
Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013) - cryoshon
http://brucelevine.net/how-societies-with-little-coercion-have-little-mental-illness/
======
butterfinger
Another point that this article does not discuss is that in many of the "less
coercive" societies, schizophrenia or related diseases are not seen as a
disease or problematic at all.

McKenna writes: "A shaman is someone who swims in the same ocean as the
schizophrenic, but the shaman has thousands and thousands of years of
sanctioned technique and tradition to draw upon. In a traditional society, if
you exhibited “schizophrenic” tendencies, you are immediately drawn out of the
pack and put under the care and tutelage of master shamans. You are told: “You
are special. Your abilities are very central to the health of our society. You
will cure. You will prophesy. You will guide our society in its most
fundamental decisions.”" [0]

[0]: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/12470230/Eros-and-the-Eschaton-
rou...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/12470230/Eros-and-the-Eschaton-rough-copy)

See also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_construction_of_schizop...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_construction_of_schizophrenia)

~~~
api
I love McKenna's raps but I really disagree with him here. I doubt he had much
experience with actual schizophrenia, which is horrific and debilitating, and
I doubt shamans present or past actually had it. Psychedelic drugs induce a
superficially schizophrenia-like state but it's transient and may not
_actually_ be much like schizophrenia at all. Visionary, trance, and highly
imaginative states are not schizophrenia or even indicative of mental illness.

Real schizophrenia is a hell of paranoia and anxiety and I doubt anyone with a
severe case could heal or make art or any of the other things a traditional
shaman might do.

~~~
benbreen
Agreed completely. I was sympathetic to arguments like his right up until the
time when my brother began acting weird and fell into a downward spiral that
ultimately led to a schizophrenia diagnosis. What really sticks out to me is
the brain damage-like effects of the disease - not just paranoia and delusions
but a total breakdown in verbal and reasoning abilities. What my brother
suffers from really is more comparable to Alzheimers or even forms of brain
damage or post-stroke states than other mental illnesses I've encountered -
it's not so much a visionary state as it is a crippling disability. Really
grim stuff, and I suspect that many people who glamorize it don't have
firsthand experience with the destruction it can cause.

To end with a somewhat more positive note, the late Oliver Sacks has written
beautifully and with great sympathy and humanity about his brother's battle
with schizophrenia - I think it's mainly in his "chemical memoir" _Uncle
Tungsten_. I've often wished that he wrote a whole book on the subject but I
guess it hit a little too close to home for him.

~~~
api
> What really sticks out to me is the brain damage-like effects of the disease

Absolutely... there's an _incoherence_ to true (not armchair diagnosed)
schizophrenia. The mind falls apart.

Traditional shamans and modern ones like McKenna himself might hold ideas that
some might find irrational, but their thought patterns are coherent and their
reasoning ability is there. They're lucid and can think. McKenna's brilliant
wordsmithing is the polar opposite of what you see with degenerative mental
illness.

~~~
joe_the_user
Given this is on the level the speculative, one thing to consider is that the
initial condition of the schizophrenic might be delusion, hallucination and
the disintegration of one's sense of reality - and when that happens, the
result in a modern society with no support for the phenomena could be massive
_stress_ , stress being a factor which many are today blaming for much mental
illness.

That is to say that shamanic rituals and such might be a way to prevent those
on the cusp of the classical symptoms of schizophrenia from progressing to
full-blown schizophrenia.

~~~
Mz
As someone who has dealt with some mental health stuff ("crap in my head"
/technical term), I can testify firsthand that a) how it gets framed and b)
how others around me respond to it make a really huge difference in how it
impacts me -- anywhere from "weird, but functional" to "odd source of useful
insight" to "losing my shit and I think I shall go play in traffic now."

~~~
mercer
Indeed! I've been able to compare friends with similar issues either deal with
them as a problem to fix or suppress (therapy, medication, etc.), or as a
'weird, but functional' state to 'live with'. The latter, assuming they were
functional enough and assuming they found a place, social group and general
environment where their 'issues' were accepted, _always_ were much better off.

