Self-Disillusioning

jwr1947

Introduction
Strange as it may seem it was to be my 91-years old mother, who confirmed Nietzsche's analysis of illusions. Of course I had been aware of the tricky methods which are being activated to make a fool of ourselves and control our lives. The convincing proof of practical illusions as useful tools and a required survival aid however will normally be missing in our environments. In his book We Are Our Brains. From the womb to Alzheimers Dick Swaab explains the mechanism in which the brains manage to maintain a stabilized environment under virtually all circumstances by simply inventing additional well-fit, acceptable fantasy information at locations in which knowledge is missing. The child will add fantasy where needed, but aged dementiapatients will also fill the lacking bits and pieces with illusions. Illusions are different from the pathological delusions' category. Therefore illusions may be considered as a standard behavior pattern for the brain. The mechanism may also be valid for animals and human beings, as in both cases the brains would be needing a similar stabilizing mechanism. According to Nietzsche and Dick Swaab there is no real freedom of choice in the brain's control center. Our decisions, our choices (including our choice to perform a disillusion) and our fantasies may be controlled by mechanisms beyond our free will. Nobody seems to be free to choose whether he needs metaphysics or needs to overcome metaphysics. This study of illusions, disillusion, delusion and the brain's mechanisms concentrates on dementia, in which the brain's reactions on and impact of illusions may be studied. From these observations we may conclude that religion may be considered as an illusion-based concept (instead of a delusion-based concept).

Mechanisms for Survival

As it has been defined in the very word the illusions are the most effective tools our brains are using to guarantee us a stabilized environment. Perfect illusions belong to the elementary survival kit we need along with some food and protection against bad weather. In his main studies Nietzsche must have been aware of the illusions' mechanisms. First of all we should concentrate on the basic principle. Having understood the technology we should try to overcome the hallucinations, which obviously may be risky as long as they are to be considered parts of our unconditional survival mechanisms. A few rungs down. One level of education, itself a very high one, has been reached when man gets beyond superstitious and religious concepts and fears and, for example, no longer believes in the heavenly angels or original sin, and has stopped talking about the soul's salvation. Once he is at this level of liberation, he must still make a last intense effort to overcome metaphysics1. Understanding and overcoming metaphysics are risky for the most tricky way our brains have been perfecting our brains. If some generations of ancestors had been confronted with imperfect illusions these would have lost their effectiveness, automatically triggering the evolutionary extinction of the bad genes. It is a quite successful self-regulation mechanism, with which the brains are keeping the disillusioning levels low enough for people to survive. The tricks our brains apply to stabilize the environment may be identified as supplying the missing information, which Dick Swaab explained in his book We are our Brains2. As soon as the brain identifies a missing piece of knowledge in its overview of the truth in our environment the mind in a best-fit method will produce or reproduce the missing elements by phantasy. By the way this is the mechanism we may observe in court if an eyewitness reproduces a detail from memory such as a car's or a cloth's color, which definitely is incorrect from other, more reliable evidence such as photographs or video-recordings. We know these mechanisms and consider these as careless mistakes or slips of the brain, because we cannot imagine the overwhelming and convincing authority of illusions. Really convincing however are the dialogues with patients suffering from Alzheimer- and dementia, in which the power of illusions is revealed. In discussions with dementia patients we clearly observe the realistic impact of illusions and phantasy and we understand the mechanism of metaphysical thoughts, which are being generated by the brain to survive the imbalance of unknown and misunderstood facts. Uncoordinated disillusion (by removing the illusions) may however be a risk, as in analogy to leading alcoholics into abstinence anytime an uncontrollable instability may be provoked.

