I share in these raw feelings you have expressed. I never consented to existing and especially didn't consent to participating in the systems responsible for unfathomable levels of pain, suffering, and injustice. I experience murderous rage born from tender feelings of compassion and love. Until the time for guillotines comes, I will dance and sing and fuck and cuddle my dogs and drink too much cheap, but delicious Portuguese wine and share the joys of companionship as much as I can while navigating my way through poverty traps, barely dodging homelessness, and staring into the abyss of nihilism that sometimes has me thinking perhaps I'd unhesitatingly push the big red button if it was in front of me, but that's too easy... better to bide my time until the guillotines are rolled out. Like a longed for vacation, I wait.
Thank you for this comment. There are masses of people like us, especially among the younger generations. I have seen it in my work as a teacher. I have to think that this all will soon not be sustainable anymore. At one point, the balance must flip and something give. Why not get it over with already?
I do see people who think like us growing in numbers and becoming more vocal than has been seen in perhaps a century or more. It's encouraging. But still so many others, including on this platform as you have seen, who have a ways to go yet to really see that capitalism cannot be reformed and that until everyone is liberated, no one is truly liberated.
agreed, JD. i may choose different activities, like hiding in the forest or sitting in the icy river or playing with leaves and flowers and herbs all day, but we have the same idea...
Ice cream. i will not hold back. But only the good stuff that is not full of antifreeze! (laughing emoji here )
I gave up for a while - just accepted hedonism, nihilism, apathy - accepted being an addict, fat, just consuming whatever shit vaguely amused me on Netflix.
I've decided against all that, now. I see finding a way to be healthy and well and to find a way to have enough energy to rage against the machine as a middle finger to capitalism and the neoliberal death-cult. They want people like us to give up, to shut up, to take our sedatives and stare at our shiny screens. Well FUCK them. I'm going to do my best to live a good life, to get fit again, to start bouldering again, to make my corner of the world a marginally better place for those I share it with, to keep my mind sharp and not clouded by my daily tonic of cannabis so that I at least have the energy to tell the system to go fuck itself, to enjoy life as much as possible despite the horror-show everywhere around us.
Is it going to make a difference to the outcome (collapse)? Is capitalism going to give a single solitary shit about whatever I do or create? Very unlikely and not even the point. The point, to me, is to carve out a niche to live life as much as possible according to my values in a world where money IS the only value.
It reminds of the poem "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dlyan Thomas, about raging against death despite its inevitability. It's about who you want to be as a person in the face of the end of history. I find myself in a place of acceptance, but an acceptance that doesn't lead to despondency but to a steely determination to exist as far as posssible on my own terms.
I want to make the most of whatever time we have left, with whatever tools I have. I may be trapped in a gilded cage but I won't let that stop me spreading my wings as far as they will go. I will not succumb.
Craig, i'm all FOR health and staying strong til the end. i too want to make the most of my time; and do what's real to me. People always say the healers "are so needed now" - but nobody wants to pay them for their work either. i'm so tired of lip service and waiting for Godot, and faking enthusiasm when i'm worn out!!!
I gave up on the western notion of success and prestige.
There is no point participating in rigged, non-democratic, non-free system. I just make ends meet while trying to remain unconditionally helpful and loving towards every organism.
Thank you for this, powerfully written. I especially appreciate the part where you write about being a teacher.
One question though: Shouldn't it say: "Just… the wrong ones will die first, and those who would *NOT* deserve it may even survive. Life is unjust like that"?
i've been teetering between 'hold-the-positive-so- i don't-poison-everyone-else" and gave-up-long-ago/
i wish i could feel real hope and happiness any more, or immerse in the soulful joy of deep spiritual practice, but alas, we are all hanging by a thread, as you pint out...
Jesus Christ: for somebody “cheery” and not “raging,” you seem pretty damn discontented. I imagine if you’re raging, that in your case means screaming, banging your head, and frothing at the mouth.
Consider that both you have emotional issues, and, contrary to your exhortations for acceptance, the fountain of content eludes you.
unfair dig. Cheery people can have opinions too, and they would be very sick if they held it all in. At least our author is not ingenuous and two faced! He's actually reaching inside a bunch of us right now for the truth behind our required masques...
