Ugh, he doesn't understand evolution at all... He keeps saying things like "During a certain part of evolution...", it's pathetic how newage-y non-sense likes to attach scientific sounding terms in attempt to legitimize their ideas.

At the beginning, he posses the question, why can't mainstream psychology and psychiatry heal bi-polar disorder. The answer is because we don't understand exactly what it is, just that it tends to happen.

Plus, I can almost guarantee that the 'statistic' that bi-polar disorder had gone up 4000% percent in 10 years two decades ago is a exercise in both failing to correct for clustering and misrepresenting the data. Read one book on how statistics can be easily manipulated to support your bias and a number like 4000% immediately becomes highly suspect thus making the assumption behind his belief also suspect.

Spiral dynamics is little more than a rehashed "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" which has been found to be useless as a way of measuring people.

if you already discount the spirit as being non-existent and have never experienced the mental health system then this video will really not hold anything of interest for you.

i find this young mans approach to dealing with mental illness a very humanistic one and while you may feel the numbers may be fudged to make his point...big deal.are you denying the RAMPANT diagnosis in the industrialized world concerning bi-polar?panic-anxiety? this list is becoming LEGION..everyone seems to be all fucked sideways mentally.
and the answer to all this mental health calamity is?........
medicate baby!!
create a society of utter zombies.

and who doesn't take favorable numbers or statistics to make their argument?
or base a philosophy partially on the words and teachings of another?
ken wilbur practically stole from teilhard de chardin and so what of it...not a big deal.

bi-polar is just failed indoctrination manifesting itself as a polarized polemic of what we have been taught how we are SUPPOSED to be and NOT who we actually are.
there are many ways to deal with this.
some self-medicate,others are medicated and then there are those that choose the path this man chose.

i do not agree with everything this young man put forth but i do agree with the humanistic approach:
know what you want.
to do that you have to know who you are and to do THAT you have to have the courage to look at yourself clearly,openly and honestly (much harder than it sounds).
this is when you realize that maybe...just maybe..you were living your life not according to what YOU wanted but rather what OTHERS wanted for you (mom,dad,grandma,girlfriend..you get the idea).
does this solve everything?
of course not but it is a good place to start and notice not one mention of spirit nor any new age jargon.

now self-medication and prescribed medication to me are just band aids without addressing the real problem and BOTH have long lasting side effects that are not of the positive kind.
i dont need to list those do i?

see what im saying here?
i see you tearing apart somebody elses work but did not see you post any solutions.
i mean look at this one line in your post:
"At the beginning, he posses the question, why can't mainstream psychology and psychiatry heal bi-polar disorder. The answer is because we don't understand exactly what it is, just that it tends to happen."
you wrote that and it didnt give you pause for a second?
they over-diagnose something that they dont know what it really is.
how the fuck can you ever be expected to heal something you dont really know anything about but the REAL question is:why the fuck are you even diagnosing people with something you dont really know anything about?

am i the only one seeing insanity all over that?
thats just fucking crazy.

I was going to attempt to respond to as many items as I can but I decided to instead try something different.

There are two books that I think you should read and that I think you'd greatly enjoy. One is called "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer" by Siddhartha Mukherjee and that other is called "Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks and Big Pharma Flacks" by Ben Goldacre.

Look into them a bit, read the descriptions. I recommend The Emperor of All Maladies because it is contains an extremely good account of the progress of the medical industry and it uses cancer research as a cornerstone. Though, I think you'll particularly like Bad Science, especially the section where the author goes into a scathing critique of where mainstream medicine has it's problems. It's actually a really funny book too.

Hell, I'll even buy Bad Science for you and have it shipped where ever you want.

Ok, I will say one thing in response to what you've said. I don't like the idea of a humanistic take on this issue because these problems aren't limited to humans. There is a range of mental conditions that humans experience that have been observed in other animals as well. In the case of mental illness, as in most cases, humans aren't special; we just think we are because we have the perspective that we're looking on everything from the outside.

