The second law of pain: Society as a Superstructured Entity

Human society is not just a random collection of billions of people, but it has a structure and behaviour like one giant, and symbolic, human being--like a super human being, or superstructured entity. Human society, through its government and industries, performs all of the functions that go on inside the individual person--but in a symbolic way:

The billions of people in society form the "cells" of the superstructured entity and the government and industries form the larger symbolic structures of organs, tissues, and bone.

In order to build any kind of organism you need a genetic code as a master plan. The human superstructured entity has a code made up of laws, rules, regulations, and rituals. This is not a real genetic code, but it is a symbolic or false one. This code of behaviour and structure (known as a constitution for a nation) has been developed as a result of a violent and socially painful history, made up of wars, revolutions, and environmental disasters like storms, fire, drought, etc. The code is designed primarily to direct people's behaviour in a socially acceptable manner.

From the first law of pain we saw that the individual passes through three distinct stages of development, and hence, three distinct levels of consciousness. As a symbolic representation of an individual, the human superstructured entity has also passed through three distinct stages of development: the Prehistoric and Ancient Ages or First Level of Symbolic Social Consciousness (commonly known as the Third World); the Middle Ages or Second Level of Symbolic Social Consciousness (known as the Second World in superpsychology); and the Modern Age or Third Level of Symbolic Social Consciousness (commonly known as the First World). So the human superstructured entity has even grown in an exact replicated way to the individual.

Furthermore, it has been noticed by some people that human society in some ways resembles a giant brain. The reasoning behind this is that society is divided into a West--with intellectual and fact-oriented characteristics; and an East--with mystical and spiritual characteristics. This division seems to mirror the division between the left hemisphere brain and the right hemisphere brain of the individual.


The Levels of Symbolic Social Consciousness

The laws of pain can now make sense of human species' development. Throughout history humans have searched in many ways for the cure for suffering. They have also sought ways to express themselves--with the brain (as in language) and the hands (as in writing and drawing). These pursuits have progressed with every level of symbolic social consciousness and help to establish the reasons for the unique development of the human species. Significant species' developments are outlined below.

The First Level of Symbolic Social Consciousness

The First Level of Symbolic Social Consciousness is indicated by the belief in animism: that all things in nature are manipulated by spirits--which, with the accumulation of nervopain, eventually developed into polytheism: the belief in many gods.

Toolmaking, Handedness and Brain Hemisphere Dominance - 2 million years ago

About 2 million years ago, hominids began making tools, which distinguished them from animals. While animals do not show a pronounced left or right handedness, the making of tools not only indicates the prominence of a specific handedness--necessary to fashion a tool--but also a dominance of one brain hemisphere at the expense of the other--since each hand is controlled by the opposite brain hemisphere. Brain hemisphere dominance indicates that part of the brain is unconscious and that hominids were suffering from unresolved psychoemotional problems. One theory holds that language may also have developed along with tool-making, and language is essentially a means of expressing pent-up nervofeelings that could not be expressed directly through action.

Possession and Exorcism - several hundred thousand years ago

Belief in spirits eventually led to the concept of being possessed by them as a means of explaining increasing health and behavioural problems. The means of treating possession was to expel those perceived evil spirits from the body through the process of exorcism. Exorcism has been practised in various forms throughout history--all designed to cleanse the sufferer and make him or her pure, whole, and free. During prehistory, those methods included charms, talismans, sharmanism, and witchdoctoring.

East: Meditation - 5,000 years ago

From around 5,000 years ago in the East, meditation was developed as a part of yoga in the Indus Valley civilization (Pakistan). Yoga means to "join together" (body and mind), and its development at that time indicates that the body and mind had become separated by partial unconsciousness. At that early stage, meditation was only one part of a range of techniques to improve health, which for yoga included physical and breathing exercises.

