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Cancer as a cell's trauma response and the separation story

8 tweets · September 2025 · 14 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter

really cool short (13min) video exploring in depth the ways in which cancer is a kind of trauma response, that causes the cell to perceive "I'm alone in a hostile environment" rather than "I'm part of something larger that cares for me" youtu.be/h-DUcbk58OI

the video is based heavily on @DrMichaelLevin's work on cell signalling & gap junctions. here's a thread from one of Levin's students on some related research: x.com/jordanstrasser…

the video ALSO talks about fall from eden as original trauma event for humanity, that caused us to perceive ourselves as separate! and thus began the somewhat cancerous relationship of humans with our environment. explored in more detail by @cubeflipper: smoothbrains.net/posts/2022-08-…

this idea is explored from a *different* angle in @AndrewCutler13's excellent essays x.com/Malcolm_Ocean/…

one part of it that feels weak to me is where it uses phrases like "go back" to refer to learning from indigenous wisdom. we can't return to a pre-differentiated state re nature. we must re-integrate. from the pages of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Ken Wilber:

Emmett Shear @eshear ·

This fallacy occurs constantly and also to call it a fallacy is sort of misleading. It’s not a fallacy, it’s a simple factual statement of perspective: once you can tell the difference between pre-boundary and trans-boundary states, you’re had the trans-boundary insight.

oh also he has a refrain about a Western confusion of "turning relatives into resources" to extract, which like, maybe "resource" view is bad, but competition isn't bad and while you don't want to compete with your family, the earth isn't equally your family!

the identified voice of the system, the "I", sometimes calls parts of the system "it" when alienated from them

Emmett Shear @eshear ·

That Freud’s book was more accurately translated as “The I and the It” cleared up a lot of confusion for me about Freud. He is speaking about an extremely fundamental problem that afflicts any learning agent! Not some human-specific dreamland.

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(btw I drafted this thread months ago in @typefully and just finally got around to filling in some stubs/links and posting it. typefully is awesome, try it out. best thread composer by far)