We are living in an era of unparalleled prosperity, driven by advances in technology that have made the basic necessities of life—food, water, shelter—widely accessible to many. Through the interwoven threads of infrastructure, we have entered a new era in which most people no longer have to struggle for physical survival. Instead of toiling the land or hunting game, we take trips to the grocery store; water is pumped straight into our home, and the only thing standing between us and shelter is often a hefty downpayment.
Life in America has generally become easier due to technological advancements. With convenience right at our fingertips, it seems paradoxical that, despite our relative prosperity, we suffer some of the highest rates of mental illness compared to any other part of the world, with more than 1 in 5 US adults living with mental illness. This raises a crucial question: how is it that despite our technological advancements and material well-being, a vast majority of us are likely to experience serious and debilitating mental conditions in our lifetimes?
Traditional psychiatric explanations attribute this rise in mental illness to chemical imbalances in the brain. However, this theory does not fully explain why mental health disorders are so widespread, especially in societies that have made such a significant advance in living standards. If chemical imbalances were truly the cause, it seems unlikely that millions of individuals would have the same biochemical makeup that predisposes them to conditions that make survival difficult. If that were the case, most of us would not be sitting here today.
To understand the rise in modern mental health issues, we must look beyond the chemical imbalance theory and explore the social and environmental factors contributing to these high rates of mental disorders. One perspective that sheds light on this issue is the evolutionary mismatch theory, which considers the disconnect between our biological and genetic makeup and the world we live in today. By exploring this theory, we can begin to understand the deep relationship between physical and mental well-being.
Evolutionary Mismatch: The Shift in Environment and Survival
The evolutionary mismatch theory posits that many contemporary health issues stem from the disconnect between the environments our ancestors adapted to and the world that we live in today. The lives of our ancestors have shaped the psychological and physical mechanisms that helped them solve the wide range of adaptive challenges they faced. Our bodies and minds evolved to thrive in an environment that is vastly different from the one in which a majority of us now live.
To understand the depth of this disconnect, imagine human history on a 24-hour clock where each hour represents 100,000 years. If human history began at midnight, we would have lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the entire day up until about 11:54 p.m., when agriculture began and modern civilization developed. In fact, our hunter-gatherer ancestors had practiced the most successful and longest-lasting lifestyle in human history. Despite the technological advancements of today, our bodies have not had sufficient time to adapt to the drastic changes in our environment. Our most notable adaptations have occurred over several generations, but the rate of change of modern life has far surpassed the human’s ability to transform through the gradual process of evolution by natural selection. For all intents and purposes, our biological makeup is most similar to that of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
Under this light, the violence of modernity becomes even more apparent. The agricultural revolution that occurred 12,000 years ago significantly changed the way we eat, the way we live, and the way we work. More recently, the industrial and digital revolution have changed the way we communicate. Our DNA carries instructions on how to navigate these aspects of life, but we now face a dilemma: the instructions that once served us well are now leading us astray. Instead of viewing modern mental illnesses as isolated phenomena, it may be more useful to adopt a unifying approach that considers the differences between how we lived in the past and how we live today.
Evolutionary mismatch theory does just that by providing the coherent glue that binds together the causes of mental illnesses into one framework. To better understand how this changes our perspective on mental illness, let’s look at one of the most pressing mismatches: modern diets and sedentary lifestyles.
The Modern Health Crisis: Diet and Physical Inactivity
Modern Americans are increasingly overfed, malnourished, and sedentary. Each one of these factors has an impact on how we feel and how we relate to the environment around us. Each one of the factors stands in deep contrast to the ways in which we were evolved to live. For example, what if I told you that your sweet tooth wasn’t a fault in your character but rather a biologically advantageous adaptation that helped our ancestors survive?
We live in a time when most of the things on the grocery shelf are packed with sugar, salt, and fat. While these calories are abundant now, they haven’t always been. It used to be that nutritious food was in short supply; our ancestors would have to take the time to hunt and forage for what they could find. In order to make this process as efficient as possible, our taste buds have evolved to crave food that is high in fat, salt, and sugar. We naturally prefer to eat these things without restraint; however, our bodies evolved to process them in low and naturally occurring doses. Unfortunately, this trait has been exploited by modern technology, which makes calorie-dense food readily available.
