di PL Lattuada MD., Ph.D., Psy.D.
"You were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge"
Dante Alighieri
I honestly did not think we would get to this point, the contradictions within society are exploding, thanks to this pandemic. Health professionals, as I am as a doctor for forty years, are obliged to get vaccinated under penalty of suspension from the order, soon the obligation will be extended to an increasing number of categories.
Any attentive observer can easily recognize that there are two positions and different nuances, some of which are extreme and perverse.
Leaving out the heads and tails, as if to make good grappa, that is, ignoring for the moment the scientists, skeptical at all costs, the dogmatic and approximate deniers by vocation, we can reduce ourselves to identifying those who, for various reasons, want to get vaccinated, the most and who for often opposite reasons does not want it. Common sense would say that the two factions should learn to respect each other in a post-modern world dominated by post-rational thinking. But no.
This argument of mine wants to illustrate the hypothesis of a much more serious pandemic affecting the human being, as serious as it is not seen: the emotional pandemic.
I must first of all thank the parliamentarians, the government, the technicians of the scientific committee, the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, the scientific community, the virologists in attendance and, lastly, the Lombardy region, for sending me the injunction to vaccinate me, thus favoring the my reflections and subsequent intuitions.
It is likely that the dominant thought will win the pandemic soon, but in my opinion it will have won only one battle, the battle of Pyrrhus, and instead will lead the current rationalist and materialistic society, straight, straight towards a scorching defeat. We are, in my opinion, missing the opportunity of awakening, the unseen pandemic has fed the virus to continue undisturbed and subtly ferry humanity towards the so-called transhumanism.
Here I use the term not in the classical conception coined by Teillard de Chardin and taken up by Julian Huxley to indicate the development of new human potentialities, but in Robin Hanson's sense that new technologies will probably change the world in the next century to such an extent. that our descendants will lose many of the aspects we consider human today.
Manifesto against Transhumanism
Below is an extract of the manifesto written by emeritus scientists, see below their names and qualifications.
The cult of transhumanism haunts Europe and the rest of our planet.
Its priests and family members live in some of the most important research laboratories, universities, large corporations and political institutions.
Transhumanism is a negative perspective on human nature, combined with a technical-scientific vision that imagines the "how" we should improve. This perspective is supported by a superstitious belief in science as salvific tout court and by an abstract contempt for our human nature: our frailty, our mortality, our sentience, our self-awareness and our embodied sense of "who We are (distinct from 'what' we are).
Transhumanists combine emotionality with irrationality, dormant potential with stupidity and disability with discrepancy. And as a result of this confusing approach they promote and push towards a future that blindly heralds ubiquitous, genetically optimized, computer-driven networks, in which supposedly fallible humans are manipulated and empowered by an invisible, supposedly controllable and optimizable machinery, driven by intended robots. such as the next stage of apparent "evolution" for humanity.
Prof. Dr. Sarah Spiekermann is Professor and President of the Institute for Management Information Systems at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Vienna, Austria).
Prof. Dr. Peter Hampson is a researcher at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford, where he teaches psychology. He is also Professor Emeritus at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK, and Honorary Adjunct Professor of Psychology at NUI Maynooth, Ireland.
Prof. Dr. Charles M. Ess is Professor of Media Studies, Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo.
Prof. Dr. Johannes Hoff is Full Professor of Systematic and Philosophical Theology at Heythrop College, University of London.
Prof. Dr. Mark Coeckelbergh is Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology at the Philosophy Department of the University of Vienna.
Prof. Dr. Georg Franck is Emeritus Professor of Digital Methods in Architecture and Spatial Planning at the Technical University of Vienna.
And don't let us fall into temptation
"know yourself"
Whether we like it or not we will have to learn to live with such a pandemic and, those who gradually believe they have awakened, and therefore healed, will have to do everything possible to help humanity awaken.
At this point I hear the voices of those who react vehemently, and you would be among the few awakened, then?
I know what happens to those who take this trouble, the cave of Plato docet, and from there on the examples are wasted, I will limit myself to proposing questions and reflections to be done together, to collect data, to make proposals, each one who will have the patience to follow me will be able to draw their own conclusions.
My first suggestion is tolerance, acceptance, compassion, in the Buddhist sense, of positions other than ours and above all respect for minorities.
I will try to demonstrate how the management of the pandemic by the institutions and the response of the masses is the result of the unseen emotional pandemic, dominated by a single thought, which is in danger of making the whole of humanity lose an opportunity for awakening, but also I will provide suggestions and good news, we still have time.
At this point the usual critics might point to my presumption that I believe I have the solution in my pocket.
I know well that being in the shoes of the various Speranza, Draghi, Figliolo, Locatelli, Brusaferro, is not easy, they are my understanding and all the feelings mentioned above: tolerance, welcome, compassion, respect, not my approval and my agreement.
But who do you think you are? One who sees the limitation of their rational thinking and the poverty of their gaze on the world. One who also knows how much the thirst for power can pollute even the most sublime minds and lead even the best-intentioned into temptation. In fact, we will see how much the emotional pandemic is at the basis of corruption and manipulation, operated by the world of science and politics.
I believe that affirming what you see and taking responsibility for it is not arrogance but a condition for humility and mutual coexistence.
I will try below to support and prove my claims.
Beyond dualism
"If your eye does not become unique you will not enter the kingdom"
Gospel of St. Thomas
The problem is believed to be the covid pandemic and the solution is in the vaccine.
The hypothesis suggested here is the following:
Whether you live prey to fear or fight it with reason, whether you get the vaccine or not, if you don't free yourself from the bondage of emotion / reason dualism, you won't be cured.
The problem is not solved by following the emotions, but not even by repressing them, the solution lies in the awareness of identifications and in the consequent choice of disidentification, a term unknown to most.
I would take away the temptation to ask the Minister Speranza or the general son what awareness is. You say that to save lives and overcome the pandemic you don't need to know? I don't think so and I will try to prove it.
Let's start with the rhetoric of war: let's fight the pandemic, fight the virus, we'll win.
