You Can't Transcend Homeostasis

A silly little book by the name of Breaking Out of Homeostasis, makes the ridiculous claim that the mind can operate "outside" of homeostasis. Here's some details:

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Stop Human Biology From Sabotaging Your Success.

Homeostasis is the invisible biological force that's sabotaging your success and preventing you from living a healthy, happy and adventurous life.

Homeostasis runs in the background of your brain. It fights every change that you make.

If you don't learn the truth about how homeostasis permeates your life, then you'll probably go through life unconsciously... drifting along the path of least resistance in everything that you do.... headed for eternal mediocrity.

But, by learning how to Break out of Homeostasis, you can use your newfound knowledge to:

[*]Get in the best physical shape of your life

Live a bold & adventurous life that will be exciting to look back on when you're older

Become much smarter (speed up your learning) in less than a year

Gain a big psychological edge that helps you dominate in a fast-changing & uncertain future

Overcome nearly any obstacle you face, and develop a healthy addiction to winning

This book provides you with all of the information, tools and exercises you need to take control of your brain and body, and live the life you desire.

It even has an imprimatur from a powerful finance billionaire: "Breaking out of Homeostasis is one of the most important books I have read in a long time. Typically you read one or two books every few years that completely change the way you see the world and this is definitely one of them."

So lets address some of these extremely tendentious points one by one:

Homeostasis isn't sabotaging anybody's success. Indeed, your very capacity to cognize derives from homeostasis, which is more or less a catch-all phrase for the sum-total of metabolic processes in your body and the way your body distributes that energy.

How can you think - how can your forebrain work, without glucose and oxygen? Does he mean to say that his book will help you a) stop breathing (stop taking in oxygen) and b) stop eating (stop absorbing carbs for energy mobilization)? Silliness.

Homeostasis, also, is not in the 'background of your brain'. I wonder whether the author (who perhaps may have a skewed inner experience i.e. is a sociopath) understandings what the word "homeostasis" even means, even though he evidently takes this claim of his as legitimate.

While the sociopath does indeed have a brain that dilutes affective signals from the body, and as a by-product, the affective signals from the social world, this doesn't mean that homeostasis isn't motivating and generating activities within the brain-mind itself. Again, the hypothalamus connects with the forebrain: when you're hungry, you eat, yes? How do you think hunger becomes consciously produced? A little area in your hypothalamus called the median eminence absorbs molecules from the blood, and in doing so, produces neurotransmitters that stimulate the orbitofrontal cortex, producing feelings of hunger, or sex, etc.

The author of this childish fantasy also seems to think that homeostasis is identical with the 'unconscious'. But this is wrong. They are different things. Homeostasis DRIVES the unconscious because the entire body and mind is built up from the ground-floor of homeostasis itself. The unconscious - in a Jungian sense - is the repository of images that ultimately derive from self-with-other, and so constitutes experiences of self (or self-states). These self-states are driven by homeostatic processes - for instance, if I am hungry, an image of my body of being "hungry" dissipates, or controls, how my mind will respond i.e. proceed to eating food. Psychological images (or schemas) are fundamentally under the control of homeostasis.

What he could perhaps be promising is: "you can dissociate yourself further from awareness of weakness", and, if you're lucky, and the world keeps affording you opportunities, you could 'grow', while at the same time stepping on person after person (let alone the natural world) to secure your 'happiness'. This indeed can happen; sociopaths appear to be less responsive to social signals, which would appear to derive from an impairment in continuity between areas in the insula, orbitofrontal cortex and the cingulate region of the brain. These affective signals are for the purpose of coherently guiding the organism, but for various reasons - all social - the self can be forced to self organize with reference to its own 'cognitive desires', and even come to feel very powerful and effective in these ways of being; but it would be an incredible error to assume that this state of affairs is sustainable: the sociopath is a profoundly motivated human 'stuck' in an individualistic attractor, created by interpersonal experiences with others, so that they both a) don't benefit from the force of loving interactions and b) also don't feel the need to seek the love of others.

This personality difference is also based in a genetic difference: Children with Low activity of the MAOA allele is associated with antisocial behavior, as well with children who have a history of abuse and neglect. Children with high level MAOA activity (a different allele) had substantially less childhood maltreatment.

Lower MAOA production means lower dopamine-production, lower noradrenaline production, as well as lower serotonin production. All of these neurotransmitters are essentially involved in social-signalling processes: dopamine to feel motivated to act; noradrenaline to register negative feedback, and therefore to experience shame; and serotonin to regulate the way these two systems relate with one another, and so determines how facile the mind can move from one state to another.

The sociopath, then, possesses a mind which has never been properly attuned to reality and truth: it is has become genetically wired to function according to a different attractor and different 'laws'. But underneath this, in the background, lies a history of errors, of breaks, of trauma, that ultimately reduces back to the same early life break in expectancy for a loving mother.

