Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)
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McKenna writes: "A shaman is someone who swims in the same ocean as the schizophrenic, but the shaman has thousands and thousands of years of sanctioned technique and tradition to draw upon. In a traditional society, if you exhibited “schizophrenic” tendencies, you are immediately drawn out of the pack and put under the care and tutelage of master shamans. You are told: “You are special. Your abilities are very central to the health of our society. You will cure. You will prophesy. You will guide our society in its most fundamental decisions.”" [0]
[0]: http://www.scribd.com/doc/12470230/Eros-and-the-Eschaton-rou...
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_construction_of_schizop...
As someone that society has basically forgotten about, realizing that I won't be useful has recently crushed me.
I would not presume to speak for schizophrenics. My quirks are bad, but not that. But the welfare of a person is greatly improved by the feeling that they'll be useful.
Deluding yourself into thinking you're useful is much easier when there aren't external forces making it entirely clear that this is false. I can see that in a society without too much coercion, people with problems would be much happier simply because they aren't called out to prove themselves on a daily basis.
I say "called out" rather than "asked," because it fits much better. The feeling that you have to do something very important is so pervasive. If you're not doing that, then what are you doing?
Which is why it feels like you're called out to prove you're useful, rather than requested.
I hypothesize that in a society that doesn't do that, schizophrenics' welfare would be much improved.
And especially with medication, it can be manageable. John Nash, for example.
He claims he was able to eventually rationally reject all delusions and voices.
Actually schizophrenics in the developing world do significantly better than those in the US. That said, McKenna's models of shamanism weren't actually valid across cultures -- shamans actually played completely different roles in different societies.
Of course, the flip-side was that those with mental illnesses (or other disabilities) who had no family would generally have a miserable existence.
Edit: the equivalent I've found here in the West has been Evangelical churches. I strongly suspect some of the 'prophet' or otherwise 'specially anointed' characters to be (mildly?) schizophrenic.
This is a form of coercion in and of itself. And as there's no such thing as prophecy, or magical cures, it turns out to be a profoundly unhelpful kind of coercion, both for the "shaman" and the society in general.
Isn't that quite a strong claim?
It seems fair that an assertion offered without proof can be dismissed without proof.
I'm schizotypal myself and I can say those methods of coping with this have not helped me at all. By now, I understand most of my paranormal thoughts are just windows into the unconcious mind. I think that having a centuries old tradition of identifying and using these thoughts would have helped me better than talking to psychiatrists that don't have the slightest clue about what goes on in my mind.
Probably because a scientific framework of mind exists which you have access to, which allows you to accept that what goes on in your mind doesn't always correspond to reality. In a shamanistic society, you might still be led to believe you had magic powers, and that it was all real, and that you had to follow certain rituals to purify yourself or to interpret the signs from the gods, or whatever. Is that useful? Do shamans really know anything more about what's going on in a person's mind than doctors?
Both are coercive, though, which was my point. "Non-coercive" societies are still coercive, they just draw the lines in different places than modern societies do.
My initial point was just that there's probably a big number of cases of mental illness in traditional societies that we can't diagnose because our ways of coping with these are so different that they manifest in completely different ways.
What if these voices are reflective of the emotional state of the people around them, as this quote suggests?
In that case, that is a kind of "magic", a special ability only you possess, that is real, and if you followed certain rituals your own emotional state could stabilise to such a point where you have the ability to detect what people are feeling.
And if this is true, then yes, a shaman would know more about what's going on in a person's mind than a doctor.
If you close your eyes, it doesn't mean the world isn't real. Just because you can't see something with the scientific framework, yet, does not mean it cannot be true.
Anyway, I don't see what coercion has got to do with shaman's in particular. There was plenty of people captured as slaves, in conflicts between prehistoric tribes, and that's a lot more coercion happening than in a schizophrenic being picked out as a shaman. There's probably less mental illness in prehistoric societies, because people probably didn't care much about a slave going crazy, it's likely unsurprising that happens, and you just kill them off.
I think coercion comes in cycles. Just after U.S. independence from Britain was probably less coercion than before U.S. independence. Today there is probably more coercion in U.S. than in 1850. There is less coercion today in Shanghai than in 1960, but probably more than in 1925.
We've internalized a world of psychic war and we see nothing but liabilities. If we had the same reverence for wackos that we do for other victims we may be far better off. The wackos certainly would be. Is that coercion? Can you see anything else?
