Are we living in a sick society?
Where normal people are the sickest, and sick people are the healthiest
Do you ever feel like there’s just something all wrong with how we are living today (aside from coronavirus and all that’s brought)?
I often feel like at an unconscious level something is slipping away (our humanity?).
Sometimes, perhaps, you might direct this at yourself and take this an indication that something is wrong with you.
“Why can’t I just pull it together and find my groove,” you may think.
Though, I think it’s just the opposite and is more along the lines of what Krishamurti, the esteemed Indian philosopher, meant when he said:
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Sick? you may ask.
Yes, SPIRITUALLY sick.
The German social psychologist, Erich Fromm, author of some brilliant books like Escape from Freedom, The Art of Loving, and The Art of Being, talks about this and how the various forms of negative symptoms like depression, anxiety, and spiritual malaise (all abundant today) are signals, and like pain, they’re a manifestation that something is wrong at a deeper level. Furthermore he hones in on this in The Art of Being when he says:
“A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet “for sale”, who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence — briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing — cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his “normal” contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society.
Don’t get me wrong, living in America in many ways is EXTRAORDINARY, it’s undoubtedly one of the best times to be alive. Just looking at how powerful the phones we all carry around in our pockets and which contain all of human history ready to be easily searched and brought up in seconds is mind boggling. One only needs to consult the work of Stephen Pinker to go further down that rabbit hole. And I don’t think he’s wrong.
Yet, at the same time, underneath lies a deep rooted dysfunction and which reminds me of what the psychedelic folk hero, Terrence McKenna, once said:
“Well, what’s wrong with the operating system we have, consumer capitalism 5.0 or whatever it is…well…it’s dumb, it’s retro, it’s very non competitive, it’s messy, it wastes the environment, it wastes human resources, it’s inefficient, it runs on stereotypes, it runs on a low sampling rate, which is what creates stereotypes. Low sample rates make everybody appear alike when the glory is in everyones differences. And the current operating system is flawed. It actually has bugs in it that generates contradictions. Contradictions such as we’re cutting the earth from beneath our own feet, we’re poisoning the atmosphere we breath. This is not intelligent behavior. This is a culture with a bug in its operating system that’s making it produce erratic, dysfunctional, malfunctional behavior.”
I also heard it expressed a different way in a video the other day by Elliot Hulse, “everything is so fake, there’s nothing worth living for, nothing worth dying for…we’re living in a zoo…what happens when an animal lives in a zoo, he gets accustomed to this fake world…something just eats at him in the inside, something doesn’t feel right, something doesn’t seem right about this… and that’s where some of us end up.”
Is much of the “it’s the best time to be alive” reasoning mere window dressing?
I just completed reading Herman Hesse’s book Demian, an excellent coming of age story of a wayward soul’s journey toward self realization, and in it he writes, there is something at the core of us that “knows all and wills all,” and is trying to lead us to our truest self and grow our will forward so that we can live out our unique destiny. I think we all need to trust in what our bodies are whispering to us and tune into into our hearts to know the answer.
If you are dealing with any of these negative symptoms like depression, anxiety, or spiritual malaise, it may indicate that you are still fighting to realize what’s TRUE. To feel alive. And not so distracted with the abundant trivialities.
I recall how Chuck Palahniuk so poignantly expressed it in Fight Club:
“You have a class of young strong men and women, and they want to give their lives to something. Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don’t need. Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don’t really need.We don’t have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against our culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.”
As Victor Frankl said it in Man’s Search for Meaning, “enough to live by but nothing to live for.”
Today’s society
When it comes to the society we’ve got today, Fromm writes:
“In capitalism economic activity, success, material gains, become ends in themselves. It becomes man’s fate to contribute to the growth of the economic system, to amass capital, not for purposes of his own happiness or salvation, but as an end in itself. Man became a cog in the vast economic machine — an important one if he had much capital, an insignificant one if he had none — but always a cog to serve a purpose outside of himself.”
Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom
He instead believed in a system in which the person and his wellness and fulfillment is primary and the end for which all economic activity and technology exist. This is opposite to the primacy of profit that serves as the operating system today. Fromm encapsulated this idea by talking about the difference between the modes of HAVING versus BEING.
“Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.” Erich Fromm
Spiritual development is something we lack in western modern culture, especially America, where consumerism reigns supreme.
Alexandr Solzenhitsyn cautioned the western world about this and it’s worship of comfort and materialism.
He pointed out that “men have forgotten God,” which draws on what Nietzsche said in the late nineteenth century:
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
Solzehitsyn goes on to say:
“All attempts to find a way out of the plight of today’s world are fruitless unless we redirect our consciousness, in repentance, to the Creator of all: without this, no exit will be illumined and we shall seek it in vain. The resources we have set aside for ourselves are too impoverished for the task. We must first recognize the horror perpetrated not by some outside force, not by class or national enemies, but within each of us individually and within every society. This is especially true of a free and highly developed society, for here in particular we have surely brought everything upon ourselves, of our own free will. We ourselves, in our daily unthinking selfishness, are pulling tight that noose.”
