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Age in Psychosis

Updated on August 29, 2014

Many people feel like what Edvard Munch depicted in this painting

Psychosis can become a symptom that arises out of a constant state of fear, Anxiety can be another driver as can alienation. Note the shadowy and suggestive characters in the background.
Psychosis can become a symptom that arises out of a constant state of fear, Anxiety can be another driver as can alienation. Note the shadowy and suggestive characters in the background.
So pervasive is the condition of fear, anxiety and alienation, that it is depicted in popular cartoon series such as the Simpsons. This of course is modeled after Edvard Munch's famous work including the "shadowy figures".
So pervasive is the condition of fear, anxiety and alienation, that it is depicted in popular cartoon series such as the Simpsons. This of course is modeled after Edvard Munch's famous work including the "shadowy figures". | Source
Psychosis is a complex condition according to this Venn diagram that links it to other mental conditions.
Psychosis is a complex condition according to this Venn diagram that links it to other mental conditions. | Source

Distractions galore and denial in an age of accelerating chaos

Immanuel Velikovsky wrote four seminal works concerning catastrophe on huge proportions. These works are “Ages in Chaos, Worlds in Collision, Earth in Upheaval and Mankind in Amnesia”. He was ridiculed and persecuted by scientists of his day, scorned and driven out. By the summer of 1994, that attitude took a decided change based on observational evidence; specifically, the impact of the 22 major pieces of Comet Shoemaker-Levy into Jupiter in the summer of that year. We now accept catastrophe as a bona-fide field of science today. But old attitudes die hard and as we enter a new age of catastrophe, many people are in denial. Further, by our own actions, we are making potential problems potentially worse. We are by now, well into the age of mass psychosis. What will be detailed here is why we are there, what the symptoms of psychosis are and how we might extricate ourselves from it. Let us look briefly at the symptoms of this malady and how it applies to society and out era.

We begin by looking at psychosis as a condition that affects individuals. A person with psychosis experiences some loss of contact with reality, characterized by changes in their way of thinking, believing, perceiving and/or behaving. For the person experiencing psychosis, the condition can be very disorienting and distressing.

A person with psychosis may:

  • Experience confused thoughts

  • Feel their thoughts have sped up or slowed down

  • Feel preoccupied with unusual ideas

  • Believe that others can manipulate their thoughts; or that they can manipulate the thoughts of others

  • Perceive voices or visions that no one else can hear or see

  • Feel 'changed' in some way

  • Act differently than they usually would

By implication, the state being run by rulers of some sort, may in fact be run by someone in a state of psychosis which may then be transferred to society as a whole by laws and legislation that are given birth in that state of individual psychosis. It then begs the questions; can psychosis be transferred and is there such a thing as mass psychosis? It is known from various observations that psychosis can be induced fairly rapidly through sensory deprivation and/of after a prolonged bout of persecution by others. Anyone who has endured bullying and torture risks drift into a state of psychosis. Thus it would seem that psychosis can be transferred or even induced in others by perfectly healthy people. When large numbers of people go through a prolonged period of stress, many of them will become psychotic. As a state is a collection of people of various classes and functions, psychosis can manifest in the state as well.

We live in an age of acute stress from economic, natural and man-made sources. We need not dwell on the encroaching mass debt bomb that is near detonation beyond what came from the sub-prime triggered economic catastrophe of Sept.=Oct, 2008. Everywhere we look, the problem gets more and more out of hand as new bigger debts are incurred to pay off old smaller ones.

Then there are the natural catastrophes that are causing the heads of many to spin at the pace and ferocity. The last few years have caused a mind boggling reaction as to causes that range from the sane to the outrageous. The natural catastrophes have various causes at their root. The main driver for earth changes is the reversal of the geomagnetic field that indicates that these are being driven by this fundamental change in the earth's interior. It is little wonder that there have been tremendous shake ups of late, with the Malaysian, Haitian and Japanese earthquakes, two of which generated tsunamis. Man-made sources of stress are events like wars, civil unrest, politics and terrorism. It even seems that the earth itself and its natural processes are in a condition of psychosis. Who has not experienced a day where the weather can turn on a dime, from sunny and warm to cold, blustery and rainy, where one doesn't know whether to break out the sun tan lotion or drag out the rain and snow gear.

Let's now look at each of the symptoms and see how it emerges in the collective.

The first point concerning confused thoughts is a no-brainer when we look at the news (or lack thereof) and all the myriad points of view on the net, most of which have no substantial backing to prove their case. We see thoughts expressed such as H.A.A.R.P. causing the recent Japanese earthquake, tsunami and melt down. We see views on aliens from space that caused it, as well as aliens who have come to help during and after the event. UFO sightings have a huge range of ready explanations. There are those who express the concern that this is nature operating as it usually does without human or alien intervention. We have heard that God will strike us down with an asteroid if we continue to tolerate gay people, when there is actually a furtive war going on against the same. This kind of contradiction can be found on any issue. There are views both pro and con concerning global warming and plenty of dithering while the situation continues to deteriorate and business goes on as usual at an ever accelerating pace. Has anyone ever considered the experiment where an engine is run in an enclosed environment to see what happens? Even a thought experiment considering all the facts should indicate the end result. At the root of much of these rants, is irrational logic based on how one feels and/or believes. Very little is filtered through rigorous testing to establish the real facts. And so, the test for confused thoughts has been established as actual.