But i'm arguing specifically against the shamanistic point of view in the gp. Should we treat mental illness exactly the same as any other? Absolutely. The stigma behind mental illness, I believe, is a vestige from the days when most people thought such things were the work of demons. People can't accept that someone who thinks and sees the world so differently is just as human as they are. But reverence? No. Being told that you've been touched by God can be a prison of its own.
Real schizophrenia is a hell of paranoia and anxiety and I doubt anyone with a severe case could heal or make art or any of the other things a traditional shaman might do.
"Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann found that voice-hearing experiences of people with serious psychotic disorders are shaped by local culture – in the United States, the voices are harsh and threatening; in Africa and India, they are more benign and playful." http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/july/voices-culture-luhrm...
To end with a somewhat more positive note, the late Oliver Sacks has written beautifully and with great sympathy and humanity about his brother's battle with schizophrenia - I think it's mainly in his "chemical memoir" Uncle Tungsten. I've often wished that he wrote a whole book on the subject but I guess it hit a little too close to home for him.
Absolutely... there's an incoherence to true (not armchair diagnosed) schizophrenia. The mind falls apart.
Traditional shamans and modern ones like McKenna himself might hold ideas that some might find irrational, but their thought patterns are coherent and their reasoning ability is there. They're lucid and can think. McKenna's brilliant wordsmithing is the polar opposite of what you see with degenerative mental illness.
That is to say that shamanic rituals and such might be a way to prevent those on the cusp of the classical symptoms of schizophrenia from progressing to full-blown schizophrenia.
That's not an argument to avoid therapy or medication, far from it, but at the very least it's should make one pause and think about finding a balance between 'fixing the person with the issues to fit in his current environment' and 'finding an environment/approach for that person to be happy with their issues'. Too often I feel that we err on the side of 'fixing'.
It reminds me a bit of the way bloodletting was once a solution to many things. Turns out that it often made things worse, and only in specific cases actually helps. Let's try to not make that same mistake.
(Also, more recently I've experienced this phenomenon personally, and I notice the same thing. The more I focus on 'fixing' or 'fitting in', the worse I'm off and the worse my problems are. On the other hand, the more I focus on finding a way to be accepted as I am, the better I am able to actually counteract my problems')
Some of my mental health stuff was rooted in being molested at age 3 or 4. I suppressed those memories until I was in therapy on a different continent, and thus felt safe enough to deal with it. Prior to that, there were clues to the suppressed memories in the form of bad dreams and bizarre thoughts.
I kept a dream journal while in therapy. I still find that talking about my dreams or recording them is useful, yet I have had people tell me "dreams are just gibberish and do not mean anything." These are often smart people who basically swear on a stack of scientific books that they are driven by logic (or well-educated Christians, who fail to see the hypocrisy and irony).
In short, I have been in situations where the truth was so unacceptable to other people that it created mental blocks in me. So, I feel very strongly that dismissing another person's reality is literally crazy-making.
" I once was lucky enough to spend time in an Egyptian village in the late 1970s, before technology or even electric lights had arrived there. One of the villagers had long, impassioned conversations with people no one else could see. He also had a way of seeing through everyone’s pretensions. He could tell jokes no one else could get away with.
Village life was not utopia. It was difficult in many ways. But this one man, who would almost certainly be diagnosed with schizophrenia if he lived in the developed world, had a secure, safe place in his village. He could wander the wide-ranging mysteries his perceptions opened to him, and if he forgot to feed himself along the way, sooner or later someone would feed him and give him a gentle push toward the door of his home.
Contrast his life with that of a typical client in a mental-health agency in Seattle. I remember one man, early in my training, who gave me the most baffled, hurt look when he asked me, “Why do people on the radio lie to us?”
“I can tell that the woman who’s talking about Macy’s isn’t really happy,” he went on, “but she’s pretending to be happy. Why?”
He felt injured by the woman’s lies, and I could see why, because he had a point. He was accurately perceiving the incongruence in her voice. All of the lying we do to each other in the name of advertising can’t be good for us. But most of us, whose brains aren’t quite as strongly bathed in dopamine in certain places where my client’s brain was constantly overstimulated, can tune advertising out. He couldn’t. "
It's from a fascinating article: http://crosscut.com/2014/05/our-indiviualist-society-breeds-...
But then there are also people like Philip K. Dick, no "armchair diagnosed" schizophrenic.
This might again raise the old issue of whether there are really multiple things we call schizophrenia.
My life experience strongly biases me towards believing that how it gets handled absolutely makes a difference ("it" = any mental health issue).