That's not an argument to avoid therapy or medication, far from it, but at the
very least it's should make one pause and think about finding a balance
between 'fixing the person with the issues to fit in his current environment'
and 'finding an environment/approach for that person to be happy _with_ their
issues'. Too often I feel that we err on the side of 'fixing'.

It reminds me a bit of the way bloodletting was once a solution to many
things. Turns out that it often made things worse, and only in specific cases
actually helps. Let's try to not make that same mistake.

(Also, more recently I've experienced this phenomenon personally, and I notice
the same thing. The more I focus on 'fixing' or 'fitting in', the worse I'm
off and the worse my problems are. On the other hand, the more I focus on
finding a way to be accepted as I am, the better I am able to actually
counteract my problems')

~~~
Mz
Sometimes, a "crazy" person needs justice. Their life needs to be fixed, not
their head.

Some of my mental health stuff was rooted in being molested at age 3 or 4. I
suppressed those memories until I was in therapy on a different continent, and
thus felt safe enough to deal with it. Prior to that, there were clues to the
suppressed memories in the form of bad dreams and bizarre thoughts.

I kept a dream journal while in therapy. I still find that talking about my
dreams or recording them is useful, yet I have had people tell me "dreams are
just gibberish and do not mean anything." These are often smart people who
basically swear on a stack of scientific books that they are driven by logic
(or well-educated Christians, who fail to see the hypocrisy and irony).

In short, I have been in situations where the truth was so unacceptable to
other people that it created mental blocks in me. So, I feel very strongly
that dismissing another person's reality is literally crazy-making.

------
FreedomToCreate
The evidence he supplies doesn't actually prove the coercion is the cause.
There is no scientific data presented, just speculative statistics and
linkages to possible causes. The neurobiologist D.F Swaab wrote a book called
"We are our brains" that talks about the issues outlined in this article and
provides scientific proof to show how various illnesses like schizophrenia can
come about. Many of these illnesses have biological and physical connections
to be brought about in a person.

I am not advocating for coercion being a good things, but manipulating a
person to do something is not the same as guiding them down a path that has
been generally beneficial for the majority, like going to school.

~~~
andrei_says_
> as guiding them down a path that has been generally beneficial for the
> majority, like going to school.

Possibly unpopular opinion: school is not negotiable for children and so
there's no guiding. It's pure coercion.

Also, there's no popular alternative to school so that we can compare enough
data and prove that school is beneficial. Unschooling exists and seems to
healthier, efficient and beneficial compared to school but there's just not
enough data.

School was a great alternative at a time when it was the only place to get
information. This is no longer true.

~~~
fsloth
"Possibly unpopular opinion: school is not negotiable for children and so
there's no guiding. It's pure coercion."

There are lot's of things which are non-negotiable for children. Things like
brushing teeth, going to bed and washing hands after toilet. All of which have
some intrinsic value beyond tradition.

Coercion is _the action or practice of persuading someone to do something by
using force or threats._. There are other means of guiding children to do
something. These include gentle reminders, routines and and just agreement.

And, yes, coercion as well, when all other things fail. Hopefully not that
much.

If a child goes routinely to school I would not call this an action under
coercion, unless the child has learned e.g. that he needs to go to school so
he does not turn into a destitute when he grows up.

"School was a great alternative at a time when it was the only place to get
information. This is no longer true."

I don't think there ever was time when "school was the only place to get
information". I would claim this is location based (if true even then). I.e.
rural villages with low rate of literacy vs. a literate society with access to
books.

Or, in pre-literate societies, just having access to a sufficient number of
people would probably provide a venue for some information access.

Besides, providing information is not the only function a school has. My kid
internalizes all math he is taught immediately and combines all new facts he
learns into a logically cohesive model of the world which he has structured in
his head.

However, he does need to learn how to live in a society and how to work with
other people and school provides a good place for that.

