this question of the modern times and the increase
in mental illness is one that cannot be ignored because
it speaks to the nature of the dislocation of the soul of man
due to the industrial revolution and its ideology, capitalism…
I believe that as a species, we have had an increase in mental
illness over what occured previously…
we have always had mental illness, that is not the question,
the problem is that we have a vast increase of mental illness
because of the industrial revolution… we have
serial killers and we have people shooting up schools
and we have acts of violence accross the world, that
shows us the impact of the “modern world” has had on us…
The ancient world, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans…
did not face such an increase in mental illness cause by the society
and its belief system… you had individuals who were mentally
ill and every society, every state, every culture has had those
are mentally ill and each society delt with each case of mental
illness as best as it could… but we have had an increase in
mental illness because of the increased pressures brought to life
by the economic system of the society… if you want to undestand
what caused this increase in mental illness, look at the economic
system we live under which denies the values and the very person
of the human beings under that system… that nihilism is what, in part,
causes mental illness in modern man… we must have value but
we do not have value because we aren’t considered to “produce” enough…
value is thought to be the product of economic system, not as part
of the justice or being morally good… no, value in our current
system is deemed to be economical in nature… and we judge people
on economic values and not on their worth as human beings…
if you are rich or can create wealth, you are deemed to have value…
if you are not rich or cannot create wealth, you are deemed to
be a failure or a loser… your value as a human being is tied to
economic belief instead of any intrinsic value you might have as
a human being……. being kind has no economic value so it is
discounted as having no value at all……… and calling for peace
is discounted because war creates greater economic value then does
peace…… a thing is judge on economic terms instead of human terms……
and this is reflected in the rise in mental illness around the world in
our modern age…………… this judgment of humans by economic standards
is what creates this mental illness because the judgement of humans
by economic standards is a very narrow and false judgement of human beings…
for we have value beyond economic value… and this is why we have
this increase in mental illness…… we cannot stand being judged for economic
values when we have so much more to offer then economic values……….
what other recourse does one have when they have been rejected as
being an adequate human being by economic values when the economic
values are so shortsided and wrong………… we are judged by the only value
that has value in the modern world, profits / losses/ money………
we have as a system that is the only system in town and that system
judges us by the values of the economic system which is profits/money…
and if we don’t meet that judgement, we are rejected and scorned
and valueless, given no voice in the modern world… and so because
we have no voice in our personal lives and no voice in our economic
lives and no voice in our political life, we can either accept our fate or
we can begin to have mental illness as a response to being judged
on our worth as human beings by economic standards which only accept
profits and money as the only judgement of human beings…….
it is no wonder why mental illness is on the rise in our modern age…
we have no value in the modern world if we are not engaged in the world
economically……….
we are not given the means of expression and so we must express
ourselves through the only means available, which is by violence
and guns……………………. we must express ourselves or we go insane…
and as most people have been rendered silent, they express themselves
in the only means they can find… which is a violent one because our
society is a martial society… and this is shown by our moral documents
such as the budgets of the government…….and those documents are
martial documents as the vast majority of money is spent on martial
activities like the defense and spying budget which is half of all money
spent in the United States budget…………violence create a means
to spend money whereas peace does not…….even the drive for profits/money
drives the moral document of the United States budget………….
mental illness is perhaps the only possible response to being deemed
to having no value because you don’t create wealth or have an economic
value…………… we can see how mental illness is one response to being deemed
to having no value… another response is an increase in the taking of drugs,
booze, finding experiences to derive value from……… the increase in opioids
didn’t happen in a vacuum or a void… it happened because people feel, correctly,
that they have no value in our society or culture and so taking opioids is on
response to discovering you have no value in the modern world and no voice
or any means to express yourself to find validation in the modern world………
human behavior is driving in part, by the need to express oneself and
to find validation for oneself…………… we no longer have that and so
we struggle to find some response to that need… much of the modern world
troubles comes this this need to express ourselves and our need for validation…
does this drive you?
Kropotkin