Was it that Christ took the side of the oppressed Jews against the oppressing Romans, perhaps that he did not offer the other cheek, perhaps that he did not reattach the soldier's ear? Who by the sword wounds ...
Before anything else, Christ and all the wise teachers before and after him have taught us to make two into one, not to fall into the temptation of reaction, an eye for an eye.
The evolutionary process, Wilber reminds us, is always transcendence and inclusion, never reaction, transformation, never opposition.
We could say that inside each human being there is a little woman, a little man and a hero, heroine. (henceforth for simplicity little man and hero).
The little man is prey to the emotional pandemic, the hero is on a journey to awaken and heal.
The real challenge, unseen, is therefore between sleep or awakening, reaction or change, war or peace, chronicization in dysfunctional behaviors or creative transcendence in the new, identification or disidentification.
We all sleep, often or sometimes, we all happen to wake up, often or sometimes. The hypothesis that I am carrying out is that the single rational thought, with which a large part of humanity is facing the pandemic is, more than ever, a child of the fear / control dyad and that favors sleep rather than awakening.
We will see together what opportunities for awakening we could seize.
The context
If you don't know the story you will be forced to repeat it
Just as when we are born, there are no alternatives either inside or outside, we live or we die.
The process of birth, however, will lead to an evolutionary leap, we will have to breathe autonomously. So the same every time we are faced with a significant bottleneck like the pandemic we are facing.
The choice seems to be between sleeping or waking up, seizing the opportunity or losing it, understanding the teaching or ignoring it, returning to normal or changing, improving, evolving. In my humble opinion we are facing an epochal transition, it would be good to realize it, instead of getting lost in what Jung would call the spirit of the time: the virus, the vaccine, the distancing, the masks, open or close? All this is certainly legitimate on a certain evolutionary level, and what if we realize that there is more? What if we recognize the opportunity to wake up? If we recognized that alongside the little man lost in the spirit of time, a hero is walking on a journey towards himself / herself? What if we listened to the voice of the spirit of the depths? (reflection number 1).
Let's try to contextualize: we are dealing with the virus thing, the problem and we are forgetting the way in which we are dealing with the problem, what is the context? What is the field of the game we are playing? (Reflection number 2).
To understand this, we should bother with history, anthropology and leave aside the stars of the moment, the virologists, for a moment. If you don't know the story you will be forced to repeat it suggests the historical nemesis. A society that does not feel the need for history is a society without a soul. Third consideration: how many historians, how many anthropologists are heard in the mass media?
Retracing history we see that for tens of thousands of years we have lived at the mercy of instinct, attack or flight., Prey or predator, mors tua vita mea. The survival instinct has allowed us to pass from prey to predator, thanks to the resources of instinctive intelligence we have become the best and we have triumphed over other species. In short, we have become permanent, we have discovered agriculture, arts and crafts, we have begun to build communities based on social life, we have given ourselves rules. The magical-superstitious thought of the instinctive conscience has begun to allow some opening to mythological thought. We began to have a history, of the gods to protect us, of the heroes with whom to identify. The great religions and the great myths were born, the soul, the sense of existing and belonging, was added to pure instinct.
The context II
"We can't solve problems with the same kind of thinking we used when we created them"
Instinct of procreation, of taking care of the offspring, of experiencing pleasure, of relationship, the feeling, the emotion, the affections are born. A sketch of rationality makes its way through mythological thought which then with the exit of the dark times of the Middle Ages lays the foundations for the scientific rational thought that has led us, improving itself more and more, with an exponential rate of growth to the extraordinary evolutionary successes of the last one hundred and fifty years.
The current context is therefore that of a post-modern world grappling with the problems of hypercomplexity, which is the product of the triumph of rational consciousness and of the so-called Western culture.
It is in this context that humanity faces the COVID 19 pandemic.
Albeit with a certain slowness, see the report on the shortcomings of the WHO, the dominant scientific thought, on the strength of its successes, has taken the situation in hand and dictated its guidelines, through technical commissions of experts, decision of international organizations, and decrees of politicians, all strictly aligned.
A few, very few doubted that the same dominant scientific thought, based on rationality, was the problem.
The drama of control
The first step in getting out of the trap is recognizing the trap
Simplifying, we could say that thought creates models of the world, that is, it forms concepts regarding the observed process. Observation and thought therefore seem to constitute the two starting points of all human activity while the ways in which the subject of experience observes the world and organizes his observation determine his experience of the world.
Observation is directly connected to the concept of states of consciousness, thought to mental activity more properly said; state of consciousness and thought are inseparable and influence each other.
The way in which the subject observes the world will determine the way in which he will organize his experience, the way in which he organizes it, in turn, will determine his observation.
As if the state of consciousness were a house and thought the interior designer.
Several houses, almost infinite furniture, impossible to separate them.
Even an empty house, in fact, expresses a way of furnishing.
The problem is that no matter how extraordinary progress the human condition has made in the course of history it still seems to be strongly and inadvertently characterized by some limiting deficiencies in these two functions.
The first is that our state of consciousness is influenced by our emotions, our needs or desires.
The second is that observation is directed almost exclusively to the objects of the external world, rarely to the objects of the internal world, almost never except in exceptional cases, it is directed to thought itself.
The third is that thought, for its part, is very skilled at creating models, that is, ideas and concepts, is able, as De Bono reminds us, to recognize them, to react to them and to use them effectively. It is also able to organize and memorize the acquired information, stabilizing it in codes that work so well that they become difficult to modify.
The result is that instead of experiencing the world "as it is", we experience the world as we believe it to be.
How do you get out of this trap?
Not with the same mind that created it, not through reason.
The first step is to realize that we can observe our thinking.
That is, we can move from knowledge to awareness. See our identifications, go further. We are not who we think we are, things are not what they seem.
The forgotten side
We are all prisoners of our mind, the first step is to realize it
We think back to our educational path, to our parents, teachers, professors, priests, we observe politicians, journalists, doctors, technicians, scientists, maybe someone teach us to observe thought? Does anyone show that they are aware of it?
