Cancer is a disease of cellular metabolic dysfunction. It is not a genetic disease (genetic mutations are downstream effects of a more fundamental metabolic shift in cellular respiration). Cancer develops and spreads when the normal, healthy functioning of mitochondria within cells is disturbed and becomes dysregulated, causing the respective tissue to grow and consume energy beyond its appropriate scale relative to the organism of which it is a part.

For details on this perspective, see the list of resources on the The Science page of this site.

Cognition is an ecological phenomenon incorporating all aspects of a living system, including biology, psychology, neurology, physiology, anatomy, communication, and social relationality. Cognition is metabolism, in the sense that it refers to the total, systemically-integrated energy dynamics of living systems on all scales -- from single cell to organism to society to planet. It is the holistic functioning of an organism as it strives to learn, grow, adapt, and sustain itself.

The pioneering biologist/neurophysiologist Humberto Maturana puts it succinctly: "living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with and without a nervous system." (Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, p. 13)

Cognitive immunology is an emerging branch of science and clinical practice that investigates and treats viral infections of mind, cognition, and consciousness. It explores the nature of our cognitive immune systems, the pathology of mind-viruses, and how classic virology, pathology, and immunology can be expanded to include the entirety of our cognitive functioning, which involves quite literally all aspects of the integrated bio-psycho-social-spiritual-metabolic nature of human existence.

In the modern industrial world, most cultures have a severely truncated understanding of "emotion." Far beyond the familiar and simple categories of happy, sad, angry, frustrated, and the like, emotion actually encompasses a diverse range of any dynamic, active energies that often don't fit into neat conceptual categories.

Etymologically, the root of the English "emotion" is the Latin movere, which means "to move." Thus, emotion is quite literally moving energy. It is anything we actively feel moving through or around us, and is not isolated to the inner space of individuals defined by their physical boundaries. Emotional energy is social-relational, arising within collective dynamics and felt by individuals in unique ways.

As moving energy, emotion must be allowed to move. When we block or repress this form of energy, we suffer. We cannot "get rid of" emotion by shoving it down inside of us, or pretending it is not there. When we repress emotion, we are recruiting and expending energy in order to keep contained another active energy. It is like holding down a lid firmly on a pot of boiling water. The boiling water is the emotional energy, trying to rise up and disperse away from the pot.

Emotional repression is a characteristic feature of wétiko infection. It leads, quite literally, to dis-ease (lack of ease) in our bodies/minds, because it disallows the natural, unavoidable flow of these very important energies and experiences. As Sherri Mitchell explains:

"...energy and emotion have a natural flow. Every thread of energy and every bit of emotion that rises has a distinct and predictable life cycle; it emerges from source, follows a patterned circuit, and then returns to source. If we disrupt the natural flow of that circuit, the energy is forced to search for new and creative ways to reach its end point. When we try to manipulate or hold the energy that arises within us, we create distortions in that flow and cause ourselves needles pain and suffering." (from Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change)

Soul has been defined in many different ways throughout the ages. In this project of Silvaticus Mundus, I use "soul" in the sense conveyed by Thomas Berry and the eco-depth psychologist Bill Plotkin:

"Soul is fundamentally a biological concept, defined as the primary organizing, sustaining, and guiding principle of a living being." ~ Thomas Berry

"Foundationally, Soul, for me, is an ecological concept, not a psychological one nor a spiritual or religious one. Specifically, by Soul I mean a person or thing's unique ecological niche in the Earth community. ...A niche, in essence, consists of a thing's unique set of relationships with every other thing in its ecosystem. A thing's eco-niche -- its Soul -- is what makes it what it is on the deepest, widest, and most natural level of identity." ~ Bill Plotkin, PhD

Soul is the vital life force that characterizes a living being as that unique being. While all humans share the same basic physical stuff (99.9% of everyone's DNA is identical), we are each irreducibly unique individuals contributing something unique to the world and to the evolution of life and the species. Soul is an emergent phenomenon that cannot be reduced to physical or linear cause-effect relationships; it is a complex of energies that flows through each of us in a particular way, while simultaneously being universal and pervasive. It both connects and distinguishes us from a universal, transpersonal whole.

"My soul is like a hidden orchestra; I do not know which instruments grind and play away inside of me, strings and harps, timbales and drums. I can only recognize myself as a symphony." ~ Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

"Psychological" trauma is not simply something bad or harmful happening to someone. Every day, hundreds of millions of people experience bad, harmful, or intense experiences and yet are not traumatized. Trauma, meaning "a wounding," is defined neurophysiologically as remaining stuck in an active protective/survival response beyond the point when such a response is adaptive to defend oneself or another against an imminent threat or danger.