~~~
nightspirit
> If a child goes routinely to school I would not call this an action under
> coercion

I'm actually young enough to remember what school looked like and I'm sure as
hell many of the kids wouldn't attend if they didn't know that they are going
to be forced by their parents or the nanny state anyway.

~~~
fsloth
Sorry, I'm a bit of a pedantic in discussions here.

To simplify the situation let's claim that children do not go to school unless
prompted by their parents. This is then an influence attempt by the parent to
make the child follow with their directives.

Such an attempt has usually three possible outcomes: commitment, compliance or
conflict.

Just because coercion can be used as an influence tactic does not mean it's
always necessary to do so. Also, it seldom leads to the most preferred outcome
(commitment).

The point was - not all influence tactics can be categorized as coercion - not
that the hypothetical child would not need external influence to attend
school.

------
onetwotree
Stress and alienation/isolation have been directly implicated in depression,
anxiety disorders, and addiction.

Perhaps these sometimes result from what might be described as coercion, but I
think that to characterize, for example, the problem of parents who physically
abuse their children as one of coercion misses the point. Coercion is a catch
all, and in many cases coercion does not result in stress, trauma, etc.

That and holy shit, when did basing arguments on the notion of the noble
savage come back in style?

~~~
jerf
"when did basing arguments on the notion of the noble savage come back in
style?"

When did it leave?

~~~
Animats
It left when more people started traveling and meeting other cultures.

------
vannevar
The societies described in the article have many dissimilarities with modern
Western civilization. Why attribute the level of mental illness (a somewhat
difficult thing to measure in a primitive society) to the "level of coercion"
(an extremely difficult thing to measure in any society)? Why not correlate it
with the number of cars, or the number of zoos, or the average diet? Such
cherrypicking is generally a strong indicator of a pre-existing bias.

------
Kinnard
I imagine its hard to get good data on mental illness let alone a good
definition of what "mental illness" is across societies. Is homosexuality
still considered a mental illness in most of the world?

~~~
DanBC
Homosexuality was listed in ICD 9 and earlier. ICD 9 was created in about 1975
- 1978.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Statistical_Clas...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Statistical_Classification_of_Diseases_and_Related_Health_Problems#ICD-9)

Homosexuality was removed from ICD 10. ICD 10 was created in about 1983 - 1990

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Statistical_Clas...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Statistical_Classification_of_Diseases_and_Related_Health_Problems#ICD-10)

Individual countries may be using their own definitions. EG US uses DSM.

DSM included homosexuality in the first version published in about 1952, but
it was scrutinised early and homosexuality was removed from DSM in 1973.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality#Psychology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality#Psychology)

Things like conversion therapy have been weirdly hard to stop, even with clear
advice from professional bodies and regulators that it's probably harmful and
has no evidence of efficacy or usefulness.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy)

------
altonzheng
The author makes a good point about re-examining our approach to treating
mental illness. I think the viewpoint that "Big Pharma" has psychiatrists in
their hands is a bit too conspiracy-ist for me. What's really happening is
mental healthcare is being excessively quantized and dehumanized. We're too
concerned with the symptoms and we have studies that lump a variety of people
under the ridiculously general label: 'depression'.

We're going too fast, the brain and human spirit is hopelessly complex, and it
takes a holistic, humanistic treatment that doesn't reduce the patient to a
set of symptoms to make a change. A book I recommend concerning this is "The
Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat" by neurologist Oliver Sacks.

------
tunesmith
Coercion and compliance are basically high-signal low-content terms. It's sort
of dose-makes-the-poison in that you can't reasonably compare something like
taxation (which is often described as coercion) to something like forced
medication.

~~~
pasquinelli
what do you mean by high-signal and low-content? i don't know about signal and
content, but typically the word coercion is used to refer to forcing people to
do something using violence and the threat of violence.

