Normalcy:\r\nThe Most Common Mental Illness\r\nAuthor: Not\r\nNormal\r\n<\/p>
Every year, mental illness costs society untold billions of dollars in lost\r\nearnings. The many among us suffering from illness such as depression,\r\nmanic-depression, schizophrenia and other ailments miss days at work,\r\noccasionally suffer periods of non-productivity and have an associated overhead\r\nin terms of medical insurance costs. Capitalist society would be far more\r\nproductive if these illness could be better managed, turning those with less\r\nthan constant productive output into good worker bees, reliable and\r\nobedient. To this end pharmaceutical firms have been developing a wide\r\nrange of drugs designed to moderate \"mood swings\", hyper-activity and\r\nflights from \"reality.\"<\/p>\r\n
However, there is a much more common mental illness that costs society\r\ntrillions of dollars in the form of unnecessary wars, corrupt governments,\r\nunethical business practices, oppressive school systems, over-burdened prison\r\nsystems and irrationally large and brutal police forces. In addition to\r\nthese wasted trillions of dollars, this other mental illness is behind the\r\nmurder of millions of human beings. Indeed, the triumph of normalcy in\r\nterms of its destructive power were manifested in Germany's Third Reich where\r\nmillions of innocent people were murdered because of their beliefs or ethnicity\r\nand millions more were murdered in unnecessary combat and savage warfare. \r\nThis mental illness is commonly referred to as \"normalcy.\"<\/p>\r\n
Normalcy too has its pharmaceutical industry, pumping out mood controlling\r\nand behavior modifying chemicals known as alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. \r\nSince normal people often cannot manage the stress of everyday life, they are\r\nencouraged to suppress introspection and logical analysis of their plight\r\nthrough drunkenness during their free time. Since normal people often\r\ncannot meet the productive demands of their employers, they are usually provided\r\nwith free caffeine injection systems while at work. Drugged with\r\nstimulants during the day and drugged with depressants at night, they manage to\r\nget to work regularly and keep up their level of productivity while suspending\r\ntheir creative and intellectual impulses outside of work. So tired and\r\nexpended are they, upon release from work, that they cannot fathom the existence\r\nof individuals who expend creative energy outside of the \"productive\r\nenvironment.\" This failure to relate to the natural human state often\r\nleads them to delusional interpretations of events. For example, the\r\nperson suffering from \"normalcy\", upon seeing a protester holding a\r\nsign on a Saturday afternoon will often blurt out, \"Get a job\",\r\ndespite the fact that it is a Saturday and the target of their imperative is on\r\nhis day off. This absurd delusion about protesters is one of the\r\nmanifestations of the normalcy illness and it stems directly from the horrible\r\ncondition of \"what it is like to be\" a normal person. After all,\r\nsince the protester is not drunk or on his way to a party or some other form of\r\nentertainment it must be because he has not sufficiently abused himself to be\r\nuseful to an employer. He must, therefore, be unemployed. At least\r\nthis is how those handicapped by normalcy think.<\/p>\r\n
I've met a lot of normal people in the course of my life and what I've found\r\nfrightens me. I spend a lot of time discussing ethics with normal\r\npeople. Most normal people intimate to me their belief that in the absence\r\nof government, everyone would run around killing, raping and robbing everyone\r\nelse. When I ask them whether, in the absence of government, they would\r\nrun around killing, raping and robbing everyone else, they tell me they would\r\nnot. This contradiction between what they believe of others (so much so as\r\nto make a universal rule out of it) and what they believe of themselves can only\r\nindicate a sharp break from reality: either they believe they are uniquely\r\ndifferent from everyone else in terms of ethics (an absurdity) or they have\r\nrationalized away their own experience and substituted it with an irrational\r\nbelief for which there is no evidence. After all, how many people have\r\nactually lived in a society without government? Powerful beliefs based on\r\nthe absence of evidence are irrational. Since the believer in government\r\nasserts that government is needed to stop everyone from running around killing,\r\nraping and murdering everyone else, he or she should at least provide proof that\r\nin the absence of government such conditions would arise. Failure to do\r\nthis is insanity.<\/p>\r\n
Watching the deterioration of civil society that we have experienced since\r\nthe \"election\" of George Bush has left me aghast at the horrible\r\ndamage inflicted by normalcy. While our freedoms are clearly diminishing,\r\nnormal people continue to call the United States \"the land of the\r\nfree.\" While the US Government wages unjustified wars of aggression,\r\nmurdering tens of thousands of innocent people, normal people cry out against\r\nunknown terrorists for much smaller crimes. While John Ashcroft and George\r\nBush make a mockery of law and the Constitution, normal people support their war\r\nagainst crime. When the US Government excludes a peaceful artist merely\r\nbecause he is Muslim, normal people buy some absurd story about spelling\r\nmistakes. There is nothing healthy about being normal. Indeed, I am\r\nbeginning to suspect that there is no mental illness more pernicious.<\/p>\r\n
