Only in America Could Misery Be Turned Into a Commodity

By Joe Bageant, JoeBageant.com. Posted February 11, 2009.

Obviously, I'm no psychiatrist and am sure to get plenty of e-mail offering certain proof of that, plus proof that I am a paranoid nutcase with authority problems (I'll gladly admit to the latter), though in more polite professional jargon. To which I say less politely, "Fuck 'em all!" I see what I see.

And what I see, based upon my own experience and watching that of others, is that alienation and the pain of utter aloneness is in the rootstock of nearly all psychic malady, excepting the clearly organic. If when we look around us in the world, we do not see ourselves in society, nor does society see itself in us, we eventually come to feel the sustained, unutterable pain of aloneness. This would seem the appropriate response for a member of our highly social species of flesh and does not necessarily deem us ill, but often rather more human.

Unfortunately, Americans get laughed off the map for being overly human these days, dubbed emotional wimps, part of the Kumbaya crowd, unrealistic utopians … and if you are sincerely human enough, you get your ass kicked by the system. To be so makes us the bane of the super-rational, technological, production-driven society we have come to be.

We got there partly through our weakness, shallow greed and mindless consent, but more so by the orchestrated world machinery benefiting powerful elites, both corporate, governmental and financial (is there a difference?), which have always been among us, although never in such strength.

Many years ago, as a much younger man, I went through a couple of major depressions, the second of which brought me to the brink of suicide. In the first instance, I was somewhat helped, through medication and "talk therapy" by a psychologist who eventually killed himself. They found him in a tree in his back yard with his beeper going off. This is not to disparage the man in any way. Dr. John Farley was a man of good will, good intent and great compassion.

The second time though, I walked out of the abyss by myself. And along the way, I encountered, sought out really, others on the same path. And I saw that together, in open sharing of our personal truths, most, if not all, of us were nowhere near mentally ill. Just sick. Sick even to the point of death in some cases, of our spiritual imprisonment within the Great Machine, but strong enough to refuse under any circumstances to dwell under its spiritual humiliation.

Contrary to what one might think, in the many years since, I've not much thought about those experiences. Just moved on. But in this new and strange era in which we find ourselves, they've returned as subjects of contemplation. And -- judge me as you will -- like many others these days, I smell the breath of Thanos in that machinery of the system unto which we supplicate in our fear, denial or intentional obliviousness.

Still, it is only a system. Systems can be changed. In any case, they inevitably crash entirely of their own entropies. Doubtlessly, ours will take down with it the hardening privatization and institutional control of the human spirit. I won't be around to see it.

But I would be damned pleased to see such a once-noble attempt at elimination of suffering as the American psychological profession rise to the choices before us -- liberation from our collective societal darkness and psychic death within the machine.

Meanwhile, here in Hopkins Village, darkness has come and brought with it good old Eljay, ready to split a bottle of the local bitters on my porch. The night winds are rising and with them comforting assurance that The Machine is not everything ... indeed, not anything by the light of these indifferent stars.

See more stories tagged with: mental health, psychology, psychiatry

Joe Bageant is author of the book, Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War (Random House Crown), about working-class America. A complete archive of his online work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found on his Web site.

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