with the way you are looking at this, but I will not attempt to go into any more details about that in this thread. There's a reason why it took 83,000 words to explain.

However, one thing I must respond to is this:

I also find your right brain left brain model disappointingly out of date in this discussion.

I am very much up to date on this. You need to read this book: https://www.DODGY TAX AVOIDERS.co.uk/Master-His-Emi ... 0300188374

I believe the author of this book is closer to understanding the true nature of the problems with the Western world than any other public figure, and his theory about how the brain works is central. I think he's hit the nail straight on the head, with a sledgehammer. He had to leave academia to write it. Academia is part of the problem. Too many gatekeepers. Same with Jem Bendell.

[BritDownUnder]

Old folks these days don't even recognise Javascript when they see it (hopefully it is javascript, I am a bit rusty )

Nothing wrong with visual basic in my opinion. That stuff gave me nightmares about trying to learn C.

I can't really comment on the blog. A bit out of my intellectual plane. I am accustomed to Maths and Ohms Law and copper conductors.

[Ralphw2]

it is a set of subroutines to manipulate cookies stored on the browser. I think they set the last viewed timestamp for the web page. Pretty routine stuff. No one is ever going to employ me again to do this stuff, with the state of my eyes and my decades out of date knowledge of IT systems

[UndercoverElephant]

it is a set of subroutines to manipulate cookies stored on the browser. I think they set the last viewed timestamp for the web page. Pretty routine stuff. No one is ever going to employ me again to do this stuff, with the state of my eyes and my decades out of date knowledge of IT systems

I hated that job. Everybody thought I had a great job, because I was paid a decent wage to program flight simulators and travel round the world. I was made redundant aged 34 and decided to go to university to study philosophy instead of looking for another job. I had absolutely no idea where that would lead me (nowhere, I suspected, but didn't care). It was the right decision.