The next symptom is the sensation of sped up or slowed down thoughts, which is a self perceptive issue. In the harried day to day business of living, it seems that the hurrieder we go, the behinder we get. This double edged sword of speeding and slowing down gets most of us knotted up in the contradiction. This contradiction gets most of us stressed out, especially if we feel that we can't keep up with unfolding events or the new learning curve thrown at us with every wind of new time saving technology that slows us down. Little wonder then that the second symptom of psychosis exists in the collective mind.

Psychosis at large in society

Distractions Abound To Turn Your Gaze Elsewhere

Almost everyone is preoccupied with something. It may be sports, or a new car, or some wild fantasy. Unusual ideas abound today and the internet seems a perfect sowing ground for the dissemination of every conceivable and not so conceivable phantasm that pops up from the void. For some, though heaven and earth may be ready to snap to some new order, the score of the football game is more important. The rush for more money is more obsessing than the threat of that nearby volcano that's about ready to blow up. Now money does not seem like an unusual idea in of itself until we realize that most of nature operates without it entirely. So did humanity for most of its history. Unusual ideas also manifest in what is considered of value. Fads and fashion that quickly change are a perfect example of a preoccupation with unusual ideas.

Thought manipulation is something that is fait-du-complait with admen attempting to sway mass opinion in every facet of life. We can imagine that this can be influenced by our input, but that is where it ends, unless we have the power, wealth and respect to change the course of history. Some people are very manipulative and have ways to influence the thoughts of many. One such person of note was Adolph Hitler, who himself was manipulated. This area of whether it is psychosis or not is a gray area, simply because it is so pervasive. So in one way, thought manipulation on all quarters demonstrates that as a society, we are in an age of psychosis.

Everyone by now has seen it; people walking down the street babbling to themselves. On closer inspection, most are using cell phones. What really qualifies as a symptom is the seeing of things or people and hearing things no one else does. These visions, though perceived as real and solid, are in the mind of the one experiencing it and in no one else. Occasionally, a group of people can have a collective hallucination. In the field of mass hypnosis and mesmerism, we enter a territory where the distinction between normalcy and psychosis is blurred. In the case where politics and military science dominate and control thought, then psychosis becomes the norm and normal is deemed psychotic. Experiments in mind control are the subject of secret and not so secret experiments by this entity. In some circumstances, people seek out visions in what is called a vision quest, which no one else experiences with them. In other situations, it comes unbidden. Today, with technology at our disposal, we can manufacture visions and even cause them in individuals or in whole groups with or without consent. This part at least is the manifestation of this particular symptom of mass psychosis in the current age.

Today, many feel that they have changed in some way that is hard to define. And yet, under closer scrutiny in the age of economic uncertainty and the war against terror, we can see how the collective temperament has indeed changed in some way. But the change has been almost imperceptible and many people only feel that they have changed somehow without being able to define it. It takes an objective observer and good memory to see this change. Even news reportage has fallen victim to this.

The condition of acting differently than usual surfaces in all areas of life, but particularly in politics. It has become a sad joke that political promises were made to be broken. There is the public relations face and then there is the back room deal and the two seldom agree.

Given the foregoing, we can see that the current condition of civilization is an age in psychosis. We voice hatred of war, but agree that we have to war against terrorism. We argue against creating more debt and then get a bigger loan to pay off one debt with another. We talk green, but it's business as usual. There is an agreement that things as they are cannot continue as they are unsustainable, but we continue down the same path. We are against poverty but act in ways to ensue that it remains and grows like a cancer. These are the signs of an age in psychosis.

Now that this has been made clear, how do we set about affecting a cure for this malady? One way is for individuals to take responsibility for acknowledging their own part in this and break from the patterns, especially when it becomes apparent. Seek out the truth in the situation no matter how painful and shocking it may be. Determine to act in a manner that is not a fantasy, that is, if you are economically broke, don't give in to the fantasy that you are anything but that. The urge to look successful at any cost is a kind of sickness that rivals the losing gamblers woes. That urge may lead to unsustainable debts that will haunt you minute by minute, unless you have the insight to get rid of that haunting. We want to cling to what is perceived as the tried and true even though it is now no longer viable. Take the internal combustion engine. We know that it is bad for everything, but we are afraid to abandon it for some other way, even if that way is nothing. However, in this case, it is not entirely true as there are plenty of alternatives. It is true that reality faced stone sober can be frightening, even in the extreme. People have been known to go into amnesia after a frightful catastrophe as pointed out by Velikovsky. We've seen it after the shock of a massive earthquake or a hurricane. But face it we must if we are to do anything really effective. There is some growing up and maturing to be done by a lot of people. The spirit of independence that gave a nation like the US a lease on life has by and large disappeared into fear and dependency. Many adults are little better prepared for great challenges than infants. Out of confusion has to come the synthesis of clarity. Thoughts have to be fixed on some great principle and not randomly floating in a desultory fashion, tugged and towed by every change of popular expression. Unusual ideas should be kept in their place in the relation to what is concrete and doable. Your thoughts will only be manipulated if you let them be without objective self analysis and investigation of motives on the part of all parties involved. Similarly, you should not force others by manipulating theirs. Recognize visions for what they are and determine what may be behind them and then take measures to correct this where possible. For instance, many strange visions come from toxicity and as a result, the cause can be removed. We all change continually; get used to the idea. Loa Tse once opined that no man steps into the same river twice as the waters continually flow and the river is constantly changing. So are we! Sometimes, we have to question; what is normal? In a natural world of diversity, there is no such thing. This is a delusion that can be easily enough dispelled. Though difficult at first, like a neophyte attempting hatha yoga for the first time, improvement comes with practice.

Psychotic business

working

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