Chapter 1
Introduction

1.1 What If We Have Been in a Collective Delusional State?

Henry Ford famously said, "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't-you're right." This seemingly correct and harmless slogan sums up the problem with modern-day cognition.

When we hear René Descartes' statement, "I think, therefore I am", no one counters it by saying, 'your thinking has nothing to do with your existence'. When Einstein said, "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one," we redefined truth by perception, reinvigorating the Trinity delusion, instead of telling him off for secularizing dogmatic thinking. How ironic that today making up your own reality is considered to be the biggest sign of mental disorder.

When Buddhist traditionalists told us, "We don't exist", we introduced Yoga1 that would 'empty our mind', nullifying the original meaning and falsifying the meaning of the word entirely. Scientists, instead of leading the science - the essence of knowledge gathering - yielded to the comedians, politicians, and tabloid journalists that led the civilization down the path of collective insanity. Science has turned into a comedy show and engineering a cartoon.

When Douglas Adams, a British satirist, said, "Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you," we found that to be profound. When Al Gore, the lawyer turned politician turned science activist quipped on his way to touting nuclear energy to the Middle East, "Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real," we didn't see his hypocrisy.

Then in the nadir of our hypocrisy, we gasped when a 52-year-old husband and father of seven, Paul Wolscht, declared from a newfound foster home, "I have gone back to being a child, Stefonknee". In the meantime, we dig even deeper and double down on the same sliding slope by cheering on law professors, the likes of whom wrote, "Pedophilia: A Disorder, Not a Crime" (NewYork Times, Oct. 4, 2014). Instead of saying 'we have heard that line before', we nod feverishly. A scientist such as Richard Dawkins follows suit and says, "Mild pedophilia" doesn't cause "lasting harm".2 Then, we are surprised when we learn that an ex-policeman, Alexander McCracken, 35, and his lover plotted to conceive a baby so they could abuse it and share it with other paedophiles in a plot to 'deffo rape a little baby girl' (as reported in the Daily Mail on February 26, 2015). Everyone watches this saga of a naked emperor, but no shepherd emerges to call out the emperor, who stands déshabillé before us. We have no moral ground and we are too busy increasing our pleasure and decreasing pain to think anything other than self-interest in the shortest term. We have lost all connection to our conscience.

Chapter 2 resets our collective delusional behavior to logical thinking and forces us to reevaluate what a human is before talking about human rights, the natural state of a human, or human maladies. This chapter reveals that we have been conned by 'philosophers' that are actually contemptuous of true knowledge, leaders that don't care for those they are leading, and scientists that have zero tolerance for real science. The chapter establishes the undeniable connection of modern-day narration of humanity with the 'original sin' model and shows that over last few centuries, we have piled up hubris in building up falsehood over falsehood, while packaging dogmatic delusion as a secular enlightenment. The chapter sets the stage for replacing the culture of fear with the science of hope.

1.2 Have We Been Bankrupted to Become Unhealthy?

It is well recognized that the United States leads the world in technology development. According to World Bank data, the United States spent 17.4% of GDP on health care as compared to a world average of 9% of GDP. Outside of the military (which consumes nearly 3.5% of GDP government spending in 2014), healthcare is the largest industry in the United States. Interestingly, both defense and healthcare have to do with saving lives directly. However, healthcare is more closely associated with saving lives than defense, even though government spending in healthcare is much lower than that for defense. Figure 1.1 shows healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP for various countries and demonstrates how it has become the biggest financial drain for developed countries. Even though, approximately 10% of the total cost involves mental healthcare, it is meaningful considering the fact that mental ailments are the source of physical complications and eventual maladies (Islam et al., 2015). The bulk of this expense is in mental healthcare. Figure 1.2 shows some of the biggest spenders (in % GDP) on mental healthcare. The United States is by far the biggest spender in terms of actual dollars spent per capita.

Figure 1.1 Health care expenses as a percentage of GDP (from World Bank website, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS?end=2014&start=2014&view=map)

Figure 1.2 Percentage of healthcare for mental healthcare (data from WHO).

Further analysis shows that the biggest rise in mental healthcare costs is for prescription drugs - an expense that has skyrocketed in recent years (Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3 Prescription drug expenses have seen the highest increase at the expense of inpatient care.

As pointed out by Kliff (2012), the near collapse of inpatient care is not an accident. The shift away from inpatient spending goes back to the 1960s, when states began moving away from institutionalization for the mentally ill. The Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963 pushed for more treatment in community settings rather than in state-run, psychiatric institutions. As Kliff pointed out,

By treating the rest in the least-restrictive settings possible, the thinking went, we would protect the civil liberties of the mentally ill and hasten their recoveries. Surely community life was better for mental health than a cold, unfeeling institution.

But in the decades since, the sickest patients have begun turning up in jails and homeless shelters with a frequency that mirrors that of the late 1800s. "We're protecting civil liberties at the expense of health and safety," says Doris A. Fuller, the executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit group that lobbies for broader involuntary commitment standards. "Deinstitutionalization has gone way too far."

Translation? We have once again been conned with a false promise.

It is estimated that some $330 billion out of $2.2 trillion of healthcare costs in the United States are due to prescription medicine (IMS, 2013). IMS Reports indicate the most prescribed drugs, along with their applications and known side effects, are as given in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1 The most prescribed drugs and their application and side effects.