The reason why I tear apart videos like that is because it's based on flawed reasoning, logical fallacies, misrepresentations and misunderstandings of science and scientific facts, and generally irrational modes of thought. The solution that I'm providing is that the video's topic, and the presenter are full of nonsensical ideas and that real evidence based research should be valued to a higher degree than some guy with his untested and/or unsupported hypothesis.

right on IATB.
i think maybe we are talking about two seperate,yet similar,issues.
i am addressing the willy nilly diagnosis of the majority of people who have been diagnosed and then subjected to mind altering chemicals which have been proven to not be very effective.
how can you speak to someone for an hour and decide they are bi-polar and then put them on an anti-psychotic?
thats crazy.
it seems you are addressing the very REAL and tragic mental disorders in which medication may be a persons only real hope for a somewhat normal existence.
and in that regard i totally agree with you.
now you may disregard alternative methods in treating someone diagnosed with bi-polar and that is ok and your right but i feel it is not something to be dismissed so lightly.
please understand i am not dismissing the science,that would be foolish of me.i am not a luddite.i just feel treatment and healing will not come solely from chemicals.
i have anecdotal evidence but thats not exactly proof of anything except for my own experience.

in my opinion other avenues should always be pursued before we zombify people.there is a growing amount of data concerning the healing power of affection and love concerning us humans which is not surprising to me.
so while this man has taken a spiritual lilt to his approach,i would just call it being human.

this is a societal issue.on how our culture has become so materialistic as to strip us of our humanity.a constant barrage of "you are not good enough,smart enough,sexy enough but you WILL be if you buy this or that useless piece of crap".
mass marketers=satans little helpers.
is it any wonder that our society is lonely,depressed,anxiety ridden?
it really should not come as too much of a shock to those paying attention and is an entirely different conversation.

thanks for the recommendation on the books!
very awesome of you to offer to pay for them as well! appreciated but no need.the bad science one does look interesting and i will check it out (no chemistry in there right? cuz i suuuuck at chemistry).

p.s:dont feel bad trashing this dudes videos.berticus has to hold his down from exploding when i post one of this guys vids.

Goldacre's book is a great read-All the Bi-polar folks I know that I can still stand, self-medicate. They get harder to stand the more they ascribe or succumb to the ramblings of their not-so-affected piers-friends and family usually.
Enochs' on to something, Know Thyself.

haha! ♥

i won't get into the bipolar stuff again, because you already know what i think. instead i want to touch on something you mentioned. in clinical psychology, it has long been known that the patient-practioner relationship (or whatever you'd like to call it, "therapeutic alliance" etc) is beneficial. in essence, it is an instantiation of a placebo-like effect. a patient forms (or already has) expectations about treatment outcomes, and these expectations do in fact produce effects (through a number of mechanisms -- i'll spare you the thesis).

as a scientist, but also a caring member of the human race, this creates a dilemma.

on the one hand, i feel it is important to point out the potential harm of alternative medicine, because we know its effects, if any, are placebo -- and placebo effects are neither consistent nor universal. in other words, you have a better chance of fortuitous outcome with scientifically proven medicine -- medicine that has been rigorously tested against placebos.

on the other hand, the fact that placebo effects produce measurable improvements across a wide range of illnesses raises important questions. what qualifies as a real treatment? what separates a real treatment from an unreal treatment? why should treatments that improve, heal, or cure people be treated as inferior because their underlying mechanism is psychological rather than pharmacological? is deception ever morally acceptable?

when you think about it, the kinds of rituals that produce these "common factor" effects will be exacerbated in alternative medicine -- because there IS no active substance. but far from being null and void, these rituals can lead to improvement (in certain situations, the boundaries of which we do not clearly understand because, as i've opined before: science is hard; science of human behaviour is fucking hard).

[disclaimer: i use 'placebo effect' in a very broad sense to mean more than what most people would consider it to mean. really i should be using 'expectancy effect' but people unfamiliar with the literature might be even more confused by that.]

>> ^enoch:

p.s:dont feel bad trashing this dudes videos.berticus has to hold his down from exploding when i post one of this guys vids.

and yes you should take his offer, goldacre is wonderful.

Moving this video to enoch's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued - promote requested by deathcow.

We can't treat bipolar and depression with great success because... Cannabis is illegal. Many conditions are well controlled with this free plant.


since it he was mentioned in comments here is a recent sift about ben goldacre

http://videosift.com/video/TED-Battling-Bad-Science-Ben-Goldacre

My thoughts:

I've struggled with depression for much of my life, I think I'll probably be struggling with it for most of the rest of it but a few things have made the struggle somewhat easier, mostly this notion of living in the now. Be aware of where your minds eye is wandering, attempt to always bring it back to your present moment. When you live in the past or future you're not really living at all, life just sort of blurs past in front of you as you contemplate your failings or worry about your future. Generally this idea of mindfulness, which has origins in Buddhism, helps me a lot.

Related to that is also learning to detach yourself from your emotions, simply identify them and just understand that they are transitory. I actually picked that up from the SciFi masterpiece, Dune. I read it at a very stressful point in my life and the litany against fear really stuck with me. I really believe fear, above any other emotion, is the most destructive to our ability to think critically and hence live a meaningful existence. Despite being from a fictional religion I think those words contain more truth, at least for me, than anything else I've ever stumbled upon. This idea was reinforced, strangely, by Day[9] of SC2 fame when he replied to a question about how he is so happy.