The fact is that if we do nothing to our thought, that is, if we do not consciously observe it, we end up identifying with its constructions; we truly believe we are who we believe we are, as the case may be, a child or a mother, a winner or a loser, a depressed wife or a brave soldier, a politician or a scientist. We truly believe that the problem is the problem, that the virus is the cause of the disease and the vaccine is the solution. It is no coincidence that we have built an evidence-based science, based on evidence.
Such evidences to a conscious observation are nothing but appearances, that is, they describe reality, sometimes they indicate the truth, but they are not the truth. We need to take a step further to grasp what they really mean.
What is stopping us from doing it?
Our habits, maintained by identifications with our beliefs. What prevents us from overcoming them? Our limiting conditioning.
What prevents us from getting rid of it?
The drama of control: we remember in codes of the rational mind they are memorized in depth and are difficult to modify in the absence of an inner work that no one teaches us to do.
Let's see what happened to scientific thinking.
The birth of science is characterized by the famous Cartesian separation between matter and consciousness. The first great minds of science since Galileo decided, not without a certain pressure, to devote themselves to the study of matter and to leave the matters of conscience to the church. In doing so, the rational mind was able to do what it knew how to do well: to divide in order to know, analyze, measure, verify. The extraordinary successes on matter (physio) then encouraged scientists to use the same method for biological life (bios). To do this they had to reduce the living organism to body, consciousness to mind and to put it in the brain. The result in this case too was extraordinary. To remain in the field of medicine, the three great revolutions have taken place: the microscopic revolution, we could say, the discovery of bacteria and antibiotics, the technological revolution, machines for diagnostics and treatment, and finally the new frontier of genomics. In doing so, science will still go very far in extending people's lives, it will certainly win this pandemic and other ventures, but everything has a price. Some call it, in fact, transhumanism.
Institutionalization of the trauma
Paradoxically, the successes of science are not only a grace but also a disgrace. The solution of the problem creates one, as much greater as it is not seen: the hypertrophy of the rational mind, the identification with matter, the denial of consciousness, the separation between body and mind, mind and spirit and delegation of the latter. to religion.
How did this happen? We have to ask anthropologists
Let's try to go back to the mists of time, prey, fleshing, predator, gatherer-hunter, shepherds / farmers.
A journey of struggle, pain, struggle for survival.
The gaze on the shepherd's world brings attention to exploration and conquest, to the use of the territory and to the migration towards ever new spaces, while the farmer takes care, by necessity, of knowing and respecting the rhythms of nature, in as it is permanent, it will also have to pay much more attention to social coexistence and cooperation.
The shepherd usually lives in inhospitable areas, often arid and marginal, made even poorer by his own habit to exploit them for breeding without ever sowing or nourishing the soil.
Pastoralism, consequently, tends to produce a vicious circle, for which the exploitation of environmental resources exacerbates the harshness of living conditions which, in turn, lead to an increase in competition, which requires the enhancement of well-founded warrior qualities. about strength and fear.
It is also understandable how a system of life that provides for the systematic enslavement of other living beings and prolonged coexistence with animals that will then be killed can create a psychological habit of hardness and rigidity.
The farmer usually settles in fertile and hospitable places and tends to establish a loving and respectful relationship with the environment in which he lives. Mother Nature is usually generous, and the farmer soon learns that, by respecting her cycles and taking care of them, her hard work will be rewarded in abundance. He learns to establish a relationship of mutual exchange, of sharing with the mother earth from which he is nourished and to which he lends his care.
The use of force intended as domination and the feeling of fear are not functional to the life of the farmer, who instead will have to develop qualities such as respect, patience, trust, collaboration and so on.
But the farmers do not make history.
The breaking of a balance
We are obviously talking about two systems of life, of two views on the world, we are not judging or demonizing the figure of the single shepherd and not even apologizing for the farmer.
Pastoralism and agriculture are indicative of two archetypal positions that have been intertwined from the beginning in the history of humanity and which represent nothing but the two complementary polarities of the living, once again, the two aspects of the dual mind. The linear mind of pastoral thinking oriented towards immediate results and exploitation, the circular mind of the farmer is accustomed to reasoning with a view to respecting natural rhythms and their collateral effects.
The shepherd-farmer polarity suggests many others starting from the mother of all dualisms, that between male and female, to reach heaven and earth, spirit and matter, mind and body, logos and eros, reason and instinct, warrior and priest and so on.
As a result, in a wise and balanced society, conquest and sharing can and must coexist, just as the two hemispheres coexist in our brain and the two mental modalities in our behavior. In the specific case, the rational mind could provide, for example, the farmer with the planning capacity and determination necessary to defend his fields and his family from enemy aggression; the ecstatic mind could give the shepherd the wisdom to collaborate with members of other tribes and respect each other's grazing spaces.
The balance would be broken if the shepherd invaded the cultivated fields or the farmer did not know how to defend the fruit of his hard work, if linear, logical thinking took over over the circular, analogical one.
Exactly what appears to have happened at some point in humanity's journey, prior to the story being told.
The crisis of the late Neolithic
The archaeological revolution that has occurred in recent decades thanks to the improvement of investigation technologies has allowed scholars to identify during the fourth millennium a period in which a sudden transition from a matrilineal to a patrilinear organization seemed to occur, associated with a gradual disappearance of female figurines and clear evidence of the rise of long wars. In that period there was what was called the "late Neolithic crisis" characterized by a progressive abandonment of sites that had flourished for millennia in fertile and pleasant locations towards all directions except to the east and in particular towards isolated and easy to protect locations such as islands, caves, hilltops as well as a deterioration of the main technologies such as metal and ceramic processing.
Maria Gimbutas, reporting the results of her excavations and many other expert archaeologists, came to the conclusion that the crisis was undoubtedly to be associated with the arrival of the Indo-European populations, warriors and pastoralists from the Eurasian steppes.
The Gimbutas calls these populations kurg or kurgan, who in three successive waves from 4300 to 2000, invaded ancient Europe, almost completely replacing the pre-existing cultures, founded on sharing, with civilizations that mythologized domination, power and destruction. The kurg glorified warriors, idealized weapons and the use of force, pain and fear, subdued women, practiced slavery, and were obsessed with death.
We can thus trace a constellation of domination that proceeds along the following vicious circle: pastoralism-environmental trauma-fear-sympathetic reaction-aggressive behavior-rational hypertrophy - culture of domination.
It is quite easy to understand how the harshness of a nomadic life in a hostile and resource-deficient environment required the development of a culture that privileged strength, struggle, fear of death, the need to resist pain and a rigid control of emotions. In a context such as that of the Eurasian steppes in the Neolithic, concepts such as love and trust, pleasure and sacredness, sharing and abandonment appear as a luxury that no one could afford.
Hence the institutionalization of trauma, the development of rigid personalities imprisoned in character armor based on hardness and control, the denial of feelings and pleasure, the enhancement of discipline and pain, of violence and domination, of the strong over the weak. , man over woman, human being over nature, reason over instinct, matter over spirit, the rich over the poor, the healthy over the sick, the normal over the deviant, the punishing and avenging God over the welcoming and compassionate Goddess . Hence the genesis of that emotional pandemic, which like a phoenix rises from its ashes, especially in emergency situations, real or presumed.
The fear / control conflict
The concept of emotional plague, proposed by Reich, in 1933, defined as the blocking of the formula of life, the somatization of sexual, economic and political repression exerted on the individual, echoes the institutionalization of trauma described by Di Maio.
The emotional plague is a chronic biopathy of the organism, which appeared with the first suppression of sentimental-genital life on a large scale; it has become an epidemic that afflicts the little man in his interpersonal relationships and political processes that can provoke undemocratic and demagogic actions.
It is an anomalous behavior of societies that threatens the search for a free and balanced society by which peoples submit their wills to various governments through the construction of patriarchal patronage, peoples are thus subordinated to political violence through impositions, but above all by generating emotionally afflicted individuals dependent on authoritarian-hierarchies organized on the basis of wealth, property, sex and race.
Given that thought as we have seen is conditioned by the emotional state, the emotional plague produces completely irrational concepts strongly supported and rationally justified by identifications to which the individual clings tenaciously, without any willingness to question his own beliefs or tolerate who you think differently.
We can now answer our question: How did it happen that Western thought with its rationalist and materialistic culture could dominate and persist despite having had its day?
The love for constraint and repression that characterizes the individual afflicted by the emotional plague is supported by a traumatized society born of a culture of domination and control based on fear for which the emergency situation is absolutely functional.
Let's see what happens on a neurophysiological level when we act in an emergency, identified with our emotions
How the emotional response works
Le Doux New York University
The key to the emotional response lies in the amygdala:
Amygdala, the center of the limbic system, at birth is much closer than other structures to complete development, declares a state of emergency by imposing its urgent agenda on the rest of the brain.
For the amygdala to declare a state of emergency (neuronal sequestration) only very few elements of the present situation need to remember those of a past dangerous circumstance.
amygdala: it functions as an archive of the emotional memory and is therefore the repository of the very meaning of the events.
Sensory inputs go to the thalamus and from there there are two routes, one to the amygdala and the other to the cortex.
Neural alley: There is a direct emotional neural pathway that bypasses the cortex and goes directly to the amygdala allowing it to respond earlier and independently. (i.e. without conscious cognitive participation).
Raw emotion is unleashed independently of and before rational thinking.
Hippocampus: recording and understanding of perceptual patterns, provides a detailed memory of the context, while the amygdala retains its emotional flavor.
Prefrontal cortex: dampens the impulses of the amygdala and other Libyan areas by modulating a more appropriate response.
Neocortex: processes information, the prefrontal lobes dictate the emotional response by working in close collaboration with the amygdala and the limbic system.
So in the case of emotional identification, induced for example by fear following trauma, or in emergency situations, a short circuit is created that escapes the control of the cortical and therefore of reason.
Here are explained the reasons for the conflict between the emotion that determines our action and the reason that tries, unsuccessfully to control it, it will at most try to repress its effects through muscular rigidity and rationalization.
Stress response
The human organism in dialogue with the world, faces or bears the Stressor difficulties by procuring the necessary energy through a natural process, the reaction or stress response, comparable to an innate adaptation mechanism that allows you to adapt individual reactions to the unpredictable circumstances vary.
Neuroendocrinologist Hans Selye identified three phases in this process:
• Alarm reaction
• Resistance or adaptation
• Exhaustion
The whole sequence has been called, General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) or "general adaptation syndrome".
The stress response is a set of chain reactions that the whole organism involves, that is, the whole psycho-neuro-immuno-endocrinological axis. (nervous, immune and endocrine systems.
The stress response, identified by Selye, is fundamentally conditioned by three elements: the Stressor, the individual and the environment in which they interact:
Stressor: There are physical stressors (an electric shock, exposure to cold, etc ...), metabolic-biological (reduction of blood sugar levels, infection, food poisoning, etc.), psychological (an exam), psychosocial (an event loss or bereavement). Each of these stressors, while inducing a general activation of the response mechanisms, is characterized by a preferential stimulation of one or more systems (nervous, endocrine, immune). Too powerful, frequent and prolonged stressors are able to overcome the possibility of resistance of the organism and start a pathological process. See a protracted state of emergency such as that induced by anti-pandemic measures.
Individual: The individual is a CAS, Complex adaptive system, equipped with some unique characteristics that allow him to activate an adequate stress response not only to regain lost balance (adaptation through self-renewal) but also to evolve, that is to transcend and include the past experience towards a new, more evolved and complex condition (self transcendence through, learning, memory and evolution). These characteristics are condensed in the term self-organization
It depends not only on the genetic heritage of the individual, but also on a process called "psychobiological imprinting" on its ability to activate the resources of the systems mentioned on the basis of past experiences, the age and sex of the individual, and good functioning organic, cognitive and psychological profile, nutrition, lifestyle, physical activity, postural attitudes., the so-called neuro-associative conditioning.
