Neurohacking & The Myth of Mental Illness

Why does it seem as though there are more ‘Normal’ people with some kind of sickness than there are ‘healthy’ people with some kind of greatness?

Why has this become our frame of reference, that we as a majority have tended not to address our Health unless as a reactive measure to address an emergent Sickness?

As with all things, the causal dynamics of any problem are found in the sources and perpetuation of the software and hardware that support the paradigm associated with it.

One such deep probable cause of this has been our tendency in science to analyze much more than we synthesize, because, in our current state, analysis comes more naturally.

This trend comes from, and is perpetuated by, both internal and external sources.

In an earlier evolved part of our brain called the amygdala(the emotional processing center), where all information from our sensorimotor systems passes through before entering the cortex & neocortex for more complex processing of information(consideration), our brain deletes, generalizes, and distorts information, based on our beliefs, pre-considerations, and preferences, all the complexities of our reality to create an abstraction of what might be going on, and be useful for us to know at any given moment. So the degree to which we have a relaxed & ready awareness determines the degree to which we will process and utilize, in our creativity, the complex information we take in on a daily basis.

This was very useful back on the plains of the African Savannah where paying rapt attention to each and every sound in the night was what allowed you to be part of the next day. Though it may seem that this part of us has passed its due date, the amygdala, as our pain/pleasure centre, still serves us incredibly important and integral processes, such as giving us our sense of intuition and emotional empathy.

All of this said, this can leave very little room for creativity and synthesis of fundamentally better realities if it is the case that we are in a constant state of ‘Fight or flight’ vs ‘rest and repair’, which has been the case for most of our history!

When you have a more relaxed state it enables the higher level processes of your cortex to be activated, such as complex thinking, creativity, and empathy.

This state of our being has caused us to have a scarcity/fear based mindset, creating from that space our psychological diagnostics manual,

“An authoritative volume that defines and classifies mental disorders”,

~ DSM-5 (Newest Volume)

which has over 300 states it describes as ‘Unhealthy‘ and only one definition as ‘Healthy‘.

So as you can see, this “Myth”(Collectively Held Story), a kind of collective mental illness, has been a self-perpetuating device for keeping our attention and focus on what is wrong, as opposed to what could be great.

For more on The Myths we need to survive. -Yuval Noah Harari (Youtube: 1h:27m)

For more on The Myth of Mental Illness. – Bruce Poulsen Ph.D

In short, our approach to Traditional Medicine, and actually pretty well all of science, has been much more reactive than proactive, and therefore has contained much more information and analysis than creativity and synthesis, which is the thing that leads us to the emergence of a fundamentally greater Qualia(quality of life).

One way to sum it up:

“A for-profit health care system does not lend itself to thriving physical and psychological well-being for everyone.”

Daniel Schmachtenberger, New Economics Series: Part III

We can intuitively feel that healthcare should be more about the proactive resourcefulness of us as a people, rather than the reactive nature of the scarcity/fear based mindset.

For a long time, the traditional reactive approach to health has had a strong-arm grip on our minds. But within the past decade, a new field and paradigm has emerged from its state as a fringe cult and is becoming the new social norm as the answer to the EPQ:

How can we radically enhance the state of our well-being?

Enter, Biohacking!

Biohacking involves anything and everything from getting a better night’s sleep and a day’s exercise, to editing the source code of you, your DNA. The movement is all about coming together and cultivating a culture of proactive health and well-being.

At first, the thought of editing your DNA might seem daunting, but the science and technology around Genetic Therapy are advancing more quickly than you can imagine and will prove to be an extraordinarily efficient and effective procedure for more substantial and proactive improvements to our quality of life. Also quite possibly the only saving grace in the near term for our aging population.

For a great introduction to Biohacking, check out Dave Asprey’s post on how to get a “Bulletproof Body“.

Now, you may have the question on that proactive mind of yours that wonders: What is behind our desire to “enhance the state of our well-being”, because if we can understand what it is we are really trying to do(have emerge) with our new approach to medicine, we can find, categorize, care for, and focus on the most relevant influences, and optimise for its prompt emergence.

So, more simply:

What is it, that we are trying to have emerge, and what are its influences?

Enter, the more specific paradigm, Neurohacking:

The idea behind Neurohacking is that the conscious entity which/that is you, or who you say is you, or who they say is you…… (Blog post on consciousness coming soon)

…is essentially upgradable.

For now, we will use the probabilistically exhaustive ontology/terminology which states that the quality of the emergence of our consciousness stems from three primary understandings: Sentience, Intelligence, and Agency(Basically, our ability to make sense of, and act intelligibly in the world).

Seeing these, it becomes apparent that there are then four categories of influence: Mind, Body, Relationships, and Environment.

This is of course not the only way to create an ontology of experience, but so far seems to be the most comprehensive and effective way of doing so.

Qualia / Love of Life

^

Sentience, Intelligence, Agency

^

Mind, Body, Relationships, Environment

So, measuring the effect on the upregulation(&disregulation) of all meaningful vectors of Sentience, Intelligence, and Agency (Eg. Empathy), by the different actions we take in each of the categories of influence, allows us to optimize for the emergence of Qualia.

The modernized science of Psychopharmacology is the method by which this can be achieved for mind and body, and is being pioneered for Neurohacking by an incredible team at Neurohacker Collective, further accessible in generally practical terms of lifestyle and wellness is mindbodygreen, and for a super effective and straightforward next step, take Tony Robbin’s 10 Day Pure Energy Challenge, you’ll be happy you did!

For a more comprehensive and interactive dive into our body and the science behind the words, check out InnerBody.

For now…