On top of this lies a history of positive feedback: to be a sociopath, apparently, is to "be specially built". This world of ours seems to funnel people with these ways of being to the 'top', and their presence there becomes even more complicated when mysticism and occultism is brought into the picture, and the mysterious biosemiotic nature of the universe becomes apparent to them.

a reply to: Astrocyte
Wow, now that is a book that may take a day or two to read. If one does not fall asleep past the first few pages.

But yes you can break out of homeostasis, in fact it happens a lot, to lots of people. It even happens to something as simple as single celled organisms, even when those organisms are themselves in and of another organisms. You know what they call a single cell that breaks out of homeostasis and goes on its own?

I do believe its called cancer. A grandiose name for such a small thing indeed.

But hey. I have not read this book, not even the back cover. But I do believe it may be kind of single pointed, maybe even self appointed, and who knows maybe even sanctified.

Now I have not read one of those sanctified books since a little book called the bible. Oh and also the Lord of the Rings is very sanctified in many peoples eyes, both great books in there own right. And both not in homeostasis while in there perspective times. But now are very much part and parcel so totally homeostasis.

Everybody wants a dam cookie, and to be special. And well, I find nothing special about being in, or out of homeostasis.

a reply to: galadofwarthethird

I do believe its called cancer. A grandiose name for such a small thing indeed.

But cancer doesnt last very long, does it?

Everybody wants a dam cookie, and to be special. And well, I find nothing special about being in, or out of homeostasis.

But that's a cookoo way of thinking. Don't you think being out of homeostasis like a tumor, produces deranged and deformed perceptions and, thus motivates even weirder and more disturbed cognitions?

You know what I think you and I should agree upon? That if things go awry early on in the life-process, the thoughts and ideas people prefer will always be 'nonsense'. Homeostasis, also, is never something willed by the organism. It's always a mismatch; cells do not get cancer - they have breakdowns in their genetic kit-outside world correlations.

In large multicellular organisms, useless genes, or oncogenes, mass produce so as to produce mass lumps of uselessness.

The robustness of the human being is such that it can live many years engaging reality in many different ways, with the system more or less supporting the human's relation. But homeostasis really is the key to everything: understanding how it works to make us, and understanding how we can live in 'tune' with our body's in a better, more understanding way, would result in a longer and happier life.

Do you know what reification is? Its taking what you have in the moment, and believing that what you say now will always be the case. I believe there is ample evidence from the sciences for us to remember - to remind ourselves - that if our homeostasis - and the mind/personality we have - is suboptimal, it stands to reason you shouldn't say "nothing matters" - either in or out.

That's not true. People without a dissociative relation to the outside world can both a) appreciate the world we live within, and b) appreciate the ultimate truth of our nature. There is no law of the excluded third in their experience. There isn't this conflict between hearing "no", and freaking out and falling into a depression. Being, or growing up aroudn, narratives that claim "everything is holy", goes a long way in perverting how the mind experiences itself and what it considers to be "really valuable".

a reply to: Astrocyte

In medical school, we learned it's definition was defined as "Homeostasis is the body's ability to maintain itself"...

And once thought that was pretty cool.. the implications you make here.. are pretty scary...

a reply to: Astrocyte

But cancer doesnt last very long, does it?

No not long at all. Generally if given enough nutrition to feed only it can live for a few hundred years or more....Wait a minute, how long do humans live for?

But that's a cookoo way of thinking. Don't you think being out of homeostasis like a tumor, produces deranged and deformed perceptions and, thus motivates even weirder and more disturbed cognitions?

I believe that thinking is one thing. Doing yet another thing. And the cognition between them yet another thing. But they are linked in there own ways. And that link is what people like to give names to, such as that ones you have given above.

You know what I think you and I should agree upon? That if things go awry early on in the life-process, the thoughts and ideas people prefer will always be 'nonsense'. Homeostasis, also, is never something willed by the organism. It's always a mismatch; cells do not get cancer - they have breakdowns in their genetic kit-outside world correlations.

Oh ya! Well another thing you are wrong on. To assume you and I think alike, much less would agree alike. Is quite an assumption. In fact its all an assumption on any given scale between any given things. Including cells and cancerous cells. And you forget Homeostassis can only be achieved when one is at home both body mind and spirit.

And as everybody knows, change is live, and the only thing that stay the same are the dead. In memory, which may change from time to time and person to person.

In large multicellular organisms, useless genes, or oncogenes, mass produce so as to produce mass lumps of uselessness.

We all produce excrement. And so by definition more then half of what you hear and see is basically brought to you by people that are just full of s-hit.

Do you know what reification is?

Nope. Did, not know what it meant. But I do now. Or at least what you think it means.

And I also think you meant rectification. A misspelling perhaps.

No one can transcend anything.
The truth will set 'you' free.

a reply to: Itisnowagain
Ah! But only for those who have not transcended the truth.

The only question is will the truth transcend all bullshintz in the world?

Not anytime soon me thinks. But anyways, were all meat creatures. There is only one destination in everything.