Ancient Mind Quotes

“What the adult says, the rest of us understands. With children and schizophrenics on the other hand or psychedelic users, sometimes their responses are so unique to their own experiences that others just don't get it because that person is still in the process of solidifying the congealing brain organization that language bestows. In a great leap (over fifty thousand years or so) the ego took a 180-degree turn from the caveman's primitive organization, hurtling our cognitive development forward in ways that were unachievable before we spoke.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“I once asked a schizophrenic man, "Why does the sun come up in the morning?" His reply was "Tomorrow." I looked at him blankly. When I requested explanation, he said, "Didn't you ever see Annie? The sun'll come up, tomorrow," and he burst into song. Instead of addressing the question from a factual point of view, he simply referred to an idiosyncratic association he had to my question. Adult thinking is universal and understandable by all who speak-a da language. It is a core symptom of schizophrenia, this regressive type of autistic thinking typical of children-or at least we evolutionists think so and most psychiatrists do as well.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“Our bodies, for instance have a need to move and were designed to do so. You don't take a tank, for example, that is designed for war, and use it to run errands downtown or to approach the takeout window at McDonald's. A sedentary lifestyle is anathema to what humans evolved to be.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“We need to sweat more. Humans moved around in warm climates generally, which led us to lose our fur, and although there was some migration northward, activity in warm air makes one sweat. (Incidentally, the farther one goes from the equator, the greater the suicide rate. We evolved near the equator. There may be a connection there.) Sweating may have been a much greater excretion paradigm than we're now used to. Go toa sauna or a steam room. There are studies that show that using them reduces sudden death and cardiac mortality. Sorne toxins are stored in the fatty tissue of the skin only to be eliminated as we sweat. Along with sweating we need to replace fluids with good old water. Drink from the stream. Dietarily, ancient humans no doubt ate occasional meats but usually foraged around for edible plants and fruits. Not on a time schedule like a modern office dude, cave guy ate anytime he found something edible.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“Sitting eight hours a day may take more of a toll than we realize. We were not designed for that. On the other hand, evolution helps us adapt to these modern demands. Those whose bodies are more tolerant of sitting have no doubt already been favored by natural selection.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“It makes sense to pay heed to our past even though the demands we place on our bodies (and minds) are now vastly different. We are still in the midst of the course correction that's happening all around us, but we don't see it. We do notice it when things screw up the process. Illnesses can be considered evolutionary misfires if they do not meet the criteria of Darwin's rules regarding genetic principles that usually lead to extinction.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“When we as civilized adults dream, we work our way back to the primitive organization that humans knew for millions of years before language and civilization. Then we use our unconscious and power of imagination to camouflage the dream in imaginative ways.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“Out of chaos comes order. And order is supplied by the ego with the help of dopamine suppression in the context of our spiffy new operating system. When order is lost, the chaos of entropy -which lurks behind this process, seeking disorganization and lower energy states - again reigns. All of this goes along with dopamine de-suppression as the fulcrum of organized thinking painfully reverses.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“Humans have more dopamine receptors than any other animal by brain weight. It provides energy, aggressiveness, and maybe even optimism. It suited the physical, experiential nature of our ancestors.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“At some point in our infancy, we draw a curtain across this terrorizing mental state and put it behind us. Freud called this infantile amnesia, and it was said to happen around age five. We forget the gruesome terror and brutality of that drama. Civilization is based on pushing it aside, perhaps delusionally, to create acquiescent civility. When we regress to psychosis, that door is opened up again and often reveals feelings that have been submerged since infancy: the door to the psychotic id. Is civilization based on a delusion of safety? Perhaps, or possibly just the need to maintain a sense of security that promulgates itself, in fragile pose, like a ballerina en pointe too long. The maintenance of this civilized state of calm has much to do with the suppression of dopamine.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“Our minds have advanced from the brutal, terrified, survivalist ethos of Mr. Caveman to the secure plateau of modern-day living. We now expect to survive into our eighties or beyond, to not endure brutal conditions, and to be able to negotiate a society that provides pathways toward success and even happiness, which is one reason I assert that happiness is a modern invention. It is when societies begin to break clown and fail in their promises that we begin to question this exchange.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“I assume, that the rules changed after language's fortuitous appearance. Natural selection's decision was a no-brainer so to speak. The brain of modern sapiens with their more intense cognitivity, hierarchically structured mind, and conceptual consciousness trumped Mr. Neanderthal's primitive brutality. Homo sapiens proved that. But the primitive organization's old ways are still trying to recapture territory, the territory between our ears.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness

“This book forwards the hypothesis that schizophrenia is a product of very recent evolutionary events. Although humans, or something like them, have been around for some six million years, language has been extant for a mere 50,000 to 100,000 years. The onset of language was afforded by skyrocketing advances in brain development, the central nervous system ballooning incrementally over eons of time to the point where the fetus's little head could barely navigate Momma's birth canal. The Horno sapiens brain profited from a unique folding of the cerebral cortex, allowing for greater speed and a sly adeptness at symbol formation that led to speech.”
― Steven Lesk M.D., Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness