Harm-Avoidance as Energy Deficiency

“The fact that a taste of chocolate can provoke a wild lust for more chocolate, or that once cigarette renews the addiction, does not mean that the presence of chocolate or nicotine in the blood creates a craving. Rather, it is that an organism in an unstable state perceives the availability of something which promises to partially restore the desired stability.” — Raymond Peat, PhD

“If we learn to see problems in terms of a general disorder of energy metabolism, we can begin to solve them.” — Raymond Peat, PhD

Functional Performance Systems has a compilation of quotes concerning bioenergetics, which you can find by clicking here.

The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) advocates for human genocide and demonstrates the maladjusted environmentalist pathology taken to its furthest extent. Nihilism, often along side atheism has tainted environmentalism. As a movement correctly aimed at a restoration of the wellness and totality of nature, now environmentalism embodies a rejection of faith in natural self-correction.

Arbitrations of order and deviance placates authoritarianism.  “Deviance” implies normalcy, and the muddling of definitions in a transition into the social sciences defines postmodernism.  Whereas social norms labeled as “deviant” now face heavy criticism or refutation in academic circles, similar dismissal cannot apply toward “biological deviance.”  VHEMT’s misanthropy logically calls for human extinction.  If social norms dictate behaviors, and if “ingrained” behaviors dictate social norms, then the emergent order of the norm itself must respond to a change, either from the environment or the organis

Prior to the discovery of germ theory, and certainly prior to the widespread adoption of empiricism and the scientific method as a reliable method of inquiry, medicine overlapped significantly with religion. Spirituality, by definition refers to a human interaction with the divine, where birth and death mark the portals by which a human enters into and exits out of their existence. As such, any mediation between disease and judg

The process of economic development and cultural differentiation acts as an energetic consolidation for the betterment of the culture’s constituents. Although technology itself can attenuate stress, modernism often coincides with dissatisfaction of life and meaninglessness, where both bring on unbearable suffering.

Acute phases of stress blind us to the value of our utilized modalities.  Pain, anxiety, fear, depression, stress, aging, disease and eventually death involve similar metabolic breakdowns in energy production. Coffee drinkers live in ignorance of caffeine’s protection against mental illness and cancer until months or several years of abstinence, at which point aging tightens its grip.

The anti-social avoidance of caffeine for fear of dependence shares aspects in common with psychopathy and the misanthropic “zero-waste” environmentalist movement. Distrust in man and his identity in relation to other beings reflect a breakdown in social trust but more specifically a degeneration of individual spirituality.

The caffeine “withdrawal” demonstrates the biological benefit of the substance and caustic effects of sudden cessation.  A comparison with opioid withdrawal (such as with heroin) underscores the substantial benefit of both drugs in the short-term.  Feelings of elation, euphoria, peace, contentment, and love correlate with a state devoid of perceived psychological stress, and a fragmented perception disconnects psychological and physiological stress and denies a congruence of order and analogy from a biological system and psychological system of classification.

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Hormonal factors contribute to the organism’s response to its environment.  A “healthy range” of cortisol derives from the average out of the general population, but it’s known that ranges beyond the given parameter impede physiological function.  Higher levels of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) still within the “normal range” promotes thyroid cancer.  A normal distribution entails the greatest frequency in the middle of the range, but to prescribe a “normal” value as ideal holds no water.

Social and mate (“sexual market”) value overlap yet diverge.  Social value has biological and “socially constructed” components.  Food facilitates consumption or waste, and both advertise mate value.  Anorexics (or the calorie-restricted) view food as a necessary evil, religious culture demonizes gluttony, and environmentalists find offense with excessive consumption.  Misanthropy mandates self-hatred, and by extension a rejection of the spiritual self, whether the group, society, state, God, or Nature.  Self-rejection lies at the heart of authoritarianism.

Celebrities, models, and actors mirror our ideal physical and social projections.  Politicians, psychologists, and priests preach our values.  The dual-bodied absolute monarch’s fusion of res sacrae (as the sacred) and res publicae (as the social) in one body reflects a holistic unification of body and mind (in direct opposition to Cartesian dualism) as the prime individual achievement and ultimate social governance (as echoed with Plato’s philosopher king, Voltaire’s enlightened absolutism, and in Hobbes’ Leviathan.)  

Comprehensive systems, whether Nature, God, Evolution, or State, garner unquestioning support.  Insufficient energy disqualifies independent striving for order in chaos, and authoritarian systems offer security to the weakened organism.  An idolized benevolent authority projects from internalized escapism.  Stressed children defer to authority more readily in adulthood.  “Authority” itself entails superior function, and individual competency precedes decentralization (as with division of labor.)  Free exchange places responsibility on the buyer to recognize authority and reciprocate monetary value.  Incompetency, whether due to a breakdown in social trust or work ethic justifies authoritarian legal intervention.  It’s not coincidental that misanthropic environmentalists oppose the free exchange of materials, whereas political and intellectual authoritarians sequester the free exchange of ideas.

Misanthropic environmentalists criticize monetary systems as narrow and inefficient and distrust the judgement of their fellow man.  Similar to how stress corrodes the individual capacity for adaptation and growth, authority undermines independence and differentiation.  Decades of chronic stress derail normal developmental processes and leave an organism hedonistic and vulnerable to escapist determinism, such as mysticism, sollipsism, and comprehensive, unfalsifiable social theories, as with authoritarianism and its relatives social Darwinism, postmodernism, and deconstructionism.

Consumption requires production, and markets demand reciprocated value or consent.  The differentiated and capable thrive in a market, and individual hormonal states influence sexuality and either promote or deter reproduction.  Masculine confidence reflects environmental mastery, and feminine energies gravitate attract to power.

The r/K selection theory refers to biological qualitative and quantitative reproductive strategies, and parallels surface in social theory.  Without biological offspring, notable homosexuals maximize “ideological reproduction,” whereas heterosexuals become celibate (by choice or through infertility) in the later years of their lives, as with Paul of Tarsus, Saint Augustine, and most middle-aged men.

At AD 55, Paul views the world in a state of social and moral decay, and he extends this to marriage:

“I suppose therefore that this is good because of the present distress—that it is good for a man to remain as he is.” (1 Corinthians 7:26, NKJV)

He continues to write about his moral justifications in future letters, but more importantly Paul purports harmony as a necessity between marriage partners.

In addition to the requirements set forth by Paul, he frames marriage as an expense of virtue:

Conservatives place their belief in ordered systems, their living spaces tend to have greater tidiness and organization, and their appearances emphasize detail and maintenance.  The objective possesses an inherent socail impetus, and generation (both in the sense of construction, and also in the sexual sense of “the next generation”) implies a greater sense of order and interconnectedness with progeny.  On the other hand, subjectivity holds no standard for behavior and or regard for social agreement.

Authoritarian liberalism (as with Marxism) projects a chronic state of conflict between groups, which reflects the liberal’s internal struggle with his immediate neighbors, but also his biological struggle against stress.  The transcendence of the social expectations placed upon the self by the individual and society appears in all major religions, particularly Buddhism and Christianity, whereas the legalistic traditions, such as Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism emphasize the primary role of the society   appears in all major religions  a constant Echoing the anti-social nature of libAs extrapolated cynicism, postmodernism can reference biology for its roots.  The Marxist class conflict implicitly views the world as a constant battleground, and similarly Hegelian dialectics offers an ideological parallel to Marx.

The “parasite stress hypothesis” observes the correlation between disease and authoritarianism.  Similar to the biological “fight or flight” response, fascism resembles the former as an immune response against “pathogen” that threatens the current social fabric.  Communism itself resembles succumbing to the threat.  The fascist “Organic State” and Nietzsche’s “Over-man” as well as the communist “New Soviet Man” all resemble a capitulation of

Conservatives emphasize the energetic cost of adaptation in a social context.  The Greek city-state Sparta foretells the limitations of excessive conservatism.