As a child I could not understand how the normal people of German permitted\r\nthe extermination of millions of Jews and legions of others, including Gypsies,\r\ngays, the mentally retarded, communists and anarchists. The documentaries\r\nI watched in which these normal Germans were interviewed included reports of\r\ncolumns of smoke rising from concentration camps and the smell of burned\r\nflesh. Yet, in the same paragraph these normal Germans would deny that\r\nthey knew Hitler was systematically murdering the detainees. In films of\r\nHitler parading through Germany and Austria we see throngs of people smiling,\r\nwaving Nazi flags and greeting their \"leader\" with what can only be\r\ninterpreted as great love and affection. Yet their leader was a mass\r\nmurderer on an unprecedented scale. Since normal people comprise about 90%\r\nof any population, none of the crimes of Hitler could have been carried out\r\nwithout the cooperation, aid and support of normal people. In the light of\r\nwhat I have seen in the rise of George Bush, I now understand what happened in\r\nGermany: normal people are deranged.<\/p>\r\n
In the former Soviet Union those who spoke out against the system were often\r\ndesignated as mentally ill, placed in institutions and treated for their\r\ndeviation from \"normalcy.\" As an American dissident I can attest\r\nthat nearly every dissident movement I have participated in has been dominated\r\nby people who are not normal. Indeed, if you wish to find an organization\r\nwith a higher percentage of non-normal people than the general population, start\r\nwith any dissident political group, whether it be socialist, anarchist, or\r\ngreen. You will find find more depressed individuals in any of these\r\nmovements. Since the dominate political ideology in the former Soviet\r\nUnion was socialism, the Soviets were probably correct, insofar as their\r\ndiagnosis of dissidents as non-normal is concerned. Those who opposed\r\nsocialism in the Soviet Union, more often than not, were probably not\r\nnormal. After all, normal people go along with the powers that be and\r\ncreate for themselves delusions that justify their support for their\r\noppressors. Normal people under capitalism support capitalism. \r\nNormal people under communism support communism. Normal people under\r\nfascism support fascism. All of these systems are possible due to the\r\nactive assistance of the normal.<\/p>\r\n
What, then, is mental illness? Are we correct in using the term\r\n\"mentally ill\" in describing anyone? The gap between reality,\r\nperception and an interpretation of that perception is highly complex and who is\r\nto say that normal people interpret reality more accurately than those we call\r\nmentally ill? In treating people with depression, for example, the goal\r\nseems to be in increase the presence of various chemicals in the brain so as to\r\nbring them up \"to normal.\" If \"normalcy\" is a state\r\ninduced by drugs, just how realistic is normal? Is it possible that\r\nsubmitting to any system of control (i.e. government) requires a certain level\r\nof psychological denial and that this level of denial requires a certain\r\nmisperception of reality best achieved by a certain level of chemical\r\npresence? If a lesser quantity of psychotropic chemicals induces\r\ndepression, is that due to a break from reality or is it due to the fact that\r\nexistence under the current paradigm is so unrewarding and futile that\r\ndepression is an appropriate response to that reality? If you are living\r\nin an unjust world where freedom is denied, murder is sanctioned by the\r\ngovernment and you are locked into exploitive relationships you should be\r\ndepressed. If you are not depressed, you have broken with reality and\r\nbecome one of the many suffering from normalcy! Isn't this possible?<\/p>\r\n
Until will live in the perfect society where each individual is free to live\r\nhis or her life as he or she actually is, then valuing and seeking normalcy is\r\nnothing more than a prescription for maintaining injustice and suffering. \r\nNormalcy is a tool used by oppressors to forward their goals. The belief\r\nthat \"we should get with the program\" is nothing more than a self\r\ndefeating psychological tool designed to forward the goals of those running the\r\nprogram. If you are not running the program, then it is in your own\r\nrational self interest to resist the program, be unproductive and rebel. \r\nNormalcy is the momentum that keeps the meat grinder of humanity turning. \r\nThrow a wrench in it!<\/p>\r\n\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/html","summary":"Just what is mental illness?","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2004\/09\/117211.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}