Writing - from 5,400 years ago

Alphabetically-based writing--developed by the Semites in the 3rd Millenium BC--showed a preference for writing or carving from right to left. This style lasted up to the Classical Age. Writing then changed into a different form around 650 BC with a style known as boustrophedon--which meant "ox-turn", because the writing went from right to left then turned round and came back left to right. This stage marked either an indecisive time in writing or a sense of freedom from convention. Either way it was a prelude to a change in consciousness. Then the Greeks--who became cultural leaders--finally adopted the left-to-right style of writing.
The Middle East and Asian (and eventually Eastern countries) continued writing from right to left. Meanwhile, Greco-Rome spread the left-to-right style of writing throughout Europe (to become the norm for the Western World). This period was a significant changing point in consciousness, because the split in Western and Eastern cultures was mirrored by a firm split into left and right versions of reading and writing as well.

Tool Use

As man graduated to a more settled existence, more specialised socially used tools were required--and these tools were designed for the exclusive use of the right hand. The chief example of this is the scythe which could only be used right handedly--which shows that it was invented by left hemisphere dominant people. Tools were handed down from parent to child and so such essential tools like the scythe reinforced the social use of unidexterity.


The Second Level of Symbolic Social Consciousness

The Second Level of Symbolic Social Consciousness is marked by a social revolution--led by three revolutionary people: Buddha, Mohammed and Jesus--to change polytheism, which had become an oppressive social regime, into monotheism: the belief in one god. This stage of human development saw a concerted social effort to find God and therefore heal suffering.

East: Nirvana - 2,500 years ago

Buddhism was developed in India around 2,500 years ago by Siddhartha Gautama (or the Buddha: "enlightened one"). After rejecting a priveledged lifestyle, and then trying yoga and asceticism without success, he sat for many days under a Banyan tree and achieved "enlightenment" (or nirvana) through meditation (via a "Middle Way"). Like yoga, Buddhism involved other activities besides meditation that were incorporated in the Noble Eightfold Path (involving a list of "correct" behaviours).

West: Healing Miracle - 2,000 years ago

With the advent of organised religion, possession and exorcism were formulated into the doctrine of Demonology: that humans were inhabited by evil spirits which caused personality problems, gambling, sexual addiction, drug addiction, sinful behaviours, etc. Exorcism practices expanded to include baptism, prayer, and confession--amongst others--and the practice itself became more commonly known as a healing miracle. The most famous of all miracle workers (or exorcists) was Jesus of Nazaris. Some of Jesus' healing miracles were exfeeling reactions, i.e., the sufferers fell back into past nervopain and resolved some of it. Resolving nervopain produces a euphoric effect which was projected onto Jesus, causing him to gain a reputation as a great healer of the sick--when he was really only acting as a facilitator. Jesus' successes at healing suffering were spasmodic because exorcism only works by accident--most of the time it does not work at all. And like yoga and Buddhism, exorcism was part of a larger range of activities to try to stay healthy, including cleansing with water, blessings, prayer, and denial of material pleasures.

Handedness

In Christian and other religions the right hand became the exalted hand and the left hand the repressed one. The left hand was considered "unclean" and associated with evil. Much superstition revolved around handedness / sidedness. Even the word sinister was created out of religious / superstitious history--originally meaning the left hand or left side, but eventually connotating evil or a bad omen. Contrastingly, things related to the right hand and right side were considered to be related to good fortune or a good omen.

East: Zen Meditation

As Buddhism spread throughout the East it developed into several sects. One of those sects was Zen--founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma, and brought to China by him in AD 520. In the late 1100s-early 1200s it was introduced to Japan. It is practised in semi-monastic communities by masters and students. It differs from yoga and Buddhist meditation in that it concentrates solely on the meditative aspect itself to achieve sudden enlightenment. Again, the need for a new practice to try to unify separated parts of a person shows the growing split in the human psychophysiology--and the ineffectiveness of yoga and Buddhism to heal that split.

West: Social Exorcism - 500 years ago

Over the centuries, the increasing level of superpain in society eventually led to a social hysteria. By the late Middle Ages hundreds of thousands of people were declared witches or warlocks and were burnt, drowned, or slain. Religious repression of the left hand also reached its peak at that time with sinistrals (left-handers) being burned at the stake as well. This period of human history was a massive attempt to rid society of perceived evil influences--a kind of social exorcism.