This is your judgement call. In a world where might makes right, non-healthy people are those who make others neurotic, and not pointlessly so. See intergenerational trauma and PTSD. Have you perhaps read The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker? If not, I highly recommend it, but read it in reverse. My take on it is that only the energy surplus of fossil fuels has enabled people to somewhat progress out of barbarism and primitivism of the world before the 19th century because they finally didn't have to tear each other apart for every little thing. Do you know that even the way PTSD manifests itself has changed since the World War I? Veterans went from conversion disorder (you can easily find videos on YouTube) to more overt forms of mental illness and addiction because it became slightly more socially acceptable to show emotions; before they just stuffed them all down, hard. Just saying.
It's a false alternative to suggest you're either making other people neurotic, or you're neurotic yourself. Intergenerational trauma and PTSD seem like damn good examples of pointless neurosis, meaning it would be better to adjust better to the causes that would cause such illnesses, (if you can't avoid the causes). I'm not sure what your point is regarding the change in PTSD; it seems to support emotional repression, which is somewhat related Antonio is (angrily) telling people not to rage, the ridiculousness of such exhortation is the basis of my flippancy.
I never said that that there is a dichotomy of either being neurotic or making other people neurotic, I said that neuroticism (in a colloquial sense) may be acquired due to external factors exceeding the individual's ability to cope. The existence of PTSD is a proof that some external factors are, in fact, overwhelming enough to break most people. If you think you have much choice about your reactions to extreme circumstances, I must unfortunately inform you you're wrong. Much of your resilience is determined by your version of the 5-HTT serotonin transporter (https://psycheducation.org/blog/chapter-1-why-are-some-people-so-affected-by-stress/) and some higher-level physiological mechanisms, such as the way memories are formed (https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748). You know who scores low on neuroticism in the five-factor model of personality? Psychopaths. Are they well-adjusted? Maybe, depends on how you look at it. Would a society made only of psychopaths work well? Probably not.
IMHO it is justified to criticize the society that produces circumstances where people either can't function without maladaptive coping mechanisms or they develop mental health issues. With this I don't want to say were powerless victims of circumstances, but it's an uphill battle, especially in a system that has such a momentum that nothing but higher-order factors can bring it down (https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691183251/the-great-leveler).
I used the change in the PTSD symptoms as an example to illustrate that just because someone does not display overt mental distress this doesnt mean they aren't in distress, the distress may just be covered up in physical symptoms that are culturally more acceptable (and other defence mechanisms I didn't mention, such as dissociation, projection, reaction formation etc). So, a seemingly well-adjusted person may actually be very unhealthy. The cultural shifts in the last century or so enabled the society to express distress more openly, which, at a surface level, may seem as though people devolved into feeble little snowflakes. The reality is the society has never been healthy, and my opinion is that it had been even more unhealthy in the past, but people just stuffed the dysfunction down better and cruelty was more tolerated. In your words, they adjusted very well to the causes that would cause "neurosis" in modern people, but did they really? Antonio just says out loud what other people express by actions (such as by addiction, which he mentions) or repress. These are just two sides of the same coin.
Then what was relevance to point out that it's non-healthy people that make other people neurotic, which, presumably, was a response to my expressing my preference to being less neurotic over healthy using the standards of the quote you posted. What is the relevance of your indication of a means by which neuroticism may be acquired? If the intended relevance is my statement about avoiding being pointlessly neurotic as applying to Antonio's case, then your indication is not relevant, since it doesn't seem like Antonio would be neurotic either due to intergenerational trauma or PTSD. It's not like I implied all neuroticism is due to voluntary thought patterns, (meaning speaking particularly of those conditions saying nothing about the neuroticism I detected in Antonio). Nothing I said implied that external factors can't be so overwhelming, so what the relevance of pointing this out? It should have been clear from my first comment what I was talking about in Antonio's case. My original point wasn't even that Antonio's neuroticism was somehow avoidable, only that he's actually neurotic, contrary to what his admonitions against raging. My expression of preference for being, by the standards of the quote you posted, less healthy over being "pointlessly neurotic" doesn't even suggest such a choice exists between the two states, or is reasonably voluntary. Nothing I said suggested society shouldn't be criticized, so relevance? Nothing I said implied that not displaying over mental distress implies not being in distress, so relevance? The point of my second message was that if someone were neurotic because of maladjustment to a "sick society," (i.e., the current society), because they were healthy, it's better to be unhealthy, which doesn't require you to cause other people to be neurotic; (again, if you weren't assuming such a consequent as an alternative to being a maladjusted to our "sick society," what was the relevance?) There seems to me to be a equation on your part between being "well adjusted" and