Today we are surrounded by processed foods that encourage overconsumption. Our food preference mechanism now induces us to eat more than our physiological systems can handle. This causes chronic issues such as tooth decay, obesity, and diabetes and has been shown to contribute to the worsening of mental health.
It is no coincidence that this rise in lifestyle diseases that are induced by poor dietary habits is positively correlated with the rise in mental disorders. In studying the relationships between diet and mental health in children and adolescents, Adrienne O’Neil discovered that there was evidence of a correlation between unhealthy diets and poor mental health. Habitual consumption of processed foods was associated with a greater risk for depression and anxiety. Poor diet and nutrition have been linked to biological processes underpinning depression, such as inflammation. Chronic inflammation is thought to contribute to the onset and maintenance of mental health disorders, as well as other chronic noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. A dietary pattern consisting of vegetables, fruits, beef, lamb, fish, and whole grain foods is associated with lower inflammatory markers and improved mental health outcomes. These dietary patterns can also help protect against age-associated pathophysiological and cognitive changes.
In these ways and more, dietary factors may modulate the underlying neurological and cognitive changes in the brain that affect our psychological systems. So as it turns out, this dietary mismatch between our evolutionary past and our technologically inundated present is a key factor not only in physical illnesses but also in mental health.
With this in mind, it becomes hard to ascribe the cause of our mental disorders as a chemical imbalance happening solely in the brain of an individual. While yes, the cause of mental disorders may be biological, this biology cannot be separated from the context in which it was created. By acknowledging the relationship between our past and our present, it becomes apparent that our environments have far more impact on our mental health.
The Rise of the Sedentary and its Impact on Mental Health
Another significant factor contributing to the rise in mental health issues is the increase in sedentary lifestyles. Sedentarism is a lifestyle characterized by very little to no physical activity. It’s common to think of not wanting to work out as some type of moral failing and an indication that one is lazy and lacks discipline. Within this framework, the onus to exercise is placed on us as individuals rather than the environment around them that influences their behavior.
In the light of an evolutionary perspective, it becomes clear why less and less people move today; there is simply no incentive to do so. All animals, including humans, are adapted to be physically active in order to acquire resources and mates as well as to avoid being killed by predators. Our human ancestors are well known for their endurance; their days consisted of long-distance walking and running in the heat, digging up root plants, climbing trees for fruits, and carrying and throwing projectiles fast and hard to hunt game. It was normal for our hunter-gatherer ancestors to walk an average of 5 to 9 miles per day to forage enough food to survive, carrying babies and food supplies in tow as well. When they were not moving or working for their survival, they were resting, conserving their energy and avoiding any extraneous effort in an attempt to survive long periods without food. Natural selection has therefore come to favor inactivity whenever possible as a means of conserving energy.
People today move less and less because there is no immediate survival need for it. As a result, there have been serious consequences for both physical and mental health. Our muscles, bones, and nervous system all require physical activity to maintain proper functioning. Our muscles consume about 40% of our body’s resting metabolic rate. When the body notices that these muscles are not being put to use, the muscle begins to hypertrophy to allow the body to conserve its energy.
A majority of the systems in the body react to physical activity in a similar fashion. For example, physical activity generates mechanical stress in the skeleton that is necessary to stimulate the bone deposition and repair mechanisms that make bones strong and healthy. Persistent physical inactivity means that the mechanisms are not triggered often enough, which leads to weak bones and increases the risk of osteoporosis and other previously uncommon diseases. Similar things occur in the nervous system; physical activity acts on the nervous system to increase neuronal function and neuroplasticity, which explains why physical inactivity is correlated with poorer mental health. In fact, it has been suggested that regular physical activity can enhance mental wellness just as equally as psychotherapy and psychiatric medication.
Several epidemiological studies have proven that exercise has decreased the prevalence of symptoms related to depression, panic disorder, social phobia, and substance abuse disorder. Just 20–40 minutes of aerobic exercise can improve an individual’s mood for several hours. This is because exercise induces changes in different neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and endorphins, which directly influence our mood. This triggers a positive feeling in the body that is often referred to as the “runners high.” The best part is that the release of these feel-good chemicals does not lead to addiction compared to other psychiatric medications. Regular exercise can reduce stress, ward off feelings of anxiety and depression, boost self-esteem, and improve sleep.
