James wrote:
And generally with a kind of moral or aesthetic - this is better than what did not thrive.
If you thrive, say, in a corporate environment - pretend that things are good wiht you and your are thriving, compete always at root with others, kowtow to power figures, overwork and so on - than you are a better organism. If you thrive in modern society - which it seems to me includes high tolerance for shallow, meaningless stress - commuting, flood of information, distraction, lack of creativity, boredom, rigidity…- than you are more fit. The presumption is this society is the environment (and implicitly normal and given) and so we can judge the merit of organisms (individual citizens) by how well they thrive.
But if you actually look at the individuals, you will find that yes, sure, many who do not do well are fairly uninteresting or damaged organisms, but also that some of the most interesting, complicated, deep, creative individuals do not thrive in THAT PARTICULAR agar agar.
The society itself is not evaluated in terms of its overall health. It is taken as something like the amount of sunlight that strikes the earth in the various seasons, when in fact it is a highly cultured, particular, odd and potentially anti-life milieu. Long term effects - like dumbing down, extinction, elimination of culture with depth, punishment of creativity and the results of doing that long term, the creation of a simpler, more controllable species in general, the cattlelization of humans - are ignored.
The way the psychiatrists and pharma interact with citizens is one example, but there are many others. Sure, some people who are damaged may do better - in compromised form - through their model. But anyone with an ounce of real life in their bodies is suddenly diagnosible. IE viewed as damaged.