Collapse Psychosis - Carolyn Baker

[hatrack]

EDIT

Citizens of empire are taught that the total abdication of inner life on behalf of decades of servitude to the needs of the external hierarchical machine is not only normal and natural, but their fundamental duty as human beings. In other words, traversing any other path than this one is synonymous with "failure", "ingratitude", "slothfulness", even "treason." Nowhere is this more exquisitely depicted, in my opinion, than in the recent film "Revolutionary Road" by actors Kate Winslet and Leonardo De Caprio. Moreover, citizens are constantly rewarded for refusing to question these assumptions. To question would be to demonstrate disturbing symptoms of adulthood. Empire needs infantile servility in order to perpetuate itself indefinitely.

The psyches, then, of empire's citizens are ill-equipped to deal with variation from the system's proscribed roles or functions. Empire, like a "good" parent, gives one everything one "needs" in return for production-until it doesn't, and when it doesn't, the citizen has no recourse emotionally because he/she has lived in psychological symbiosis with empire since birth. Does this sound like the relationship between an abuse victim and the abuser? "I've been used!", cries the abused, having believed that to keep quiet and play by the rules would be better than breaking silence. But we have only to ask the currently unemployed, homeless, foreclosed upon, and bankrupt how well credit scores and paying their bills on time served them.

So now it becomes clearer to us what is happening in the psyches of millions of individuals who are losing their roles in the imperial system-and in the psyches of those who are not. The entire culture is under unprecedented stress, except perhaps for those old enough to have lived through the Great Depression. On some level, many of them "grew up" and stopped being infants during their ordeal. The 1930s in America was an enormous initiation which they moved through and became wiser and more authentically adult for having done so. This is not to say that every person now alive who lived through the Great Depression is a paragon of wizened maturity, but rather to notice that their survival of it has informed their behavior and attitudes since and actually equipped many of them to face the current crisis more skillfully than younger generations.

As for those in the present moment who have jobs, homes, and healthcare, they realize on some level how precarious their position is. They have these things now, but it's only a matter of time until they may not. And consciously or unconsciously, this is creating gargantuan levels of stress among "more fortunate" Americans.

EDIT

http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/1056/1/

[Merlot]

1. Ahhh, the stress of worrying about loosing things...jobs, homes, health care

Is it more stressful for "more fortunate" Americans to worry about loosing what they have, or more stressful for people who have been living without heath care, a steady job, or a hom of their own?

hmmmmm. tough call.

[HillbillyBob]

3. Have you ever been homeless, jobless, etc?

I have been there several times, one just a few years ago.
Where to turn, how to keep the family together.
I think it is extremely stressful for either case once you realise how precarious our modern lives are.
In 2002 my partner got laid off, outsourced twice, we went through a very bad time, we have picked up the pieces made sure any bills left over from then eventually were all paid and we patched up credit enough to buy (and the VA) place in the country with enough room for displaced relatives at need and land enough to grow just about any and all of our own veggies.
It was a really low ball price because the previous owners had divorced then rented it out, then walked away from it. It had been vacant for almost 3 years. We are learning to can, this summer we will learn to do dehydrating to preserve food.
We might all do well to plant stuff to eat even if in some pots on the window sill.
We did what we could to not have to do a repeat of 2002 and 2003.
We are pretty calm now, I guess knowing you have done what you can and cannot change the world, just how you react to it. I would be lying if I said I was not very anxious over the whole economic mess, I fear it will get much worse before it gets better.

[BeFree]

2. Thought....

"You are only as good as your last payment"

Meaning that if you don't make the next one, you're done for. You're trash.
This is what we have become, we are only as good as our last payment made.

[Delphinus]

4. Sad, isn't it?

I really don't think that's what life is supposed to be about.

[XemaSab]

5. She would enjoy Lakoff

She's talking about a strict father model, where we are all the children.

[wuvuj]

6. It's never too late to learn the truth....

....or is it just a fantasy? Maybe it's all in your head.