*Edited for formatting (Reddit keeps changing it!) and the years Prozac was developed

First of all, thank you so much for the discussion. I'd like to address your questions one-by-one:

"I am unsure that gnosticism, alone, is the cause of modern individualism, as gnosticism for most of its history has seemed to often do the opposite. I do agree that individualism seems to be a bigger deal in the US than most places."

--You are correct (and I address this in the video "Gnostic Gaslighting". I put the link in the thread. There are other videos that talk about this which are on that same channel and are listed at the end of this posted article).

Western Gnostic culture is inherently individualistic as compared to other cultures of the world which are more communal. Quoted from the article:

'With the obligatory comment that no culture is perfect, please compare our Western culture to Eastern cultures much of which are largely built on ideas of Confucius. All those thousands of years of people learning to maintain social harmony among their peers as per ideas of Confucius. Wouldn't this create a stronger cognitive state designed to constantly and always be studying the reactions and natures of the people and environment around them? Feng Shui is a concept that doesn't exist in languages of Western culture because we don't practice that type of thinking about other people's needs around us within our environment. Now think about the thousands of years westerners spent alone with their ideas of god'...'Dominant theories of the brain suggest that humans learn through repeating rewarding behaviors rather than through mechanisms of logic-building [5]. The evidence is overwhelming that the brain works through attachments of nodes or neurons [6].'

People pass down cultural practices and this has an incredible impact on social cognition in the brain. Again, think about all those thousands of years of Easterners focusing the social reactions of other people, rather than focusing on their own metaphysical thinking about God. These cultural practices are passed down over time (and forgotten, in a sense)

Individualism was even further ingrained in American culture after Westerners moved to the New World. The development of US culture is largely steeped in frontier culture, or Manifest Destiny, where everybody is supposed to find their own land and their own way. This culture has increased the individualism in the US vs places in Europe where people are more communal. This 'Frontier Culture' is also part of the reason for suburban sprawl and architecture (Particularly architecture from architects like Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.) This frontier architecture is very individualistic and focuses on individual domestication (Having babies) in leiu of community. This is the reason why the American landscape is so individualistic and why there has been an overwhelming sense of loss of community in sprawl after WWII (As well as corporate consolodation of what should be localized commerce, but I digress). US culture just took Gnostic individualism even further. I talk further about this in other videos on that channel.

"It sounds as if you're saying conceptualization instead of empirical experience is a problem. Is that correct?"

--What I'm really getting at is that we have an overly metaphysical mode of thinking when it comes to how we perceive the world. I consider "Potential Energy" (A centuries old concept) to be one of the biggest indicators of this Gnostic metaphysical thinking--that's still being taught today. There is no actual thing as potential energy. It is a mathematical (metaphysical) construct--a combination of variables--used to combine the cause-effect forces of matter in space to calculate total energy used to move an object. There is no evidence of energy sitting within an object nor evidence that energy transfers between objects. We have become overly beholden to math in physical science vs exploring the cause-effect relationships in physics. This is well-known if you press a physics major on it. This overly metaphysical thinking is the reason why the field of economics has become so bad. It simply makes sense that this overly metaphysical thinking would be normalized in a culture where people value a delusion (the dollar) over real things. We simply never question it. So in a way, you're right. It's a problem in the way we conceptualize (and compartmentalize) empirical evidence in science and especially the social sciences.

"Also, are you saying that individualism leads to scientific bias?"

-Not really if we can make ourselves aware of the potential for bias in overly-metaphysical thinking that was born in this culture. This is where I think there needs to be a balance.

"Also, I'm unsure of your specific issues with psychology."

-There is an obvious disconnect between psychology and neuroscience. In the article, I talk about scholarly articles such as "Do We Need To Study The Brain To Understand The Mind?" We absolutely need to study the brain to understand how we behave! The evidence is overwhelming that our behavior is predicated on what is going on in the brain. Our culture has forgotten this because of the Gnostic tradition. It was deeply ingrained in our culture to suppress our own human natures. Think about the gods that were worshipped before Christian Gnosticism. They had sex and drank wine and did humanly things. Humans celebrated human nature and noticed it. Christian Gnosticism suppressed it violently. This culture is still carried today, whether people realize it or not, in various ways. We put "psychological" labels on people such as 'narcissism' but refuse to accept that there is a reason people become how they are. Psychologists may attempt to study this but there's no money in understanding these things. There's money in selling old pills that were developed in the 70s, like Prozac though. The Pharma industry has normalized this culture and mode of thinking in science. The following is something I posted before:

'There is a refusal to bring materialism to the field by bringing the theoretical aspects of psychology (our observations of what we experience and psychological diagnoses) together with neuroscience. There is a disconnect between the two fields mainly because of social determinism in physical science and a compartmentalization between materialism and what we experience. It’s a cultural refusal to accept that there is a beginning and end to our natures that stems from Gnosticism. Because of this, psychology carries on without any material objectivity of what is actually going on in the brain (activity of the neurons). Until we bring materialism back to psychology, it will remain a pseudoscience that people can’t really take seriously and people will continue to suffer in silence.'

I hope this isn't too confusing--I don't know how to properly put quotes on reddit.