~~~
tunesmith
high-signal low-content... for example, if you say a term like "gun control"
to a collection of people, and every person in the group has a clear idea of
what it means, and yet the definition might be different for every person. So,
the content of the term has low meaning overall, while as a signal it evokes a
strong response.

~~~
aninhumer
So, I get what you're saying, but I don't think "signal" is a great term for
that, because it comes from information theory, and there its definition more
closely matches what you're calling "content".

I'm not sure what you could call emotional impact to make a similarly pithy
description though.

~~~
tunesmith
Yeah, that's a good point - I have heard "signal" used more in this context in
social sciences, like "dog whistle" in politics. But it'd be nice to come up
with something clearer and just as pithy.

------
gooftop
Not clear to me if the article implies that totalitarian societies have more
coercion - but if it does, should a country like China have more mental
illness? I don't know if thats the case, at least in percentage of entire
population. What does that mean for the central hypothesis of the article and
its validity?

~~~
WhatIsDukkha
China is an interesting case of thousands of years of relatively modern social
order with high coercion in many ways.

However, it's also a society that maintained high levels of family and clan
based organization which counterbalance the atomization and individuality that
you see in modern "Washington Consensus" societies.

I highly recommend "The Search for Modern China" if you are truly interested
in thinking about these things in context. It's very pleasing and readable.

Modern China isn't as straightforwardly authoritarian as you might want to
compare against.

North Korea might be a better choice.

------
cryoshon
FTA: "Throughout history, societies have existed with far less coercion than
ours, and while these societies have had far less consumer goods and what
modernity calls “efficiency,” they also have had far less mental illness. This
reality has been buried, not surprisingly, by uncritical champions of
modernity and mainstream psychiatry. Coercion—the use of physical, legal,
chemical, psychological, financial, and other forces to gain compliance—is
intrinsic to our society’s employment, schooling, and parenting. However,
coercion results in fear and resentment, which are fuels for miserable
marriages, unhappy families, and what we today call mental illness."

How many great people did we lose because they weren't 'compliant' enough to
conform properly? I can sure think of a few.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'd like to see some concrete evidence that people in the past did in fact had
"far less mental illness", and it is not just a result of them not being
diagnosed. Most of the mental illnesses we know have been _defined_ within
last 100 years. In the past they may as well have been known as anything from
demonic possession, and magic, to being stupid, being a brawler or a person
ill-disposed.

Secondly, I wouldn't underestimate the amount of coercion that was going on in
the past. Sustenance farmers probably didn't feel much direct coercion
(besides the days when the nobility showed up to collect their dues), they
were just mostly scared of going hungry. But factory workers in the early
Industrial Revolution? Miners before, during and after that? Militaries of
various times? If coercion causes mental illness, it should be reflected in
the historical records. It's probably worth checking.

~~~
crpatino
> I wouldn't underestimate the amount of coercion that was going on in the
> past.

Don't forget about the Inquisition. Most people hear that and think of the
burning of witches and heretics, but that institution alone had a much wider
array of non lethal punishments for all sort of behaviors considered
"undesirable".

I have been in the Inquisition museum at the city of Guanajuato during the
holidays, and they had a remarcable number of painful or even midly
unconfortable artifacts that got used on people doing the pre-modern
equivalent of littering. Victims would not face lasting harm, but the
judicious infliction of pain plus public humiliation [1] was enough to keep
them toeing the line more often than not.

[1] A remarkable example was a sort of iron flute. It was heavy and it had
manacles for both hands and neck so that the transgressor would be forced in
position as if playing it. They would attach it to the victims and send them
back home for a few days to reflect on their sins, which was alteration of
public order, or "wild partying".

------
PaulHoule
Mental illness is a complex entity. Beware of any simple "definition of
insanity"

I recently discovered I have a mutation which makes my verbal intelligence too
high to measure but has negative effects in other areas. Other people have
similar variations.