The Third Level of Symbolic Social Consciousness

The third level of symbolic social consciousness was marked by the decline in social influence of the Church, and in its place the growth in social influence of science.

The Renaissance, and Experimentation with Handedness

Following the Middle Ages--where religious belief reached destructive heights--came the Renaissance, which saw new scientific discoveries about human physiology, other lands and peoples, and of nature itself. It was a scientific revolution as a response to the constrictive regime of the Church which had become oppressive and corrupt in parts.
By the 1800s, the mentally ill, who had always been treated and cared for by the Church, were now placed into government asylums and then in specialist care hospitals where they became the subject of scientific investigation. Those who were previously described as "possessed" were now termed "hysterics" who were suffering from hysteria.
With this newfound increase in creativity and scientific exploration came a similar increase in interest in ambidexterity. A number of major artists of the Renaissance--such as Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo--worked ambidextrally (either out of a sense of freedom and experimentation, or to buck the previously oppressive social regime.)
From Charles Darwin's book The Origin of Species people began to question man's unidextral nature when our ancestors, the apes, were ambidextral. In response, John Jackson created the Ambidextral Culture Society to promote the benefits of "two-handedness and two-brainedness" (but the society's influence was temporary). Also at that time General Baden-Powel was well known for his (self-trained) ambidexterity and he promoted its benefits especially as a means for soldiers to improve their combat abilities.

West: Psychoanalysis - 100 years ago

Hysterical patients were treated and experimented on by a succession of practitioners of the new science of psychology--e.g., Mesmer, Braid and Charcot--who all recognised that an hysterical reaction or catharsis seemed at times to have a healing effect on such people [note how this is a similar reaction to exorcism]. Sigmund Freud then took the study of psychology off on a tangent by exploring the nature of symbolism. He was able to discover the unconscious and find a pathway into it via symbolism. He did not discover the cure for suffering, but he developed an intellectual framework (psychoanalysis) for the discovery of the cure for suffering to be made in the future.

West: Reexperiencing-based Therapies - post WWII

In the 1950s, L Ron Hubbard developed dianetic therapy (morphing later into scientology), which involved an accurate procedure of reexperiencing traumas going back to womb life. In the 1960s, Dr Arthur Janov discovered the same healing reaction, which he called a primal. Both therapies have proven to be technically competent, and have gone on to heal many people of a good deal of their neuroses. They are the first psychologically orientated health care treatments to work consistently. But they cannot heal people thoroughly as is evidenced by the fact that after 50 years both have developed significant social problems. Those problems have included disputes between the early therapists, subsequent legal battles for control of the therapies, and being the subject of cultism complaints. Additionally, both had breakaway groups - the Free Zone and unauthorised primal therapy respectively - for the same reasons: the authorised version considers the breakaways bad practitioners, while the breakaways consider the authorised version to be money and power hungry.  The authorised and breakaway versions of both display left brain and right brain characteristics respectively.  These two therapies are similar in many respects because they involve the discovery of the same therapeutic procedure, and their subsequent practices became spoiled by the same human foibles.  
Due to their social problems their centres are unable to provide a stable, whole, and complete healing service. For example, a significant number (estimated to be about one third) of primal patients have been to one or more primal therapy services. Additionally, there have been no claims of increased ambidexterity in either therapy (although in primal its absence in our species was attributed to trauma). This is because they lack the knowledge of social suffering throughout history, and, hence, the consequent knowledge of left or right brain dominance (and concordant left or right-sided dominance) in the species.