Makes me think of Wesley Willis [1] who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and found the only way he could manage it was by making music. Just such a sad and shitty disease.
...or create an OS?
Secondly, I think the general professional narrative about those accounts is that those shamans were schizotypal, and that severe marginalization of the schizophrenic population is a cross-cultural phenomena.
Every culture has its idea of what is acceptable, including what's acceptable magical or religious thinking (we don't think that Christians who pray to Jesus for cancer relief, whether effective or not, are schizophrenic). But if you step outside of those realms, you will be mistreated. If you tell Christians that you have a personal relationship with Jesus, they'll think that's normal. If you tell them that you actually hear the voice of Jesus, they'll be conspiculously polite but suspicious.
I am not advocating for coercion being a good things, but manipulating a person to do something is not the same as guiding them down a path that has been generally beneficial for the majority, like going to school.
Possibly unpopular opinion: school is not negotiable for children and so there's no guiding. It's pure coercion.
Also, there's no popular alternative to school so that we can compare enough data and prove that school is beneficial. Unschooling exists and seems to healthier, efficient and beneficial compared to school but there's just not enough data.
School was a great alternative at a time when it was the only place to get information. This is no longer true.
I am not that smart - it's just that standard schooling is terribly inefficient. And if you ask me, it's inefficient in this respect because it's not really about learning. It's about keeping kids somewhere while their parents go to work - so that more value can be extracted from the working population. Oh and also about teaching the children to be good little employees.
There are lot's of things which are non-negotiable for children. Things like brushing teeth, going to bed and washing hands after toilet. All of which have some intrinsic value beyond tradition.
Coercion is the action or practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats.. There are other means of guiding children to do something. These include gentle reminders, routines and and just agreement.
And, yes, coercion as well, when all other things fail. Hopefully not that much.
If a child goes routinely to school I would not call this an action under coercion, unless the child has learned e.g. that he needs to go to school so he does not turn into a destitute when he grows up.
"School was a great alternative at a time when it was the only place to get information. This is no longer true."
I don't think there ever was time when "school was the only place to get information". I would claim this is location based (if true even then). I.e. rural villages with low rate of literacy vs. a literate society with access to books.
Or, in pre-literate societies, just having access to a sufficient number of people would probably provide a venue for some information access.
Besides, providing information is not the only function a school has. My kid internalizes all math he is taught immediately and combines all new facts he learns into a logically cohesive model of the world which he has structured in his head.
However, he does need to learn how to live in a society and how to work with other people and school provides a good place for that.
I'm actually young enough to remember what school looked like and I'm sure as hell many of the kids wouldn't attend if they didn't know that they are going to be forced by their parents or the nanny state anyway.
To simplify the situation let's claim that children do not go to school unless prompted by their parents. This is then an influence attempt by the parent to make the child follow with their directives.
Such an attempt has usually three possible outcomes: commitment, compliance or conflict.
Just because coercion can be used as an influence tactic does not mean it's always necessary to do so. Also, it seldom leads to the most preferred outcome (commitment).
The point was - not all influence tactics can be categorized as coercion - not that the hypothetical child would not need external influence to attend school.
They also have the power to rip a child from their parents. This is biologically a very serious threat.
If the higher level goal for a state is to make people follow the law, then starting with violent coercion is a stupid influence tactic. There are other influence tactics as well.
But, if the culture is such that coercive tactics take precedence then I suppose you can have a point. I would not start to unravel this by deregulating schooling but by fixing the habits and culture of the executive personnel, though.
If you happen to live near a Sudbury school, I recommend checking it out for your child.
While, ironically, labeling some children's inability to accept and tolerate such conditions as ("treatable!!") pathology.
A human child who grows knowing herself, knowing how to determine what's important to her, knowing how to meet her own goals, knowing her own value, and knowing how to gain support and resources to achieve what's important, is very difficult to control or "guide."
There are very few institutions which support gaining such knowledge, like democratic schools. Public schools do not.
I'm not against differentials in salary. But I do think that our present system is completely messed up.
And yes, even if mental illness is rooted in biology , we know that some environments cause it to manifest and some environments don't , and since we cannot change biology (and drugs are a very poor solution to such problems ) this means , at least that a big part of the solution is environmental change.
Perhaps these sometimes result from what might be described as coercion, but I think that to characterize, for example, the problem of parents who physically abuse their children as one of coercion misses the point. Coercion is a catch all, and in many cases coercion does not result in stress, trauma, etc.
That and holy shit, when did basing arguments on the notion of the noble savage come back in style?
When did it leave?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Statistical_Clas...
Homosexuality was removed from ICD 10. ICD 10 was created in about 1983 - 1990
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Statistical_Clas...
Individual countries may be using their own definitions. EG US uses DSM.
DSM included homosexuality in the first version published in about 1952, but it was scrutinised early and homosexuality was removed from DSM in 1973.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality#Psychology
Things like conversion therapy have been weirdly hard to stop, even with clear advice from professional bodies and regulators that it's probably harmful and has no evidence of efficacy or usefulness.
We're going too fast, the brain and human spirit is hopelessly complex, and it takes a holistic, humanistic treatment that doesn't reduce the patient to a set of symptoms to make a change. A book I recommend concerning this is "The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat" by neurologist Oliver Sacks.
I'm not sure what you could call emotional impact to make a similarly pithy description though.
However, it's also a society that maintained high levels of family and clan based organization which counterbalance the atomization and individuality that you see in modern "Washington Consensus" societies.
I highly recommend "The Search for Modern China" if you are truly interested in thinking about these things in context. It's very pleasing and readable.
Modern China isn't as straightforwardly authoritarian as you might want to compare against.
North Korea might be a better choice.
How many great people did we lose because they weren't 'compliant' enough to conform properly? I can sure think of a few.
Secondly, I wouldn't underestimate the amount of coercion that was going on in the past. Sustenance farmers probably didn't feel much direct coercion (besides the days when the nobility showed up to collect their dues), they were just mostly scared of going hungry. But factory workers in the early Industrial Revolution? Miners before, during and after that? Militaries of various times? If coercion causes mental illness, it should be reflected in the historical records. It's probably worth checking.
Don't forget about the Inquisition. Most people hear that and think of the burning of witches and heretics, but that institution alone had a much wider array of non lethal punishments for all sort of behaviors considered "undesirable".
I have been in the Inquisition museum at the city of Guanajuato during the holidays, and they had a remarcable number of painful or even midly unconfortable artifacts that got used on people doing the pre-modern equivalent of littering. Victims would not face lasting harm, but the judicious infliction of pain plus public humiliation [1] was enough to keep them toeing the line more often than not.
[1] A remarkable example was a sort of iron flute. It was heavy and it had manacles for both hands and neck so that the transgressor would be forced in position as if playing it. They would attach it to the victims and send them back home for a few days to reflect on their sins, which was alteration of public order, or "wild partying".
While valuable to look at, these agrarian and proto industrial societies also had large amounts of coercion.
As I read the other posts I see too many people wanting to T/F this thesis whereas I think it real value is as a critical tool to examine societies and the minds that have to learn to live in them.
I recently discovered I have a mutation which makes my verbal intelligence too high to measure but has negative effects in other areas. Other people have similar variations.
Some kinds of mental illness such as schizophrenia seem very much to be a biological phenomenon, but stress and particularly the way stress is structured has a definite negative effect on the origin. You can become stronger and more capable in many areas by applying stress in the right way (athletic and military training, for instance), but stress without time to recover has negative effects on body and mind and certainly surplus coercion leads to surplus stress.
I agree that the real culprit is stress-- biological differences to processing and coping with stress are likely the actual mechanism at play rather than generalized "coercion" like the article suggests without providing evidence. Our society is intensely stressful, and provides no real permanent reductions in stress level.
I am hetero at SNP rs1800497.
I'm not seeing it. Curious to find a reference with more info.
When you say hetero, I would guess you mean (C;T) which doesn't look that rare, i'm guessing i'm misunderstanding.
It seems contradictory to first note problems in defining insanity and then make a claim of vast "verbal intelligence", a quality a bit further out on the fringes of psychology definition.
In our society we suspect people to have mental illnesses but it takes years to get a good diagnoses and sometimes they never get a clear one.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Sleep-There-are-Snakes/dp/18466...
or indeed, any context. It's a fabulous book about the good and bad in societies untouched by civilization, and about one man's attempts to understand a language with no reference points. And his struggle with his Christian mission, ending up in his atheism. It's got everything, and would make a great film.
Is it possible that people stricken by serious mental illness in these societies simply die? I have some experience with mental illness and I can see how someone 'out of their mind' could easily die young when exposed to the elements.
I don't have direct evidence, but I believe the mortality rate in rural / isolated societies is higher than in more cultivated societies.
They're generally heavy on beliefs and light on science, but empirical evidence suggest that they might be right.
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ed-stamm-and-others-c...