Some kinds of mental illness such as schizophrenia seem very much to be a
biological phenomenon, but stress and particularly the way stress is
structured has a definite negative effect on the origin. You can become
stronger and more capable in many areas by applying stress in the right way
(athletic and military training, for instance), but stress without time to
recover has negative effects on body and mind and certainly surplus coercion
leads to surplus stress.

~~~
cryoshon
Are you talking about the Met-158 mutation? If not, which?

I agree that the real culprit is stress-- biological differences to processing
and coping with stress are likely the actual mechanism at play rather than
generalized "coercion" like the article suggests without providing evidence.
Our society is intensely stressful, and provides no real permanent reductions
in stress level.

~~~
PaulHoule
I don't have Met-158 thank god I am not like that crazy killer family from the
Netherlands.

I am hetero at SNP rs1800497.

~~~
wickedgain
How did you find out?

~~~
PaulHoule
23andme. It's funny because I always thought I was some kind of X-Man.

~~~
malft
Your mental superpowers are caused by a rare mutation shared with 40% of all
people?

~~~
danieltillett
Yep. This must be why 40% of the population has a “verbal” intelligence that
can’t be measured.

------
eneifert
With response to "The 1916 book The Institutional Care of the Insane of the
United States and Canada reports" paragraph. Schizophrenia is by no means easy
to diagnose and there is a lot of debate over when someone is or isn't
Schizophrenic. I have known two people (one a family member) that some would
call Schizophrenic and after many years I'm still not sure if that is a fair
diagnosis or not. I think it might be a bit much to expect a society with
little social expectations to evaluate this well.

In our society we suspect people to have mental illnesses but it takes years
to get a good diagnoses and sometimes they never get a clear one.

------
rrggrr
Identity is harder to come by in today's society than in the forests of New
Guinea or in our own recent history. At the same time diagnosis of mental
illness is easy to come by, as is anxiety provoking news media, and identity
models of narcissistic, sociopathic and borderline celebrity personalities.
Our young people, identities still forming, have many traps in which they can
fall and most are alone with their thoughts. I think the author's hypothesis
is the polar opposite of what is actually occurring... we've given our young
people too little structure and not enough direction.

------
zwischenzug
A great book to read in this context:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Sleep-There-are-
Snakes/dp/18466...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Sleep-There-are-
Snakes/dp/1846680409/ref=sr_1_1)

or indeed, any context. It's a fabulous book about the good and bad in
societies untouched by civilization, and about one man's attempts to
understand a language with no reference points. And his struggle with his
Christian mission, ending up in his atheism. It's got everything, and would
make a great film.

~~~
aarpmcgee
Terrific book. Was mind expanding for me.

------
Jupe
I think the author jumps to some conclusions here - not sure what is cause and
effect.

Is it possible that people stricken by serious mental illness in these
societies simply die? I have some experience with mental illness and I can see
how someone 'out of their mind' could easily die young when exposed to the
elements.

I don't have direct evidence, but I believe the mortality rate in rural /
isolated societies is higher than in more cultivated societies.

------
rogeryu
A while ago I read that societies around the equator have almost no
schizophrenia. This was linked to vitamin D or UV-B, which we lack in the
western world.

------
astazangasta
On the subject of schizophrenia, the most interesting and insightful thinker I
have read is John Weir Perry: [http://global-
vision.org/papers/JWP.pdf](http://global-vision.org/papers/JWP.pdf) His notion
is that schizophrenia is a normal process to reorder the mind to heal from
severe psychic trauma, which neuroleptics interrupt and prolong.

------
SCAQTony
The article was a bold, confident, hypothesis with possibly cherrypicked
examples rather than a serious study. YMMV

------
jmnicolas
For all we know it could be as well the food : there's a lot of people that
believes that highly processed food is toxic for the organism and is the
source of most of our ailments.

They're generally heavy on beliefs and light on science, but empirical
evidence suggest that they might be right.

------
dawnbreez
Define "coercion".

------
backtoyoujim
I'd rather be smashing imperialism

[http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ed-stamm-and-
others-c...](http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ed-stamm-and-others-
consent-or-coercion)

~~~
_yosefk
You said it, man! Nothing is more fun than smashing imperialism. I think I'll
close the tab and go smash me some right now.

