My Upcoming Talk for the Scientific & Medical Network (SMN)
The Neuroscience of Self-Love and World Peace - Online, Wednesday, 20th November 7-8.30pm UK
On 20th November I will present an online seminar for the Scientific & Medical Network (SMN). If you are interested you can book a ticket here. You do not have to be a member of the SMN to attend the network’s talks and seminars.
I have been asked to present this seminar because of my article, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”, The Neurobiology of self-love and world peace, which I published earlier this year here on Substack.
About the Scientific & Medical Network (SMN)
The SMN was established over fifty years ago to counter the problem of materialism in science. Most people do not realise it, but all of modern science is based on an unproven paradigm, or assumption that the only thing that is real is matter. This materialist/physicalist paradigm is not based on any evidence. It is, simply, a ‘belief’, with serious, and negative implications. It is possible to demonstrate that the materialist paradigm causes us to develop technologies and practices in many disciplines that are harmful to us, to the planet and to everything else that shares the planet with us.
Materialist science ignores our yearning for meaning, and connectedness. It leads to the false body-mind dichotomy, which leads to the objectification of the body and the dismissal of the intricate and complex relationship between the mind and the body for which there is ample scientific evidence. The materialist of physicalist paradigm leads to the development of technologies alienating technologies, toxic and abusive medicine and psychology, and to heartless economics. In many of my essays I discuss the fact — and it is a fact — that humans do not do well psychologically and physically when their life is limited to survival. We all need meaning and purpose and to fulfil the innate potential we each know we have. The idea that life is about survival is one of the expression of the materialist paradigm. If only the body is real, then living means not dying. When we realise that we need more from life than just survival, it puts us at odds with materialist thinking. Feelings, aspirations, hopes, the need to fulfil our potential, love, connectedness, and spirituality cannot be weight, measured or quantified. They are not matter, which makes them unreal in the materialist world. And yet, they are so real and so central to us, that healthy people cannot live well without them. Existentialists like Irvin Yalom or Viktor Frankl argued, some people would rather die than live a live devoid of purpose and meaning. Even a person with advanced dementia living in a care home still has a need for purpose, all the way to the end.
The SMN seeks to broaden the scope of science. Or, another way of putting it, is that it would like science to work as it should. A mere unproven belief that matter is all there is allows materialist science to ignore hypotheses that do not ‘fit’. It limits the scope of what science is prepared to study, only to what fits within the materialist paradigm. This is not good science. Real science does not limit the scope of its investigation before it even started.
If you want to read more about this, I highly recommend the excellent and fascinating, Galileo Commission Report. (The Galileo Commission is a project of the SMN). I wrote an article for the Galileo Commission’s publication Paradigm Explorer, that you might find interesting: ‘To Broaden the Scope of Science, We Must Address Fear. A psychotherapist’s perspective on overcoming materialism’.
The Seminar’s Abstract
It would not come as a surprise to anyone that things are not going so well for humanity. A great deal has been written over millennia, describing, and lamenting the woes of our human existence. Despite the fact that there have been many suggestions about what we could do to make things better, we keep repeating destructive, painful patterns. Living like this falls far short of the potential we all know we have.
One of the most ancient and universal principles we have been given is to love one another as we love ourselves. This holds the promise of transforming human existence. However, the concepts of self-love, and loving one another have so far remained elusive. We have the ability to bring about world peace, but as a species, it appears we are still on a learning curve.
If we are not peaceful inside, we cannot imagine, let alone create a peaceful society, even with the best of intentions. With the help of neuroscience, we can translate the concepts of self-love, and loving one another into something concrete. Evidence from the practice of psychotherapy shows that when people love themselves properly, they are more capable of loving one another. As individuals transform their inner ‘landscape’ — from a turbulent, troubled, war-like space, plagued with divisions, and littered with abandoned and rejected parts of the self — into a peaceful and harmonious space, they naturally transform the world around them. We are complex systems that exist within complex systems. We create the world in our own image, and in turn the world shapes us. Anywhere you intervene in a complex system, would impact on the whole. If we want to transform our collective reality, it is valid to start with ourselves.
As an ethical psychotherapist, my work cannot remain merely theoretical, or in the realm of guesswork or speculation. Psychotherapy must work, or people continue to suffer, which affects everything, and everyone in their lives. What I share in this seminar is a framework that has been tested in well over twenty years of practice. It is based on the consilient framework of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB), that learns from many sciences, and ways of knowing. IPNB has been a game-changer in my profession. It has highlighted the fact that for psychotherapy to make a difference, it must facilitate changes in people’s brain architecture. IPNB makes the concepts of self-love, and loving others clear and tangible. In other words, we now know exactly what we need to do to bring peace into our internal reality, and by extension also into the world. The same principles we use in psychotherapy, can be readily implemented in education, and parenting, or in any domain where people interact with one another.
In this talk I will share the science, and practice that changes our brain, and transforms our subjective internal reality. The principles are simple, albeit not always easy to implement initially. This talk emerged out of an essay I published in March this year on my Substack page: You shall love your neighbour as yourself; The neurobiology of self-love and world peace.
Everyone is welcome, and no prior knowledge is required, only your curious mind, wisdom, and life experience.
It’s so strange but wonderful to hear other people say this! Science is a belief system no different from any other. It is based on unquestioned assumptions which become indoctrination. I have both a science and philosophy background, so this became obvious to me decades ago, but most people have never thought about it. They can't imagine any other world view, just as they can't imagine anything other than capitalism, violence or colonialism.