This page provides easy access to key pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that explain our collective madness.
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Headline evidence; The smoking gun of serious brain damage.
Context re 'normal' ageing.
The failure begins in the uterus.
Psychedelics were 'treatments' for a failing perceptual system.
The wider evolutionary context that explains why.
With knowledge in relevant subjects at a college level of education at most, it is easy to trace a relatively simple picture.
What emerges is a shocking self-portrait exposing the cause of our collective insanity by simply joining the dots through the data modern science has generated.
The abstract model of reality that the reductionist data has built is now of sufficient resolution to be able to see the cause of our ancestral perceptual trauma, the mythological 'Fall from Grace' and our subsequent descent into all-encompassing delusion.
The ancestral crash site and the trail of debris leads to where we are right now and offers a blindingly obvious explanation for the severity of our mental ill health and self-harming behaviour and why we are hell-bent on our own destruction.
The basic biological mechanisms are all self-evident once you dare ask the right question and follow the data trail one step at a time.
What the reductionist model we have constructed also reveals is a relatively simple solution to the underlying cause of all our dysfunctional behaviour if you make the effort to understand the diagnosis.
Headline evidence; The smoking gun of serious brain damage re our ancestors accounts of massive perceptual trauma followed by a slow descent into delusion and our current self-inflicted apocalypse.
This one piece of data alone can explain pretty much everything including why we don't easily recognise and are even likely to deny its profound and urgent significance.
On its own, it is extremely alarming, with just a small amount of additional context it is a simple yet shocking diagnosis for our ancestral descent into madness and our current self-harming propensity.
Selective Atrophy of Left Hemisphere and Frontal Lobe of the Brain in Old Men
This is the key piece of data, the stark objective 'body' of evidence including an easy to understand image of our atrophied and shrivelled new brain.
The primary objective is to point out the screamingly obvious and ask how such a massive structural failure could not be absolutely central to our collective insanity and everything we think or do.
Also and most particularly how the data so easily predicts and explains the inevitable emergence of hierarchical patriarchy exhibiting increasingly demented behaviour that always manifests and imposes itself and the extreme end of our delusory spectrum of symptoms on the rest of society.
We end up being at the mercy of the most cognitively impaired, perceptually limited and frightened members of society due to the degree of perceptual dominance they experience as 'normal' courtesy of the most primitivised and withered part of their brain.
This is greatly compounded by the symptoms we all suffer by degrees that include a degenerating and primitivised neural substrate that is increasingly vulnerable to being conditioned by and identifying with beliefs that limit our capacity to respond appropriately to our collective mental health emergency.
Nobody's fault but a really really bad idea!
Considered as a case of unique and somewhat perplexing 'normal' ageing by researchers using the same atrophying brain to figure out what the data means...?
Context re 'normal' ageing;
Serious neurological developmental problems with the same hemispheric pattern of dysfunction begin in the uterus and accelerate through all stages of maturation.
Nothing remotely like this severity of neural atrophication happens with any other species?
Humans Alone in Brain Shrinkage With Age
Aging of the cerebral cortex differs between humans and chimpanzees
Primate aging in the mammalian scheme: the puzzle of extreme variation in brain aging
Massive structural problems including atrophication and erosion are always long preceded by an equivalent degree of perceptual and behavioural problems.
If our new brain was sculpted and honed as a response to survival pressures in hostile environments by selective adaption and that 'essential' new brain tissue was locked in our DNA code or genome why does it exhibit such major developmental problems, atrophy and begin to erode as we mature?
Recent paper of interest linked in article below.
Left and Right-Brain Age Differently: Alzheimer’s Link
The failure begins in the uterus with serious developmental problems and accelerates during maturation.
Our own very powerful steroidal sex hormones play a central role in these 'normal' developmental problems.
These two papers alone outline the incredible sensitivity of the developing mammalian neural system to changes in the transcription environment.
Implications of Prenatal Steroid Perturbations for Neurodevelopment, Behavior, and Autism
The Placenta as a Mediator of Stress Effects on Neurodevelopmental Reprogramming
1. Factor in a co-evolving symbiotic relationship with the reproductive system of the angiosperms that perpetually infuses the mammalian transcription environment with a cocktail of transcription modifying reproductive compounds.
2 Then factor in the sudden loss of the same cocktail of transcription modifying reproductive compounds after millions of years of symbiotic integration.