The systems in our body need physical activity to develop the body’s normal capacity; in the absence of the necessary physical activity, our bodies fail to develop in the ways that they need to in order to promote our proper functioning and well-being. Our modern chronic and non-infectious diseases have become more common and severe because humans have never evolved to be this sedentary.
Physical Health is Mental Health
The idea present in evolutionary mismatch theory supports the budding conversation about the deep connection between our minds and our bodies. More and more, we are realizing that a cognitive, top-down approach is not enough when considering the drastic rise in mental disorders that we are dealing with today. This problem is not one that can be understood through a purely biological or psychological lens.
While genetics and brain chemistry do play a role, by individualizing and medicalizing the reality of human suffering, we are leaving out the subtle nuances that emerge when we consider our context and history as a species. Evolutionary mismatch theory forces us to question whether these categories of depression and anxiety are inherent to individuals or a byproduct of the individual existing in an environment that is not conducive to their well-being.
Diet and exercise are just two of the most prominent ways in which our genetic past is impairing our ability to healthily function in our modern society. By examining how our brains were adapted to function, we move closer to understanding who we actually are as humans. To truly address the mental health crisis, we must shift our focus from purely biological explanations to a broader, more holistic understanding that considers the deep-rooted disconnect between our evolutionary past and the modern world. By doing so, we can begin to craft solutions that address the root cause of mental illness and promote better physical and mental health for all.
There was a strong sense of family and community in hunter and gatherer tribes. Everyone was important for the survival of the tribe or community. Some people, like me, were born for the wrong reasons and weren’t wanted and were treated accordingly. Some people, like me, had nobody to turn to for help from an abusive situation. I had no family around me, no siblings and friendship were rare and didn’t last long. Everyone had themselves and their own families to worry about. I would think it would be hard to find a child in a hunter and gatherer society being abused and alone and, therefore, trying to raise themselves with everyone looking the other way. The hunter/gatherer lifestyle and even small farming communities wouldn’t allow that to happen. There was no time. Everyone had to pitch in and help each other. I don’t know how some disabled people were treated in hunter/gatherer communities or small agricultural communities. Some people were sacrificed in some of these cultures, at least in some agricultural communities. Humans are complicated but living off the land certainly has lots of healthier benefits than modern life.
In the modern world, it happens more and more often because we live a different lifestyle where not everyone is wanted or needed, and some people are actually seen as a hindrance to an individual’s freedom and autonomy in some situations. We weren’t meant to grow up alone and to not fit in anywhere. That goes against our well-being because it’s not natural. We are highly social beings and so being alone too much is going to hurt us. Most people seem to get some kind of support from one or more people but not everyone does, and they usually don’t get enough support to make it through the rough times without getting traumatized in some way.
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Modern regression techniques have found past lives in societies much more technologically advanced than this one. In this context, our experience as “primitive” humans is only a small part of the picture. It is just as possible that our current state of advancement is resulting in some of those past lives, with all their unhandled traumas, “leaking” into this one.
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Right, this is exactly what it’s all about. Mental health is concocted by controlling people who find a way to benefit financially, and further giving them more power do so, by convincing society that those who are not on board, or cannot be onboard with their agendas, have some sort of imbalance of the brain. And that’s absolutely nonsense.
Take schooling for example. Schooling doesn’t create thinkers, it creates obeyers. It creates people who do as they are told. That is why they have it. They want people just smart enough to run the presses and operate the machinery, and just dumb enough to passively accept these increasing shittier jobs. And if you are not with the program, you have ADD and need some drugs for your brain disease. And that is absolute nonsense.
I have always said these mental illnesses are due to a lack of ability, or will, to adapt to what no one should be forced to adapt to, because it is in the best interest of the very few, and not a well oiled and functional society where we all “willingly” help each other, instead of trying to control each other, instead.
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Robb,
In my experience, what you are saying is much closer to the core of the problem than what the author Chi Akano is saying. Diet and exercise are of course important to physical health and maybe a factor in a lot of mental health problems but greed and the ability to exercise oppressive power and control by a relatively small minority is surely a much larger causative factor that also seems to play a part in a variety of counterproductive life style issues.
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You got it, brother.
I see I made a couple of typos though lol.
“I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers”.
