So what if we don’t learn neuroscience? What if we can’t speak that language? Then those who can will control us. We will have no answer to the “chemical imbalance” story or to the “it’s all genetics” story. We will not be able to hold our own amidst the contemporary dialogue about mind and mental health. Our voices will be silent and others will dominate some whose motives are greed driver or power driven. The pharmaceutical companies will continue to be the arbiters or mental health care policy as they have been for decades now.
Lewis Mehl-Madrona, “Why Learn Neuroscience?” (via skinnerschild)
“Culture does leave its signature in the circuitry of the individual brain. If you were to examine an acorn by itself, it could tell you a great deal about its surroundings – from moisture to microbes to the sunlight conditions of the larger forest. By analogy, an individual brain reflects its culture. Our opinions on normality, custom, dress codes and local superstitions are absorbed into our neural circuitry from the social forest around us. To a surprising extent, one can glimpse a culture by studying a brain. Moral attitudes toward cows, pigs, crosses and burkas can be read from the physiological responses of brains in different cultures.”
David Eagleman, neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, where he directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action, bestselling author, ☞ David Eagleman on how we constructs reality, time perception, and The Secret Lives of the Brain, Lapidarium notes, The Observer, 29 April 2012. (via amiquote)
My suggestion is that whenever you have to choose, always choose the unknown, because the known you have already lived. Never miss the unknown. Always choose the unknown and go headlong. Even if you suffer, it is worth it — it always pays.
Osho (via lashla)
The source of genius is imagination alone, the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently.
Eugene Delacroix (via nirvikalpa)
(Source: kristenmerie)
Psychedelic experiences and dreams are chemical cousins; they are only different in degree.
Terence McKenna (via loluum)
What the world calls sanity has led to the current planetary crises, and insanity is the only viable alternative.
(via blankrorschach)
Robert Anton Wilson / Robert Shea - The Illuminatus trilogy
(via existentialvaccum)
The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.
Bruce Feirstein
Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.
Hermann Hesse (via lucifelle)
(Source: libraryland)
