"Electrochemical smog"

¶ "Nothing disturbs me more than the glorification of stupidity." - Carl Sagan

¶ "Most of our history is the history of stupidity." - Stephen Hawking

¶ "Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation...'' ―Robert A.

Heinlein

¶ 'What distresses me is to see that human genius has limitations, and human stupidity has none.'—A.
Dumas, fils.

« Le génie humain a des bornes, Mais la sottise n’en a pas. » - Alexander Dumas

¶ "The adverse effects and perverse misuses of new technologies tend ironically to increase the human
vulnerability that is one of the prime motives for technology in the first place. Furthermore,
technological advancement substitutes for moral or social progress, so that business (quite literally) can
proceed as usual, without the inconvenience of social upheaval or economic redistribution. The more
technology we have, the more technology we crave to protect ourselves from its abuses in the absence
of real wisdom. And, the more we put ourselves at risk from the horrors of runaway development, the
more we take flight in the distractions it provides. As Aldous Huxley foresaw, the pervasive culture of
entertainment includes and combines TV, alcohol and drugs, computers, shopping, virtual reality, sex,
and that classic opiate, religion.9" [Dan Bruiger p. 11, 12, SECOND NATURE the Man-made World of
Idealism, Technology and Power ]

'WISDOM Is The ACT Of SEEING, Is The ABILITY To MAKE A DISTINCTION BASED On INTELLIGENT
PERCEPTION.' - David Bohm

"In a sense, to perceive the totality of understanding , one must be a totality. This requires that one
see through the totality of illusion. " - David Bohm

" an active, self-sustaining pool of human knowledge – accumulated and refined through millennia – is
thoroughly infected with misinformation, thus polluting human experience at its generative source." -
David Bohm

● "...his mind is ready to accept any illusion, if he can only get pleasure rather than pain." ~ David Bohm
● "Thought is governed by the pleasure principle, which puts pleasure first, ahead of factuality and
logic." -David Bohm

● "Whatever one tries to “do” is based on the root of all illusion and is therefore just an extension of the
very problem that one wants to get rid of. " - David Bohm

● “Illusion-generating illusion” covers up and suppresses awareness of its poisonous character. To really
see deeply the nature of this illusion is action enough. For in the light of this perception, it has to
collapse. Whatever you do beyond this just stirs up the cloud of dust." - David Bohm

■ David Bohm on INTELLIGENCE :

●"Indeed it is necessarily implied, in any statement, that the speaker is capable of talking from
intelligent perception, which is in turn capable of a truth that is not merely the result of a mechanism
based on meaning or skills acquired in the past…"

●"The actual operation of intelligence is thus beyond the possibility of being determined or conditioned
by factors that can be included in any knowable law. So, we see that the ground of intelligence must be
in the undetermined and unknown flux, that is also the ground of all definable forms of matter.
Intelligence is thus not deductible or explainable on any branch of knowledge (e.g. physics or biology).
Its origin is deeper and more inward than any knowable order of definable forms of matter through
which we would hope to comprehend intelligence."

●"What, then, is the relationship of intelligence to thought? Briefly, one can say that when thought
functions on its own, it is mechanical and not intelligent, because it imposes its own generally irrelevant
and unsuitable order drawn from memory. Thought is, however, capable of responding, not only from
memory but also to the unconditioned perception of intelligence that can see, in each case, whether or
not a particular line of thought is relevant and fitting."

●"One may perhaps usefully consider her the image of a radio receiver. When the output of the receiver
‘feeds back’ into the input, the receiver operates on its own, to produce mainly irrelevant and
meaningless noise, but when it is sensitive to the signal on the radio wave, its own order of inner
moverment of electric currents (transformed into soundwaves) is parallel to the order in the signal and
thus the receiver serves to bring a meaningful order originating beyond the level of its own structure
into movements on the level of its own structure. One might then suggest that in intelligent perception,
the brain and nervous system respond directly to an order in the universe…“
 ~ David Bohm.