—John D Rockefeller
Our society is not created for us to be happy and successful. It’s created for billionaires to be happy and successful lol. Even though it doesn’t even do that, because success and happiness are more about appreciating what you have, rather than gaining more and more. This idea of material gain being the core of success is no less a sickness than the inability to accept your limitations to take basic care of yourself and your family by sacrificing your life to those with larger financial means and capabilities. Neither is an actual medical sickness, but rather a distorted view of what success is, and how control, power and obedience create the illusion of a healthy society.
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This is a cute theory and undoubtedly has some truth and workability in it. A failure to keep the body under control can allow it, and all of its aberrations, to take over. But even top athletes complain of “mental health” problems.
Physical health is only part of the answer.
Freud was on the right track when he theorized that suppressed memories form the basis for unwanted thoughts and feelings in the child or adult. He just never developed a method to look far enough back in a person’s memory. When such methods were developed and used, past life memories were discovered. Poor prenatal and birth experiences were also discovered. As it turns out, the suppressed memory bothering you could be almost anything. You must either have the spiritual strength and certainty to not succumb to those influences, or they must be dug out and exposed (remembered, or brought into conscious memory for inspection). Almost any past experience can be remembered, if the proper techniques are used.
These basics have been known and used for over 50 years. Why doesn’t anybody know about them, talk about them, or test them? I must say that the apparent ignorance of these findings in this field makes me wonder how many on this field, and in society in general, really want to get well. “Illness” has always been a great excuse for not living up to one’s responsibilities.
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It’s a very good point. Athletes eat proper food and get tons of exercise and they have many mental health problems, too.
The problem is a mix of nature and nurture. It’s probably more the environment (society) than genes. Mental health is not just “how you feel”. It’s just “how you feel” when it comes “to these drugs”. The psychiatrists and Pharma have just convinced everyone that it’s what mental health is all about, and it ain’t. It may play a part, but it’s not as big a part as society seems to think, because society has been brainwashed by society. And the root of that is psychiatry. They got the ball rolling, and now it’s the perceived truth.
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Your answer is a perfect example of the point I was trying to make:
“Nature” and “nurture” are not the only factors in how the mind operates. We have – I hope you might agree – the mind itself. The mind is full of suppressed memories (including from past lives) and automatic behaviors (mental habits we forgot we created), and these CAN play havoc with a person. The environment can “trigger” these memories and mechanisms. The result is usually highly confusing.
A “healthy” person will shake off these episodes and continue with life. A less “healthy” person can get stuck in these incidents. The first goal of any mental health technology should be to improve a being’s ability to “shake off” their reactions to environmental triggers and get back to living.
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I think it’s more about “impulse control” and control of “obsessing” when you talk about “shaking off these episodes”. A perfectly healthy person can have this problem. Even a perfectly healthy mind can have this if under duress and traumatized. So, it’s a combo of personality and experiences. Possibly also the way they feel.
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You can believe this if you want.
My only point is that past lives have been verified by several researchers, and the fact that we can’t remember them indicates that our minds are full of suppressed memories.
Where do “impulses” come from? The resource pool for them is actually very deep, dating back millions of years, and encompassing at least thousands of body deaths.
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Thank you for this. The comments are good, too. It’s encouraging to hear voices that sound kind of like mine. I particularly appreciate the mention of Evolutionary Mismatch. I believed in this idea without knowing it was a named thing; I like knowing it’s a recognized theory. So many troubles arise in the conflict between natural and human-made systems.
As our systems of governance—all of them systems of concentrated power—carry us further away from the reality we would naturally encounter in largely self-reliant communities—people might become increasingly unbalanced.
Given the increasing levels of depression, we might already be there.
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Thank you, Chi and MIA, for a really great, thought-provoking essay, which I thoroughly enjoyed!
“I’m better when I move!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff9fbbLe4xc
They always seem so well groomed and in such perfect shape that I sometimes wonder if “extraterrestrials” (I use the “” around them because I suspect Earth may be every bit as much their home as it is ours) who are technologically more advanced than us now need no longer waste any time in grooming or in exercising/working out or in agonizing over optimal nutrition etc., because they have evolved beyond all that?
Mind you, if that same evolutionary path caused them to become or to remain humorless and unentertaining, too (I was terribly disappointed, weren’t you?, to discover that the one/s who asked Whitley Strieber “What can we do to help you stop screaming?” apparently were NOT trying to be funny, after all), then I think I might be okay putting up with our fur and our need for work-outs etc. a while longer, at least.
