I was thinking about the usefulness of our illness as shamans or mystics in the past.
I was listening to Alan Watts and he defined shamans as: “person with a peculiar type of sensitivity, and who is in touch with a domain of consciousness: the spirit world, the ancestors, the gods or whatever”.
What do you think?
I think the mystics of the past were probably clever cookies. Able to fool the village.
I suspect schizophrenics were just the village madmen.
Just my cynical opinion.
I fail to understand the evolutionary purpose of the “village madmen” and their role into the society…
Yes. If schizophrenia is genetic you’d think it would have gone away long ago. I don’t understand why it hasn’t.
Some cultures treated them as if they were. But, on the other hand they were treated badly in other cultures.
Yeah, I get where your coming from though. When I first got sick I read about the shaman aspect of schizophrenia and wanted to believe my illness was not that horrible and maybe I had some kind of special powers and that because of having
schizophrenia I had a bunch of great insights into life.
Sadly (and early on) I realized that it turned out to be just wishful thinking. The reality was that I had a severe mental illness that screwed up my thinking and made my perceptions of people and life awry but could be managed with medication.
What is the usefulness of a shaman or a mystic? Not trying to make a point, I just really don’t know too much about it.
I agree. We would be the medicine persons in prehistoric times. I’ve heard creativity described as having “remote associations”. We see events and processes in a more holistic way.
I think there’s a big difference between being in touch with the energies of the Universe and being flat out mad.
Try not to read too deep into esoteric philosophies and metaphysics. Those ideas and books were made by people just trying to make sense of the word, so a lot of their ideas are rather dated.
That’s just my two ruples. 
Healers , visionaries, religion, communication with spirits, escorting the souls of the dead to the afterlife…
Yeah, I was wondering about the evolutionary purpose of beeing psychotic.
I went through this stage as well. My problem is I tried to convince 16/17 years old acquaintances and friends. Safe to say they stepped back from this
If you don´t mind to answer… What did they thought of you? Are you still friends with em?
My memory of this is faulty. No matter what I had to get other people to believe me to be taken seriously, and I was obsessing over it.
I can imagine they saw this as a result of the LSD and Weed, but who knows.
I am not friends with them any more, which is a good thing as they were a bad influence on me, and they used me
I went through a very simmilar experience with friends and acquaitances. Very bad influences.
Yes, they were, and to some extent still are.
I just got diagnosed with Autism. It kinda explains things a bit more in the context that I was so easily manipulated and a soft target for bullying whilst I grew up.
The outcast definition doesn’t quite go far enough in what happened…
I am grateful for this diagnosis, as it actually gave me answers to why things went so wrong between the ages of 5 and 18 when I got clean.
What about Egyptian times
I wonder how schizophrenics lived
The elite, kings queens emporers. Because of their high status they would be under insurmountable tasks and stress, when they fall ill who is there to relate to them cure them or accept them as ligitaamently I’ll.
No I don’t think we are any different from ‘normies’ (lol) but I do think many of us go through a lot more suffering and numb it with ‘crap’ things like junk food compared to many ‘normies’ (lol)
I’m descended from clan mac Gregor. Children of the mist in Scotland.
A psychotic person is very different from the normies when unmedicated…