When neurons fire together, they wire together…

To live, an organism must metabolize: it must exchange matter and energy with its environment. Consequently, over the course of a year, many atoms in your body are replaced by new ones. The energy you use to get a drink of water comes from sunshine working its way up to you through the food chain - in a real sense, light lifts the cup to your lips. The apparent wall between your body and the world is more like a…

Continue ReadingWhen neurons fire together, they wire together…

“Despite the intense care and attention lavished on the individual ego

despite over a century of trying to “raise self-esteem” in the peculiar belief that it will simultaneously enhance individuality and create good citizens; despite valiant attempts to consolidate relationships and lower inhibitions; despite intimidating efforts to dragoon the more independent-minded and creative to become “team players”; despite the promises of personal freedom made to us by neoliberalism and the cult of individualism and rights — despite all this, the well seems to be running dry. We are living in a…

Continue Reading“Despite the intense care and attention lavished on the individual ego

The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal…

They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society.

Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness.

These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.

Aldous Huxley

Continue ReadingThe real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal…

They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society.

Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness.

These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.