Mandy Nolan’s recent Soapbox article on the mental health crisis was a ripper. Spot on. She’s right about one of the principal causes: capitalism. Sounds too easy doesn’t it, to blame our collective misery on a flaying, fundamentalist economic belief system. But it’s true, according to James Davies in How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis.
The latest iteration of this system, neoliberal capitalism, is the most egregious example of aberrant ideas that anyone could conjure. It’s competitiveness, greed, selfishness and destructive impulses are about as inhumane, anti-species and anti-life as it gets. And contrary to what Clive Hamilton suggests, we may be on a path of total fucked-up-ness.
The idea that we can somehow, miraculously get out of the mess that is climate breakdown and biodiversity loss, is becoming less and less convincing.
Meanwhile dear old mining magnate Twiggy Forrest is strutting the globe telling us that he’s one of the 1,000 people most responsible for the trashing of our planet. But that’s okay, he and his like-minded philanthropic billionaires are here to make amends. Tell that to the millions already impacted by climate breakdown and to future generations who are facing an uninhabitable Earth.
The troubled soul
But I digress. What is the mental health crisis? Well, that’s the official badge for a very complex problem. Its effects are human misery on an epic scale, especially in rich Western countries.
The health angle is in fact a metaphor for social sickness or, more prosaically, the troubled soul. When the most fundamental values that make life worthwhile – belonging, love, attachment, connection, kindness, compassion, mutual care, etc. – are either eviscerated or utterly compromised, then hey presto, misery arises.
This of course is amplified by material circumstances, like the absence of affordable accommodation, low income, poverty, precarious work and the like. It’s also fuelled by the fragmentation of communities, the privileging of the material over the social and, by the way, the meanness and gullibility demonstrated in the referendum. The triggers are manifold. So are the symptoms.
Personally, my soul sickness – always lurking in the shadows – re-emerged as a result of a growing awareness of climate breakdown, and all that goes with it.
Eco-anxiety doesn’t really capture what I’m feeling. It’s more to do with witnessing human hubris and selfishness, and the suffering of the world’s most vulnerable and powerless. How can this be otherwise, one asks inanely, just as we do when viewing horrific events in the Middle East, the Ukraine, Myanmar or wherever cruelty presents.
These events however, pale against the unfolding realities of climate breakdown. The lived effects are visceral. Personally, it’s taken me months to recover from the 2020 floods. Sleeplessness, anxiety, melancholia – all that and more. These are the telltale aftershocks of witnessing all the human suffering, the destruction, and the meanness of governments that offer flood victims zilch to raise their houses. Zero. Nowt. But, hey, there’s AUKUS and all those fossil fuel subsidies and tax concessions to pay for.
Building a future
OK, no more. Let’s talk about some ways that you and I can address embodied misery. Johan Hari and others are good on this. Easier said than done, of course. You can’t just wave a wand and fix material problems. But there are some props we can use, like: connecting with others, doing voluntary work, exercising, eating as best you can, getting sleep, meditating, yoga, having a different relationship with your thoughts, getting out into nature, being compassionate and kind to others, and yourself, avoiding too much misery talk, and putting a lid on alcohol and other stuff.
Easy-peasy? Not really. But it’s a start. The thing I’ve found most helpful has been yakking with my friends, stacks of laughter, and doing heaps of activist work. Avoiding vexatious people helps too, as does getting off the computer and reducing your attachment to social media. The FOMO bullshit that comes with ‘hyperconnectivity’ is a killer – sometimes literally. The more we indulge the fantasies and encroachments of social media, the more we feed into the imperatives of surveillance capitalism. So, ditch as much as you can.
Instead, have a chat with your neighbours, do a drawing of your favourite flower, hit some tennis balls, walk through Heritage Park in Mullum, have a glass of something with a mate, hug friends, say you love them, play the uke, join a protest, campaign for human rights and social justice, pull some weeds, play some Lennon, and scratch your bum. Celebrate idleness. Don’t buy into turbo capitalism.
That was just a laundry list of things you attack due to not understanding them. But to address your first point, capitalism, as you are calling it, has raised the standard of living of everyone on the planet, and raised billions out of severe poverty. Kick Capitalism out from under them, and you won’t just make them poor, you would kill most of them. The problems you are trying to get at are far more nuanced than a Marxist trope.