In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act. – Unknown

Yesterday was International Mental Health Day.

Mental health… first of all, has nothing to do with whether a person has autism, or ADHD, or whatever, or not.

And second, mental health is neither separate nor independent from physical health, nor should it be understood or viewed that way. Body and mind interact with each other.

Even if today it is constantly emphasized that autism is not a disease, autism is nevertheless still part of medicine and psychiatry, there are behavioral therapies for autistic children and in the language around it the terms "defect" and "error" can still be found, which of course have to be ironed out and corrected. Nowadays we have even gone so far as to diagnose high intelligence, that is, to see it practically as a disease.

And this is the very big and also fatal error of thinking of the modern (western) man of our over-technologized time. The beginnings of this go back to early industrialization, and even far beyond. Since then, however, in medicine, biology and other natural sciences we find "genetic defects", "birth defects", and, and, and. Of course, the idea of a "birth defect" imposes itself on the mathematically conditioned mind, if for example a calf is born with five legs, or a child with Down's syndrome... and the mind conditioned in this way will then think that this "defect" must be "corrected". On this mindset, on this understanding of nature and life, is based the entire modern civilization, which seems to have its origin in Europe and Christianity, but if we look a little closer, we find that this way of thinking and mindset can already be found with the ancient Greeks... with the ancient Hebrews and Indians and the Chinese… it goes back to the moment when the first man thought he could selectively breed a certain plant, and selectively allowed only certain animals to reproduce in order to preserve and strengthen certain traits, and weaken or even eradicate others. The next step that followed this discovery was to assume that life, nature by itself could do it less well than man. In the cultures that then became great and powerful in the course of time, man began to see himself as the master of life and death, whether on the battlefield, in the context of spirituality (at this point I would like to invite the following consideration: Even today, most people shudder to think of the rituals of the Aztecs and Maya, in which people's hearts were cut out while they were still alive, as an offering to the gods… or the human sacrifices of the Germanic and Celtic peoples, likewise to appease or favor the gods… so teaches us the mainstream archaeology of Western scientists. Well... but what were all those women, girls and also some men who were burned at the stake "in the name of the Lord!"? "In the name of God!" tortured and hanged "witches" and others well into the 19th century… this too was all done within the framework of religious ideas, to pay homage to a god and, well, to appease him and make him favorable!…) and socially: in ancient Greece, when a wife gave birth to her child, after a few days she brought it to her husband so that he would accept and acknowledge it. However, if he did not do so, the newborn had to be abandoned - his certain death.

This idea of the (male!) human being as the master of life has developed accordingly over the centuries, and the more nutrition and medicine were "rationalized", the more he believed himself to be able to control nature. Where he couldn't, he destroyed - from wolves and bears to eagles and even humans themselves: everything that was considered "wild" was "hostile" and had to be fought, defeated and subjugated or even completely wiped out.

To this day, nature is perceived and portrayed as hostile. Be it in the animal documentary that speaks of a hostile environment, whether it's penguins in Antarctica or lions in Namibia, or the action film about a hero fighting for survival alone in the wilderness. Human values are attributed to animals and their forms of organization, they speak of leadership and kings… but the lion is not a king, and wolf packs do not organize themselves like a gangsters around the strongest male – and also the act of killing does not serve the proof of the own power and strength, even if it may well look like that among males sometimes.

Among animals, in nature, it is not about "hostile" even if the hippo aggressively drives away a pride of lions and a penguin cub may freeze to death in the cold of Antarctica. Antarctica is what it is, and the fact that penguins live there means that these animals have adapted to the living conditions over countless generations. And that means: they have what is necessary not only to survive under these conditions - but to be wholly and completely themselves. A "less hostile" climate, on the contrary, would be fatal to them and their needs and capabilities.

Nature is about a "together" coordinated down to the finest detail - even if it may sometimes seem to us like an "against each other". It's about interdependence, and this interdependence transcends everything. The young is dependent on the mother for better or worse, sometimes on the father, sometimes on both. The parents, in turn, are often dependent on a group. And all together are dependent on the seasons and the plants and other animals. The wolf and its whole family depend on finding enough deer, the forest in turn depends on not having too many deer that destroy young trees, and so on, and so on.

It is about alignment. And there is a very specific aspect to this, and it is the crucial aspect: the "flow" aspect. Life flows and everything adapts to this flow, because animals do have ego but no pride.

That is why there is no trauma among animals living in their natural way and habitat, as a well-known American psychologist claims. An antelope is attacked and badly injured by a lion, but escapes from it; an elephant cow loses her calf; all this hits the animal at that moment, from elephants we also know that they even mourn - but then they surrender again to the flow of life and return to the present moment.

Trauma is when something happens to us that is outside of what we are equipped to handle, for both animals and humans. There are areas in Southeast Asia where people capture female orangutans, then shave them, put make-up on them… and offer them for prostitution. This causes massive trauma to these animals.

Humans, however, are the most susceptible to trauma. Because our species is not equipped with a specific survival pattern for a specific environment, but with the creative intelligence to be able to adapt anywhere in an enormously short time, we are also extremely fragile mentally.