Further experiments, also conducted on human subjects, showed that the neuro-associative conditioning (neuro-association) is stronger the more the number of experiences related to it increases and the more intense is the associated mood; and we know that all behavior is dictated by a specific state of mind. This "learning" remains latent, relegated to the unconscious, ready to reactivate itself when the right stimulus appears. If we take into account the fact that, as MS Gazzaniga states "98% of what the brain does is outside the domain of consciousness", we can understand the enormous importance that neuro-associative conditioning has in our life, in determining of our moods and, consequently, of our behaviors.
Environment. It constitutes the third important component of the stress response, often overlooked despite being in a certain sense the source of stressful stimuli. By environment we must mean the external one, not limited only to the geo-climatic conditions, but also to the social, family, sentimental, working, economic, political condition and so on, but in the same way the internal one, that is the psycho-emotional conditions of the individual ( education, intelligence, awareness, emotional mastery, human qualities, spiritual potential, and precisely the capacity for awareness, wisdom and disidentification.
What happens in our body when the general adaptation syndrome is activated?
First phase: alarm. It is the initial phase of the stress reaction in which the body collects all its available resources for immediate action, especially by secreting hormones capable of causing appropriate changes in certain organic functions. In this phase there is an intense production of adrenaline and a rapid acceleration of the heart rhythm.
Second phase: resistance or adaptation. This phase lasts as long as a special readiness and capacity for action is required, according to perceptions based largely on psychological factors. It is the phase in which we adapt, for better or worse, to new circumstances and, in practice, as long as the stress factor is perceived, the organism resists. In this phase, the activation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis) plays a fundamental role in which a complex biological and behavioral program is implemented that supports the response to Stressor. The fundamental event is the overproduction of cortisol which has, as a consequence, the suppression of the immune defenses
The consequent weakening or temporary ineffectiveness of immune functions are not worrying if they last for short periods, but become a serious problem in case of chronic stress: the prolonged reduction of the defensive capacities multiplies the probability of contracting infectious diseases, and seems to increase the predisposition to autoimmune diseases.
The culture of control, the institutionalization of trauma, the code of fear, identification with our emotions, and in the case of the pandemic, the protraction of the emergency situation imprisons people in this phase, hindering the achievement of adaptation. The need to maintain control leads to an inability to relax and a loss of addiction to pleasure such that the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic jumps, chronicizing the individual in a sympathetic hyperactivity characterized by accelerated heart rhythm, rigid muscle tone, a feeling of danger imminent.
Here is our vicious circle at work:
trauma - fear - sympathetic reaction - rational hypertrophy - control.
In today's scenario, emotionally identified people face a protracted emergency with the inadequate tools of the rational mind trying to control the situation.
In doing so, stress becomes a daily habit, the adaptation phase translates into a phase of prolonged resistance, chronic stress produces further damage to the psycho-neuro-immunological network and in particular to the immune system.
Third stage: exhaustion. If the stress response has been effective, the adaptation phase passes to the third phase of exhaustion, which requires rest to recover the energy necessary for a correct functioning of the self-organization processes. This phase is usually experienced with a pleasant sense of relaxation and contact with oneself.
In the chronic stress condition described above, however, this cannot happen and a rapid exhaustion of adrenal hormones and energy reserves occurs. Further worsening the vicious cycle of fear / control.
On the threshold of awakening
Now let's pause for a moment to consider our life before the pandemic. Let's think about the famous phrase. Do we hope to be able to return to normal soon?
At what normality? Don't you remember how much you complained two years ago about the economic crisis, the stressful work, the alienated life, the selfishness of the people, the corruption and incapacity of politicians, the greed of multinationals and world finance?
And of that normality you speak of? Maybe you don't remember chronic stress, fear and anger, sadness and dissatisfaction?
Don't worry / or you just have to be patient for a few more weeks or months at the most, the task force of our politicians and scientists will soon lead you, thanks to the mass vaccination that you will repeat every year, towards the much desired normality. It is waiting for you exactly as before, in fact probably worse.
Do you really think you cannot dream and realize a better future? Remember when you are born you don't just come out of the darkness of the womb, you start to breathe.
Do you think you don't deserve a different ending, the fresh air of a new beginning?
Do you think it is not time to get out of the inner emergency, which will not end with the victory over the COVID pandemic?
You probably don't believe it, you can't imagine what should happen.
So I'll give you good news, everything is ready for awakening, we can get out of the real pandemic, the emotional one.
Be patient a moment longer, I must first back up with data what I am promising you.
the Culture of domination, struggle and competition based on rational thinking and emotional identification, supported by the old Darwinian model of evolution, has had its day.
Despite this it is still taught in schools.
The new holistic-systemic, integral paradigm, based on mutualism, cooperation is still left out of the world of education.
New possibilities?
In 1991, 40.000 specialized cells called sensory neurites, similar to those of the brain found in the heart, were discovered that think independently of the brain.
Arranged in such a way as to be called the brain of the heart, around the coronary arteries.
We store information, memory of the trauma in the brain and / or in the heart.
When we feel safe, sensory neurites send signals to the arteries, stage 2 and 3 general adaptation syndrome: you can flow, regenerate. If we have trauma, we get stuck in phase 1, attack escape, block flow, focus on defenses, chronic stress.
We can harmonize these two organs, these two brains: harmonization produces longevity enzymes that repair telomeres and repair DNA.
We can reverse the process, we can create telomeres responsible for slowing down aging.
We can reverse the trend towards chronic stress and initiate the process of self-regulation (self-renewal and self-transcendence, repair and regenerate by stimulating longevity enzymes.
Coherence-Harmony heart brain:
Strengthens the immune system,
increases HRV heart rate variability,
Increase resilience and intuition.
Promotes gratitude gratitude, interest compassion, which in turn elevates the brain to a higher state by increasing gamma waves and triggering 1300 positive reactions, which last for 6 hours, increases DHEA the hormone of youth by 100%, cortisol is lowered by 30 %.
Now I have to talk to you about states of consciousness, have you ever heard of them? Do you think it has nothing to do with your daily problems?
