The issue with Psychosis' - and the Cultural Psychosis of our Time

The common understanding of man(kind) itself is a topic that takes us through a long-winded past, where once upon a time people saw Gods and expressions of their power, we nowadays see energy and particles. In that sense it is a story of mankind unraveling the layers of reality - from the superficial to the substantive.

But apart from physics, there's also the human condition. Though plenty of people are aware of the case, that normal is often enough a strenuous term, I suppose it is still valid that a thing such as "the norm" or "normal" is present within our minds. It is simply the core of the things we're used to. Things, where our pattern recognition doesn't sounds any alarms. And somewhere, within all of this, sat the so called idiot. I would surmise - someone who wasn't able to grasp common things; Someone who just couldn't do as anyone else would. And similar to that, eventually terms such as crazy or psychopath would emerge. And I assume attempts have been made to understand these things. And as of today, we've come a long way from merely shunning those who wouldn't perform as expected - and moved on to whatever tools of aid we have.

Part of that aid however entails medication. That, in and of itself, isn't too bad. But it is, as I've learned, still a long way away from how we understand medication that treats ... infections and other ... we might say: tangible conditions. So have we as of yet not discovered the proverbial - or more like: literal - "brainworm" that "does the crazy"; And often enough, I assume, the open minded person is left understanding, that the human psyche is complicated.

Having suffered the one or the other condition that would pass as psychosis - after all it's somewhere amongst the various diagnosis' of my mental health - I understand; And effectively that should be common sense; That these mental illnesses aren't ... 'magical'. From a scientific perspective there is the medication that is used - and based on what it does, we can infer some mechanisms at some bottom to mental illnesses. Say, hormonal and neuro-transmitter imbalances - predominantly.

So is there this biological machine we call our body - and it imposes its own challenges on the mind. Say, when stressed or over-stimulated - or drunk - we can speak of physical conditions that influence our spiritual or mental functionality. And naturally, as one can't merely ask someone to "get sober" - although there also is some kind of spiritual drunkness that one can sober up from - some of these issues are just 'concrete'.

When speaking of pychosis' however - there isn't all that much clarity as to what it is or why it is. And since, to my awareness, it is mostly spoken of in the context of legalization, I assume there's an emergent idea, that it is what comes from taking drugs. And I suppose, to be taken with a grain of salt, I can acknowledge that - in the sense that any state of 'non-sobriety' - once normalized - might lead to a state that could be distinguished from 'a normal'. I suppose, for instance, when thinking of hallucinogenics at least - where one might see pink rabbits where however there are none.

Funnily enough, the recent month have provided us something new - in case of which we can have a technical understanding of how the mind works. So in the case of Artificial Neural Networks such as at the basis of ChatGPT.
In that sense at least we can think of the pysche as something semi-automated; But I suppose ... diagnosing ChatGPT of mental disorders goes a bit beyond my current competence.
But what I meant to highlight, is how ChatGPT displays what we might call complexes or ego - in the sense that it will be utterly convinced - in as far as that's the right terminology - of apparent falsehoods.
So - in a sense - it is delusional.
And all that without much of the human baggage we'd claim for our own.

So, [humor:] - welcome to the 21st century - the age of mankind and its delusional AI.

And how to fix it? Well, other than doing the equivalent of brain-surgery, which ... probably wouldn't work out as intended, we should not try to - effectively - make it our God and further nourish its delusions; And be mindful of our own - and have it grow along with us. At least ... that would be the least complicated solution I think.

The internet, via its 'influencers' works similarly - as an influencer, or one who aspires to be one, is an individual that is on professional standby to respond to topics that one might be interested in hearing more about. So then ChatGPT for instance - being one thing people would have opinions about - and subsequently ... lots of people voicing their opinions.

And so much for the analytical/background side of this.


My current hunch is to see psychosis as a sort of byproduct of incoherent stimuli. These stimuli would be perceptions or insights - experiences, thoughts, ideas, theories ... - that we either willingly or passively try to integrate into our worldview - and as there is nothing to 'process' them, they first of all just sit there. After all ... these high-states usually pass away and the person returns to their normal life. But when exposed to stimuli of a certain kind for long enough - the mind will start to process them individually; That is, regardless of whether they fit in or not - and the next step up from there ... is for those processes to become the dominant 'mental state' as it were.
So might one symptom be that the individual starts isolating itself from "normal people" - as the new mental state is more interested in interacting with "the crazy".

The "Elden-Soulsborne" games inspired me to this perspective - as ... competing against a Boss, especially in Elden Ring when trying to not use Ashes, where I repeatedly fail has me learn ... I'd say ... wrong things. The story goes as: One learns certain mechanics while playing the game - and one would try to beat a boss with the acquired tools or skillset. Eventually the Boss is however programmed to have defenses against the more common strategies - and while the individual is oblivious to its strengths and weaknesses, it cannot play against the boss properly; While the Health-bar is effectively a margin of error. And as the mind grows tired - it will more so resort to its "tried and tested" habits - and fail even harder. Unless it has been able to work out some winning strategy it can capitalize on. And so, often enough it is helpful to take a break and re-enter the fight with a refreshed state of mind.

As for the cultural psychosis of our time - it relates, for once, to the ... I'm sure there's a word for that ... where something macroscopic takes on a similar structure or function as something it itself contains. I'll just say ... macroscopic inverse re-fractalization. Such as ... social networks that may resemble neural networks. How individuals and their beliefs then can sortof be equated to a neuron. And it seems to me as though this worlds rulers and the ruled - are at a bit of an impass - especially while its healthy components don't get heard as much as everyone else. It is also weird how right wing populism is this highly organized structure, although all they have to share is nonsense; Althewhile "the left" might as well just be ... a puff of smoke. We might argue that this condition highlights the social condition of our time - and I don't think that it really reflects our common sense understanding concerning those things. So ... something weird is going on there.

But well.
Other than that I mean to apologize that ever so often I only manage to write half of what I probably should have written, but well - I'm still working at capacity. Sortof.

Have a nice one.