'a sick culture prevailed upon a presumably normal machinery of reason, with disastrous
consequences. ' Antonio Damasio , DESCARTES' ERROR

'The proclamation of bruised feelings, the desperate plea for the correction of individual pain and
suffering, the inchoate cry for the loss of a never-achieved sense of inner balance and happiness
to which most humans aspire are not likely to diminish soon. IT WOULD BE FOOLISH TO ASK
MEDICINE ALONE TO HEAL A SICK CULTURE, BUT IT IS JUST AS FOOLISH TO IGNORE THAT
ASPECT OF HUMAN DISEASE. ' - Antonio Damasio, DESCARTES ERROR

The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of
human stupidity." ~ Voltaire

"Common sense is not so common." ~ Voltaire

'Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who
do reason.' - Voltaire

"The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for
continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe." ~ Voltaire

"Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the
ideas of the time." ~ Voltaire

"The more a man knows, the less he talks." ~ Voltaire

"The more you know, the less sure you are." ~ Voltaire

" an active, self-sustaining pool of human knowledge – accumulated and refined through millennia – is
thoroughly infected with misinformation, thus polluting human experience at its generative source." -
David Bohm

"The thought that you are doing great will make you feel good inside ‐ all the good feelings will
come out. Or the thought that you have done something wrong may make the adrenalin flow,
may make you feel guilty. If somebody says you are guilty, which is a thought, then you can
feel very miserable. Feelings are tremendously affected by thoughts. And obviously thoughts are
tremendously affected by feelings, because if you are angry you don't think clearly. Likewise, if
you have a feeling of pleasure in something, you may find yourself reluctant to give up that idea
which gives you pleasure, even if it is wrong ‐ you engage in self deception.

There's a good physical reason that feelings and thoughts affect each other; you can see it in
the structure of the brain. There is an intellectual centre in the cortex, the outer layers of the
brain. And deeper down there is an emotional centre. Between them is a very thick bundle of
nerves, by which they communicate very closely. So they are connected. There was a famous
case in the nineteenth century of a man who had an iron pin driven through his brain by an
explosion. He apparently recovered from this, and he was physically more or less normal. But
although he had been a very level‐headed man, after he recovered he was totally unbalanced
emotionally, and intellectually he couldn't maintain any very consistent line of thought. The
breaking of the connection between the emotional and the intellectual centers prevented the
system from functioning. [...]

Those centers are intimately and closely related. The very wish to think must come from an
emotion or from an impulse to think. They are really almost two sides of the same process. But
our language separates them and our thought separates them into fragments. I'm saying that
emotion and intellect are closely connected, but we introduce into our thought a very sharp
division...

It is worth repeating what I've said the last few years ‐ that in our language we have a
distinction between ʹthinkingʹ and ʹthoughtʹ. ʹThinkingʹ implies the present tense ‐ some activity
going on which may include critical sensitivity to what can go wrong. Also there may be new
ideas, and perhaps occasionally perception of some kind inside. ʹThoughtʹ is the past participle of
that. We have the idea that after we have been thinking something, it just evaporates. But
thinking doesn't disappear. It goes somehow into the brain and leaves something ‐ a trace ‐
which becomes thought. And thought then acts automatically. The example I gave about the
person who kept you waiting shows how thought reinforces and sustains anger; when you have
been thinking for a while, ʹI have a good reason to be angryʹ, the emotion is there and you
remain angry. So thought is the response from memory ‐ from the past, from what has been
done. Thus we have thinking and thought. We also have the word ʹfeelingʹ. Its present tense
suggests the active present, that the feeling is directly in contact with reality. But it might be
useful to introduce the word ʹfeltʹ, to say there are feelings and ʹfeltsʹ. That is, ʹfeltsʹ are feelings
which have been recorded. You may remember pleasure that you once had, and then you get a
sense of pleasure. If you remember pain you had you may get a sense of pain. A traumatic
experience in the past can make you feel very uncomfortable when remembered. Nostalgic
feelings are also from the past. A lot of the feelings that come up are really from the past,
they're ʹfeltsʹ. By failing to make this distinction we often give too much importance to some
feelings which actually don't have that much significance. If they are just a recording being
replayed, they don't have as much significance as if they were a response to the present
immediate situation. Often you may respond according to the way you felt a long time ago, or
the way you became used to feeling in the past. In effect you could be saying ʹwhen I was a
child, a certain situation made me feel uncomfortableʹ, and then when any similar situation
arises in the present you feel uncomfortable. You get that discomfort because you don't see that
it doesn't mean anything.