“Our bodies and minds evolved to thrive in an environment that is vastly different from the one in which a majority of us now live.”
So wrote Chi, above.
Yes, I agree, but this does not mean that we have not evolved at least every bit as exquisitely intelligently to be forced to learn to better adapt to our contemporary worlds – does it – for instance by being forced by traffic hold-ups to understand and to transcend our emotional responses, and to seize a more conscious control over many aspects of our lives such as nutrition and hydration, physical and intellectual exercise, rest and sleep etc?
I believe we have evolved to a point where (thanks largely to our Judeo-Pauline-permeated science and society) we have been taught and believed that we long ago – perhaps when we first gained self-awareness, or ate The Apple, made our first tools, or lit our first fires – or more recently – with the Industrail Revolution – evolved beyond evolution (or “Nature” or “the Universe” or “LIfe” or “Being” or “God,” or “got ahead of ourselves”)…only to realize that this is obviously absurd…and so have nowaways evolved to find that this very realization precipitates our at-least-exponentially quickening enlightenment, our now-conscious evolution in Consciousness to Consciousness, like now…and so to grow to become increasingly at peace with the Now, with the present moment and with all that it contains, instead of feeling upset by, indignant at or, as Eckhart Tolle puts it, “morally superior to” reality, and to realize that, of COURSE, we are always meant to be starting from exactly wherever we find ourselves, all that science, like religion, has told us to the contrary notwithstanding!
“[‘]Oh, what idiots we all have been. This is just as it must be.[‘]
In response to Frisch & Meitner’s explanation of nuclear fission, as quoted in The Physicists – A generation that changed the world (1981) by C.P.Snow, p. 96
[‘]I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.[‘]”
– Niels Bohr.
– from https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr
That said, Chi, I happen to agree with much of what you wrote about the benefits of movement. At the end of one week at college, I added up the hours I’d spent either in training (for rowing) or bicycling to or from training or college, and came to 36. I can’t remember now if this embarrassed me, at all, but I do know that, more than 40 years later, whiloe I may not be faster or stronger, I feel fitter and healthier: I’m better when I move (more).
And I also believe that Evolution (or “Nature” or “God”) inexorably pushes us to the point where we have no option but to leap to greater things.
As Anais Nin put it: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyR7XB0VBPM
Thank you very much, Chi and MIA, for an excellent essay which, for me, at least, draws attention to this.
Comfort and joy!
Tom.
PS: What a wonderful name to bear, Chi – given or chosen or both! I believe our destiny and our evolution is in our very names, too!
MOVEMENT, FLOW, A RIVER OF ENDLESS ENERGY, A NEVER-ENDING STREAM of LIFE connecting us to our SOURCE
I wonder if you have yet read Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” and, on Page 131 of it, the following:
“THE SOURCE OF CHI
[The following is in italics in “The Power of Now,” as though a question from an interlocutor:]
Is the Unmanifested what in the East is called chi, a kind of universal energy?
[End of italics]
No, it isn’t. The Unmanifested is the source [“source,” here, is italicized in “The Power of Now”] of chi. Chi is the inner energy field of your body. It is the bridge between the outer you and the Source. It lies halfway between the manifested, the world of form, and the Unmanifested. Chi can be likened to a river or an energy stream. If you take the focus of your consciousness deeply into the inner body, you are tracing the course of this river back to its Source. Chi is movement; the Unmanifested is stillness. When you reach a point of absolute stillness, which is nevertheless vibrant with life, you have gone beyond the inner body and beyond chi to the Source itself: the Unmanifested. Chi is the link between the Unmanifested and the physical universe.”
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“this trait has been exploited by modern technology,”
these traits have been exploited – not by some vague abstraction: technology – but by human beings – by predatory capitalists.
see michael pollan
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It’s as though some sudden shift may have occurred in our evolutionary past?
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/it-takes-teamwork-how-endosymbiosis-changed-life-on-earth/evidence-for-endosymbiosis/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_(Gnosticism)
Some event analogous to a fall from Grace, an injection of alien DNA, a sudden awareness of our animal nature which became possible through some ?sudden leap in consciousness, and, with it, an ongoing dilemma, both horns of which we find uncomfortable, irreconcilable, so far:
On the one hand, or horn, so to speak, we have learned to despise, denigrate and distrust our animal nature, building taboos around sex and voiding of our bodily waste (which, of course, poses potential health risks for others, in any case), even if not around ingestion (I think this latter possible ?anomaly struck Carl Jung, and possibly countless others, too!).