1 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human (1878; additions in 1879, 1880) - Section 1, Of First and Last Things - 20. A few rungs down. 2 Dick Swaab - We Are Our Brains. From the womb to Alzheimers

The Freedom of Self-Disillusioning

Another problem is to be solved: the freedom of choice to get rid of our own illusions or to decide to live with the old hallucinations. Both ways may be possible and there may be thought of a free decision of people to either preserve or to alternatively get rid of his illusions. Nietzsche however also demonstrates in his work that man cannot act freely at all. This statement also must be valid for the relevant choice whether we want to live with or without illusions3: The fable of intelligible freedom.7 No one is responsible for his deeds, no one for his nature; to judge is to be unjust. This is also true when the individual judges himself. The tenet is as bright as sunlight, and yet everyone prefers to walk back into the shadow and untruth--for fear of the consequences. Anyone may be forced to disillusion himself or not. If your character forces you to disillusion yourself it will happen anyway. To perform the disillusion the brain will lead you to the correct action anyway.

Brainwashing methods
Nietzsche's fable of intelligible freedom has been confirmed by modern brain analysis4. The denial of self-responsibility may also influence justice. And conditioning children with discussable wisdom may be rather irresponsible brainwashing method. Is it allowed to feed a child's brain with illusions to bend its will? This is the way which has been described by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World5 hnelt6: Fetuses chosen to become members of the highest caste, 'Alpha', are allowed to develop naturally while maturing to term in "decanting bottles", while fetuses chosen to become members of the lower castes ('Beta', 'Gamma', 'Delta', 'Epsilon') are subjected to in situ chemical interference to cause arrested development in intelligence or physical growth. People are literally bred to do their jobs and cannot desire another. There is no competition within castes; each caste member receives the same food, housing, and soma rationing as every other member of that caste. Basically the brainwashing in Brave New World uses the imprinting of illusions, which happened to be agreeable with the current social environment and may be have to be abandoned by cumbersome disillusioning methods.

3 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human (1878; additions in 1879, 1880) - Section 2, On the History of Moral Feelings - 39. fable of intelligible freedom. Nietzsche's Footnote: In ancient Greece, Plato's world of ideas--as a model for the sensual world--was referred to as the "intelligible world:" "Intelligible freedom" is the pure form of freedom, the idea of freedom. See The World as Will and Idea, bk. 4, par. 55 - 8. Ibid., bk. 4., par. 65. 4 Dick Swaab - We Are Our Brains. From the womb to Alzheimers 5 From: Brave New World (a novel written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley, published in 1932) 6 Quelle (Wikipedia): Schne neue Welt

Dehumanizing ourselves
As long as we behave like humans we may compare ourselves to normal or abnormal social life. Our life conforms or we must be considered as abnormal. Conformity is defined as a standard way of behavior. Nonconformity is defined as being unsocial, being avoided or being registered at the police-station. All of us have been born and raised as children, enter the maturity phase and decay either suddenly or gradually towards the normal limits of life. Some of us are dehumanized slowly up to dementia, in which illusions take over control in the brain's basic functions. Normally we will have to accept the decay as the end of our brain's activity. This however also may be the very state of mind we need to understand disillusioning. A great deal of effort has been invested to describe mankind's gigantic progress in big thinking, imagining and poetical pondering, the great ideas of billionaires, the eloquence and philanthropy of bankers, the excellence of industrial development, which allowed us to build nuclear power stations and nuclear reprocessing plants. Nothing had been said of thinking hallucinating thoughts in a malfunctioning brain, of dementia's tricks and the methods of dehumanizing ourselves, in which we transform our mind and which is going to guide us to the end of our lives. Therefore we must consider the dehumanizing method and why it may have lost its scarifying terror. It is acceptance which will lead to the elimination of terror.

The third age

Three ages have been identified in human life: Immaturity, Maturity and Dehumanization.

Immaturity
The first phase, our childhood, is sweetness, which I remember as the boring one. Sweetness may be delusive, but it is dull and making dull. In puberty the children learn to search for more excitement. In childhood the children learn to enter the world and how to earn a living, how to print money and to procreate, how build nuclear plants and dissolve these after their lifetime. Children may be influenced by illusions ad lib, as long as the parents allow the external illusions to reach their children's brains and the parents themselves have been able to free themselves from illusions. Children believe in the existence of Santa Claus and heaven, the unconditional love of their parents, the authority of adults, their teachers, the priests and a divine Being. You might make children believe almost anything. The childish belief in illusions is so strong that legal action has been defined to protect children against some forms of brainwashing.