But it does seem to mean a great deal, and it affects you. So not only is there a false division
between thinking and feeling, but also between feelings and ʹfeltsʹ, and the whole state of the
body. You can see that the way you think can get adrenalin flowing. You can get neurochemically
affected all over the body. For example, if you are in an area which you think is dangerous and
you see a shadow, your thought says that there are people around who might attack you, and
then you immediately get a feeling of fear. Your adrenalin starts flowing, your muscles tense, and
your heart beats rapidly ‐ just from the knowledge that there may be assailants in the
neighborhood. As soon as you look and say ʹitʹs a shadowʹ, those physical symptoms subside.
There is a profound connection between the state of the body and the way you think. If people
are constantly worried and under stress about their jobs or something, they may stir up their
stomachs too much and get ulcers and various other things. It's well known. The state of the
body is very profoundly tied to thought, affected by thought, and vice versa. Thatʹs another kind
of fragmentation we have to watch out for. All of this will tend to introduce quite a bit of
confusion, or what I call ʹincoherenceʹ, into thinking or into action because you will not get the
results you expect. That's the major sign of incoherence: you want to do something but it
doesn't come out the way you intend. That's usually a sign that you have some wrong
information somewhere. The right approach would be to say; ʹYes, that's incoherent. Let me try
to find out the wrong information and change it.ʹ But the trouble is, there is a lot of
incoherence in which people don't do that.

The positive and the negative are two sides of the system. Anything positive is implicitly negative,
and vice versa. Let's try to look at that. Somewhere in the middle of the brain there are
pleasure‐pain centers. Researchers have access to those centers in animals. I once saw an article
which showed a picture of a cat looking very pleased when they touched a pleasure centre
either electrically or chemically. Then when they touched it a little stronger the cat looked very
frightened. When they touched it a little stronger still, it looked enraged but somewhat pleased
at the same time. Rage was pleasure. What they said was that every time you stir up pleasure,
all the pain centers around also come in to compensate. Every time you stir up pain the pleasure
centers come in. There is always a mixture of the two. Itʹs a very complex feeling. Suppose you
stub your toe: you feel pain, but meanwhile the pleasure centers are set to work to overcome
that . And when the pain goes away you then feel pleasure ‐ itʹs left over. In other words, the
pain has died away and the pain centers are quiet for a moment. But the pleasure centers take
a bit longer to quiet because they were stirred up a little later, so one turns into the other.
Likewise, the sense of fear and the sense of security will turn into each other. Then the process
gets more complex because we introduce words about it, saying ʹthis is pleasure, that is painʹ.
We've introduced this way of saying that things are either pleasurable or painful. If something is
not pleasurable, the implication is that it might be painful. Or if you are losing the pleasure you
had before, then there is an implied loss ‐ there is pain. On the other hand, if you think that
the pain is over then you are pleased by that.

So pleasure directly implies pain, and pain implies pleasure. You can't separate the two ‐ either
at the level of chemistry or at the level of the intellect, or anywhere else. The attempt to have
constant pleasure must fail, because the pleasure centers get worn out. And the pain centers,
having been stimulated to balance them, will then start to come in strongly. Thus there is no
way to get pleasure constantly. If you were to try to do it I think you would discover that it
would become painful. Pleasure is always a transitory phenomenon. The pleasure‐pain reaction is
generally appropriate for the animal, but you can see that for thought it is not. The criterion for
coherent thought is that it is true and correct. But if you can get pleasure or pain from thought
then coherent thought is no longer functioning. Rather, the criterion has become whether the
thought gives pleasure or pain, consequently that thought becomes destructive. If thought can be
determined by pleasure or pain, thatʹs already the beginning of a lot of trouble. And we get
conditioned by that.

Anything that would give endorphins would be equivalent to taking morphine, or even better.
You'd feel good for the time being. But you can't maintain the endorphins forever; itʹs bound to
change. There are, for example, other chemicals which can cause anxiety, and there are still
others that cause other reactions. They all go on to the receptors in a way you can't control.
Therefore that process of pursuing constant pleasure is not really going to work. If you look at it
you will find that the attempt to control the endorphins is not coherent.

