The Reality of Serotonin, The Gut & The Brain
Hospicing Modernity Can We Really Positively Think Our Way Out Of The Mass Extinction?
Sunday 28th December 2025
The notion of compassionately euthenising industrial capitalism is a fantasy which ignores the fundamental basics of class struggle. There is a tendancy among some thinkers to place indigenous people and their philosophy outside of capitalism and class struggle. This is a failure to understand the underclass. Indigenous people are the underclass. The underclass are the most exploitable people under Capitalism. Cultural exploitation and homogenisation goes hand-in-hand with colonnialism. Indigenous spirituality is not universal. Indigenous homogenisation ignores head hunting, cannibalism and other less desirable traits of the primal human.
Something Indigenous people sometimes do is mistake their world view of biology as scientific biological reality. A capitalist trap they sometimes fall into is using the language that New Age Neo Shamans use which originates in Buddhism like "heart mind". They probably do this to try and meet modern humans where they are, including white ritual shamans instead if educating them into their world. However indigenous people also experience separation and seek teachings from other indigenous people. The question I have is from what stand point do they experience these teachings and are the teachers even suitable?
Hospicing Modernity, seeks to present an alternative to Revolutionary Marxism or Anarchism as a means of overthrowing capitalism. But it is questionable whether it seeks to overthrow it or simply replace the undesirable aspects of capitalism with a more equitable system of commerce, still based in capitalism. This is a naiivity which indicates a poor understanding of the nature of surplus, exploitation and the core nature of capitalism to absorb, dominate and then filter the generated surplus wealth upwards.
Vanessa Andriotti, Author of Hospicing Modernity. Says nature is central to her teaching, but she doesn't appear to suggest we do more than imaginal nature connection.
Her Key Concepts & Skills
Relationality & Entanglement: Sees humans as part of Earth's metabolism, not separate; education should restore this intrinsic connection.
Andriotti offers no explanatory framework for "education should restore this intrinsic connection."
Hospicing Modernity: Acknowledges and lets go of the violent, separation-based logic of modernity (colonialism, consumerism) to create space for new ways of being.
New ways of being under a new capitalism? We can't let go of separation without a cure for it. Separation requires re-unity with nature.
Indigenous Knowledge: Values Indigenous worldviews that inherently understand deep connection to land and life.
Connection to the land is not necessarily unique to indigenous people. Coppicers live in close connection to the land and the trees they cut in 8-10 year rotations.
Composting: A metaphor for processing harmful modern ideas and practices within oneself (unlearning) to generate new, generative forms of understanding.
This is the imperfection model of humans in the New Age Self-Help model, we need to evolve.
Mycelial Agency: A form of action rooted in the dark, interconnected, instinctive network of fungi—acting locally, staying with dissonance, and fostering networks rather than grand, individualistic heroism.
This was the model of environmental action before XR came along
Wide Boundary Intelligence: Moving from "either/or" thinking to "both/and" to perceive complexity and act morally in paradoxical situations.
This sound like wishful psychobabble
Climate/Nature Emergency Skills:
Developing tools to understand complex, "wicked" problems, moving beyond fixed futures to focus on felt-qualities and relational accountability.
?
Andriotti has all the potential, but her theory of connection to nature is wordy, and is rooted in a simplistic error about a neurotransmitter and the Brain.
Interviewed by Manda Scott on her accidental Gods Podcast Vanessa Andriotti explains how serotonin originates in the Gut and while this is true, this periferal nervous system Serotonin has no influence on the Brain.
"Vanessa: And he (her indigenous teacher) said, we don’t have that separation, but the approximation would be we educate the gut, so that the heart is filled and the head follows. In the education of the gut, it’s where most of the serotonin produced in our body is in the gut. Serotonin is the neurotransmitter that helps us sense this sense of entanglement and connection with everything, and calm and responsibility towards everything else.
The serotonin synthesized in the argentaffin cells in intestines regulates functions such as excretion in the GIT (Figure 1). This serotonin cannot reach the brain since it cannot cross the “blood-brain barrier”; therefore, the serotonin acting as a hormone in the periphery is not relevant to the emotional status.
Diet & Gut biome doesn't connect us with nature, and ambiguous phrases like "entanglement and connection with everything" are much loved by New Age Neo Shaman because they can talk about it endlessly without going outside. Manda Scotts Shamanism claims "connection to the web of life" or "the all that is". She believes, like so many other "new agers" that we need to:
Evolutionary Shift: She compares this period to the shift from caterpillar to butterfly, arguing that humanity is due for a "phase shift in consciousness as radical as the evolution of complex life."
Humans made that "phase shift" when our brains became entangled with nature by 1-2% Serotonin released by the brain when we enter nature. Manda Scott is about several million years of hominid evolution too late.
Accidental Gods Podcast: Manda Scott, author and host of the Accidental Gods podcast, frequently explores this theme, discussing how to navigate this liminal state with resilience and courage.
Any Human Power: Her 2024 novel, further develops these themes of systemic change and new mythology.
The metaphor emphasizes that just as a caterpillar dissolves completely within the chrysalis before reforming, society must let go of current unsustainable systems to allow a new, more interconnected way of living to emerge.
The Butterfly metaphor comes from. Robert Moss, originator of the New-Age Shamanic Dreaming.
"Let's allow this place in which we shelter to become the chrysalis, like the chrysalis in which from which the butterfly will emerge with shining wings. Think about that as one way of dreaming a better future. You are right now in a chrysalis, and yes, there are competing feelings and emotions and thoughts. Because in the chrysalis, as you probably know what was until recently a very hungry worm, a very hungry caterpillar, is in a skew, a mush of contending forces and influences.