I don’t say this because I’m so religious but I say it to show that what we’re lacking in western culture is a transcendent ethos that will save our souls from the corporate capitalism, secular individualism, and a worship of materialism that is gradually eroding them.
Diseases of Despair
We can see indicators of this deep spiritual sickness pervading western cultures — increased suicide, depression, anxiety, overdose, obesity, financial despair, chronic disease, and stress abound.
Author and historian Chris Hedges, sees all these as signals of a decaying American empire, which he argues in his latest book, America: The Farewell Tour. According to Hedges, at the heart of our neurosis is corporate capitalism, and its perversion of our democratic systems and the hollowing out of the American economy in the name of the primacy of profit.
In his book, he brings us to the heart of deindustrialized cities like Scranton, which have been decimated and left barren, with little hope or opportunity for its people to live the dignified lives they once did when there were good paying industry jobs and labor unions watching out for their best interests.
In one of Hedges recent talks with Dr. Cornell West, West remarked, “we have an empire in profound spiritual decay, and wrestling with moral decrepitude, with the rule of big money, the rule of big military, a predatory capitalist society that is commodifying EVERYTHING, so people having very little sense of who they are or sources of meaning in their lives.”
Furthermore, we are living in this commercial culture which orchestrates alienation, loneliness, and a sense of inadequacy. Whether it’s in the newspapers, ads, magazines, TV, or social media, the undercurrent that is blasting us in the face day in and day out is you’re not good enough, buy this and you will be happy. It keeps us servile and constantly chasing things outside ourselves.
This often leads to what author and psychologist, Tara Brach, calls “a trance of unworthiness.”
Social media has poured fuel onto the fire by creating a culture of the self. Facebook and Instagram revolve around self presentation and posturing. It has nothing to do with the truth, and partly why many of the early creators, like Jaron Lanier, are telling us why we should delete our social media accounts. He adds we are constantly being watched so that the algorithms can use that data to get better and better at knowing us. What happens is they end up knowing us so well that they effectively hijack our will. (If you haven’t seen it already, The Social Dilemma, was a stark and alarming portrayal what is going on behind the scenes). On this point, author and historian, Yuval Noah Harari, has said the current times mark the first time in human history when there’s a “race to know yourself,” and thus, underscoring how critical it is to be self aware today.
The dark undercurrents of this society are leading us toward becoming hollow men and women, and as Neil Postman writes in the forward to Amusing Ourselves to Death, “ in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”
This is the spiritual sickness that is underway.
Closing
Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance, writes:
“DH Lawrence described our western culture as being like a great uprooted tree with its roots in the air. ‘We are persishing for lack of fulfillment of our greater needs,’ he wrote, ‘we are cut off from the great sources of our inward nourishment and renewal.’ We come alive as we rediscover the truth of our goodness and our natural connectedness to all of life. Our “greater needs” are met in relating lovingly with each other, relating with full presence to each moment, relating to the beauty and pain that is within around us. As Lawrence said, ‘we must plant her selves again in the universe.’ ”
If you don’t feel okay with living today it’s likely for good reason and it’s your bodies way of telling you that something is out of alignment and not conducive to the fulfillment of your soul and what it means to be human.
This, therefore, demands that we be extra vigilant how we live today and be intentional with what we allow in our world.
This is why I have embraced the whole idea of minimalism and have found it helpful. It’s become increasingly more important to know what to ignore and cut out. For me, I don’t buy much, besides books and good quality food. Instead, I live below my means, save, and invest (in bitcoin). I also don’t participate on social media or watch the news but instead consume content that I find aligned with my interests and where I want to go. Good inputs. I focus on what I can control, work on putting my own house in order, and be there for those handful that are most close to me.
Many of us are suffering in own unique ways. If we can find some way to embrace our sufferings and say yes, it can help to start shifting our internal relationship with it. Let it know that it belongs and that it’s okay. We need to understand and put a face to it. We also need to put our suffering in the right context and find a higher meaning to it. An excellent book to read if you want to explore this further is Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, where he had to find somehow find a higher meaning to the senseless horror in the concentration camps.
We also need to be grateful and appreciate all that we do have today. Sure there are the realities of what we discussed, but I don’t want to be all bleak and ignore how amazing it is to be alive at this current time in history. Both are true.
As we know through the Golden Age Fallacy, it’s all too easy to romanticize the past sometimes. Instead find your footing today and realize what is true for you today and create your own Garden of Eden in the way that you live. Leave all that isn’t conducive to your own soul growth aside and take advantage of all that feels right, and is good and can help propel you forward. You are the creator and are more powerful than you think.
Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” What’s your why?
If these ideas land with you in some way, I would love to hear any thoughts you might like to share. Thank you for reading.