States of consciousness and emotion
Simplifying We can recognize four subsystems of consciousness:
Ø instinctive consciousness,
Ø the rational conscience,
Ø intuitive consciousness,
Ø the unitive consciousness.
The first three find biological basis in McLean's description of the triune brain:
Ø the reptile,
Ø the paleo-mammal,
Ø the neo-mammilian.
The reptilian brain (or brain stem): is the phylogenetically oldest part of the brain, to use McLean's words:
"Its core or frame, roughly corresponding to the basic structures of the reptilian brain, contains the essential apparatus for internal regulations (visceral and glandular), for primitive activities based on instincts and reflexes, and also the centers for arousing vigilance of the animal or put it to sleep. " (Koestler 1976 pp. 277)
We can refer to it as the general level of rudimentary sensorimotor intelligence and instinctive drives or impulses. Here's how McLean expresses the concept of the paleo-mammalian brain (or limbic system):
“The limbic system is intimately connected by two-way neural pathways with the hypothalamus and other centers in the brain stem that deal with gut sensations and emotional reactions - including sex, hunger, fear and aggression; to the point that the limbic system has also been given the name of "visceral brain". (Koestler 1976 pp. 277)
"The limbic system processes information in such a way that it is experienced as feelings and emotions, which become driving forces for behavior." (Koestler 1976 pp. 277)
The third, the neo-mammalian brain (or neocortex):
"The explosive growth of the neocortex," says Jantsch, "at a later stage of evolution is one of the most dramatic events in history." (Jantsch, E. 1980 Pergamon Press, p. 167).
As we see, the passage from the instinctive stage of consciousness to the rational one to the intuitive one occurs according to an evolutionary process of transcendence and inclusion characterized by a greater complexity of the brain structures.
Neuro-scientists and in particular Karl Pribram (Pribram K., 2013), have in turn reached a cognitive leap, the famous holographic hypothesis predicts that the brain could function as a whole.
Since then, holographic theories on consciousness have multiplied, such as that of Tam Hunt (Tam Hunt 2001), which envisages a sort of macro-consciousness that derives from a shared resonance between many micro-conscious constituents.
Here's how Hunt said it:
“As a shared resonance expands into more and more constituents, the particular conscious entity becomes larger and more complex. Hence, shared resonance in a human brain reaching gamma synchrony, for example, includes a much larger number of neurons and neuronal connections than does the case of beta or theta rhythms alone. " (Hunt 2018)
The experiential practices of meditation that provide for the development of awareness and disidentification from one's emotions as a tool to overcome one's chronic stress condition, access one's true nature, contact with oneself and therefore inner peace are not a mirage reserved for some elite with time to waste. They represent the essential condition, they are within everyone's reach and find a neurophysiological foundation in our brain.
Unity consciousness is the best condition we can find ourselves in, as it appears to be the result of the harmonic resonance of our brain functions.
In summary, we can realize that we are prisoners of our mind and of the emotional pandemic that operates through the vicious circle of fear / control, chronic stress, identification, we have the knowledge and tools necessary for an evolutionary leap of consciousness, we are physiologically made to this, everything is ready for awakening, our intent to do it is missing.
The evolutionary leap
There are countless authors who describe the evolutionary leap that awaits humanity beyond reason, towards the birth and affirmation of a suprarational thought, capable of providing the resources to operate with the challenges of globalization and the hyper-complexity that characterizes the postmodernity. It is a conscious, inclusive, integral thought, able to transcend and include the rational ethnocentrism, exclusive to the Western worldview in a transcultural, transpersonal, non-dual world-centric vision.
The COVID pandemic can represent an opportunity to take up the challenge, to learn how to make the epochal transition towards well-being and harmony, contact with oneself. A passage that will lead us to recognize, to give voice, time and space to listen to the echo of the sages of humanity, to realize that know thyself written on the door of the oracle of Delphi; that leave everything and follow me Cristico, that awareness that the teacher is in the heart of each of us, available.
Through conscious observation and self-listening we will be able to meet that a divinity hidden in the depths of the human soul,
It will not be the reason, it will not be the successes of the science of matter, but that spirit of the depth of which Jung speaks that will be able to awaken us; it will not be knowledge but wisdom, not conquest, haste, combat or victory but listening, contact, trust is the flow that will allow us to access the suprarational dimension. We will have to accept the ineffable and the mystery, tolerate the uncertainty of the unknowable and the immeasurable, clean our gaze, recognize that inner voice, that guide that comes from deep within, which the psychology of the future calls Self.
No one will truly make it if this pandemic continues to be managed with the egoic identification of the little rational man who still drunk with his supposedly conquered power over nature, will simply persist in fighting the disease with the sheer force of technology. diagnostics, pharmacology and pharmacogenetics.
However much we can still afford to believe that the human being is a mass of flesh, bones, cells, biochemical processes, Spike protein RNA and DNA; how long will science still be able to delude itself into ignoring details such as the soul, the spirit, the very essence, the true nature of the human being?
With this I do not want to blame the vast majority of the population who is unaware of the possibilities offered by the new paradigm described here, but I cannot fail to recognize the smallness of the little women and little men who govern us, the little men who direct the big ones. pharmaceutical companies, which are in power in the places of high finance and multinationals. These are undoubtedly great minds who have achieved the pinnacle of success, they are intelligent, smart, crafty, people who probably do their best according to their rationalist view, I also want to believe that they are in good faith. There are simply different lines of intelligence and development, the intelligence of power is able to manipulate minds, it is an intelligence that is used first of all against oneself, one's Self, it is said in psychology. In fact, the first to be manipulated are the same individuals identified with power and success, alienated from themselves and lost in their own role, which ends up replacing their true nature. Great Egos identified with their role, their dominated personality, unaware of the emotional pandemic of success, power, money, prestige that pervades them and manipulates their consciences.
The intelligence of the egoic power is so adept, as Laing recalls, at telling lies to itself that it believes they are the truth; to hide behind the masks of rationalizations, to justify any behavior with refined arguments. These subjects deserve our compassion, after all they are at our service, slaves to their identifications.
