For example, would you agree that members of stone-age tribes are literally schizophrenics by DSM criteria and would be diagnosed as such by competent psychiatrists?
This reminds me of debates about IQ, whether stone-age tribes would be diagnosed as mentally retarded.
Seems like on one hand, if we could use a time machine and somehow convince the stone-age people to do our IQ tests, they would probably score low. On the other hand, they wouldn't be the same kind of people as a random selection of people who have the same value of IQ today. I guess the conclusion is that there are many factors that can lower the IQ, some one of them would be problematic in the ancient environment, and some of them not.
Analogically, the idea that the members of stone-age tribes would be diagnosed as mentally ill using today's criteria seems quite unsurprising to me. And analogically, there could be various variants of schizophrenia, some of them widely present among the stone-age tribes, and some of them absent. I have no idea whether the anti-psychotic drugs would target those historic variants.
Is meditation nothing but teaching yourself schizophrenia?
It seems like the goal of the most serious meditators is to have hallucinations of your previous reincarnations, which is supposed to give you the hard evidence that your faith is the true one. (Conveniently ignoring the alternative explanation that your faith may actually have shaped the content of the hallucinations.)
But most people in our culture seem to meditate merely as a way of relaxation. That means, not giving it enough time and effort to make the hallucinations appear. (Literature seems to suggests that it is usually necessary to spend weeks meditating several hours daily to achieve the "enlightenment".)
Were all mystics throughout the ages just mentally ill people?
Well, unless you believe in the supernatural, I am curious what other explanation there is...
(Connotational disclaimer: "Mentally ill" is not the same thing as "dysfunctional at everything". Just because a person has weird hallucinations once in a while, they can still be a great person, even a great scientist.)
if we could use a time machine
I'm talking about people living now. Amazon Indian tribes, Andamanese, maybe remote communities of Bushmen, Aboriginals, etc.
the idea that the members of stone-age tribes would be diagnosed as mentally ill using today's criteria seems quite unsurprising to me.
The question was much more specific: diagnosed with schizophrenia by DSM standards. And should we medicate them? The life of schizophrenics noticeably improves when they take their drugs.
...It seems like the goal of the most serious meditators is to have hallucinati
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