The ʹother stateʹ is projected by this system. If we start by assuming that there is another state
then we have already gone into the system, because the projected image of another state is
also producing endorphins. We have to see that the only right way to do it would be to say that
we want to see what is ‐ what is correct, what is true, what is coherent.

Q: Thatʹs not the same as seeking pleasure?

Bohm: No. But even if you do get pleasure from it, fine, except that your seeing may get
distorted. I'm saying the key point is that this process is not coherent; none of it has any
meaning ‐ whether you have pleasure or pain or fear or whatever. When the process has
sustained incoherence then it all has no meaning. Somebody may get great pleasure by deluding
himself, an extreme case being I'm Godʹ or ‘I’m Napoleonʹ. And if he deludes himself sufficiently,
perhaps he could keep out all evidence to the contrary. But you can't maintain this forever
without destructive consequences. So the attempt to live by pleasure or endorphins is not
coherent. We are caught up in a process, in a system which isn't making sense. That's the first
thing to notice. Then what do we do? I think we have to understand this process better. " -
David Bohm , Thought As A System

Most of Our History Is "The History of Stupidity" - Stephen Hawking

Journal Of Brain And Neurological Disorders

The Psychosocial Basis of Stupidity

James F. Welles*

Department of Psychology, PO Box 17, East Marion, New York, USA

*Corresponding Author: James F. Welles, Department of Psychology, PO Box 17, East Marion, New York,
USA.

What is stupidity? It is the learned corruption of learning. At best, learning about our surroundings and
ourselves is an imperfect process.

At worst, it is rendered difficult, impossible or self-defeating by stupidity, which promotes maladaptive

behavior by denying us knowledge about our environment and our effects on it.In general, learning is
directed and controlled by a "Schema" —a master cognitive plan by which each person organizes
information. It is both a mental set which provides a context for interpreting events in the perceptual
field and a program for behavior. Schemas are good, if they are appropriate and adequate, or bad, if
they are inappropriate or inadequate for the situations and problems at hand. Stupidity is a matter of
unnecessarily modifying a good schema to its detriment or unnecessarily adhering to a bad one to one's
own detriment. We commonly do both, since we are all emotionally involved with our schemas to the
extent that we identify with them. Thus, a person may change his to suit his self-image while being
reluctant to alter it simply to bring it into congruence with information from the environment.

Basically, a schema is a system of belief, and all people need something in which they can believe. Often,
this is a religious belief system based on faith in supernatural powers, forces or beings and is
accompanied by equally strong beliefs (i.e., "Secular religions") in human institutions and individuals.
Whatever the basis of the schema, it rationalizes the believer's relation to the world while defining what
he considers to be proper behavior in it. [1] Invariably, each schema is accom- panied by an ideology—
an intellectual, logical expression of the beliefs. The irony of the human condition is that a person's
behavior is so often inconsistent with his specific ideology, particularly in matters of importance.
This self-deceptive aspect of human nature is due to the role the schema plays in binding groups of
people together. The schema is not only a behavioral/belief system for an individual; it is also a unifying
force for society. However, stupidity is induced when linguistic values, social norms, groupthink and the
neurotic paradox promote a positive feedback system which takes schematic behavior to detrimental
extremes unjustified by and at odds with external conditions.

Language functions not only as a communication system for a group but also as a value system which
defines the mental life of the members and thus is a prime contributor to stupidity. On the positive side,
language obviously makes it possible for people to discuss problems, processes and phenomena of
which they are consciously aware. On the other hand, language also (and much more subtly) affects the
process of perception and makes it so ambiguous that people can accept clear discrepancies between
their beliefs and actions in many important, ego-defining situations. To wit, Crusaders killed for Christ,
[2] and capitalists enlist the aid of government when free competition hurts their special interests. With
perception rendered so ambiguous and subjective, stupidity is invited, if not actually promoted, as
people usually can find some verbal framework in which they may rationalize their behavior [3] and
some scapegoat or excuse to explain away their failures.

Thus, it appears that the verbal nature of our schemas shapes human perception by blurring the
boundary between unwelcome fact and desired fancy. Perception is actually quite an active process in
which the perceiver selects certain aspects of his environment as worthy of his attention. Many
important events may be simply ignored because they are not deemed significant or interesting. On the
other hand, as we see as much with our minds as with our eyes, we are fully capable of perceiving
conjured fantasies of events that did not happen and things that do not exist. Further, if and when an
actual event is perceived, it can be distorted, with details added or omitted to suit the psyche of the
observer. Finally, and most important of all, raw sensory data are coded, reorganized and given mean-
ing according to the perceiver's particular value system.