Faith in the state, a kind of mysticism protects the embedded perception of self-incompetency by externalizing responsibilty.  Similarly, a criticism of the “system” as inefficient removes individual accountability, so it of the self sense in determining personal consumption, but also in a general sense

Happiness correlates with longevity, and stress impairs both happiness and longevity.   laughter indicates a state of The biological “hiccup” of laughter improves physiological and psychological health, and the subjective enjoyment of laughing itself conveys “benefit” to psychological health.  “The brain is not able to distinguish between [spontaneous laughter (triggered by external stimuli or positive emotions] and self-induced laughter.”

Stress buffering involves an individual’s intentional immersion in a socially supportive atmosphere.  Romantic love exacerbates stressful situations.  Men and women constantly screen each other for future value.

Briffault’s Law states the following:

“The female, not the male, determines all the conditions of the animal family. Where the female can derive no benefit from association with the male, no such association takes place.” — Robert Briffault, The Mothers, Vol. I, p. 191

  engagement of two partners   Biological stress constrains happiness, and the easing of such stress through an organism’s “buffering” Forced positivity

to the organism’s survival.  then objective category of “health” obstructs postmodernism  logical exaggerations of post modernism  Prior to the Understandings of deviance allows categorizations of certain behavior as deviant has

Opioid abuse sensitizes the brain to pain and steers the organism away from future threats.  Doctors see the apparent paradoxical increase in pain sensitivity as a biological failure, but rather chronic abuse of opioids and opiates for pain management in a clinical setting lacks coherence in an evolutionary context.

Raymond Peat, PhD mentions the role of opiates in cancer proliferation.  The toxicity of opiates and their derivatives merit their reevaluation as therapeutic aids in any context outside of extreme desperation, and their use in palliative care resembles an insidious brand of irony.

The emphasis on short-term relief derives from a harm-avoidant pathology, which in itself has a beneficial function, as with the medical “primum non nocere [first, do no harm].”  With institutionalization of dogma, the proscriptive “do no harm” morphs into the prescriptive “minimize harm.”  Effective action requires comprehensive understanding, and the adaptation of short-term interventions as long-term therapies kills.

An alternative to harm-avoidance, dogmatism exploits the fullest extent of limited knowledge available in the present moment.  Estrogen itself impairs learning and together with serotonin causes aggression.  Whereas prison physically restricts to avoid harm, academic authoritarians manipulate the Overton window to achieve similar safety in ideological terms.

“If we think of the image as including autonomic nerve processes, it is not too strange to think of the orgasm as being an act of discovery regarding the nature of the opposite sex and of the particular sexual partner.”

– Raymond Peat, PhD in Mind and Tissue

The father, akin to the movement of energy (or function) creates the son, and the mother, resembling the pooling of energy (as structure) sustains him.  The female reliance on the male, and the male’s desire for the female respectively resembles the impetus of either.  Without the yoke of the feminine (as the means for new life), the male cannot create, and without the passion of the masculine (as the impetus for creation), the female loses her maternality.

Insufficient energy precipitates scar tissue and fibrosis as a thermodynamic necessity, but also as structural adaptation against continued energy restriction.  Fibrosis impairs tissue function, and psychological “scar tissue” parallels a breakdown in human sexuality.

Thyroid function determines the organism’s resistance to stress and toxins and maximizes androgen (testosterone and DHT) production.  Similarly a masculine (but not necessarily male) sexual orientation exhibits mastery and resilience against the environment.  Intrauterine stress can cause homosexuality, and environmental factors form of reverberation of a breakdown in creative energies.  psychological dysfunction for many homosexuals.  breakdown therein may be thought of as a  Stress degrades dihydrotestosterone (DHT), the primary driver of the male sexual response.  The breakdown in heterosexual function as a result of stress  .  Maternal hypothyroidism predisposes the fetus to develop autism, another pathology with impaired learning and and repetitive behaviors.  Female autists often appear as tomboys or bisexual, and autistic members of both genders have lower sex drives.

During sex, the masculine force experiences desire in opposition to his default state of mastery as being the desired, whereas the feminine feels desirable as opposed to her prior state of insufficiency and longing.  Feminine sexuality employs hypergamy, whereas masculinity prefers hypogamy, and any equalization between the two sequesters sexual polarity.

