Who'd have thought that popping pills is no substitute for a satisfactory life? It's a shock isn't it.
We live our plugged in lives, with no room for silence. We're so busy we don't have time to do more than anaesthetise ourselves when we feel pain or distress.
We eat food with no taste, entertain ourselves with turgid time fillers and we're scared shitless of anything that even looks a little bit like authenticity that we build up barriers and strategies to ensure nothing gets through.
Give me the blue pill. Give me the blue pill now.
Our minds are so colonised we can't imagine any better solution to anomie than a synthetic, plastic capsule. To try to think beyond that risks letting in the light of understanding that it's our lives that are the problem, and changing those takes much more effort than our KFC fed butt cheeks can muster.
As the man said "Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
So the drugs don't work
Labels: Culture, News, Thinking aloud
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3 comments:
There is no anti-depressant, than come close to guaranteeing, you will not attempt suicide while taking it.
Much of the research is corporate bought. Who will say that new and old psychotropics, in time have the same side effects.
In one of my literally crappest jobs, skivvying in a hospital, I worked with a lovely lady who regularly consumed "Hello" and "Heat" with great enthusiasm.
Like many others, she works seven-days-a-week - out of choice! I could hardly believe my ears when she explained to me that she would get "bored" otherwise. That was a very unhappy and frightening eye-opener for me.
http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/pub_contents/4
BTW, Jim ... <<...X
And before anyone assumes anything, no, I wasn’t doing a Polly effing Toynbee swanning in for a couple of weeks, I worked there for several years and we became fairly good friends. She definitely wasn’t joshing me. In my experience women don’t take the piss out of each other quite so much as men in the workplace. And yes, I have been sent for a long weight in a different, male-dominated environment, and yes, I totally fell for it.
It took me many years to discover the shocking truth that modern "work" is no longer actually about working. Few people nowadays are able to take a pride in doing a good job - which contributes enormously to the anomie and meaninglessness you mention in the post. In the modern world of social mobility and "aspiration" everything's about money and status anxiety. No wonder we're screwed.
Say the words "public service" to most people under 50 and the best you'll get is dismissive laughter.
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