[4] Ergo, what any person perceives is very much affected by his own experiences, attitudes, motives,
psychological defenses, etc., all of which are shaped very much by "Categorizing" according to verbal
values.

We each really build our own reality by this process of sorting out perceptions into categories. These are
our own schematic constructs based on our specific language group. These constructs then determine
each person's psychological world, the rules of tongue used to assign percepts to the given categories
and the hypotheses created to explain how various events and objects perceived relate to one another.
[5]"

The psychological basis of stupidity

https://escientificpublishers.com/the-psychosocial-basis-of-stupidity-JBND-01-0008

UNDERSTANDING STUPIDITY
"Not until I reached the last chapter did I realize I was really dealing with the limitations of science—the
ethical dimensions of behavior which are beyond the range of science proper. A full understanding of
human behavior will begin with psychology but must go beyond it and deal with metaphysics and
morality." - James F. Welles, Ph. D.

'II. Defining Stupidity

Naturally—that's how! We can be stupid just by being ourselves. In fact, this book is based on two
fundamental contentions: we cannot really understand ourselves without understanding stupidity, and
if we understand stupidity, we will understand ourselves. Although the focus of this work is on stupidity,
it is really a study of how the human mind functions. Sometimes it is "Intelligent"; more often it is
"Stupid", but most of the time, it just plugs along unobtrusively in a manner unnamed because it is so
common as never to have been named anything at all. Regardless of the labels used, our characteristic
interactions with the environment are all directed by the same basic mental process—the process by
which our schemas shape perception, cognition and behavior.

In defining our mental life and shaping our behavior, the schema so routinely causes people to act in
their own worst interests that stupidity can be considered one of the few, true cultural universals.
Geniuses display it; superior people flaunt it, and the average person is never without it. Nevertheless, it
thrives unnoticed in humanity's closet of shame. As this is the age when gays, blacks and even women
have come out of the closet, perhaps it could also be the age when stupidity is acknowledged,
confronted and even understood. Considering its impact on history, stupidity certainly deserves a
hearing which is at least fair if not equal to that granted intelligence.

Traditionally, historians have pleased their readers with accounts of humanity's wondrous progress.
These generally placed humans, as Mr. Clemens' boy Sam once observed, "Somewhere between the
angels and the French". Likewise, psychologists followed the path of greatest acceptance in their
concentration on intelligence to the total disregard of stupidity. Considering how little intelligence and
how much stupidity there is, it really is incredible that this imbalance in the literature has existed for so
long. Whatever the cause for this condition, it cannot be that stupidity is not a fit topic for scientific
investigation, because if it is not, then neither is intelligence. However, the one is totally neglected and
the other virtually pounded into the ground. If we really want to have a full understanding of the human
experience, we will have to acknowledge and examine that which is both embarrassing and shameful. ' -
James F. Welles, Ph. D.
Read more:

■ 'Understanding stupidity ' by James F. Welles, Ph. D.

http://www.mensch.net/stupidity/story2/index2.htm

■ ' The Cognitive Basis of Stupidity'

Welles JF*

http://www.imedpub.com/articles/the-cognitive-basis-of-stupidity.php?aid=22070

■ 'Humans and Insects Decide in Similar Ways

■ 'Illusion is generating illusion. It is an active, dinamic reflex...' ~ David Bohm

"Mankind has been in a chronic state of crisis for 6000 years or more. Now the crisis is acute, general,
and inescapable. The old illusions don’t seem to work very well any more, nor do the new illusions
either. So mankind is presented with a unique opportunity to drop the ego process. This opportunity
arises out of a unique danger. He may annihilate himself or degenerate to the level of a confused beast
if he does not drop the ego process in a reasonable period of time."- David Bohm

