A social and evolutionary theory of human disease and chronic pain

[Courageous Inmate Sort]

I just listened to an interesting podcast from the Corbett Report with Denis G. Rancourt about his Theory of Chronic Pain - A social and evolutionary theory of human disease and chronic pain. The main point discussed is that human health is very strongly influenced by the actual place of the individual as well as the perception of individual has of its place in the societal hierarchy of dominance due to the inherent stress of being in the lower ranks.

From this premise Rancourt extrapolates a theory of why that happens from an evolutionary point of view, asserting that this fact provides a positive loop that strengthens the hierarchy, although there is a point where there is an imbalance that makes the lower ranking individuals to rebel in some way against the hierarchy, which then returns to the beginning of the positive loop cycle. He concludes that this information could be used by individuals to change their perception of their position in the hierarchy by taking a positive approach to your daily life and thus regain health and being able to "rebel" against the hierarchy in a very personal way.

In the end when he talks about dealing with the difficult situations and people that surround you in your daily life, I think it can relate a lot to the information that we have on psychopathy, meaning that we can regain our health and strength by dealing with such people in a positive manner. Regarding the general premise about the health level being dependent upon your place on the hierarchy, it came to mind the STS "pecking order" that Laura discuss in The Wave.

Here is the podcast: _http://www.corbettreport.com/corbett-report-radio-041-hierarchy-of-pain-with-denis-rancourt/

And here is the article about his theory:

_http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2011/12/theory-of-chronic-pain.html

A Theory of Chronic Pain

A social and evolutionary theory of human disease and chronic pain

By Denis G. Rancourt


We like to nurture a species self-image where we are radically different from ants and bees. The idea goes like this. Ants and bees are automatons completely governed by chemical and physical signals and each individual in the colony has its place which determines its physical body characteristics, adapted to the function of its class.

We distinguish these colony insects from mammals which we project have much higher degrees of individuality. We like to think of herds or packs of mammals as individuals who “choose” to come together and cooperate. We generally don’t admit body characteristics of individuals as being associated with class in societal dominance hierarchies.

But humans, primates and ants and bees may be much closer than we care to admit, then we are easily able to perceive.

There is an area of scientific research which points to just how wrong we may be. It is the study of the effects of a dominance hierarchy on the health of the individual. It turns out that in mammals and birds, for example, the health of the individual, barring accidents of nature, is primarily due to the individual’s position in the society’s dominance hierarchy [1][2][3]. Here, one needs to stress “primarily”, as in by far the greatest determining factor -- having a direct bio-chemical and physiological impact [1].

The dominance hierarchy in packs of monkeys, for example, determines fertility, resistance to disease, vigour, and longevity of the individual [1].

Now the dominance hierarchy as individual health determinant discovery is a paradigm-establishing discovery in medicine (if medicine is ever able to recognize it! [3]), akin to plate tectonics in the Earth sciences, Newtonian mechanics in physics and evolution in biology, but it naturally leads to a follow-up question: Why?

Is there an evolutionary advantage, for mammals say, to suffer severe individual health effects from the intra-species dominance hierarchy? Otherwise, how has individual health vulnerability to dominance hierarchy survived on the evolutionary time scale? Is there a use or a need for individual health vulnerability to dominance hierarchy in terms of species survival, or is it simply a remnant of pre-insect-divide or colony-forming cells evolution?

A first glance would suggest that the human species, for example, cannot possibly benefit from having individual health materially and negatively affected by society’s dominance hierarchy. But is this the correct conclusion?

I think not.

What is the most successful nervous-system-bearing animal species on Earth, in terms of both number of individuals and total biomass, and in terms of its transformative impact on the biosphere? Answer: Ants [4]. And the most successful large mammal? Humans [5]. Both live in highly hierarchical societies.

What is the sustaining biology of a highly hierarchical society of mammals? The individual must accept his/her place. All-out competitiveness of equal individuals (like a bar fight) is a recipe for disaster and does not lead to a highly stratified hierarchy. Pumped individuals who are and feel equally strong do not spontaneously organize into a stratified dominance hierarchy.

The built-in individual health vulnerability to dominance hierarchy is the biological (bio-chemical-metabolic) mechanism that sustains a positive feedback able to spontaneously generate a highly stratified dominance hierarchy.

If you are and feel sick from being dominated, you are not going to fight back. You are going to accept your place. The species is happy to have hoards of unhealthy individuals who will die young having spent their days doing the grunt work. What better way to stratify a successful species?

The impact on individual health also plays another key role, in addition to providing the feedback for stratification. It provides a needed mechanism of self-destruction for individuals who grow out or fall out of docility and compliance.