As the most fundamental stressor, survival pressures precipitates male endangerment during a famine (or war,) and a subsequent patriarchy reduce on men.      Females readily Femininity imposes an artificial stressor as a test.  The value of the masculine energy lies in its resilience or he feminine amplifies the stressor, where the masculine  where the feminine amplifies the stimulus, and where the masculine sequesters (or controls) the mas and similarly sociopolitical “sexuality” features a consistent conflict

The phenomenon of laughter demonstrates

Serotonin promotes verbalization and laughter, and both rejuvenate the stressed organism.  Verbal artists such as poets and writers die young, whereas painters, sculptors, and architects live longer, and scientists have the longest lifespans.  Greater achievement correlates with a longer lifespan.  Social status increases DHT.

DHT relieves anxiety and females have lower levels of DHT and higher levels of anxiety. In male but not female monkeys, DHT muffles the stress response and decreases cortisol.

It’s well known

Child abuse reflects a rejection of the parent and an inherent breakdown in the psyche , in effect a rejection of the parent, who may be thought of    With adequate energy, the fibrotic heart can reverse itself, and the current fortress of academic authoritarianism either requires a tremendously expensive and intensive metamorphoses, or the transplant of the entire organ.

Albeit with high energy requirements, creativity carries an intense efficiency, so much so that creative insight actually improves the “efficiency” of any given framework, as with a new mechanical invention.  Similarly, the learning processes of movement may be thought of as a manifestation of creative impetus, where a young child adapts rapidly to feedback and adjusts motor neurons to develop a novel approach to tackling the needs of gravity.

Depressed functionality often appears “good-enough” for allopathic care, whereas psychiatrists optimize the mental functioning of the patient as independent of physiology.    Psychiatrists have offered relief to many, but the newer serotonergic antidepressants shorten the lifespan, leave the heart fibrotic, or even worsen derail the long-term neurological health of the patient.  Greed and relativism both benefit the criminal, and deconstruction of universal behaviors of certain hormones (such as hormones) serve to benefit the distributors of “medications” that damage the organism.

Social engineering prefers a worldview of knowability, as with political authoritarian structures National Socialism and Marxism.  Genetic and environmental determinism both undermine the response of the organism to its environment and reflect feelings of powerlessness.  The draw to political authoritarianism could be thought as a form of “addiction” to compensate for feelings of lack.  Leftist authoritarians dissolve group identity for inclusion as an obvious relinquishment of the energetic requirements placed on the individual, while authoritarianism with an in-group preference seeks the destruction of other non-members to the current group.  Identity politics, a form of environmental determinism employs social engineering to free the individual from any obligations through an “outsourcing” of identity to a particular group.  A similar externalization of responsibility appears with genetic determinism, and the belief in the organism as a fixed template or an unveiling tapestry.  A rejection of novelty and reliance on mental fabrications underly all authoritarian worldviews.

Stress prompts a demand for control, and social engineering relies upon a worldview of knowability, as with political authoritarianism.  Genetic and environmental determinism undermine the response of the individual to his environment and reflect feelings of powerlessness.  Neither to say that the environment should be discounted, nor that agency in isolation exists as the only factor in individual success, but rather that the interaction between an organism and his environment matters the most, and the impetus of the individual will decide the degree of sacrifice to overcome a stressor.  The concept of “eustress” refers to activity without compulsion, and indeed defining “eustress” as “stress” lacks a developed understanding of the mammalian hormonal response to a stressor.

The stress hormones serotonin, estrogen, adrenaline, and cortisol (among others) mediate shock and preserve the integrity of the organism in the context of scarcity.  With continued pressure placed upon the individual, the stress hormone cortisol can cause feelings of euphoria and hypervigilance (which may be mistaken for “eustress.”  The same stressor can become dangerous in a less favorable context.  True “eustress” would be something akin to a concentric movement (where a muscle flexes and exerts control over a load.)  Activities such as these include “stimulating” activities, such as spontaneous movement, reading, playing games, listening to or creating music, painting, writing, interacting (in the correct circumstances), and mathematics or similar challenging activities (such as games involving dexterity, fine-motor skills, or acute perception, as with pool or crossword puzzles respectively.)

