Mental Willness…Are you willing to be crazy, i.e., to be yourself?

Morris Berman (www.MorrisBerman.blogspot.com) recently published a blog (“Fork in the Road”) on his site about the phenomenon of Big Pharma, i.e., the pharmaceutical industry.   In case you don’t know, Big Pharma (or perhaps I should refer to them as “B.P.”  Hmm…  Interesting acronymous statement, don’t you think?)  is making a lot of money (some might say a “killing”) by getting a large number of Americans (including small children and sometimes animals!)  addicted to its  prescription drugs.  Berman suggests that that the brain damage resulting from years of taking these drugs might be one of the causes of the docile, complacent and blind obedience displayed by the American people these days.

In fact, this is Business 101, folks.  Those of you who have run your own businesses, I’m sure, are aware that one way to succeed is to get steady customers who must keep coming back for your product.  This is why most American companies make everything “to break.”  To manufacture long-lasting, high quality products is to risk losing returning customers.  Once they’ve bought your product, they need not come back to buy another–if it was made to last forever.  But wait…we can manufacture that cell phone, TV, computer, or whatever, to last only for a year, a few months or in some cases, a few minutes.  Then the customer will return to buy another, and you will have a steady customer base.  Brainwash customers to believe that newer, technologically-advanced products are more desirable than the “old” ones they’ve been using for the past year, and they’ll be happy to just keep buying a new one every year.  (Yep, I’ve purchased products that didn’t work to begin with, from the moment of purchase.  My guess is that some manufacturers expect that we just won’t bother to return the item, that we’ll just keep buying other brands without complaining…while they continue to sell us junk…)

How sad, though, that our for-profit health care system now makes human beings to break for the same reason.  Doctors want regular patients.  So are they purposely “breaking” us so that we’ll keep coming back for more drugs, more procedures, more testing? I’ve always been amazed by how my friends who have health insurance and more spending money than I do receive completely different health care when they visit their doctors.  Usually, they are offered prescription drugs, surgical procedures, testing, etc., that I am not offered when I see doctors for the exact same maladies.  While I am told, “It’s nothing serious and will go away by itself.  Nothing’s wrong,  you’re fine,” my wealthy friends are told, “You must take this pill, let us operate and remove that or insert this, allow us to conduct a series of tests, etc., because this could be serious.”  So my question is, are they receiving needless treatment because their doctors know they can bill the insurance companies and make thousands of dollars?  Or am I just not receiving the treatment I should be receiving?

Either way, my sad conclusion is this:  doctors cannot be trusted.  Doctors value money over people.  The Hippocratic Oath is really a Hypocritical Oath recited by wealthy medical businessmen/women who call themselves “doctors.”  Sorry, but if you’re a doctor, I don’t trust you.  I’d sooner trust a tarot card reading from a gypsy shaman with bad teeth. Nope, I don’t have health insurance, but is that a bad thing?  Do I want unnecessary treatment?  From someone who prescribes treatment, not based on what I need in order to get better, but based on how much money I have to spend?  To get addicted to their drugs and their diagnoses?  Their delusion of grandeur?

What really fascinates me about all this is how the drugging of people with emotional or psychiatric problems creates problems for all of us who must interact with such people who’ve been discouraged from addressing their own problems, to just rely on medical sedation.  I’m talking about the failure of mental health practitioners to show the “mentally ill” how to make changes in themselves or their environment so that the underlying cause of the “illness” is eliminated or properly coped with.  Inevitably, the unresolved issues that are only superficially covered up by the drugs cause problems for our society as a whole.  Yes, psychiatric drugs can “dumb people down,” and sedate people into submission.  But, more important, problems in general–whether they are politically, socially, environmentally or internally created–remain unsolved.  If a person is depressed because of financial problems, we’re conditioned to blame the individual, medicate him/her, rather than address the sagging economy and its inevitable affect on people.  Problem “solved.”  Now we can ignore the real and growing problem that an increasing number of Americans are suffering from anxiety, depression, alcohol or drug addictions, and that these problems tend to increase with poverty.  We don’t need to ask why this is.  We don’t need to address the problem of poverty, unemployment, the uninsured, or the lack of social safety nets.  We don’t need to do anything.

