The Spiritual Problem
Manufacturing Insanity
This probably isn’t something you don't know. Most people living in the USA, and really, most people living in what we think of as Western "Civilization", are messed up in the head. Practically every day some article talks about the Depression/Loneliness/Anxiety Epidemic, and then the article describes the latest drugs, therapies, and coping mechanisms that might help you function, or at least survive, another day on this rock.
It’s interesting that Neurosis is no longer considered a mental health disease according to the psychiatric profession. Maybe they have some good reasons, or maybe it is that anxiety, sadness, depression, anger, irritability, low self-esteem, feelings of inadequacy, insignificance, impotence, and hopelessness are so common that, if they were considered mental illness, then the medical profession would have to acknowledge that almost everyone is mentally ill. Which is unfortunately to a great degree true.
So perhaps this is just the price we pay for civilization then? In return for a much higher standard of living, technology, and health, we must live in a mass society that removes our individuality and reduces us to mere interchangeable, anonymous statistical units and data points? And as a consequence we must cope with impulsive and compulsive irrational acts, fear of other people, avoidance of close relationships, obsessions, dependency and aggression against others. Further, a lack of individual purpose and meaning in our lives affects our ability to adapt to our environment, inhibits our ability to change our bad habits and improve ourselves, and it makes it difficult if not impossible to develop a richer, more complex, and more satisfying personality.
Maybe so, but the consequences, not just to our own mental health, but to humanity, are extremely damaging, and may be fatal. The philosopher Nietzsche predicted 150 years ago that humanity would suffer from the lack of a spiritual life and purpose, and that humans, both good and bad, would voluntarily drink poisons and commit slow suicide, and they would call this Life. Carl Jung posited that the unconscious psyche or soul of the modern human would try to compensate for their perceived lack of power and meaning by a lust for it, including gravitating toward collective ideologies and mass movements. Thus we see why so many are willing to sacrifice their individuality to the tyrannical nation state.
Sure we who have taken the red pill recognize much of this, and we know the state is a large part of the problem. But it all comes back to the individual - if the individual does not grow up and become a fully functioning personality, then no amount of protesting, resistance, revolution, or voting, will make any difference. Either humanity becomes unique and self-actuated individuals again, or we are doomed.
Over the past several posts we have been examining and discussing how we can tap into our unconscious to help us become spiritual men and women again - people who are in touch with their spirit (or soul, or psyche, or unconscious - call it what makes you comfortable). We have looked at the works of Jung, Nietzsche, and many others who have pointed the way to recovering the part of ourselves that most people have neglected or entirely abandoned, and we will continue to do so until we launch our spaceship and get off this rock!