The expansion of an organism to correct its environment may be thought of as “distress,” whereas the desire to go outwards and expand (and the subsequent activity that results) resembles “eustress,” similar to the concentric movement of a muscle (or in this case, person) struggling against a load (or environment) with adequate energy.  Within Mr. McNair’s quote, desire remains contextual.  In college, for example, one person may have a strong desire to escape or sequester the stress of college life through either completion, withdrawal, or a modification of the complementary habits of the person.  Many students take antidepressantss, others engage in alcoholism, some engage in compulsive strenous exercise regimes, and still others find divergent activities  (for a more compatible expression of their creative energies), such as drama, music, podcasting, writing, sports, or the social aspects of Greek Life.  Until the distaste or hatred for the activity

My own journey into understanding parallels my ideal career path.  I founded the Foster Your Health podcast and blog a while back to communicate an integrated understanding of biology, psychology, and philosophy, and I just recently founded Foster Your Health Radio, which will expand my production to greater frequency with more interactivity, and I plan to do interviews on my show as well.  After the loss of my mother to multiple sclerosis and my father’s succumbing to Alzheimer’s, I’ve devoted my life to understanding the underlying pathologies of these conditions and disease in a more general sense, and further in extrapolating these to better understand happiness.  

Originally, I envisioned medical school, but the authoritarian knowledge structures and sense of social isolation (and indeed prevalent suicide) amongst doctors reflects an obvious failure of the educative system.  From the age of five, doctors of varying specialities endure a minimum of 20 and up to around 30 consecutive years of school before entering into clinical practice.  To think that such a system grooms “the best and brightest” has no bearing on reality.  In fact, the allure of the medical profession (and indeed my attraction to such an abbreviated title as “Dr.”) unfortunately draws in some of the most competitive and competent individuals in our society into a system that intentionally restricts its supply of professionals.

Humans distrust each other.  We have these large structures to mould our consciousness, as if we need such contrived avenues for development, and also as if society itself does not provide enough incentives for development, growth, and propsering that we need artifiical systems in place to regulate the flow of knowledge.  Licensing in itself borrows many problems from “regulatory capture,” and while a few institutions benefit from the strenuous (and often superfluous) requirements placed upon doctors (such as international volunteer requirements, as if the most masterful members of our society have no philanthropic impetus, which historically has not been the case.)  It might seem trivial to dispute the layering of requirements due to the tendency for individuals to meet similar milestones on their own, but on a more subtle level it corrodes the individual involvement in a task.  It’s the difference between treating children as independent humans or property, or the same may be said of a spouse.  Although similar requirements arrive either way, lacking compulsion leads to self-actualization, enhanced creativity, efficiency, and an experience of indescribable richness when compared to the cold, methodical, legislated bureaucracy.

I struggle with the balance between impetus and convention.  I retain my individuality, but I also need to operate within a system that bears no favor toward outlandish ideas.  I once viewed the struggle as a balancing act between my own beliefs and the beliefs of those around me to meet somewhere in the middle.  However, this happens without my consent as I grow and change in response to others.  My purpose lies in my presntation of myself unconditionally and without concession unless met with another modicum of truth that contradicts my own biases.  McNair’s perseverance mandates a dedication to the self, and a strong-will (entirely the result of an organism’s health and sense of identity in relation to its environment) facilitates the continuous development process that directs me, both as a force that informs the direction and methodology for proceeding.

Initially, stress (as with shock) increases the activity of estrogen and serotonin, which temcauses energy to be used rapidly (particularly in the nerves), and the latter of which blunts the appetite, so as to limit energy consumption and maximize expenditure.  With a continued perception of stress, the adrenal glands secrete adrenaline, which itself increases the pulse and starts burning fat for immediate energy.  If the stress continues unabated, then cortisol breaks down muscle tissue (and eventually organs) for glucose.  in response to stress and increase energy expenditure, while they blunt the appetite.  Serotonin acts upon the hormone ACTH to produce cortisol (known recently as “the stress hormone” for its causal role in aging and disease.)  Cortisol

, as well as the desire to destroy, and an organism and its environment

Further manifestations of a “harm-avoidant” pathology appears in psychology and its emphasis on “normalcy” and indeed any collectivist institution that sacrifices individual actualization at the behest of the dominant narrative.

