I wonder why so many of us blame ourselves for depression and anxiety. If you really think about it, the real culprit, the real glaring reason (though it’s hidden in plain sight) is mass society and mass culture. Sociopathic, consumer-driven, maniacally cruel and relentless, zombie-creating, hive mentality, money/capital-obsessed mass society/culture. We go through life trying to fill the enormous hole inside of us that mass society creates…for some, it works, although usually not without the use of high doses of anti-depressants and benzos and other drugs like television (mass media and audio-video methamphetamine), sex, food, material objects that we “have†to have (most of it made by non-white children and adults in sweatshops) and dysfunctional culture (e.g. as my brother-in-law put it, most people can tell you who Kim Kardashian is dating but don’t have a clue what’s going on inside slaughterhouses). Everyone on this site should pat him/herself on the back! I think (and don’t laugh!) that if you are NOT depressed and angry, YOU are the one with problems! You have been intellectually, emotionally and spiritually zombified to the point of complete cluelessness and unfeelingness. If you are rolling around in fake mass culture like a dog in a pile of shit AND you do so with no emotional twinges of any kind, you’ve got problems. THOSE people need help—not us! We FEEL. Even if you don’t know why you’re sad, even if you feel your problems are personal (e.g. you’re fat, ugly, etc.), your perception of the world was shaped by the culture you live in—society/culture defines what fat and ugly are and if you fall short, you’re less worthy of life than the ones who fit inside the box well. YOU are not useless or stupid—your mind, your mass culture-nurtured mind, is telling you you are. I’ve read through this site for a while now, and most of the reasons used to justify suicide attempts sound to me like inability to cope with the master/slave dichotomy of society and all of the dysfunctional people within it who have hurt us.  We’re exhausted, we’re sad, we’re enraged.  We come to this site, many to reach out to others who have NOT lost their empathy and feeling…rarely do we come across people in our everyday lives who really understand and care. Rarely! Most seem to want to just heat up a TV dinner and watch “Dancing with the Stars†after an eight hour slog at a meaningless, repetitive job they hate. Can’t blame them. But they’re burying the pain with drugs: TV, toxic food, etc. I’m sure most of us on this site do that, too, but we also reach out. This site is a community of people reaching out for FEELING. We feel too much, it’s true—an exhausting amount—but at the same time, we feel isolated in our feelings, so they ferment inside of us. I’m not trying to persuade or dissuade anyone from committing suicide—I’m on the verge of it myself—but I would love it if more people realized that their sadness, torment, anger and all the rest of it are not their fault. Society/culture has failed YOU. YOU haven’t failed anyone.
7 comments
This was a great post. Very accurate and agreeable. Great minds think alike, it reminds me of a post I’ve read earlier: http://suicideproject.org/2012/09/my-decision-to-get-off-this-prison-planet/
Thank you! I think it’s important that we all wake up and start pointing the finger where it really needs to be pointed, which isn’t at ourselves.
And GREAT post you linked to–wow. I read it twice and commented. Just excellent!
Thank you. Needed to read that. Xx
I was wondering if I’d ever read a post like this here. It sure does resonate with me, but the jury is out as to whether or not I believe that’s a good thing.
Society may be sick, but the only thing that’s going to cure it is us, one true and selfless loving interaction at a time. The change you hope to find in the world may manifest itself as a response to your own change in attitude / expanded concept of love and responsibility.
“For it’s in giving that we receive,
And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it’s in dying* that we are born to Eternal Life.”
*”Dying” here being more of a metaphor meaning abandoning our sin-fed Pride, regaining our humility, and accepting (or if we’re blessed “enjoying”) our duty to lovingly serve one another, under whatever circumstances we’re given, and making the best of it. It’s rediscovering the beauty of God / the Tao / unconditional love.
WOW, Belial. Some incredible insights there. I think you hit the “cure” for psychotic mass culture on the head, too: change happens with each individual. My mother said this weekend that too often we think of utopia/paradise as a physical place rather than a state of mind/heart and as a personal responsibility. Can you imagine what would happen if each person who looks at this website–each sensitive, feeling person on here (i.e. ALL OF US)–spent even one hour of his/her day helping others (humans, animals or the Earth/environment) instead of dwelling on sadness, hopelessness and self-hatred (all of which are NOT your feelings–they are your brain translating feelings of internal emptiness caused by sick mass culture into something your conscious mind can quantify i.e. depression, anxiety, self-criticisms, etc.)?
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not, but I owe you my thanks anyway. Between your post and something I was reading earlier (A.E. Housman’s poetry) and a few related internet articles, I’ve indulged myself on more than my share of food for thought for today. See what I mean? Gluttony and Sloth! Was it a waste of time? I don’t know…in the end it has brought me back here to post something a little less sanctimonious than my previous post, which might be more welcome. I’m not a religious nut btw, but many of the times and ways I’ve wronged other people weigh heavily on me, and I’m trying my best to learn to deal with it.
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/clarence_darrow/facing_life_fearlessly.html
If you have the time, maybe you’ll enjoy it.
I wasn’t being sarcastic. Indulgence in food for thought is gluttony/sloth I can agree with! Wish there were more of it going on out there. Expanding knowledge is never a waste of time. It’s lack and ignore-ance of knowledge that has brought this world to its bloody knees. Thanks for the link. I meant to look at it last night, but I had household chores I’d been neglecting that needed doing. I bookedmarked the site, though, and will read it within the next few days, I promise! We’ve all wronged someone. I euthanized my eighteen-year-old cat earlier this year, because he was losing his grip (as well as control of his bowels) and because of my anxiety/depression, I was impatient with him in his last months, even at times feeling that I didn’t love him and wanted him to die (he was born outside my window when I was ten years old…he’d been my little buddy forever). I feel I killed him because his care wasn’t “convenient” anymore (even though my logical mind tells me he had arthritis, seizures, incontinence, etc. and was on his way out). So we’ve all got “stuff” we feel guilty about. I suppose we can either stew in our guilt and let it tighten around our necks everyday until we’re eventually strangulated or we can forgive ourselves and live better lives, you know what I mean?