paranoia

[Joseph Tracy]

The ancient doctrine of original sin, variants of which occur independently in the mythologies of diverse cultures, could be a reflection of man’s awareness of his own inadequacy, of the intuitive hunch that somewhere along the line of his ascent something has gone wrong. To put it vulgarly, we are led to suspect that there is somewhere a screw loose in the human mind. We ought to give serious consideration that somewhere along the line something has gone seriously wrong with the evolution of the nervous system of Homo sapiens.   (The Ghost in the Machine, Arthur Koestler 1968, 267, p. 238)

….Let us note as a possible hypothesis that the delusional streak which runs through our history may be an endemic form of paranoia, built into the wiring circuits of the human brain. ( The Ghost in the Machine, Arthur Koestler 1968, 267, p. 239)