And the imaginal cells of the emerging butterfly are fighting against the old gnarly resistance that clings to the old order, to prevent something shining from emerging. That might be where you find yourself. What would it mean to dream yourself inside the chrysalis of the shutdown time, in order to emerge on shining wings? Would it mean beginning to understand all sorts of very cool things about dreaming?"
Genetics, not imaginal cells dreaming is what decides what happens in a chrysalis and what will emerge.
Imagining A World We Would Be Proud To Leave To The Next Generation
"Imagine all the people living for today" -John Lennon
The advocates of wishful thinking in public conversations & discourse about collapse share one thing, everything they are doing is all in the mind and their imaginations. A lot of what they say about human biology, the land and connection with nature is either erroneous or misleading.
They will take your money and teach you that you need a good diet for the serotonin your brain needs for happiness. They will ask for more money as you struggle to learn their methods. Does it sound like a cult?
Maybe.
They use hyper-optimistic language like Flourishing & Thrutopia. This appears quite toxic. The same is true of many of their concepts, many of which could be seen as psychologically damaging and mentally harmful. For example:
Minimal contact with nature, bushcraft and survival skills are seen as a backwards looking cultural idea. Nature is treated as a museum exhibit. Indigenous people are universally shamanic and elevated to demi-gods, but not like the corporate business shamen who admit fakery, but carry on anyway. These shamans remain at the edge of nature, dreaming with a fire and doing visualisation meditations. Their mythology holds that the Iron Age Celts were our indigenous shamanic ancestors. The only thing they are interested in about the Celts is how they thought and what ritaluals they did, but not the skills they had to survive.
Concepts of the self in relation to nature are of traumatic separation. Yet the only path they accept back is through shamanic teaching, ritual and visualisation of connection. By accepting that Serotonin produced in the gut is the brain chemical that makes us aware of complexity denies the real role of the brain chemical serotonin in Nature connection. Even though the medical data disagrees with the New Age Shamans, they carry on nonetheless.
1-2% of total Seotonin is produced in the brain when humans have prolonged (more than 1 hours) contact with nature. Again this is medically proven with medical and molecular biology studies dating back 30 years.
Michael Harner, Author of Core Shamanism asserted connection with nature was through ceremony. He has been proven wrong by medical science for several years, but still his followers love his way of nature connection.
Even sitting under a tree is not a new concept, we don't know if Buddha sitting under a tree is a metaphor. But its certainly a theme of continued separation: Soul Tree: Joining Earth and Heaven Robert Moss. Being in around and under trees is soul titbits. Learning about nature, in nature and how to be human is soul food. The way we lived before agriculture for over 100,000 years is soul food mediated by less than 1-2% Serotonin (less is more).
They get so close, but then reject the commitment to life through acceptance of our place in nature and in doing so condemn themselves and their admirers to incompetence during collapse.
Scott says we need to move forward with todays technology. She can't make up her mind whether she wants a hyper complex natural order or the linearity of capitalisms progress. She is clearly struggling with change in a fast moving dynamic climate changing world. She sounds increasingly like the shamanic business leader, her next move will be corporate shamanic business coaching. Another casualty of changing things from the inside, which so far hasn't changed anything. She will leverage AI as an Eldering Tool based on Celtic pseudohistorical shamanic dreaming.
I have largely ignored the rest of Vanessa Andriotti work. If you can't get the Serotonin science of nature connection right. In my opinion, everything else you have to say is psychobabble.
How are they helping you survive collapse if they are rejecting resillience skills. Why are they carrying on when the medical data disagrees with what they say. The climate data disagrees with them too, we are leaving our children hell. While these influencers are trying to tell us a better world is still possible but we need to change ourselves, all of us.
Modernity won't be hospiced, capitalism will be here until its wiped out by heat & ecological collapse.
The mechanics of nature connecting to humans takes place wen we are immersed in nature, not when we sit under urban trees or drum and visualise it.
Deep Connection To Nature is a process which involves nature and the human Brains neurotransmitter Serotonin at a concentration of 1-2% of total body output of Serotonin from the Brrain. The peripheral nervous system around the Gut uses serotonin to manufacture enzymes for the GIT, but becasue it can't cross the brain /blood barrier it is not the brain happiness neurotransmitter.
Nature is the brainse serotonin influencer, and there's science as good as climate science and as old as 30 years that the brain loves nature and is hard wired to it PBS documentary.
By learning survival skills, practicing them in all weathers day & night and building relationships with plants. Skills like building a shelter from scratch, choosing a safe location for the night, Whether to have a fire or not are the core if survivalism.
Scott suggests she is the only doomer. Yet here we (the Doomers) have been talking collapse on Twitter, privately and while deoxygenation is the endgame, between now and there there are plenty of dumb climate related ways to die. But at no point
are any of us using language like Flourishing or Thrutopia. However once again Scott has her take on how survivalists play out collapse.
Why isn't Scott talking about Wet Bulb Global Temperatures and the risks they pose to her followers Flourishing?
Doomer Kevin Hester predicts Wet Bulb Globa Temperatures will account for large numbers of deaths in the coming decades.
I agree with him and blog about extreme heat, Wet Bulb Global Temperatures and how to measure your risk at any given moment.
#solidarityprepping is far more than "Plucky humans" stacking bean cans. We arent stacking cans of beans like the short term collapse preppers. We are nature immersed and totally chilled with extinction.
High on 1-2% Serotonin loving nature immersion, the dopamine is added by each learning experience in nature.
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