It’s as though (as Eckhart Tolle has pointed out) we instinctively fear being pulled back (evolutionarily, in levels of Consciousness or of consciousness) to baser, beastlier states of being.
On the other hand, though, as Fromm particularly pointed out, I believe, we also have this urge to give away our autonomy, our power, our “free” will to others – to “authorities” of all kinds, religious, civil, academic, spousal…as though afraid to “eat of the Tree of Knowledge,” to grow up, to claim our “divine inheritance,” to exercise our highest levels of cognition – perhaps in fear of failure and its awful repercussions, perhaps because of our so very deep-seated Homo sapientine need to BELONG and so to compromise and to conform – and neither to threaten our tribal inclusion nor to risk the loss of approval, and of love?
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.’ – Marianne Williamson.
If the older
“YOU ARE ALL SINNERS!”
(knowingly and willingly wicked rebels against God, victims of our sinful nature) message of certain bibles
has been more briefly giving way to equally unsatisfactory and untrue
“YOU ARE ALL MENTALLY ILL/DISORDERED!”
(or hapless, hopeless victims of our inherent human weakness) messages of other (DSM, ICD etc.) bibles,
maybe it is because we are hastening towards a realization that all the great teachers of humanity, from Lao Tzu to Jesus to Jung, have always been trying to remind us of the same thing – of our shared, immortal indestructibility, and, with it, of our shared tremendous but temporary human vulnerability?
“I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man, has no dedication nor any membership in literature.”
– John Steinbeck, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck
Deep down, I believe we all know that it is neither wilful wickedness nor innate weakness on our parts which causes us to suffer, but only ignorance, forgetfulness, “unconsciousness” of our true (and immortal) nature, and of our equality and oneness.
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” – Lao Tzu.
“There is no coming to consciousness without pain,” according to Jung.
Hopefully, these growing pains of ours will very soon be over, as we realize that there is nothing wrong with us, at all, after all, and that, being so much more rather than less than perfect, we remain endlessly (and immortally) more than exponentially…perfectible!
https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/EPS281r/Sources/Gaia/Gaia-hypothesis-wikipedia.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality
Thanks, again, for a most stimulating essay!
Happy holidays – and eternities!
Tom.
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I don’t believe we have an “evolutionary past” on Earth.
We have spent the majority of our past off Earth.
Yes, there are technologies in place to convince us that we are sinners or crazy. It has very little to do with evolution, and everything to so with (bad) societal control. That is the problem with psychiatry and much of “modern” medicine. It’s here mostly to control us, not to heal us.
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MANY thanks, Larry.
You know Stephen Hawking, in his “A Brief History of Time,” jokes/grants/admits/suggests that, of course, the entire fossil record COULD have been manufactured/laid down just to mislead us all, too, don’t you?!
I think that may have been his most intensely scientific suggestion in any of his books!
Yes, Larry, about being misled, and those technologies or various institutions which have persuaded us that we were sinners and or crazy (rather than being variously neurotic/unconscious), have been tremendously successful – effective, anyway! – in doing so because the perpetrators actually believed their own propaganda, actually saw, in their own minds, the Emperor’s Clothes, or believed they did(!), some of the time, at least!
But, Larry, if the Intelligence behind and beyond and beneath and above and around and throughout all of what we consider Creation-and-More, or the Manifested-and-the-Unmanifested-and-Mote-than-Infinitely-More, or the ultimate order or cosmos or cosmicness which one can perceive in ANYTHING if we can but look long and hard and deep enough….if THAT Intelligence IS truly intelligent and more, then surely EVERYTHING is actually ultimately here to heal us – once we can trust that this is so?!
Saul/Paul seemingly successfully misleading Christians right back into an Old Testament point of view, reportedly wrote:
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
But, actually, ALL things work for Good, all the time, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, even Saul/Paul’s own corruptions, as I see them, of a whole new way of seeing the world notwithstanding…
I suggest that Jesus was trying to be truly unconditional in his love of self and so of everyone and of everything, while Paul missed this essence, and so remained a soi-disant “sinner,” continued to see himself and others as flawed, as less than rather than as being at the very least infinitely beyond “perfect.”