Maturity
The second phase may be compared to the wild young wine, must, unripe and out of control. If consumed in an overdose must will cause pertaining headaches, bad stomach and lead to many hours of bad feelings. Anyone adult may remember the puberty phase and its transforming steps into maturity. Some illusions may be lost deliberately such as the idea of Santa Claus. Some of us may also have lost a parent in a divorce, maybe also accompanied by a halving the illusion of parental love. In puberty authority is going to be discussed and its limits are being probed. Some of us may have lost religious illusions. In the end the adolescents will have learned how to manipulate other people. As soon as the adults have learned to earn a living by applying illusions to others they will feel themselves comfortable and satisfied as modern, full-grown adults... In the maturity phase it is time to take care of procreation, to care for the aged parents, to collect the self-printed money and to assemble nuclear plants in order to reprocess the remaining nuclear waste. Maturity will also allow us to lead a childish life as if no illusions ever existed. If anyone may have discovered illusions they must be considered as inferior concepts anyway. Inferior illusions are to be replaced by alternative hallucinations. On a larger scale our lifestyle will always be equipped with an acceptable standard set of illusions.

The dehumanizing phase

Having accomplished the previously maturity phases man will be prepared for his final destination, which is named the dehumanizing phase, which will lead to dementia and death. And it is not immaturity or maturity which will be leading man to salvation. Salvation will have to be accomplished by releasing the earthly illusions, resolving our thoughts by dementizing the fragments of our brains.

This way and probably only this way a modern, deluded man will be able to reach Socratic wisdom, in which he or she realizes that knowledge may be an illusion, that memory has been filled up with black holes, that recognition largely bases on hallucinations. Even whoever never saw the twilight phase may by now accept the idea that illusions cannot be discerned from truth and that in their need wise man will need the help of Fortune-tellers, whose wisdom does not rely on hallucinations only, but who may belong to the hallucinations themselves. This, I must admit, may only be rising in the demented patients' brains and certainly not in the minds of the immature children and their matured parents, who are still in the process of reaching the fragmentation phase and do not have the time to be looking for wisdom and truth. The preparation phase for wisdom however may be very short and it is accompanied by uncertainty of wisdom, insecurity and the inability to describe the process. Still the hallucinating person may be fully aware of what is happening inside his brain. The process may be frightening him or her, but it may also be satisfying, if it clarifies how intensively our life is being dominated by illusions. Those of us, who have been feeling proud of their illusion-based lifestyle may be scared if they understand the loss of control, which is announcing itself. They may be feeling the self-control is coming to an end. The others, who previously had identified the illusion-based lifestyle as hallucinations will now welcome the nearing hour of the Truth and Release, which in the end is going to reveal what remains true of all that had been named Truth in our lives.

The Quintessence
Mens sana in corpore sano. How easily nay this be mutated into Mens insana in corpore insano? Both may be considered as truthful as long as we do not take the trouble of clearly defining sanus = healthy. Health does not really cover the idea of extreme efficiency. Inefficient and unhealthy side-effects are being observed in high performance sport, in which high performance leads to crippling and overdosing medicine. High performance banking and business may lead to temporary fortunes, but result in unhealthy imbalances.

Health
Healthy is what is to be seen as the quintessence of life, such as Rosebud in Citizen Kane7, as the insight of Buddhist or Socratic philosophers, the perfect pirouette of a dancer, Michelangelo's David statue And what had been identified as the quintessence should be unique for each individual, as anything repeatable must be considered as standard and does not contribute to perfection in evolutionary sense.