"So it causes thought to manipulate itself, not to reflect truth and fact, but rather, to preserve and
enhance what appears to be the pleasure in the very center of one’s being. It will do this by suppressing
awareness of anything that would expose the emptiness of this mode of thought and therefore of the
whole structure of pleasure itself. This suppression process involves not only feelings of dullness and
deadness, but also rabbit-like darting from one subject to another, intense excitement that fills the brain
and destroys clear discrimination, and the acceptance of every kind of false thought as true (i.e., fantasy,
illusion, and delusion). So one sees that the illusion of a false pleasure-center in the mind is also the
generator of an independently proliferating series of illusions. It is an “illusion-generating illusion.” The
key to sanity is to see through this basic illusion-generating illusion. It is no use merely to see through
some of the particular illusions that arise in this process, as long as the “root” that generates all the
illusions is not touched. But to see this root is very difficult, because the state of mind that wants to see
it is already lost in illusion. So what it will actually see is an illusion about the root of all illusions. This will
be worse than useless." - David Bohm

' Ego begins with the creation of illusion. How does this happen? Man evolved from an animal. His
thalamus (central brain) is not so different from that of animals. Now, the animal’s brain is more or less
adequate for his normal surroundings. Thus, if he is afraid, he runs. If he is angry, he fights. But in man
this thalamus is now surrounded by an intelligent cortex that can create illusions. These illusions can
either be pleasant or frightening to the thalamus. When they are pleasant, the thalamus sends a signal
to the cortex to produce some more of the same. When they are frightening, an urgent and disturbing
signal is sent out, and the cortex is unable to function properly. Confusion results, and the cortex gets
busy creating new illusions until the thalamus is satisfied. But reality is always bursting in, so that a man
in the state of illusion is always being presented with crisis after crisis, and eventually tends to get into a
state of chronic fear or anxiety. It is no use blaming the poor thalamus, as it was never prepared for
living in an environment consisting mainly of the cortex. Nor can the cortex help it, because it cannot
function properly if the thalamus is always sending out urgent signals that mix it up. Thus, it no longer
tries to see what is true and what is false. Perhaps the above problem can be solved only if the whole
mind understands what is happening, and sees through the mechanical character of the signals from
the thalamus, as well as the illusory character of what the cortex “cooks up” to keep the thalamus
quiet. To see this will amount to a psychological mutation in man. In other words, man is already a
totality, physically speaking, in his mind. But because he does not realize this in his awareness, the
thalamus and cortex each operate as if they were independent “minds,” presented with problems from
“outside.” In this way, each confuses the other, in contrast to an animal without much cortex where
the thalamus by itself functions sensibly. '~David Bohm

'It is interesting to speculate on the probable origin of the ego process in the human race. There is
evidence that modern man, with essentially his present brain capacity, came on the scene not more
than 30,000 years ago. At this stage, the poor creature was ignorant. The animal is ignorant too, but it
does not possess a cortex that can remind it of unpleasant dangers, real and imaginary, as well as
death, while at other times creating wonderful illusions of satisfactions, apparently to be obtained by
certain actions, and so on. So the animal can sit peacefully until there is actual danger, in which case it
either runs or fights. But our poor primal “Homo-sapiens” must experience fear of the known and the
unknown as well as desire for satisfaction of a kind that never would enter the animal’s brain. Being
confused, he starts to invent imaginary “magical” means of dealing with dangers, and bringing him
these satisfactions. At first, this is not so different from what a child does in his day-dreams. But
eventually, man’s imagination runs away with him. The magical forces that he has invented seem to
escape him, and disclose themselves as even more dangerous than the unknown dangers that he first
wanted to escape. So he must propitiate them. He confuses his mind even more, now being afraid even
to look at what he has termed “taboo.” But he doesn’t see that it is all a game that he is playing with
himself. How can he? After all, magical dangers are easily confused with real dangers that abound in his
life, and there is no easy way at his disposal to study the problem properly. Gradually man starts to
accumulate tools, techniques, knowledge, language, weapons, etc. He develops agriculture,
aggregates himself into stable communities, smelts metals, is able to guard against hunger by storing
food, etc. This apparently happened in North Africa about 9000 years ago to 6000 years ago. V.
Gordon Childe, in his It Happened In History, suggests that this was a great period of creative
development in man. Now up to this time, war had not developed, beyond occasional raids and
quarrels. Slavery wasn’t worth it, as a man consumed almost as much as he could produce. But with
growing wealth, plunder became inviting. Weapons made raids practicable and slavery was now
technically feasible. At some time, there began to occur to some people the brilliant idea that they
could live off others. Thus started the modern age of war, plunder, slavery, and exploitation of man by
men. Childe gives evidence that for thousands of years following this change, creativity almost dried up,
as man began to look up to the “hero,” the conqueror, the slave-holder, while technique and the arts
were left to the despised slave. Even in Greek and Roman times, there was the same tendency, and only
much later was there a change, allowing a self-respecting man seriously to interest himself in arts and
techniques. Childe suggests that except for slavery, man could have reached modern technical levels
long before the time of the Greeks. It seems to me that the development of plunder, slavery, and
exploitation as man’s main mode of life determined the modern form of the ego process. Even when
slavery was given up, exploitation remained the essential feature of man’s relation to man, which it still
is today. Once this mode was started, man was doomed to ever increasing confusion, for he had to
justify his mode of life to himself. '~ David Bohm