merely appearing so, since your response to my expressing a preference of being well adjusted (over health) is to either depreciate the appearance as such of being well adjusted, or to explain that an appearance of being well adjusted isn't equivalent of being actually so. I'm speaking of preferring actually well-adjusted, not merely its appearance. I didn't and wouldn't assume that being well adjusted in a "sick society" is a measure of health, since "well adjusted" and "health" are ambiguous here, only that I would prefer worse health over being pointlessly neurotic, and, in Antonio's case, neurotic not apparently originating from something either like "intergenerational trauma," or "PTSD." I understand your point about neuroticism not being a matter of choice, but I assumed you posted that quote to dispute my first comment, particularly in its respect of suggesting that he tries to correct his neuroticism that is a response to the issues of our "sick society." Regardless to what extent his neuroticism is a matter of choice, or actually caused by the involuntary origins you mentioned, I would still recommend that he consider taking prozac, since, while I'm more familiar with its application for general depression or anxiety, as a mood stabilizer, it could, (seemingly so at least within the confines my knowledge), help with general emotional issues, even those caused by said origins. Neither I nor anything I said assume people have ever been healthier, so relevance? If you're contradicting what I said about emotional repression being supported based on what you said, (which was specifically though not explicitly about people with PTSD), I interpreted your saying that later manifestations of PTSD were more overt implied such later manifestations were worse, which I realize now doesn't actually follow, so I take back what I said about what you said supporting emotional repression. I didn't say they adjusted "very well," only, which I took back in the previous sentence, that what you said suggested emotional repression. Whether negative emotions were expressed or not was irrelevant to my points in my original post, my point beings that not only Antonio's self-description was inconsistent with his apparent emotional state, (as suggested, if unintentionally, by what he wrote), but also for him to consider that he has the opposite of the emotional equanimity he claims to have, and he should consider taking prozac, (implying it might be a means to fix this).
Antonio, I wouldn't say you're depressed; more like a very talented misanthrope and excellent writer . . . but can you tell us whom you want to put under the guillotines you would build? If not names, then what categories?
I share in these raw feelings you have expressed. I never consented to existing and especially didn't consent to participating in the systems responsible for unfathomable levels of pain, suffering, and injustice. I experience murderous rage born from tender feelings of compassion and love. Until the time for guillotines comes, I will dance and sing and fuck and cuddle my dogs and drink too much cheap, but delicious Portuguese wine and share the joys of companionship as much as I can while navigating my way through poverty traps, barely dodging homelessness, and staring into the abyss of nihilism that sometimes has me thinking perhaps I'd unhesitatingly push the big red button if it was in front of me, but that's too easy... better to bide my time until the guillotines are rolled out. Like a longed for vacation, I wait.
Thank you for this comment. There are masses of people like us, especially among the younger generations. I have seen it in my work as a teacher. I have to think that this all will soon not be sustainable anymore. At one point, the balance must flip and something give. Why not get it over with already?
I do see people who think like us growing in numbers and becoming more vocal than has been seen in perhaps a century or more. It's encouraging. But still so many others, including on this platform as you have seen, who have a ways to go yet to really see that capitalism cannot be reformed and that until everyone is liberated, no one is truly liberated.
right on; stop dragging it out. just end it
agreed, JD. i may choose different activities, like hiding in the forest or sitting in the icy river or playing with leaves and flowers and herbs all day, but we have the same idea...
Ice cream. i will not hold back. But only the good stuff that is not full of antifreeze! (laughing emoji here )
I gave up for a while - just accepted hedonism, nihilism, apathy - accepted being an addict, fat, just consuming whatever shit vaguely amused me on Netflix.
I've decided against all that, now. I see finding a way to be healthy and well and to find a way to have enough energy to rage against the machine as a middle finger to capitalism and the neoliberal death-cult. They want people like us to give up, to shut up, to take our sedatives and stare at our shiny screens. Well FUCK them. I'm going to do my best to live a good life, to get fit again, to start bouldering again, to make my corner of the world a marginally better place for those I share it with, to keep my mind sharp and not clouded by my daily tonic of cannabis so that I at least have the energy to tell the system to go fuck itself, to enjoy life as much as possible despite the horror-show everywhere around us.
Is it going to make a difference to the outcome (collapse)? Is capitalism going to give a single solitary shit about whatever I do or create? Very unlikely and not even the point. The point, to me, is to carve out a niche to live life as much as possible according to my values in a world where money IS the only value.
It reminds of the poem "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dlyan Thomas, about raging against death despite its inevitability. It's about who you want to be as a person in the face of the end of history. I find myself in a place of acceptance, but an acceptance that doesn't lead to despondency but to a steely determination to exist as far as posssible on my own terms.