Quintessence
In order to discern the quintessence from illusion life should be lived until the end or at least up to dementia's initiation. At that stage we may identify the difference between illusion and Truth. You will not have to analyze your own dementia, producing hallucinations. You might also start a discussion with any friend, relative, neighbor or your mother in law, how the brain is making a fool of us: a divine Being, a ghost person, who already died 10 year ago but refuses to fade away and may have settled down at the attic and he refuses to leave this house.... It really convinces me how effectively the brain resists instability and collapses. As soon as a mind's region has been damaged phantasy will be activated. In this process the brain is quite flexible. In presenting a 20 year old photo album to my mother she recognizes my sister's face, her own daughter as her own. Especially in faces and relatives' properties the confusion is escalating. Phantasy will only be applied where it is needed badly. It just amazing how the brain identifies the mind's dead or living areas. Regions may also decay temporarily and it may happen, that a previously dead zone is to be active and alive the next morning. Reactions may be quit different from day to day. The dehumanizing process is releasing fantastic information as if it were quite plausible as if the truth is being released for any imaginable thought. There is no real check option except a discussion with the accidentally present people. It may happen that helping people may be accused for burglary, they may be accused for legacy-hunting. People suffering from dementia may also observe religious images, God, angels and other signs. Dementia patients may be suffering in proportion to the amount of illusions which had been flooded into their young brains. An what had been entered earlier will have to leave the mind at a later stage...

7 Rosebud is a keyword in Orson Welles' movie Citizen Kane (It is Kane's last word to be identified at the sledge)

Persons who suffer from dementia may believe anything which has been told to them and they may be as eager as children to accept fantastic stories. They will believe anything that fits to their current state of mind. From nurses I learn how they have been learning to respond to panics by saying: OK, you've seen a burglar, but I already just have chased him away. This response may be acceptable for severe Alzheimer cases, but it for beginning dementia it might as well be causing distrust. Who is going to accept an answer which for normal people would be ridiculous? Confronting fantasizing dementia patients with the unbelievability in their assumptions we may often hear severe protests against rejections of their feelings. Whatever they just said must be considered as plain true. On the other hand other corrections may be accepted if these just fit into the pattern of thoughts. The basic principle of filling empty black holes with phantasy thoughts is frightening and suggests to study in which ways the mechanism may also be activated for healthy people. We remember how we are being flooded with advertisements from very young ages. Advertisements basically use illusions which especially are most effective at young ages. Additionally professional marketing specialists also are aware of the diminishing impact of advertisements for the aged people. Obviously the sensitivity for illusions diminishes from the immaturity to the maturity phases until it reaches the dehumanizing phase in which it suddenly starts raising to very high levels.

Rope-dancing
We will never be able to move so elegantly as it will be done at very high ages, in which the human body is to be moved in slow motion with a absolutely minimized amount of power. Raising a human corpse at 91 years of age is a sensational gymnastic effort, comparable to rope dancing. Yes, and that's just what she is doing: dancing on ar rope my mother. Rising at full power of the muscles, moving the unwilling bones... controlled from a brain which starts thinking, but looses the thought flow and fails to end up the sentence, which could not be made airborne before it had to be landed in the middle of nowhere.... Life has been mutated in accepted imperfection in which the brain has been ordered to manage the increasing number of temporary black holes. How do we live in a world, which is filling itself with unthinkable items, which are being named hallucinations by whispering neighbors? Today my mother is much richer than she ever has been. She is married and feels to have seven sons, four or five daughters and countless nephews. Most of the time she names me her husband, but from time to time I am her nephew or a younger brother. It is amazing how fast the mind changes its ideas in a damaged brain. Just a minute ago she called me husband and right now I am one of two nephews, who are visiting her at home. Never again life will be so easy as at the age of dehumanizing or growing up. As children we used to check the floor under our beds for burglars and vagabonds who might have been hiding underneath. In a similar way my mother thinks there must be some visitors at the attic not really frightening who need to be invited for coffee or dinner. That's why she places some more cups and dishes on the table. How do we protect ourselves against these irritating illusions of a beginning dementia? I am not sure, but the intensity of hallucinations may be correlating to the amount of previously applied brainwashing. If in our youth we have been confronted with rather non-frightening, easygoing illusions we may be hoping to enjoy rather peaceful hallucinations at high ages. Who may be testifying these theses? Nobody probably ever tested these mechanisms. Therefore it might be a good idea to start disillusioning early to remove the hallucinating ideas from our brains and fill the black holes with secured knowledge about the manipulating methods. It must be considered valuable to discuss these topics with a slightly beginning Alzheimer patient, maybe a relative, a friend or an uncle. These discussions will illustrate dementia's impact and provide us with insight in the brain's tactics. The brain certainly cannot be considered as a reliable computer. Sometimes the machine is notoriously unreliable, evidently drunk and out of its mind, a pathfinder without a concept, who is explaining this smuggler path is a highway leading to London. Strictly spoken our brain's reliability is an illusion, which may be eliminated at a stroke, comparable to our ability to walk, swim, make love, eat and bear children. All of these treasures may disappear by a single blow within a second or gradually within a few months.

