End the stigma. End the persecution. End the long decades of rotting lives at the bottom being forgotten and ignored. But whatever you do, don't point out how mental health has been adversely affected by the modern world, because that's where we make our profits. Let's not stigmatize the status-obsessesed, the oversharers, the internet addicts, sociopaths, borderline sociopaths, the narcissists, the identity fetishists... in short let's just change the perception by stating that it's not the ill person's fault they're ill, and give them a modicum of respect, and continue on our deranged way. Some day we'll all be mentally ill, if we aren't already.
So let's have a mental health awareness month, a couple corporate-backed mental health awareness movements every year, some nice infographics, some nice ads, some good progressive and compassionate copy. Let's take some real steps, let's end the crisis before it gets worse, or at least make a pretty big deal about acknowledging it. Just let's not pry into where it's coming from, or why more people than ever are getting ill. Keep condemning the suicides and the silence. Don't look over there at the causes: that way lies madness.
Poverty, mental illness, illiteracy, substance addiction, lifestyle addiction, non-normative sexuality (itself a freaky frontier that's easy to support especially if you want nothing to do with it but want to appear a progressive and compassionate person), and megatons of other stuff. It's no longer anybody's fault. Those who declare it a function of individual responsibility, as well as those who declare it a function of societal responsibility, are entrenched in ideology. The truth is far simpler than anyone wants to acknowledge: they're all Bad Things. Mental illness is just a Bad Thing, that needs Attention, and requires Awareness. The problem is that mental illness not photogenic. It doesn't respond well to attention. It's really, really ugly and it's got deep roots and deeper pockets.
Health in general in decline. Increased incidences of diseases of affluence, first world problems like anxiety, a weakening breed finding new ways to pity itself. Dementia rears its ugly head. Cancer from years of worry-free high-living catching up to us. The natural, polluted world with its natural conclusions. Let's keep consuming so the economy doesn't falter. Let's not ask questions. Let's never wake up from our nightmare as it gets darker and darker.
People are less mindful than ever. Overconnected to everything via the internet. Bombarded with images of opulence and excess that they will never know, for which they are programmed to have an insatiable lust. Lost in meaninglessness, with false meaningfulness leading them astray. Conditioned to worship at the altar of Mammon. Real vs. VR. Terrorism vs War. Inequality is Solved. Internet sickness. Quality of Life. 12 Steps to a Better You. Fired by Text Message. 10 Cute Cats That Will Cure Your Blues. The Babylon System is winning, the world is changing, nobody seems to give a shit. Money rules everything, people with money call the shots, and most people believe their half-truths. Meanwhile a million unchecked distractions clamor for everyone's attention, and the individual (despite the hype of optimists) has never felt so insignificant in a world of Social Networks, Big Ideas, and Batshit Maniacs. There's no fucking respect, I'll tell ya.
In my opinion it's no mystery why people are getting all fucked up and sick. They can't police their own thoughts, they can't control their government and corporate sanctioned addictions to legal substances and activities, they can't escape without losing their future. People are generally more separated by technology than they are brought together by it. A whole generation is living a shitty, loveless, poor existence wrought by their elders and blamed on them – and I'm sure they'll turn out fine and well-adjusted despite this, but they take a sickening amount of shit from a world so unfair it's parodic. Suicides everywhere... a sinking quality of life, urban hellscapes, the decline of the natural world and a bunch of insane technofucks claiming we should divorce ourselves further from our roots, as if our current divergence isn't at least partly at fault for the insane clusterfuck we've wandered into. Jargon rules the day, but it never saved one life.
And the isolation. Alone in a sea of identity, tired of the cult of identity, feeling like nobody and nothing and stumbling through a life ruled by the pleasures of others and the whims of the greedy, powerful, and detached. Faces are masks, genuine humanity is in decline and retreating to the quiet places. Hope is dying along with mental healthiness. There is nobody to talk to, but everyone wants to speak out about how it isn't shameful to be mentally ill. Of course not, but the cure isn't in reinforcing the status quo, just like how all the cures to all of what ails us as a species are not in keeping things comfortably similar to 'how it is'. We don't want to look into what's harming us, like the obstinate addicts we are. Maybe things seem worse than they are, maybe I'm a shitty blogger and an alarmist, but things're bad enough and breeding vast populations of stunted narcissistic sociopaths incapable of human emotion or connection – populations in all age groups, not just the young tech-savvy millenials who already have tons of opprobrium piled onto them coupled with an increasingly grim outlook.
The world is increasingly soulless and irreal. Appearances have replaced qualities. Abandon all hope, because nobody gives a shit anymore. The pressure to succeed can only be met by dishonesty and combativeness, the competition is severe, the world is at the edge. Don't ask any questions. Don't step out of line. Don't live - exist. Just repost the memes, make those donations happen, and keep ignoring the people you know who are sinking, the people you pass on the street who are already sunk... keep your eyes on the newsfeed. Let the internet do the good works for you. This is the least self-aware era and it needs to be ripped violently in half by a comprehensive, blood-thirsty, no-prisoners satire before we destroy everything of value and premise our future on misery, ignorance, and disgust. The time to wake up is fast approaching, and a world of comatose automatons will greet it with indifference.
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