"Thought is governed by the pleasure principle, which puts pleasure first, ahead of factuality and logic."
-David Bohm

"Whatever one tries to “do” is based on the root of all illusion and is therefore just an extension of the
very problem that one wants to get rid of. " - David Bohm

“Illusion-generating illusion” covers up and suppresses awareness of its poisonous character. To really
see deeply the nature of this illusion is action enough. For in the light of this perception, it has to
collapse. Whatever you do beyond this just stirs up the cloud of dust." - David Bohm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9dZQelULDk&feature=youtu.be

Thus thought has, at the very least, a certain basis in this neurophysiological process; it can never be
separated from it. That's something we have to keep in mind. And that process is part of the system
we're talking about. Also, IF YOU PHYSICALLY ALTER THAT PROCESS ‐ BY PURRING DRUGS INTO
YOUR BODY, for example ‐ YOU'VE ALTERED THE SYSTEM.' - David Bohm

●The word "addiction" is derived from a Latin term for "enslaved by" or "bound to"

The chaos is a normal consequence! The great majority of its inhabitants are :

ADDICTION IS ABOUT THE DENIAL OF REALITY . An addicted being can never, ever be free. ~ fmoesf

●Pleasure and Addiction

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3782756/

●Affective neuroscience of pleasure: reward in humans and animals

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3004012/
●Addiction and will

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3769621/

●THE ADDICTED BRAIN: UNDERSTANDING THE NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL MECHANISMS OF ADDICTIVE

DISORDERS

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4365688/

●The neurobiology of addictive disorders.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19834992

●The Neurobiology of Addiction: Where We Have Been and Where We Are Going

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2901107/

●Introduction to Behavioral Addictions

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3164585/

●'Addiction is not just about the “sex, drugs and rock and roll” scene. One can be addicted to gambling,
food, tobacco, stimulants, prescription drugs (tranquillisers, and maybe even Prozac), exercise, the
Internet, computer games, television, designer labels, work… the list is endless. '

- http://www.britishhomeopathic.org/bha-charity/how-we-can-help/conditions-a-z/addictive-
personalities/

● 'In some ways, addiction is an extreme example of an existential challenge we all wrestle with every
day: accepting reality as it is. One obvious dynamic of addictive behavior (be it alcohol, licit or illicit
drugs, sex, food, internet or television. Addiction, by definition, is a psychiatric, psychological or mental
disorder first, and a biological or physiological illness second. Addiction, be it to alcohol, cannabis, sex or
porno, is not a biological disease like diabetes or leukemia. Patients may, in some cases, inherit a
genetic, temperamental predisposition to the tendencies that make one susceptible to addiction. But
that is not what makes them an addict. More than anything else, ADDICTION IS ABOUT THE DENIAL
OF REALITY. It is, like depression, nonetheless a debilitating and potentially deadly psychiatric syndrome.
People do suffer and die from addiction. And that these patients are severely ill, especially in the
advanced stages of addiction and during withdrawal, cannot be denied. But that does not make
addiction a biological "disease" per se. For, as AA has long rightly recognized thanks to psychiatrist Carl
Jung's influence on its founder, alcoholism and other addictions are at least as much sicknesses of the
soul, psyche or spirit as of the physical body and brain.' ~Stephen A. Diamond Ph.D. - Psychology Today
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evil-deeds/201002/avoidance-sobriety-and-reality-the-
psychology-addiction ]

