Solving at the Level of the Problem

I think solutions must occur at the same level as their problem. We have copes and responses at all levels of our body, and if a top-level / whole-system problem persists I suspect those copes are applied incorrectly. For instance, if we live in a (di)stressful environment, our body learns in a whole-system way that it’s under stress, and that learning is then executed on all other levels: elevated stress hormones, hyperactive immune system. But those are not the level of the problem, and consequently they become a solution in search for a problem, and eventually it finds something to attack: itself*. At this point the problem becomes self-validating, as the autoimmune disorder creates the very stress that it’s intended to address.

I think we should see our bodies as collectives, not singular entities. When its constituent cells are put under prolonged stress, activation / fear, scarcity, I think it begins to revert back to its selfish, single-cellular programming. Cancer is a return to original pre-multicellular behavior which is still vestigially embedded in our genetics. I wonder if cancer may be downstream of autoimmune loops because “mid-level copes” (system-level) applied continually eventually trigger “low-level copes” (cellular-level). When the body begins attacking itself single-cellular self-preservation mechanisms are engaged, which are cancerous in nature. Continual false positives and misfiring activation has a kind of recursive nature which spreads top-down.

If this is true and misfiring system-level copes trigger cellular-level copes, perhaps these cellular-level responses are misinterpreted to be the problem? Perhaps this creates the autoimmune loop we see, the system-level cope is a solution in search of a problem, and when the cellular-level cope is activated it is incorrectly identified to be the problem (which in fact exists on a completely different level). This then creates a vicious cycle and accelerates cellular-level copes which are essentially cancerous.

In some sense, the body is not prepared to remain under long-term duress, the only solution is to the solve the top-level problem. I suspect that the top-level problem is quite simple: social isolation. The human immune system has been co-regulating in the context of community since homo sapiens became social. Pretty much by definition there has been no time in human history when humans have been isolated; what we’re going through is unprecedented and profoundly disregulating. In an evolutionary sense, isolation meant death, period. Isolation triggers copes intended for life-threatening situations: hypervigilance, hyperactivity, hypersensitivity. These map to the “disorders” we’re seeing exploding: ADHD, autism, etc, these are all represented different kinds of elevated attention for protecting oneself from the dangers of isolation. I have a suspicion that trauma and isolation correlate quite strongly because traumatic conditioning / overfitting is cemented using pathways specifically designed for life-threatening situations.

I suspect social isolation is the right level of the problem and if solved, safety would cascade down to other inflamed levels. Going into more woo territory, I wonder if shamanic / exorcist / mystical experiences represent major somatic shifts where the body flips from a default sense of isolation-fear to embeddedness-safety. In this framing, faith in some sense could be seen as the highest level sense of existential safety, and that safety cascades down to all other levels.

flowchart TD 

	subgraph S1 [Recursive Top-Down False Positives / Cascading Inflammation]
		A{Social Isolation} --> B{Prolonged Distress}
		B --> C{Body-System-Level Copes}
		B --> G{Psychological Copes: Hypervigilance, Hypersensitivity, Hyperactivity}
		
		subgraph S2 [Autoimmune-Cancer Vicious Cycle]
			C -->|1| D{Cellular-Level Copes}
			D -->|2| E{Body-System-Level Autoimmune Response}
			E --> C
			D -->|3| F{Cellular-Level Cancer}
			F --> E
		end
		
		G --> C
		C --> G
	end
	style S1 fill:#e6f3ff,stroke:#333,stroke-width:2px
	
	subgraph S3 [Recursive Top-Down Psychosomatic Safety / Cascading Safety]
		ZZ{Experience of Group Field Unconditionality} --> Z{Psychosomatic 'Religious Experience'}
		Z --> Y{Psychological Safety: Unraveling of Copes}
		Y --> X
		Z --> X{Body-System-Level Safety}
		X --> W{Cellular-Level Safety}
		W --> X
		X --> Y
	end

* an analogous example of this internalization of responsibility is with children in abusive homes. As the child is powerless to change their environment, instead they can only make personal adaptations. These personal adaptations go hand-and-hand with an implicit belief that the abusive environment was somehow their fault. This internalization of responsibility is basically self-protective in nature, it’s adaptive but ultimately incorrect. If this gets too extreme, it can result in self-attacking and self-abusive; I know this from personal experience, I used to hit myself for making mistakes, a sense of intense personal responsibility soured into self-hatred in specific areas of particularly deep wounding.