The velveteen Rabbit

The mechanisms of childish belief may be illustrated by studying (The Velveteen Rabbit: Or How Toys Become Real)8. It chronicles the story of a stuffed rabbit and his quest to become real through the love of his owner. 'A boy receives a Velveteen Rabbit for Christmas. The Velveteen Rabbit is snubbed by other more expensive or mechanical toys, the latter of which fancy themselves real. One day while talking with the Skin Horse, the Rabbit learns that a toy becomes real if its owner really and truly loves it. The Skin Horse makes the Velveteen Rabbit aware that "...once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."' This mechanism of childish belief is a fine example of the illusions, which in an inexperienced brain may be provoked to fill the gaps between understood and misunderstood facts.

An Animal's supreme Being

There is no good reason to consider the gap-filling mechanism to be restricted to human beings. Why shouldn't a dog's brain feel the need to fill black holes of missing explanations with canine fantasy. We know Ivan Pavlov's investigations, and the Pavlov's reactions of dogs which are expecting food as soon as the hand of my brother-in-law is reaching for his coat's pocket. The dog knows there is a goody waiting for him. I expect the dog to consider his boss as some superior upper-dog. Other smaller dogs may be underdogs, which completes the canine hierarchy. These mechanisms fill standard patterns in a dog's life, in which family ties must be revised for practical reasons. The dog's family is transposed into a human family pattern. Geese will also follow the first superior being they identify in their life. Their imprinting had been intended to contact the superior parental being, but it may easily be switched to another leader. Lorenz demonstrated how incubator-hatched geese would imprint on the first suitable moving stimulus they saw within what he called a "critical period" between 1316 hours shortly after hatching. For example, the goslings would imprint on Lorenz himself (to be more specific, on his wading boots), and he is often depicted being followed by a gaggle of geese who had imprinted on him. The imprinting mechanism may simply be explained by a black hole arising at a "critical period" between 1316 hours shortly after hatching and fixated at the sight of the the first suitable moving stimulus such as the wading boots of a human being.

8 written by Margery Williams and illustrated by William Nicholson . The book was first published in 1922 and has been republished many times since.

A God Delusion or a God Illusion?

In his book The God Delusion Richard Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig's statement in Lila that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion." These idea probably need to be revised. Dawkins obviously considers religion as pathological 9. As an illusion (instead of a delusion) however religion would be ranging under the standard brain's behavior in filling black holes of missing knowledge for the purpose of regaining psychical stability. Robert Pirsig's statement in Lila that: "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion." may have to be revised and to be modified in: "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from an illusion it is called religion." The reason for this redefinition is clear. When many people suffer from an delusion or illusion it may most probably be have to considered as an non-pathological illusion (or dogma).

9 Wikipdedia's delusion: Ais a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary. Unlike hallucinations, delusions are always pathological (the result of an illness or illness process). As a pathology, a delusion is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, dogma, poor memory, illusion, or other effects of perception.

Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................................1 Mechanisms for Survival......................................................................................................................2 The Freedom of Self-Disillusioning ....................................................................................................3 Brainwashing methods.....................................................................................................................3 Dehumanizing ourselves......................................................................................................................4 The third age.........................................................................................................................................5 Immaturity.......................................................................................................................................5 Maturity...........................................................................................................................................5 The dehumanizing phase.................................................................................................................5 The Quintessence..................................................................................................................................7 Health...............................................................................................................................................7 Quintessence....................................................................................................................................7 Rope-dancing........................................................................................................................................9 The velveteen Rabbit..........................................................................................................................10 An Animal's supreme Being...............................................................................................................10 A God Delusion or a God Illusion?....................................................................................................11