But this does not make us a species that would stand outside of nature, and its vibrancy, and its flow, although that is what the majority of people seem to think nowadays. And is it now that nature is defective? Does nature make mistakes?

No, she does not.

What nature does, however, is experiment. Nature is not a static entity. Nature is evolution, and evolution is constant change. The whole globe is in constant change, we just don't notice it. Coasts and continents move continuously, they shift, and inside the earth it throbs and bubbles, just as we move around the sun without ceasing. Just take an hour and sit quietly to observe the shadows on the street, for example. Then you can see it with your own eyes.

And all these "defects" and "disabilities" that modern conditioned humans find in other humans and all the way down to cucumbers and tomatoes all the time... what if all this is really part of nature's experimentation? Autism is a different form of perception, of logic. A person who is highly sensitive is also like that, he or she perceives differently. What if just this high sensitivity is actually the original state of humanity? And the majority has moved away from it over the centuries, so that today only a remnant is able to feel vibrations and energies so finely? I claim that it is so! Because exactly this fine perception is absolutely necessary in every natural environment, whether it concerns the weather, or where there could be water, or which herbs help with illness… Here now, of course, we may have to question whether the evolution is really an evolution…

And autism... is also only called so today in our society striving for uniformity and standardization. In other times and in other cultures it was often quite different.

What if "autism" is a crucial experiment of evolution? Namely, to introduce yet a new surge of creativity through this very otherness...? Because let's be clear here: the difficulties and problems that autistic people so often face in our world are because of our society - not because of the autism. In this standardized world with its so narrowly defined limits of what is considered possible and therefore permitted… he or she is considered defective and faulty who thinks and lives differently, be it the child who cannot sit still for hours as a fidget, or the woman who lives together with another woman in a relationship... or entire cultures.

But nature does not make mistakes. Breasts or penis too small, nose too big, wrong brain, wrong skin color, even whole body wrong… All this is a human invention, born of this idea of standardization and this striving, this addiction that everything has to follow a very specific scheme and a very specific simple calculation. Any male lion that encounters a pride with cubs from another male will kill those cubs because he is following an instinct that was given to his species. Among wolves and horses, on the other hand, we can observe adoption.

And among humans all the freedom of creativity.

And this creativity, which we often see manifested in such a frightening form in our time... this creativity can also work in a completely different way. Consider: all the material conveniences we enjoy today... cars, airplanes, the Internet... all of these come from inventions done with war and conquest and destruction in mind. The entire not only technological progress of the modern Western world is based on a creativity that always had war and conquest as its goal - that is, destruction. We also find this approach in art and music and philosophy, not to mention psychology.

Until about the Renaissance, and in other cultures until today, the creative approach was always quite different: it was spirituality. And at first a spirituality that was (and is) born of the precise and patient observation of the world that surrounds us, of nature. Only much later religious dogma was added.

And doesn't it testify to the true creative nature of man in general to use all these inventions that were developed with violence and destruction in mind... now in a completely different way? Nobody asked us to do that. That's just what people have done, to use the highways and cars and planes and the Internet to get and stay in touch with each other, to visit each other, to help each other... in short, to form community. To be human.

Evolution is not over, and it is not the strongest that wins, but the one who can adapt best. And it is about *together*, always and without exception. Man is neither the "crown of creation" nor master over life and death. Neurodivergence means neither better nor worse and certainly not "defective" or "erroneous". The more and the longer humans refuse and fight against the flow of life and evolution, in all the various ways we have come up with, the worse our mental health will be.

Therefore, don't we have to ask ourselves mercilessly honestly what mental health is really all about? Should it really be about adapting basically (mentally) healthy people to a deeply dysfunctional environment and way of life? Poverty and worrying about how to feed oneself and one's children makes one sick, mentally first. So don't we have to ask ourselves whether this mother, who needs three or four jobs and is therefore simply mentally at the end of her rope, really needs therapy? Or even pills?

World famous master gymnast Simone Biles showed us during the last Olympics: instead of submitting to the pressure of competition, she dropped out.

But could a non-world-famous gymnast have afforded to do that?

The series about the murderer Jeffrey Dahmer is currently popular on Netflix. Millions of people sit on the couch with their dinner in the evening and watch this story, with its mental and emotional abysses and according scenes.

This is the mental illness of our time. Not only psychopaths and otherwise mentally dangerously ill minds like Dahmer, but also that we as a society get off on these stories, and getting off on them is what it is. I dare to say: such mental excesses are a mental cancer and the result of a completely de-humanized way of life. An animal will only become aggressive and otherwise behave erratically, and all too often physically ill, if it is forced to live in a way that does not conform to its nature-given specifications.

I am deeply convinced that in this time of change and upheaval, humanity is called upon to reorient itself. It is not a matter of renouncing technology and the modern way of life per se; it is a matter of looking at our mind, and our soul. The change does not have to take place on the outside, but in the mind. Fear and hatred and violence originate in the mind, and only there can they be healed.