Friday, February 24, 2023

Citizens of Democracies Suffer From More Mental Illness Than Those In Authoritarian nations - According to Boston Univ. Prof

 


In her striking essay, The West’s Struggle for Mental Health, Lisa Greenfeld, Boston University Political Science & Sociology Professor writes:


The epidemic rates of mental illness, even if taken at the 2007 measurement of incidence among adults aged 18 to 54 as 20%, means that 1 in 5 American adults at any point in time are likely to be irrational. That is, their judgments would be erroneous and subjective, reflecting their psychological condition and not objective reality. If we consider the current rates among college students, or tomorrow’s elite, we might expect judgments about economic, military, political or social matters by 2 out of every 5 American decision makers soon to become unreliable.


This is nothing short of appalling and means we soon may not be able to trust the judgments. as well as long term (and short term) decisions of a large swath of Americans. Surely, if "2 out of 5 American decision makers soon become unreliable".  What gives?  What is the agent or source of this crackup?   


In Prof. Greenfeld's take, such mental dislocation is a primary feature of liberal democracies in which equality and personal determination and choice are highly valued.  By contrast, such problems seldom arise in authoritarian countries because personal choice is circumscribed.  As she writes:


"The more a society is dedicated to the value of equality and the more choices it offers for individual self-determination, the higher its rates of functional mental illness. These rates increase in parallel with the increase in the available occupational, geographical, religious, gender and lifestyle- related choices."


Adding:


"Equality inevitably makes self-definition a matter of one’s own choice, and the formation of personal identity— necessary for mental health—becomes personal responsibility, a burden some people can’t shoulder. A relatively high rate of functional mental illness, expressing itself centrally in dissatisfaction with self and, therefore, social maladjustment, thus must be expected in democracies."


But is this necessarily so or is it a psycho-babble copout?  Even if by accident one WSJ op-ed contributor( Vivek Ramaswamy)  may have hit on the core source of the issue (Feb. 22, p. A15):


"America is in the midst of a national identity crisis. We hunger for purpose at a moment when faith, patriotism and hard work are on the decline. We embrace secular religions like climatism, Covidism and gender ideology to satisfy our need for meaning, yet we can’t answer what it means to be an American."


But just as effectively trashes his point in the next line:


"The Republican Party’s top priority should be to fill this void with an inspiring national identity that dilutes the woke agenda to irrelevance."


No, No and NO!  That is exactly the wrong approach because we know the GOP is already compromised as a totally irrational cult of paper patriots and actual traitors, election deniers - who are as far from solving our real national problems as Earth is distant from Pluto.   The solution isn't to flee from wokeness but to embrace and enhance it in the tradition author Charles Reich first argued in his book, The Greening of America.  

Reich envisioned the path past false consciousness to entail evolution  through three stages he called "Consciousness I,  Consciousness II, and Consciousness III".  

Consciousness I identified with the nation’s early self-reliance;

Consciousness II  associated with the conformism of the New Deal era; and Consciousness III marked an unshackling from the stifling moral constraints of the 1950s, focusing on spiritual fulfillment. In today's context that fulfillment - independent of religious affiliation- would have recognized Trump's total lack of any moral compass and hence his unfitness as a leader. Certainly not one to be kowtowed to as most of the GOP has done.  (Witness Kevin McCarthy’s revisionism in certain January 6th insurrection videos then making them available to the most shameless liar on the planet – next to Trump: Tucker Carlson.  Then pundits wonder why so many Americans turn to opioids and other drugs to escape finding their authentic selves.

Enter now Charles Reich and his description (op. cit, p. 392) of the unaware or 'unwoke' in the 1960s, which matches the millions in the same boat today under the throes of Trumpism and GOP- FOXite propaganda, lies:  

"He is unable to understand his society, unable to vote in a responsible way, unable to communicate with his own children or to understand their culture. He is allowed to become human wreckage because his mind stopped growing while all the elements around him moved ahead."   

Should this forlorn unwoke citizen be allowed to just flounder and fiddle through his life, misfiring on all cylinders-   never enhancing or improving his lot, or his nation's?  Worse, deforming and defiling the remaining democratic edifice for those citizens who are woke,  via Thomas Jefferson's immortal words in his 'Notes on Virginia'?:

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. AND TO RENDER THEM SAFE, THEIR MINDS MUST BE IMPROVED."

I submit here we have the core answer - and inherent solution - to the tragic level of mental degeneration in the U.S.  That is, minds-brains have been left to flounder amidst the flotsam and jetsam of a consumer culture in which authentic identity is verboten.  Because of this, and the over choice paradox of the freedom available - too many seek refuge in devices (cell phones), diversions and drugs- unable to face being the authors of their own choices. For Reich, the mandate for his consciousness pursuit was always "know thyself".   

But Alan Watts, in his book, 'On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are',  is also on Reich's wavelength as he encapsulates this issue in his Preface:

"We are therefore in urgent need of a sense of our own existence which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes our feeling of alienation from the universe."   

But the central problem is too many in the U.S. are indeed alienated from the universe and grope at any semblance of what their existence is about.  It is this alienation, leading to absence of self-awareness, that has led to the flight from reality in drugs and devices as well as the responsibility for our own decisions. The latter comprising the central plank of Lisa Greenfeld's thesis for the eruption of so much mental illness in the world's democracies - and particularly the U.S.

What Alan Watts would argue is probably in line with Reich: 

 Being 'woke' is a good thing. It means being alert and alive to life in all its diversity and to acknowledge one's own self on the stage of life. To the extent this is done one embodies the mindfulness Thomas Jefferson wrote about and which is the prerequisite for making authentic choices. Those choices, made with self-awareness are what lead to actual freedom, as opposed to imitations based on consumption.

Thus, the "dilution of the 'woke agenda' proposed by the WSJ writer is no real solution. Rather what is needed is a repurposing of that effort toward the mind- healing wholeness proposed by Charles Reich and Alan Watts.  The latter's words best sum that concept up - linking Wholeness, and Wokeness:

"Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. "

Failure to appreciate this leads to the sense of separation and isolation that accompanies depression and other mental illness- as well as the futile pursuit of false identity.   The result is "we have no common sense, no way of making sense of the world in which we are agreed in common. It's just my opinion against yours and therefore the most aggressive and violent propagandist makes the decisions."

The latter highlighted segment simply is that of the authoritarian, "where such problems as equality, personal determination and choice seldom arise."  Nowhere more vividly portrayed than in the following scene from the film '1984' where 'Big Brother' Interrogator O'Brien demands Winston disavow his friend - else deal with face-eating rats.

1984 (11/11) Movie CLIP - O'Brien Tortures Winston (1984) HD - YouTube

This ensued after Winston earlier had asked O'Brien why he must bend his will totally to Big Brother and was informed that the "future of humanity" was a boot stomping on a human face - to exert total control.  Such is what the end of a 'Woke' impetus might mean in any remaining free society - or at least those which allow greater self-determination than authoritarian ones.

To quote journalist Clarence Page:  

"I've never understood why so many attack being 'woke'. What? Would you rather go through life asleep?"


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