Who among us would put ourselves in such uncomfortable roles as the Minister of Health to make such stupid decisions, to put ourselves in the hands of technical-scientific committees which in turn are in the hands of the great economic and financial powers.
How could they play this game if they were not themselves manipulated by their own identifications.
Summarizing, we can therefore affirm that identification and manipulation are the founding "symptoms" of the emotional pandemic.
But let's see in detail some traits of the personality profile of those who are "affected" by an emotional pandemic.
Personality profile
Ø Self-manipulation:
In the individual affected by the emotional pandemic, the reason for an action is always presumed; the reason given is never the real reason, regardless of whether the real reason is conscious or unconscious. He believes, seriously and honestly, in the alleged goal or motivation.
Ø Emotional dependence: The result is a tendency to submit to strong, patriarchal powers, to passively undergo rules, impositions and violence by authoritarian hierarchies. We are easily manipulated and often unconsciously we are willing to manipulate as long as it offers us stability, security and the illusion of solving our problems.
Ø Irrationality: Thought is clouded by the so-called wishful thinking, irrational concepts and determined by senseless emotions, for which we tend to believe true what we are similar to and false what we do not like.
Ø Tendency to coercion and repression: No matter how well-intentioned he may be, he cannot act except in the way the emotional plague script foresees.
Ø Guided by the past: Constraint and repression arise from past traumas that have led the individual to the premature suppression of sentimental-genital life on a large scale and the consequent defense against pleasant emotions.
Ø Passive-aggressive attitude: the individual will tend to control his aggressive impulses through a socially accepted behavior, with a superficial courtesy and condescension that masks aggressive feelings that emerge in the form of manipulation, forgetfulness, involuntary mistakes, gossip, envy, jealousy and any other form of behavior that creates damage to the person who is the object of his aggression. When this attitude of control gets out of hand or when the situation justifies it, the true face of aggression emerges.
Thus we come to justify the rhetoric of the war, fought through intermediaries to whom we delegate the task of discharging our repressed anger.
Ø Rationalization: Often successful attempt to justify irrational or wrong ideas through excessive use of reasoning. Often such arguments are very credible and supported by coherent arguments. "Our mind is so adept at telling lies that we believe they are the truth" (R. Laing)
Ø Tendency to Projection and projective identification: projection is defined as the unconscious desire to get rid of a part of oneself and to put it or project it into someone else. Projective identification goes so far as to implement a real "interpersonal pressure" with attitudes and behaviors that lead the person or groups object of the projection to truly experience that projected feeling.
Ø Familiarity with the emergency: The condition of chronic stress in which the emotionally identified individual usually finds himself leads him, almost automatically, despite his conscious will, to feel at ease and almost search for, even if affirming the opposite, situations of pain, discomfort and in any case an emergency in which the situation of stress and denial of pleasure is justified
Ø Sense of fatigue and exhaustion: the repression of the most vital emotions, and chronic stress lead the person to live in a perennial state of exhaustion and lack of energy. The result is a sense of fragility, more or less masked by defensive attitudes and distrust in the body's ability to heal.
Ø Sense of threat and insecurity: the perennial state of emergency and the lack of energy lead to an experience of perennial threat that tends to seek a sense of protection and security in the authority, in the law, in medicine and in the institutions to which one is willing to delegate their autonomy in order to feel safe.
Ø Guilt / responsibility: when we neglect our true nature, when we repress our eros, the impetus for life, we consequently tend to feel guilty. The sense of guilt thus becomes a central element in our life that regulates our moral choices and our judgments about others. The person in full emotional pandemic abuses the sense of guilt, finds relief by sacrificing and giving up pleasure or by placing the responsibility for their condition on others. He exchanges responsibility for fault, does not assume his own and delegates it to the established power. He feels the weight of duty in the concept of responsibility and neglects the fact that responsibility means ability to respond, thus impeding confidence in himself and in his own abilities.
Ø Fear and control: the mother dyad that guides those who are emotionally identified is a sense of perennial fear that lies in the background or that can emerge in a full-blown way in certain situations but which indicates a constant defensive and distrustful attitude to a constant tendency to vigilance and control.
Ø Separation: the original separation from feelings and pleasure, the chronicization in a defensive and controlling attitude lead to separation from oneself and consequently:
Ø Distance from oneself: we tend to be guided from the outside, by the family script, by tradition, by what others say, the church, politicians, public figures, we tend to give extreme importance to what the people and their image, built on behaviors borrowed and implemented to obtain benefits and approval.
Ø Superficiality: One remains on the surface guided by ideas about ourselves and the world and resists everything that wants to invite us to deepen, to listen to oneself, to questioning, to change.
Ø Renunciation: We ignore our own potential and resources, we react with mistrust, disbelief and judgment towards those who encourage us to improve ourselves
Ø Intolerance: Under a mask of apparent welcome and availability there is a defensive attitude of intolerance towards those who threaten our stability and our consolidated beliefs. We refuse to take other points of view into consideration, reacting with closure and judgmental attitude.
Ø Fear of death: death in spite of its true nature, that is part of life, opening to the skin, is lived in a negative way, it is feared, ignored, fought and this brings with it an attitude of struggle, mistrust and control in the comparisons of everything that remembers her: illness, weakness, letting go, trusting, not doing, giving up, emptiness, silence, etc.
Ø Reduction of areas of comfort: Emotional identification, with consequent distance from oneself and manipulation of oneself, leads to a sense of bogus strength that hides a great vulnerability and a sense of helplessness / inferiority. The person who is the victim of the emotional pandemic, despite having surges of love and desire for good, is able to exercise his best qualities only within his comfort areas, basically when his emotional security is guaranteed and recognition ensured. In the absence of these conditions, the more reduced the more the person is identified, the person enters the area of psychological risk, feels in an emergency and implements his defensive behavior patterns. This is why we feel comfortable in emergency situations, we accept them if imposed and we almost look for them. One can behave according to known patterns, according to personal, automatic control systems. Control and safety above all. And what guarantees safety and control? The rational mind.