So our personal philosophies are patchworks of ideas cut from the strangest sources. I'm not a buddhist or a Bene Gesserit, but none the less there are grains of truth in each, as I believe there is some truth in what this video describes. So while I'm not dismissing mainstream medicine when it comes to treating mental illness, but I also think our conscious thoughts are as much a sympton as a cause. When I am in control of my thoughts and emotions I am a happier more productive person, and for that I have to thank not my Dr, but Frank Herbert, Buddhism and Sean Plott (among others).

Anyway, there is a small glimpse into my brain mr anonymous internet stranger.

To me this video represents liberalism in society... which is why I want to see what QM says about this. Without liberalism running rampant through the 60's I feel many of these topics would still be taboo. Through liberalism I feel as though consciousness has expanded on many fronts. Although, don't tell that too a business man - they're not supposed to be empathetic with humans who are below them in the hierarchy.

It seems like this video has a couple of things going on. It wants to talk about the evolution of consciousness & how it relates to being bi-polar in our modern world. But, mental illness for the masses in America is just a drug war. "Buy these, don't buy those". It's largely a fabricated industry & consciousness is another story.

As far as I can see on the topic of evolved consciousness - many, many, many more people in liberal cities have evolved. But, I think the internet is a great device so I think if someone is interested in certain aspects of reality they too can evolve their consciousness & thought processes from the middle of no-where in Kansas; if they really care to or know to. I mean we're constantly expanding QM's consciousness - he just doesn't know it yet he's afraid of it!

I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was a teenager by a psychologist... but I may as well have been diagnosed bi-polar. I was pissed off at the world even though I had it all and was fairly sheltered... and that was the problem. It was too peaceful & I knew the world was out there waiting for me to find out the truth. So, I'm not exactly sure if we could say that my affliction was/is the symptom of post-modern evolution of consciousness but just an annoyance of mundane life tangled up with general anxiety.

I definitely think many people could benefit from "alternative medicine". I know it has a new agey bad wrap. I was prescribed both ritalin (legalized speed) & zoloft (what the hell is it? I don't know!) which are obviously fairly potent. I've experimented with herbal shit like 5-HTP which helps produce more serotonin and it works. It's not as potent but if someone doesn't have a serious mental illness it can work for short-term use and is great for people who would rather not turn into a zombie/robot.

As far as weed... I'm not sure if pot is the greatest thing for someone who is "bi-polar" or super depressed... mushies are great for positive consciousness just don't take em when you're feeling low, lol!

Either way, no one can be happy all of the time. We're human after all. Even though I hate the (human capitalist pig waste) fucking world - I am happy & people always tell me I'm super positive hahaha!! They can never know the truth!



As always...

I'd say I'm a seven. *patting myself on the back*

@enoch & @IAmTheBlurr: Spiral dynamics is not for everyone... and there is very little empiricism to back it up because the bases upon which the different levels are concerned have not been qualitatively elucidated sufficiently enough to study them, to say nothing of the scientific method, itself, as being contingent upon certain assumptions within a given level of consciousness and not others.

However, if you were to adopt the philosopher, Hans Vaihinger's postulate of "As If," you may find a utility of the theoretical orientation which extends beyond its empirical accuracy. That is to say, "So what if it's bullshit, so long as it's useful?" This goes for many of the theories that are widely used in the social sciences, including Abe Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" among others.

That said, we should note that none of this "spiral dynamics" theory is very original. The concept of the "evolution of consciousness" is itself the basis of much of early Vedas in Hinduism which are nearly 5 thousand of years old.. However, the theory has become more codified in the 20th century by mystics and scholars such as Sri Aurobindo Ghose, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Clare Graves, Edward Haskell, Arthur Young, Erich Jantsch, Jean Gebser, and, most recently, by Ken Wilber.

Of these, I'd have to say the following books are worth reading:

Aurobindo's The Life Divine & Synthesis of Yoga
de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man
Gebser's The Ever-Present Origin
Wilber's Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

(partly because I haven't read the others' works)

When I feel my mania creeping, I always consult Maryjane. She does wonders.

>> ^vaire2ube:

We can't treat bipolar and depression with great success because... Cannabis is illegal. Many conditions are well controlled with this free plant.

since it he was mentioned in comments here is a recent sift about ben goldacre
http://videosift.com/video/TED-Battling-Bad-Science-Ben-Goldacre