I think we can all do better – always.
And, with all its pain and suffering, I still think this makes this better than the best of all POSSIBLE worlds, don’t you?!
“If this world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.” – Yogi Berra.
Much love.
Many thanks.
And have a great, GREAT day!
Tom.
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If intelligence was always good, you wouldn’t have smart criminals. Intelligence, unfortunately, is no guarantee of goodness or good intentions. Thus, I see no reason to believe that “everything is here to heal us.” All we have created in this physical universe is an interesting game. What we have is a mix of beings who can play, even enjoy playing, and some who can’t play or don’t want to. The ones who feel forced into a game they think they didn’t create (almost certainly not the case) are in a bad way. They are stuck here now, and can only think in terms of some sort of rebellion. The only way to get out of that problem is to recognize one’s own role in getting into it, then rehabilitate one’s ability to be free of it.
Jesus had a lot of good ideas but was unable to fully implement them on Earth. However, there are certain assertions made in both the Old and New Testaments which are almost certainly exaggerations of the truth. There has been a consistent effort to suppress rebellion of any kind on Earth, and we cannot rule out that religious teachings were sometimes a part of this effort.
The idea that the fossil record was somehow faked by someone is not necessary. We can assume, even if we don’t agree with evolutionary theory, that the biosphere on Earth was built up over many millions of years, according, perhaps, to some standard sequence for Earth-like planets. While the evidence for the intelligent design of biologic forms is not strong, it does exist. And if the timelines uncovered by Hubbard’s research, as well as that of others, are anywhere near accurate, then intelligent design is much more likely than Evolution, even if we allow millions of years for both processes to produce “higher” forms. Here on Earth, it took a relatively long time for us to produce the first working car. But now we produce several new models every year.
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Any deity who came up with the human childbirth process can hardly be accused of “intelligent” design!!!
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Well, that’s a funny observation, but many mammals go through similar suffering when they give birth. The whole subject of sexual reproduction is a bit up in the air at this point. As we know, some living things have ways of “reproducing” using non-sexual processes (“cloning”). The only data I have on the decision to make biology self-perpetuating is from a questionable source.
But as a point of comparison, many human designs (the product of engineers or otherwise), while they obviously involved intelligent choices, were not that “smart” (or wise), or in fact did not work well or at all after they were constructed.
The scientific evidence that ID proponents are using involves calculating the probability that a certain biological object could have arisen by some random process versus some guided process. The same technique can be applied to non-living objects.
Of course, my implication, if not explicitly stated, is that “deities” were not involved in the design process; they were engineering teams similar to the ones that design cars or electronic devices today.
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That was intended to be a humorous remark! But the engineering team (if there was one) still missed the boat on that one.
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I think it is more likely humanity is less a product of intelligent design than God is one of unintelligent design.
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…..and then there is all that Lamaze breathing might have to teach us about pain and more…
Tom.
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Great point – especially for a guy.
I think I’m gonna need to think about that, especially as a guy, and as one who has often said that he fear that if he does not lead the best life he can from now on, he will find himself sent back – as a gal.
For now, though, I suggest that
1. what if there is no deity outside our very selves – that WE are all integral parts or aspects of the divine, the creative impuilse or whatever, Consciousness, Awareness, Imagination?
2. if, either as The Creatrix, our or Her powers are unlimited, we/She can surely reward in a nanosec, or in no time, or possibly in less than that ourselves/Herself for any suffering/sacricie or slight wee/She may ahve endured?
Once we take Time out of any equation, of course, everything changes radically…and RATHER fast, right?
Thank you, Steve!
Tom.
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Robb, you wrote:
“I think it is more likely humanity is less a product of intelligent design than God is one of unintelligent design.”
I could hardly agree more.
Not only this, but I suspect that we may transmute all human suffering (“sinfulness”/mental “illness”) simply (but not yet easily) by appreciating that hegemonies viewing humanity as being neither fully natural nor fully divine (when we are both) has been The Obstacle which can now become The Way.
It seems to me that Carl Jung – like Jesus and Meister Eckhart and Rumi and countless other mystics – saw this but, doubtless for entirely divine reasons, up until now, at least, could neither convince nor enlighten us.
MANY thanks.
Tom.
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Amen, Tom. Amen. 🙂
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