Beyond the bio-medical model
product of Western modernity
We often hear it said we must believe in science, only science will advance humanity.
This statement can be shared but no one tells us what the word science really means and above all what science we are talking about.
There is only one science you could object to. False.
A knowledge that provides guarantees of reliability is called science.
As we have seen in the brief historical excursus, the positivist scientific method, Newtonian Galilean: experiment, measurement, repeatability, verification, has produced extraordinary results in the field of matter, having been applied to living systems.
In doing so, two fundamental errors were made: one methodological the other epistemological. The essence of life is immeasurable and unrepeatable, measurement and repeatability can be applied to the living being only if it is reduced to the material aspect of it.
A scientific method has been identified with the scientific method. It is the scientific method of the Western, rational, materialist, reductionist vision.
All non-materialistic and reductionist methodological and epistemological approaches are ignored, not recognized or fought against.
The biomedical model, so defined as it focuses on the organic and biological aspects of the states of the body) arises from a philosophical vision, rather than from a scientific method.
It is first of all a way of looking, of investigating the body that originated in a specific historical, economic, philosophical and cultural period, which it is no coincidence that we call "modernity".
Modern Western scientific thought is therefore a gaze that has relegated all other conceptions of the body, of health and of disease, to superstition and magic, and as such discredited (
It is necessary to recognize that this Western scientific attitude did not concern only the "internal" medical systems alternative to the nascent biomedicine - we think of all those practices that have been collected, often for homologation, under the label of "folk medicine"
Biomedicine inserted in the colonial device has had a considerable weight in relegating the multiplicity of medical systems with which it was confronted - and mostly clashing - in the world of the irrational, the magical, the primitive: and often, again through this prejudice we look to other medical systems.
They are medical systems that, for simplification, are defined as traditional, precisely to underline their otherness from biomedicine - and perhaps this is also an implicit sign of the fact that we continue to consider them as non-modern.
A post-modern, world-centric, transcultural, inclusive thought is developing that recognizes the colonial, exclusive attitude of the biomedical model, supported in this by the religious thought of Christianity. It is a vision that offers dignity to traditional medicine, to the dimensions of the spirit freed from the exclusive narrative of Christianity.
It is a vision that offers a new scientific model, which has its roots in the science of complexity and in the new integral, holistic-systemic paradigm.
There are now countless studies and researches for evaluating the relationship between modern Western medicine and health that questioned the dominant biomedical model.
We can summarize the conclusions as follows:
“Modern medical technology alone cannot tackle and resolve the most common 'diseases of civilization'.
The biological interventions, even if they prove useful in emergency cases, have irrelevant effects on the health of entire populations.
Only rarely, biological mechanisms are the sole causes of infirmity.
The health of human beings is mainly determined, not by the medical act, but rather by their behavior, their eating habits and the nature of their environment. "
Capra F. (1987), The turning point, Feltrinelli, Milan.
I thank those who have had the patience to follow me up to here and I leave you with some cards that foreshadow the light beyond the dark, the transcendence and inclusion of the biomedical model and rational thinking towards an integral supra-rational model.
Integral medicine
A definition that goes beyond the eternal dichotomy between biomedicine and traditional approaches was proposed by Wilber with the term Integral Medicine. Below I propose a modified version which includes:
Ø The excellence of biomedicine suitable for intervening on the organism from a physical point of view.
Ø The excellence of traditional medicines, suitable for a holistic approach, on the unity of the person.
Ø The excellence of the psychological approach that focuses on the doctor-patient-environment relationship.
Traditional medicine
(unconventional)
Ø According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Homeopathy is the 2nd largest medical system in the world, with an important and constant rate of growth every year worldwide.
Ø In Europe, more than 100 million people use homeopathy and 50 are homeopathic doctors who practice it.
Ø There are over 500.000 doctors in the world and more than 600 million patients using it (according to WHO), distributed in more than 100 countries.
Ø According to the data of the EURISPES Italy 2017 Report, one in 5 Italians (21,2% of the population, equal to almost 13 million people) uses unconventional therapies (with an increase of 6,7% compared to 2012) .
Ø According to the Report, homeopathy is the most loved unconventional medicine in Italy, towards which 76,1% of Italians are oriented. This is followed by phytotherapy (with 58,7%), osteopathy (44,8%), acupuncture (29,6%), chiropractic (20,4%).
Traditional medicine
(pre-conventional)
Ø traditions of care peculiar to Sub-Saharan Africa
Ø ayurveda traditional Chinese medicine
Ø Shamanism characteristic of Siberian South American and North American continents
Ø traditional Australian Aboriginal healers
Ø Folk medicine and traditional healers of Europe
Which science?
The different theories attributable to the Science of Complexity are, among others:
Ø General Systems Theory (Bertalanffy, Weiss),
Ø cybernetics (Wiener),
Ø thermodynamics of non-equilibrium (Prigogine),
Ø automated cell theory, (Von Neumann),
Ø catastrophe theory (Thorn),
Ø theory of autopoietic systems (Maturana and Varela),
Ø theory of dynamical systems (Shaw, Abraham),
Ø Theories of Chaos. "
Other scientific research methods
Ø transpersonal-phenomenological research
Ø research conducted through exceptional human experiences
Ø Embodied Approaches to Transformative Research Praxis
Ø Imaginal and Artistic Approaches to Transformative Research Praxis
Ø Indigenous Approaches to Transformative Research Praxis
Ø Tart's essential science,
Ø Varela's first-person science (Varela 1999),
Ø Wilber's integral science (Wilber, 2011)
Braud, W. & Anderson, R. (1998) Transpersonal Research Methods for the Social Sciences. London: Sage.
Possible treatments
Ø Early home care
Ø Integral medicine
Ø Increase defenses
Ø Primary prevention
Ø (Nutrition, lifestyle habits, sports activities, contact with nature)
Ø Development of potential
Ø (creativity, quality, service, sharing)
Ø Treating the emotional pandemic
Ø (mastery of inner experience, awareness, liberation from personal history, self-realization)