It is natural and unharmful to shift temporarily into a protective/survival response (which is characterized biologically as a state of dysregulated [either hyperactive and/or hypoactive] nervous system activity). When we remain in such a dysregulated state, however, we sustain a condition of believing, feeling, perceiving, and acting as if we are in immediate danger (even if we're not actually). In such a state, wherein our nervous system and many other systems and functions in our body are tuned toward threat protection/survival, our vital life-support systems are either disrupted or depressed. This undermines our ability to sustain health by compromising metabolism, immune function, restoration and repair processes, memory consolidation, rational thinking, social connection, and efficient respiration, among other processes. This leads to all sorts of imbalances and insufficiencies in our neurobiology, which can manifest in a wide range of illnesses, diseases, and symptoms. This is the "wounding" that is trauma.

Trauma can result from intense, extreme, acute events (so-called "Big-T" traumas, such as war, assault, car crashes, etc.), but it can also result from subtle, low intensity, chronic distressing experiences (so-called "little-t" traumas, e.g., a person of color experiencing microaggressions repeatedly, over time, in their workplace or the larger culture). Both sorts of experiences -- and many others along a wide spectrum of triggering experiences -- can traumatize a person in equally harmful measure, quantitatively speaking. Of course, the qualitative dimension of experiences will vary widely; the point is that regardless of original triggering event, trauma is trauma, and can have significant detrimental effects on a person's well-being.

Ultimately, trauma is universal in human experience. As the pioneering neurophysiologist and creator of the Polyvagal Theory of the vagus nerve function Stephen Porges says, "We have to acknowledge that human beings are a traumatized species."

Wétiko is an indigenous term (Algonquin/Cree) for a sickness of the soul, or of spirit, mind/body, and relationality that has spread across the entire globe and infected nearly the entire human species. Various people describe it in various ways, which is appropriate given wétiko's multifaceted nature. It is a "sickness of exploitation" (Jack Forbes), a cannibalistic force that functions as a virus, a cancer, and a parasite in its various, shapeshifting forms.

More concretely, it manifests socially-structurally-institutionally as: colonization/conquests of cultural erasure and homogenization; imperialism; genocide; the rape and plundering of living beings and ecosystems (whether human, animal, plant, or planetary); authoritarianism; state-sanctioned violence and repression; privatization and corporate monopolization of basic life processes and resources; repressive legal codes and institutions; and dogmatic instructional systems (mandated, parochial, formal schooling programs), among related phenomena.

Intellectually-emotionally-relationally, wétiko manifests as chronic fear, anxiety, and doubt; toxic co-dependency/attachment; narcissism; nihilism; dogmatism; fundamentalism; cynicism; "holier-than-thou-ism," spiritual bypassing/escapism; social isolation; spiritual materialism; self-harm; and chronic depression/lethargy.

Biologically-neurophysiologically, this disease/virus manifests as metabolic dysregulation/disease; clinical endocannabinoid deficiency (CED); and the many chronic illnesses/conditions that these states underlie: migraines; fibromyalgia; IBS; insomnia; ADHD/ADD/OCD: chronic pain; PTSD; allergies; asthma; autoimmune disorders; various skin conditions; cancer; and neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia. 

(For the scientific evidence supporting all these claims, see the Resources page for literally hundreds of high-quality sources detailing these phenomena.)

I'm afraid I am quite serious about this. See the "About" page for a detailed explication of the concept of wétiko as a mind-virus.

I've been researching and practically wrestling with the phenomena animating this field of study for many years, long before I had the language to uniquely describe what I was investigating. Formally, my undergraduate degree is in psychology, and I earned my PhD from Syracuse University through a Doctoral Research Fellowship in an interdisciplinary department called the Cultural Foundations of Education. My doctoral dissertation explored a wide range of phenomena and science directly related to many of the core issues in cognitive immunology. These include: the current paradigm shift in the life-mind sciences; process ontology; cognitive science; embodied cognition; neuroscience; neuropragmatism; quantum neurophilosophy; ecological psychology; autopoietic biology; dynamic systems theory; mindfulness; and related topics. You can download and read my dissertation for free here: https://surface.syr.edu/etd/1288/

Since completing my formal schooling, I have continued independent research and trained in a number of modalities that inform this work. This includes research in the neurophysiology of trauma and emotional regulation; training in trauma-informed yoga therapy and trauma-sensitive mindfulness; two yoga teacher trainings; and a permaculture design certificate course, among other informal experiences and education.