I want to make the most of whatever time we have left, with whatever tools I have. I may be trapped in a gilded cage but I won't let that stop me spreading my wings as far as they will go. I will not succumb.
Craig, i'm all FOR health and staying strong til the end. i too want to make the most of my time; and do what's real to me. People always say the healers "are so needed now" - but nobody wants to pay them for their work either. i'm so tired of lip service and waiting for Godot, and faking enthusiasm when i'm worn out!!!
I gave up on the western notion of success and prestige.
There is no point participating in rigged, non-democratic, non-free system. I just make ends meet while trying to remain unconditionally helpful and loving towards every organism.
that seems like success to me.
Thank you for this, powerfully written. I especially appreciate the part where you write about being a teacher.
One question though: Shouldn't it say: "Just… the wrong ones will die first, and those who would *NOT* deserve it may even survive. Life is unjust like that"?
Thanks! I meant that those who would deserve to, well, die may even survive. But I see why you got confused.
i LOVED this, and yes i so agree!
i've been teetering between 'hold-the-positive-so- i don't-poison-everyone-else" and gave-up-long-ago/
i wish i could feel real hope and happiness any more, or immerse in the soulful joy of deep spiritual practice, but alas, we are all hanging by a thread, as you pint out...
Jesus Christ: for somebody “cheery” and not “raging,” you seem pretty damn discontented. I imagine if you’re raging, that in your case means screaming, banging your head, and frothing at the mouth.
Consider that both you have emotional issues, and, contrary to your exhortations for acceptance, the fountain of content eludes you.
Consider taking Prozac.
unfair dig. Cheery people can have opinions too, and they would be very sick if they held it all in. At least our author is not ingenuous and two faced! He's actually reaching inside a bunch of us right now for the truth behind our required masques...
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. - Jiddu Krishnamurti
I get the quote. It has merit. However, I personally would rather be less healthy in that respect than pointlessly neurotic.
This is your judgement call. In a world where might makes right, non-healthy people are those who make others neurotic, and not pointlessly so. See intergenerational trauma and PTSD. Have you perhaps read The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker? If not, I highly recommend it, but read it in reverse. My take on it is that only the energy surplus of fossil fuels has enabled people to somewhat progress out of barbarism and primitivism of the world before the 19th century because they finally didn't have to tear each other apart for every little thing. Do you know that even the way PTSD manifests itself has changed since the World War I? Veterans went from conversion disorder (you can easily find videos on YouTube) to more overt forms of mental illness and addiction because it became slightly more socially acceptable to show emotions; before they just stuffed them all down, hard. Just saying.
Antonio may present the situation somewhat hyperbolically, but his grasp of the world is not far from the truth. Even powers-that-be have to admit it: https://hdr.undp.org/content/human-development-report-2021-22
Count your blessings for being either privileged or resilient enough to be flippant about those who are not.
excellent comment. you nailed it
It's a false alternative to suggest you're either making other people neurotic, or you're neurotic yourself. Intergenerational trauma and PTSD seem like damn good examples of pointless neurosis, meaning it would be better to adjust better to the causes that would cause such illnesses, (if you can't avoid the causes). I'm not sure what your point is regarding the change in PTSD; it seems to support emotional repression, which is somewhat related Antonio is (angrily) telling people not to rage, the ridiculousness of such exhortation is the basis of my flippancy.
I never said that that there is a dichotomy of either being neurotic or making other people neurotic, I said that neuroticism (in a colloquial sense) may be acquired due to external factors exceeding the individual's ability to cope. The existence of PTSD is a proof that some external factors are, in fact, overwhelming enough to break most people. If you think you have much choice about your reactions to extreme circumstances, I must unfortunately inform you you're wrong. Much of your resilience is determined by your version of the 5-HTT serotonin transporter (https://psycheducation.org/blog/chapter-1-why-are-some-people-so-affected-by-stress/) and some higher-level physiological mechanisms, such as the way memories are formed (https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748). You know who scores low on neuroticism in the five-factor model of personality? Psychopaths. Are they well-adjusted? Maybe, depends on how you look at it. Would a society made only of psychopaths work well? Probably not.
IMHO it is justified to criticize the society that produces circumstances where people either can't function without maladaptive coping mechanisms or they develop mental health issues. With this I don't want to say were powerless victims of circumstances, but it's an uphill battle, especially in a system that has such a momentum that nothing but higher-order factors can bring it down (https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691183251/the-great-leveler).
