I have believed for awhile that paranoia is the brains way of handling real or perceived danger and it is a primal instinct.
It can be triggered by traumas in life, -. the memories build up and the brain subconsciously reacts to the trauma by producing paranoia.
The reason I have called it a primal instinct is because in most of the past of human history there were real dangers to be concerned about. Tribal societies had to watch for large wild animals, or neighboring tribes that might attack. Poisoning wasn’t uncommon in those days, and disease was a mystery far more than today.
Today such watchfulness is called hyper-vigilance, but in tribal societies it was absolutely necessary. Anyone who exhibited hyper-vigilance would be chosen to be a watcher, or guard because they were best at spotting any approaching danger.
Even in more modern times people had to watch for invading countries, such as in medieval Europe, or when Genghis Khan was raiding everywhere…
Then all of a sudden the past 100 years or so things changed and people became more “civilized” (supposedly), and with the advent of technology you could detect many things such as an invasion so people didn’t have to watch personally.
The human brain didn’t know what to do with it’s primal instinct so paranoia started becoming an issue. It’s also strange that the term schizophrenia was coined shortly after the beginning of this time
http://schizophrenia.com/history.htm#
Interesting is this part: “A recent study into the ancient Greek and Roman literature showed that although the general population probably had an awareness of psychotic disorders, there was no condition that would meet the modern diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia in these societies.”
It seems like schizophrenia has grown within the population, many are paranoid, but why? I do feel at least the paranoia part of it, especially when there are few or no other symptoms, is the brains way of coping with perceived dangers, and moreso if the person has experienced multiple traumas.
Since modern society has lost touch with many real dangers that presented themselves for thousands of years of human history, they are at a loss as to what this is all about and since it is considered abnormal, they label it under schizophrenia and paranoid delusions.
But if it is viewed as a natural state of mind, that knowledge can help us adapt to modern culture - we can look at things from a natural and spiritual perspective instead of a medical one. At times symptoms are due to medical causes but not always, and doctors to this day often say they don’t know what causes schizophrenia.
When I took cultural anthropology it dealt mainly with different tribal societies…and I came across some material that would support what I am saying…They didn’t specifically say schizophrenia but they talked about how members of tribal societies were often on edge due to real dangers, and had to be much more watchful than we are today…but what if some of us due to trauma or maybe a more active brain are still watchful and it manifests as paranoia because the old dangers are largely passed…? The brain then begins to select dangers that may be possible or may not be possible, and causes you to have paranoid thoughts.
This would kind of go along with the shaman topic that was posted recently as well…