In a highly stratified society, individuals who cannot function must be eliminated, or they become a destructive force against the hierarchy. The police and jails would never be enough to achieve this without the built-in individual health vulnerability to dominance hierarchy.

As soon as the individual wants out and senses that there is no out, the individual self-destructs -- rather than go on a destructive rampage, most of the time. This is called cancer and heart disease. It prevents the destructive rampage of the disillusioned individual and provides a natural end at the completion of the individual’s cycle of utility to the hierarchy, to the species.

No wonder anarchists are so few and far between! But as with any positive feedback-driven system, it is inherently unstable [6].


Endnotes

[1] “The influence of social hierarchy on primate health (Review)” by Robert M. Sapolsky, Science, vol.308, p.648-652, 2005. (and references therein)
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/308/5722/648.abstract

[2] “Anti-smoking culture is harmful to health -- On the truth problem of public health management” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2011.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2011/04/anti-smoking-culture-is-harmful-to.html

[3] “Is establishment medicine an injurious scam?” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2011.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2011/11/is-establishment-medicine-injurious.html

[4] “Is the burning of fossil fuel a significant planetary activity?” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2010/08/is-burning-of-fossil-fuel-significant.html

[5] “Collective intelligence does not imply individual intelligence -- Technology does not come from geniuses” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2011.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2011/11/collective-intelligence-does-not-imply.html

[6] “Institutions build hierarchy between politico-cultural re-normalizations” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2011.
http://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2011/11/institutions-build-hierarchy-between.html

The author has also been discussed in this thread:
http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,11648.msg177503.html#msg177503

 

[psychegram]

Professor Rancourt has just released a book, originally entitled 'Against Anti-racism' but now titled 'Hierarchy and free expression in the fight against racism' (which is a bit less incendiary). I'm helping out with the book launch on my campus, and have thus had the opportunity to read a pre-publication copy. The book is quite short (~100 pages, including a longish introduction from sociologist and globalresearch.ca war correspondant Mahdi Nazemroaya), and is essentially a compilation of some of his more impactful blog posts, taking on the following subjects (this is not an exhaustive list):

- anti-racism and politically correct speech codes (he explains that these policies serve mainly to hide racist beliefs, cover up true systemic racism, divert attention from class structures, and divide oppressed classes amongst themselves by getting them to squabble over who's more oppressed - something the left has been calling 'the oppression olympics' - instead of confronting their own oppression directly)
- the biopsychosocial effects of dominance hierarchies (ill health and stupidity, due not just to privation but also physiological stress)
- the distinction between 'true intellectuals' and 'service intellectuals' (the latter being essentially sophists, in the most negative sense of the word ... and the vast majority of academics of course)
- the big lies of science, especially regarding economics (private central banks, debt-based currencies), medicine (he postulates that the primary purpose of medicine is to cover up the effects of dominance hierarchies, which are the true source of most ill health), and environmental science (which serves to distract from real environmental problems by generating hysteria in profitable non-problems)
- the tension between reformist liberals who advocate for small tweaks to the power structure, vs. radicals who advocate taking on large structural problems at their root ... and how anti-racism, anti-oppression, and pacifism all work for the liberals and against the radicals

When discussing medicine, he singles out the anti-smoking movement as a public health 'smokescreen'.

He doesn't mention psychopathy anywhere ... but you can see that topic of topics bubbling just below the surface of a lot of what he says, especially on the topic of dominance hierarchies.

Overall, I found the book to be very readable, and to make some very good, very thought-provoking points, in many ways crystallizing nebulous concepts that had been forming in my own mind as well over the past couple years. It draws on some of the major works of critical pedagogy (especially Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Jeff Schmidt's Disciplined Minds), and quotes extensively from Malcolm X, Mother Jones, and other true revolutionaries, ultimately drawing a picture in which conflict is not just unavoidable but necessary for the personal development of all humans, especially those engaged in social struggle. I honestly can't remember the last time I read something more contrarian from an academic. There were some places where I wish he'd gone further, but there was very little I disagreed with.

The book itself came out of Rancourt's most recent legal troubles: in brief, the University of Ottawa had a black, female law professor write a report that covered up systemic racism, alleged in a previous report released by the U of O student union. A Freedom of Information Act request revealed that the behind-the-scenes action had been, shall we say, less than honest ... at which point Rancourt remarked on his Activist Teacher blog that the law professor seemed to have acted as Alan Rock's "house negro" (yup, he went there). Alan Rock is U of O's president, and former justice and health minister in the old Liberal government. As a direct result of this, Rancourt has been sued by the law professor (for racism), for $1 million, with her legal fees backed by the university 'without limit' (as revealed by another FoI request).