Split Brain Research - 50 years ago

In the 1950s and '60s, Dr Roger Sperry and coworkers conducted simple perceptual tests on animals, and, later, on people who had had their brain hemispheres surgically separated (to prevent fits). With the brain hemispheres unable to communicate with each other, the experiments helped to identify the different specialised skills of each hemisphere. The left hemisphere brain was more logical, sequential, fact-oriented, and controlled speech; while the right hemisphere brain was more spatially-oriented, and responsible for the appreciation of things like art, music, and aesthetics.
In most people tested there was a strong inclination to try to solve a puzzle with the left hemisphere brain. (Indeed, the impulse was so strong that some people had to sit on their right hand to let the right brain have a go.) This led to an important realisation: that Western society is left brain-oriented. In other words, Western society--especially the education system--encourages the use of the left hemisphere brain at the expense of development of the right hemisphere brain. This is a very important finding because it created a link between society and the individual: that link is that individuals who are left brain dominant tend to live within a society that is left brain-oriented. And one can extrapolate from this that people who live in Eastern society--which exhibits right brain characteristics--will tend to be right brain dominant.

West: The Genetics Theory of Ill-health - post WWII

The Twentieth Century brought with it genetic research and the discovery of the structure of DNA, which led to treatments and cures for a number of diseases and illnesses. Following medicine's success a social machinery developed whereby medicine became a prominent lobbyist of government and, reciprocally, government provided research grants and university placings for medicine. What is happening in the Twenty-first Century, though, is that this social machinery is rolling down the wrong path. Because while the medical profession continues to claim that all health problems are a result of "genetics"., the modern crop of health problems - like AIDS, cancer, heart disease, dementia, depression, etc. - have proven difficult for them to cure even with advanced genetic knowledge.  

East and West: the New Age - since the 1960s

From the late 1800s, both yoga and Zen were introduced to the West, and Eastern and Western cultures crossed paths on several occasions (e.g., the Chicago World Fair, WWI, WWII, and via pop music). Since then the Eastern approach to living life has achieved increasing appeal to many Westerners who had become dissatisfied with the materialistic drive and soulless life in the West, as well as the inability of conventional health care treatments to heal psychoemotional suffering. It has resulted in the explosive growth of "New Age" (alternative and spiritual) therapies. So in philosophy and therapy, the West of society has been trying to become more Eastern in order to achieve more social balance.

East and West: Handedness and Laterality

Up until the mid to late Twentieth Century there has been a major difference in the treatment of handedness by the Eastern and Western Worlds--with the East forbidding left handed writing, and the West generally allowing it (though at times even in Western schools left-handers have been encouraged by teachers to change to the right hand for writing). The reason for the Eastern World's outlawing of left handed writing is due to their strong (right brain-oriented) social and political codes of conformity; while the Western World has a more left brain-oriented social code of expansion and free-expression.
Meanwhile, Californian art teacher Betty Edwards wrote of a new approach to art: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, (Harper Collins, 1993). Edwards picked up on the split brain research of Dr Roger Sperry and others and realised that the reason most Westerners feel that they can't draw is because they were left brain hemisphere dominant. So she developed techniques for blocking the left hemisphere brain from operating and therefore allowing the right hemisphere brain to be in control during drawing. This allows a person to see things more objectively and, hence, be able to draw things more accurately and realistically. In some cases the results were spectacular with novice artists being able to draw lifelike pictures in a matter of hours. Although only a transient fix, the success of the "drawing on the right side of the brain" (or DRS) concept poignantly shows that most people in the Western World are indeed left brain dominant--that they are, effectively, "stuck" in the left hemisphere brain, and this mental affliction hampers creativity. The Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain concept represents Westerners' last-ditch attempt to try to overcome chronic left brain dominance, and to normalise an inherent mental imbalance.

East and West: Writing and Economics

Some Asian and Eastern countries have gone through a more recent change in writing (after employing a literacy influenced by China). The Chinese pictographic language has traditionally been written right to left and top to bottom. But in the modern-day it is most often written in the Western convention of horizontally left to right. Additionally, the Roman alphabet was introduced from 1958 to help in the transliteration of Chinese characters (a system known as Pinyin). Other Asian and Eastern languages that have changed to the Western convention (in either writing direction or alphabet) include Mongolian (the modern language is based on Baltic or Cyrillic), Korean (developed their own alphabet from 1446), Vietnamese (adopted the Roman alphabet from the 1600s), and Japan.
Additionally, the Western economic model has been adopted by some Asian and Eastern nations--most notably Japan and China. So in writing and economics, the East of society has been trying to become more Western in order to achieve more social balance.