Cerebral Lateralization. Biological Mechanisms, Associations, and Pathology: I. A Hypothesis and a Program for Research
Foetal oestrogens and autism
Fetal Testosterone Influences Sexually Dimorphic Gray Matter in the Human Brain
Relations between prenatal testosterone and cerebral lateralization in children
The relationship between prenatal testosterone and developmental stuttering in boys
Differential effects of prenatal testosterone on lateralization of handedness and language
Fetal testosterone and autistic traits.
Autism linked to 'male hormones'
Testosterone-Related Cortical Maturation Across Childhood and Adolescence
Developmental effects of androgens in the human brain.
Testing the Empathizing–Systemizing theory of sex differences and the Extreme Male Brain theory of autism in half a million people
Prenatal and pubertal testosterone affect brain lateralization
Why sex hormones matter for neuroscience: A very short review on sex, sex hormones, and functional brain asymmetries
Brain's synaptic pruning continues into your 20s
Extraordinary neoteny of synaptic spines in the human prefrontal cortex
When does age-related cognitive decline begin?
Development and Aging of the Cerebrum: Assessment with Proton MR Spectroscopy
Smaller left hemisphere planum temporale in adults with autistic disorder.
Abnormal Brain Lateralization in High-Functioning Autism
Dissociation of anosognosia for hemiplegia and aphasia during left-hemisphere anesthesia.
If ancestral use of psychedelics were 'treatments' for a failing perceptual system, a perspective increasingly supported by ongoing modern research, then this early study into the neurological correlates of typical perceptual effects during an LSD induced experience appears to confirm the same asymmetric pattern in hemispheric response.
The significance of the temporal lobes and of hemispheric dominance in the production of the LSD-25 symptomatology in man: A study of epileptic patients before and after temporal lobectomy
Why would our new brain suffer major developmental problems even in-utero then atrophy and wither away as we mature?
It is already known that our new brain and particularly the most recently acquired areas are less genetically regulated than might be expected if it were the product of classic selective adaptation.
“The brain is heavily influenced by genes. But from birth through young adulthood, the part of the human brain that most defines us (frontal cortex) is less a product of the genes with which you started life than of what life has thrown at you. Because it is the least constrained by genes and most sculpted by experience. This must be so, to be the supremely complex social species that we are. Ironically, it seems that the genetic program of human brain development has evolved to, as much as possible, free the frontal cortex from genes.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Relaxed genetic control of cortical organization in human brains compared with chimpanzees
The wider evolutionary context that explains why the current accounts for the developmental failure of our new brain were not 'normal'.
Our 50 million year plus ancestral symbiotic relationship protected us from the 'normal' developmental, maturational and ageing effects of our own steroidal sex hormones.
The relationship involved ingesting several kilos of swollen plant ovaries on a daily basis that specifically evolved to provide an extremely embryonic transcription environment for seed development.
Plant ovaries are very rich in hormonally active compounds such as flavonoids, when these compounds are ingested by mammals they are classified as powerful endocrine disruptors.
Their complex activity includes inhibiting and diluting our own very powerful mammalian hormone activity.
The net effect is very juvenilising, in other words, they inhibit the normal maturation and ageing processes
During the long period our ancestors were embedded in this juvenilising symbiotic relationship what is currently considered normal maturation, differentiation ageing and atrophication would not have happened at all or anything like the same degree.
Relative to our symbiotic ancestors our new brain is now exposed to a prematurely and rapidly ageing developmental environment even in the uterus.
We end up with an unexpected and quite bizarre form of senile dementia that begins in the uterus and accelerates with age, one hemisphere is afflicted more quickly than the other.
The condition also gets worse over evolutionary timescales, we are at the wrong end of tens of thousands of years of post symbiotic reversion and associated neural atrophication.
This explains the severity of the structural failure and dementia-like symptoms that have left us increasingly unable to recognise what is quite literally staring us in the face.
Is fruit eating responsible for big brains?
Primate brain size is predicted by diet but not sociality
Mechanism of Action of Flavonoids
The Roles of Phytoestrogens in Primate Ecology and Evolution
Flavonoids as Therapeutic Agents in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases: A Systematic Review of Preclinical Evidences.
Flavonoids as Therapeutic Compounds Targeting Key Proteins Involved in Alzheimer’s Disease.
Dietary flavonol intake is associated with age of puberty in a longitudinal cohort of girls
Fruit Bats
Interestingly a parallel symbiotic relationship resulting in traits of slowed development and unusual neural expansion appears to suggest a similar mechanism at work in the largest fruit bats.
As with similar traits in frugivorous primates no account is taken of the inevitable hormonal impact on mammalian physiology that would result from ingesting swollen plant ovaries over evolutionary time scales.
More specifically re hormonal impact: The extreme modification of the mammalian transcription environment with fairly predictable outcomes based on established mechanisms central to basic developmental biology. Essentially immersing the mammalian genome in a dilute reproductive environment inevitably results in a slowing of maturation through each stage of development resulting in a complex of highly anomalous emergent traits i.e. giant stretched fetuses with a freakishly massive proliferation of new brain tissue.
Link to pdf Relative Brain Size and Feeding Strategies in the Chiroptera
This is the 'real world' end result of how the condition constructs the world in its own increasingly demented image.
The accelerating self-destructive and primitive trajectory those most afflicted by the neurological damage impose on all of society.
The Selective Atrophy paper is not just a measure of how we neurologically and perceptually regress in a lifetime, it is the same 'Post Symbiotic' pattern of decline we have collectively suffered throughout recorded history and beyond.
The most damaged part of our brain and the primitivised self it facilitates has by degrees assumed perceptual control and is pulling us all towards unrecoverable insanity without any subjective awareness of the cause or consequences of its actions.
A snapshot of how cognitive and perceptual decline manifests societal structure that in turn accelerates the further decline.
At one time increasing age would have meant greater life experience, greater accumulated knowledge and ultimately greater wisdom.
As the developmental failure in our neo-cortex has worsened increasing age exacerbates the condition and results in a mixture of early-onset dementia and generally a more primitive neural system with a more primitive state of mind. This trend is reflected in both our individual life span and in our collective degeneration over evolutionary time scales.
Putting aside the simplistic political interpretations the correlation between post symbiotic reversion and its impact on societal trajectory appears solid.
The emergence of an increasingly tyrannical hierarchy disconnected from the essence of our humanity and not too bright...
Political attitudes vary with physiological traits
Political Ideology and Executive Functioning: The Effect of Conservatism and Liberalism on Cognitive Flexibility and Working Memory Performance
The Relationship Between Emotional Abilities and Right-Wing and Prejudiced Attitudes
Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism.
Corporate psychopathy: Talking the walk
More juvenile neural tissue equals lesser atrophication and constriction of perceptual lens
Hence perceptually more broad-minded and less frightened
Generally more access to advanced cognitive capacity
Behaviourally more liberal
Essentially less primitive
More mature neural tissue equals greater atrophication and constriction of perceptual lens
Hence perceptually more narrow-minded and more frightened
Generally less access to advanced cognitive capacity
Behaviourally more conservative
Essentially more primitive
We continue to address our most urgent problems by attempting to change our ideologies, beliefs and behaviour.
However, those ideologies are borne from and implemented by a structurally failing neural system that results in a spectrum of perceptual symptoms that range from moderate at best to severely pathological at worst.
One of the symptoms of increasing dysfunction is fear and the need for control so hierarchical societies act a fractional distillation system drawing those of us with more serious symptoms to the top. In turn, those suffering greater dysfunction attempt to create and impose a world based on the limits of their own perception.
The idea of perceptual medicine or a pill to treat those exhibiting symptoms of the more self-destructive end of the spectrum of our collective insanity is a tempting idea though hardly new.
It also runs into the problem of deciding who and what is sane or insane and would likely be dismissed or prohibited by those most in need.
However, if practices or pills were simply treating 'catastrophic developmental failure in our neocortex' and beginning to restore lost function and a semblance of sanity are supported by overwhelming contextual evidence it might make for a more compelling case?
We may be at a point where that case can be made in a language that is difficult to dismiss.
What if a Pill Can Change Your Politics or Religious Beliefs?
Broadening Your Mind to Include Others: The relationship between serotonergic psychedelic experiences and maladaptive narcissism
Neurological age of Kali
In the distant past ageing and wisdom would have gone hand in hand, now ageing can and often means a much greater degree of dementia-like symptoms.
If this is not addressed then there is no chance whatsoever that we can change direction, recorded history tells us that we have no capacity to learn and pretending that we do is part of the problem.
Confronting what the objective evidence supports;
A deteriorating species-wide developmental failure of our new brain at least gives us the choice to immediately treat the condition and ultimately repair the damage.
In doing so the mountain of complex symptoms we have created that cause endless suffering and threaten our existence automatically begin to resolve.
This is what our much wiser ancestors were trying to tell us, I suggest we take their advice and act with the urgency and resolve our current predicament requires and pay no attention to the inevitable resistance from our most atrophied, deluded and frightened hemisphere.
The link below is a grassroots project you can get involved with, it is simply an effort to point to the obvious cause of our collective insanity until the perceptual penny drops.
Operation ‘The Emperor’s Neo Cortex’ (New Brain).