Given that cognitive immunology is, by definition, an inter- and trans-disciplinary field of study and practice, my experience and education uniquely suits me to contribute to the development of this project. I am constantly studying, researching, exploring, practicing, playing, learning, forgetting, remembering, and striving in more ways than I can easily specify to grow my knowledge and expertise in these areas of interest.

There is not a "cure" in the sense of an absolute, final eradication of wétiko from one's cognitive field or the social mind/collective consciousness. In this sense, it is like cancer. There is no real "cure" for cancer, because cancer is the result of dysregulated cellular metabolic function and genetic encoding disruption. There is no way to definitively, indefinitely prevent such dysregulation from occurring, so the best we can do is protect ourselves against developing such dis-eases by lowering the likelihood of metabolic dysregulation/dysfunction by supporting our innate immune function, simultaneously biologically-cognitively.

You should take this seriously for a few different reasons.

1) There is solid, empirical scientific evidence that this class of phenomena is real (i.e., mind viruses; viral ideas/ideologies; mental/cognitive immune systems; parasitic perspectives; etc.). For a good reference to this emerging field of science, see Andy Norman's book Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think, and the recently published, peer-reviewed, open-access article "Do Minds Have Immune Systems?" by Andy Norman, Luke Johnson, and Sander van der Linden, in Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, Dec. 12, 2024.

2) When the field of virology was developed (just over 100 years ago), many of the core ideas and claims were dismissed as bull hockey, quackery, or plain nonsense. "Really? Invisible, tiny entities float through the air and infect people by breaking into their cells and manipulating their genetic code? Yeah, right!" Similarly, when the idea of retroviruses was first proposed, prominent scientists dismissed the concept as plainly "impossible." Now, we obviously know retroviruses (such as HIV) exist and are very powerful forces to contend with.

A large portion of contemporary medical science is built on research that was initially dismissed simply because people weren't ready to believe the evidence being generated by scientists and medical doctors. We are in a similar position with cognitive immunity and mind virus pathology. If humanity survives long enough, there will come a time when these are well-known, extensively researched, and well-practiced ideas and principles. Come back here in 50 years and tell me I'm wrong.

3) Lastly, I'll just appeal to your intuition. Look at how humans are acting all over the globe right now. Look how we have acted throughout the 20th century (the most violent and deadly century in human history), and down through the history of civilization. What characterizes "civilization" in every stage of its development are frequent occurrences of war, genocide, rape, torture, ecological destruction, imperialism/conquest/colonization, witch hunts, slavery, political repression, economic inequality, social oppression and marginalization, and exploitation of the working class, plants, animals, and the Earth itself, among other detestable practices.

Honestly considering all this, could you at least hypothetically imagine that our species is infected with something beyond biological-level viruses? That perhaps we are suffering from some form of collective psychosis? That our social consciousness is dis-eased? (Literally and figuratively.) What else explains the utter insanity of how millions of people -- and governments, institutions, corporations, churches, etc. -- are acting? Never once has any other species waged genocidal, imperialistic, colonial warfare against multiple other species and against members of their own species, to the point that they have disrupted the planet's vital life support systems to a degree that threatens their continued existence on Earth. This is unique to "civilizational" humans. We are supposedly the "most evolved" and "most intelligent" species of life ever to grace this planet, but we're not acting the part. So, what explains this?

There is always hope. I also encourage you to think beyond the realm of humanity as currently existing on Earth. One of the core perspectives of soul care is that how we live has important implications for life beyond humanity, life beyond this time and place, even life beyond its particular configuration on Earth. Life-mind-consciousness is eternal, so what we do in our human lifetimes is significant for eternity, not just for the immediate issues of daily life in society.

It is only a modern materialist's dogma that believes humans and our comfort are the primary concern of existence, or that life is meaningless outside the fleeting window of time marked by a single being's birth and death. That is sheer dogma, not fact. We exist for vastly -- infinitely -- more than the contingent social purposes of getting a job, supporting the economy, getting our kids into the right college, owning a house and car, having our names printed in publications, etc. These are all significant, yes -- but every moment of our lives also has significance for life beyond the human drama, beyond human empires (all of which will crumble soon enough), beyond the hype of politics and media.

A narrow, anthropocentric perspective often leads a person to cynicism, pessimism, and nihilism. From the perspective of Silvaticus Mundus, that is a sad and uninspiring way to live; it is also unscientific. Science does not equal reductionistic, fatalistic, meaningless materialism. That is a dogmatic ideology, not a scientific perspective. To think, perceive, feel, and imagine beyond the contingent confines of any given human era is to live not only with hope, but with the knowledge that there is infinitely more to life and consciousness than what contemporary consumer society presents to us as valuable, significant, and meaningful.