Superpsychology - Current

In the early 1980s, this author discovered that exorcism was actually historical man's version of an hysterical reaction, catharsis, primal, or reexperience of trauma. This led to the discoveries of social exorcism (attempts to heal social problems), an infection of social traumas (supertraumas) going back through history, and that the human species was a superstructured entity. Overall, this was the exact discovery of a second "law of pain" which then allowed for the formulation of two laws of pain: the first explains individual suffering and its cure (from reexperiencing-based therapies); the second explains social suffering and its cure.
The laws of pain can now explain in detail how individuals are linked to society. Human beings are suffering from an infection of nervotension which causes them to develop personalities. It can now be seen that these personalities are either left brain or right brain-oriented. For example, an incessant talker is left brain-oriented, while a person obsessed with pornography is right brain-oriented. And because people tend to work in areas that allow them to express their personalities, this phenomenon also applies to the work environment: so a lawyer is left brained, while an artist is right brained.
Furthermore, it can be observed that all sorts of social groups within society also exhibit brain-like structures, for example: science is left brained, while religion is right brained; people support either a left-wing political party or a right-wing political party; etc. Social gatherings can also be seen to be divided vertically into threes reflective of the three levels of consciousness: an upper class, middle class, and lower class; and tertiary, secondary, and primary education; etc. The reason that this phenomenon occurs is because nervotension causes people to habitually use (or become "stuck" in) one small area of their brains--so that many people stuck in small areas of the brain--and all performing specialised tasks--all add up to one large social brain (or global brain) structure. So, in the Homo sapien World, where people do not fully exfeel and resolve the many traumas of living life, whenever people come together--be it through sport, work, leisure, etc.,--they always gravitate into social brain structures.
Superpsychology's laws of pain directly address the left and right brain split in suffering people, and as a consequence it is able to restore natural ambidexterity. The fact that superpsychology can restore ambidexterity indicates that it is the world's most effective method of healing suffering and is bringing about a visible change in human nature after several million years of suffering and symbolic development. It is expected that as time progresses the laws of pain can also heal social divisions within society itself, like the division between the East and West.
From superpsychology research, the evidence of human history is unmistakable: a psychoemotional infection caused a split in the hominid brain leading to right or left hemisphere dominance (and dominant sidedness) in individuals, and that also split the species apart into two sides--the East and the West--that reflect the right and left brain hemispheres respectively. Superpsychology is showing--through a restoration of ambidexterity--that it is now possible to resolve this age-old mental infection and return people to a natural state of good mental and physical health.


Why History, Suffering and Religion are all Tied Together

Much of human history is concerned with trying to heal a persistent affliction--mostly through the avenue of religion. Why should history, suffering and religion be intermingled? The answer is straightforward: history is really just a record of experiences that were unresolved by society--it is a record of social suffering; meanwhile, religion makes an appearance in history at the same time as suffering. This is because nervotension produces religious behaviour--and that religious behaviour is also, circuitously, an attempt to cure suffering. The Bible is universally recognised as primarily a history book. It actually contains a record of what happened to the human species in ancient times, but because the people at that time had no substantial scientific knowledge, they encapsulated these often socially traumatic experiences within myth, mysticism, and legend to try to make some sense out of them. History, suffering, and religion are really all one and the same thing--or, at least, they all revolve around the same thing: unresolved individual and social trauma.


Additional Notes

Exorcism is still widely practised in the world today--the Pope even has an official exorcist at the Vatican who regularly treats many suffering people. In a French documentary entitled Everyday Life in the Vatican, the Pope's exorcist stated that most of the people that he treats are not possessed by the devil, but are suffering from nervous disorders that they think are caused by the devil. His remedy for these sufferers is just to tell them to straighten or clear their conscience. So even the religious authorities tacitly recognise that suffering is the result of trapped tension and not of evil.


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