I used the change in the PTSD symptoms as an example to illustrate that just because someone does not display overt mental distress this doesnt mean they aren't in distress, the distress may just be covered up in physical symptoms that are culturally more acceptable (and other defence mechanisms I didn't mention, such as dissociation, projection, reaction formation etc). So, a seemingly well-adjusted person may actually be very unhealthy. The cultural shifts in the last century or so enabled the society to express distress more openly, which, at a surface level, may seem as though people devolved into feeble little snowflakes. The reality is the society has never been healthy, and my opinion is that it had been even more unhealthy in the past, but people just stuffed the dysfunction down better and cruelty was more tolerated. In your words, they adjusted very well to the causes that would cause "neurosis" in modern people, but did they really? Antonio just says out loud what other people express by actions (such as by addiction, which he mentions) or repress. These are just two sides of the same coin.
Then what was relevance to point out that it's non-healthy people that make other people neurotic, which, presumably, was a response to my expressing my preference to being less neurotic over healthy using the standards of the quote you posted. What is the relevance of your indication of a means by which neuroticism may be acquired? If the intended relevance is my statement about avoiding being pointlessly neurotic as applying to Antonio's case, then your indication is not relevant, since it doesn't seem like Antonio would be neurotic either due to intergenerational trauma or PTSD. It's not like I implied all neuroticism is due to voluntary thought patterns, (meaning speaking particularly of those conditions saying nothing about the neuroticism I detected in Antonio). Nothing I said implied that external factors can't be so overwhelming, so what the relevance of pointing this out? It should have been clear from my first comment what I was talking about in Antonio's case. My original point wasn't even that Antonio's neuroticism was somehow avoidable, only that he's actually neurotic, contrary to what his admonitions against raging. My expression of preference for being, by the standards of the quote you posted, less healthy over being "pointlessly neurotic" doesn't even suggest such a choice exists between the two states, or is reasonably voluntary. Nothing I said suggested society shouldn't be criticized, so relevance? Nothing I said implied that not displaying over mental distress implies not being in distress, so relevance? The point of my second message was that if someone were neurotic because of maladjustment to a "sick society," (i.e., the current society), because they were healthy, it's better to be unhealthy, which doesn't require you to cause other people to be neurotic; (again, if you weren't assuming such a consequent as an alternative to being a maladjusted to our "sick society," what was the relevance?) There seems to me to be a equation on your part between being "well adjusted" and merely appearing so, since your response to my expressing a preference of being well adjusted (over health) is to either depreciate the appearance as such of being well adjusted, or to explain that an appearance of being well adjusted isn't equivalent of being actually so. I'm speaking of preferring actually well-adjusted, not merely its appearance. I didn't and wouldn't assume that being well adjusted in a "sick society" is a measure of health, since "well adjusted" and "health" are ambiguous here, only that I would prefer worse health over being pointlessly neurotic, and, in Antonio's case, neurotic not apparently originating from something either like "intergenerational trauma," or "PTSD." I understand your point about neuroticism not being a matter of choice, but I assumed you posted that quote to dispute my first comment, particularly in its respect of suggesting that he tries to correct his neuroticism that is a response to the issues of our "sick society." Regardless to what extent his neuroticism is a matter of choice, or actually caused by the involuntary origins you mentioned, I would still recommend that he consider taking prozac, since, while I'm more familiar with its application for general depression or anxiety, as a mood stabilizer, it could, (seemingly so at least within the confines my knowledge), help with general emotional issues, even those caused by said origins. Neither I nor anything I said assume people have ever been healthier, so relevance? If you're contradicting what I said about emotional repression being supported based on what you said, (which was specifically though not explicitly about people with PTSD), I interpreted your saying that later manifestations of PTSD were more overt implied such later manifestations were worse, which I realize now doesn't actually follow, so I take back what I said about what you said supporting emotional repression. I didn't say they adjusted "very well," only, which I took back in the previous sentence, that what you said suggested emotional repression. Whether negative emotions were expressed or not was irrelevant to my points in my original post, my point beings that not only Antonio's self-description was inconsistent with his apparent emotional state, (as suggested, if unintentionally, by what he wrote), but also for him to consider that he has the opposite of the emotional equanimity he claims to have, and he should consider taking prozac, (implying it might be a means to fix this).
Antonio, I wouldn't say you're depressed; more like a very talented misanthrope and excellent writer . . . but can you tell us whom you want to put under the guillotines you would build? If not names, then what categories?
Prozac isn’t only for depression.