Imbecility is the largest source of environmental pollution. -fmoesf

●Neurobiological Substrates for the Dark Side of Compulsivity in Addiction

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2637927/

●The dark side of emotion: the addiction perspective

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4380644/

●Hedonic Homeostatic Dysregulation as a Driver of Drug-Seeking Behavior

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2801885/

●THE EVOLUTIONARY ORIGIN AND SIGNIFICANCE OF DRUG ADDICTION

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1174878/

💡👀

●Effect Depends on Subjective Perception ...

●人心不足蛇吞象

A man’s greed is like a snake that wants to swallow an elephant.😲

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfGMYdalClU&feature=youtu.be

●Drug use and nightlife: more than just dance music

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3160361/

●Historical perspectives on music as a cause of disease.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25684288

●Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward : Music

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92781

●Anhedonia to music and mu-opioids: Evidence from the administration of naltrexone

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5296903/

●Is there addiction to loud music? Findings in a group of non-professional pop/rock musicians

●●https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4630946/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSR81y2pDHk&feature=youtu.be

'ILLUSION IS THE THE FIRST OF ALL PLEASURES'. ~ Voltaire

THIS IS THE GLOBAL SOCIAL IMPACT OF ADDICTION :

Imbecility is the largest source of environmental pollution . - fmoesf

●Hypothesizing Music Intervention Enhances Brain Functional Connectivity Involving Dopaminergic

Recruitment: Common Neuro-correlates to Abusable Drugs

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5133180/

●The rewards of music listening: response and physiological connectivity of the mesolimbic system.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16023376

●From perception to pleasure: Music and its neural substrates

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3690607/

●Musical pleasure and reward: mechanisms and dysfunction.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25773636

●Listening to Rhythmic Music Reduces Connectivity within the Basal Ganglia and the Reward System

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5368249/

●Drunk in Love": The Portrayal of Risk Behavior in Music Lyrics.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27669104

●Addictive potential of cannabinoids: the underlying neurobiology

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0009308402001627?via%3Dihub

●Introduction: Addiction and Brain Reward and Anti-Reward Pathways

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4549070/

●How addiction hijacks the brain ( Harvard Medical School )

http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/how-addiction-hijacks-the-brain

●Addictive drugs and brain stimulation reward.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8833446
"Corruption occurs, not because we make errors, but because the errors we make go uncorrected and
extrapolate beyond the scale of correction". - unknown author

''A comfortable lifestyle is the beginning of a corrupted mind.''- Chinese proverb

"The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon
mere survival.'' - Aristotle

"You could say that where man took a wrong turn was, he got a certain kind of knowledge which was
not only a mistake but which led him to make more mistakes to justify this mistake and hold on to it.
That was where he began to go wrong, and where he’s continually going wrong. We make a certain
mistake about ourselves. Why is it so hard for a person to say, “I’ve made a mistake on an important
point”? He doesn’t say, “I’ve made a mistake.” No, he says, “Somebody else made a mistake,” or “It
wasn’t a mistake.” So he makes a second mistake and a third mistake and a fourth; it goes on piling up.
That’s ENDAREKENMENT. THAT IS NOT ONLY MENTAL ENDARKEENMENT , BUT IT IS A PHYSICAL
DISRUPTION OF THE BRAIN." ~ The Essential David Bohm

"There is an intellectual centre in the cortex, the outer layers of the brain. And deeper down there is an
emotional centre. Between them is a very thick bundle of nerves, by which they communicate very
closely. So they are connected.'- David Bohm

'The thought process is neurophysiological as well as intellectual and emotional. It has physical and
chemical elements. Medical investigators have demonstrated this when they do various scans of the
brain. Every time you think, the blood distribution shifts all around and all sorts of changes occur inside;
there are electrical brain waves that can be measured. Thus thought has, at the very least, a certain
basis in this neurophysiological process; it can never be separated from it. That's something we have to
keep in mind. And that process is part of the system we're talking about. Also, if you physically alter that
process ‐ by purring drugs into your body, for example ‐ YOU'VE ALTERED THE SYSTEM.'' - David
Bohm