Inconsequentiality and distraction act as the

Stress as the Root of Evil

Libertarian ethics distills morality down to the non-aggression principle (NAP), which bars the initiation of force by one human against another.  Consumption of animals, starches, vegetables, nuts and seeds, and fertilized eggs requires human intervention into the capacity for life in other living organisms.  Dairy and non-fertilized eggs

“Celsus fails to notice that the name of daemons is not morally neutral like that of men, among whom some are good and some bad; nor is it good like the name of gods, which is not to be applied to evil daemons or to images or to animals, but by those who know the things of God to beings truly divine and blessed. The name of daemons is always applied to evil powers without the grosser body, and they lead men astray and distract them, and drag them down from God and the world beyond the heavens to earthly things.”

C. Cels. V.5. Cf. VIII.31, “the entire race of whom is evil,” VIII.39; VII.69; Clement of Alexandria, Protrep. II.40-41.

Authoritarians manipulate language.  Controlled opposition,

Instinctively, we all crave greater realization of our own potentials.  After obtainin wealth, celebrities soon descend ninto debauchery and drug use, the former often precipitated by the latter.  Estrogen promotes hypersexuality, and estrogen causes inflammation.  It’s valuable to think of a craving as a striving to remedy the acute rise in inflammation, where long-term, chornic inflammation derails developmental processes and leads to manifestations such as personality disorders as a sort of “cancer of the mind.”

Pursuance of substances that deliver us from our momentary expeiriences of stress have a great degree of evolutionary value, as the organism seeks to maximize its energetic potential in the moment and thereby not only delay the process of aging and inevitable death, but also promote greater expansion in the relams of social, familial, and spiritual life, which also leads to greater survivial through greater ingenuity and intellectual discovery..

Therefore, we should not criticze drug users in their behavior, but rather we should dissuade them from their inferior approaches.  Stressed individuals seek “pleasurable substances” such as alcohol to alleviate the burden of stress, and in the short-term all “hedonistic” desires tend to alleivate stress. Hedonism in itself exists as a state of chronic energy insufficiency, albeit not enough to merit the category of “disease,” but enough to disturb the highest reaches of our developmental processes.

Adaptive pleasure-seeking results in satsifaction with the sexual response and pursuit of orgasm being the best example of such.  During the orgasm, the intense rush of dopamine, release of endorphins, and secretion of prolactin lower cortisol levels.  Strong thyroid function promotes rapid recovery from the “refractory period” of an orgasm, and the prolactin sharply declines.  Hypothyroidism itself tends to promote prolactin secretion through stimulation of the pituitary gland, and the derailment of proper glucose metabolism often features high cortisol.  A certain sub-type of hypothyroidism termed as “hypersexual” for lack of a better word features chronic elevations in cortisol and the act of lustful “addiction” as a therapeutic aide to attenuate the state of chronic “near-exhaustion.”  Total exhaustion would lead to depression and eventual suicidal ideation, and the “teetering” oscilation between normalcy and insanity appears in puberty, mid-life crises, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disroder, and other disorders of impuslivity such as hypersexuality, OCD, ADD, and so on.

The modern “business culture” promotes continuous exhaustion, and those who succeed have superior thyroid function and can withstand daily stress.  Modalities such as antidepressants and adaptogens that lower cortisol in the short-term (such as alcohol, opiates such as kratom or kava kava and so on), as well as substances that tend to promote oxidative metabolism (and thus lower cortisol) over the long-term (such as coffee or caffeine, tobacco or nicotine, and cannabis or THC).

“Good enough” merits survival, but not living.

References 11/15/17

References (prior to 11/15/17)