And what of the people who are “mentally ill” as a result of internal conflicts that need to be attended to?  Poor communication, assertiveness,  coping, or anger management skills, for example?  What of the people who need to learn to talk back to negative, irrational thoughts that float around in their heads as a result of years of abuse?  To resolve a traumatic event that continues to haunt them?  What of the people who need to learn to build up their self esteem?  To create healthy relationships with others?  To parent their kids more effectively?  To deal with abusive family members?  To express their anger constructively rather than destructively?  To address serious character flaws within themselves that may have resulted from years of abuse or faulty upbringing?  To recognize their own maladaptive behaviors and learn new, healthy behaviors?  Those people who truly are mentally ill (not just diagnosed so that medical B.P. and psychiatrists can earn a living) are not going to learn new skills, new behaviors, new, improved ways of living, coping and interacting because the focus is on medicating rather than solving problems.

Similarly, people with mental health issues left only treated with drugs can continue to wreak havoc on their environment.  And the people in their community who suffer as a result will just be diagnosed and drugged themselves.  Here’s an example of what I mean:  A family I know of who are consistently abusive toward their children.  All of their children have been diagnosed with mental illness–all of them, and from the ripe-old age of four!  Small children imbibing drugs such as Ritalin or other drugs because they’re not concentrating, because they aren’t learning to walk and talk at the normal age, because they are easily startled, because (again, at the age of four!) they are depressed and suicidal.  Yet this doesn’t tip off the authorities in social services, the teachers, the school psychologists or the surrounding community that the parents are somehow being ineffective (to say the least.)  The children are simply being drugged into submission. What is sad, heartbreaking really, is that the parents continue to abuse these poor, innocent children–not physically, but psychologically.  Several times a day, the children are screamed at, told they are worthless, stupid, that everyone hates them, etc.  The screaming is so loud and startling that it is difficult for adults to remain in the presence of these people.  But only friends, family and neighbors are aware of the screaming and abuse.  These same parents are quiet and unassuming when confronted with teachers or other members of the outside community.  These children are beginning life with serious neuroses and probably character flaws that will impact the world around them.  Most likely, they will abuse their own children and possibly their future spouses, drugs or alcohol. They may develop serious mental illnesses or criminal behavior.  The abusive behavior will “be fruitful and multiply” perpetuating itself from generation to generation, as the underlying problem was never addressed.  Were the parents unhappily married?  Unhappy with their lives?  Dissatisfied at work?  As far as I can see as an outside observer, none of the above questions is being asked.  The children are “mentally ill” and being medicated.  End of story.

Psychologists spend much of their time evaluating “patients” to see what types of pills or diagnoses they should receive instead of studying better counseling methods.   And so psychologists become incompetent and ineffective, as more and more psychologists fail to study ways to interact better with their clients, ways to better understand and show empathy for their clients and to teach clients methods for dealing with life’s challenges, for making internal changes when necessary, for handling conflicts and personal tragedies, etc.   When the focus is on the pill, we don’t see the myriad of other possible solutions.  I read once that brain chemistry changes along with one’s emotions.  Neurons and synapses form in response to human experience.  But this fact was discovered accidentally.  Psychologists were so focused on finding biochemical causes for mental disorders that this unexpected information came to them by mistake, as the researchers were biased in favor of emotions being caused by changes in brain chemistry–not the other way around.  If it weren’t for an error, the researchers would not have discovered this as this fact went against what they wanted to believe (even though scientists claim to remain unbiased.)

This suggests that we can change our own brain chemistry by controlling our own thoughts and emotions.  Who knew?  Actually, lots of psychologists knew but they continue to emphasize the pharmaceuticals.  When there is money to be made, facts just go out the window, replaced with what Stephen Colbert refers to as “truthiness.”

Not everyone in the mental health industry agrees with the medical model of “mental illness” and not all of its detractors are scientologists.  Back in the 1990s, Paula J. Caplan (www.PaulaJCaplan.net) wrote a book called “They Say You’re Crazy:  How the World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal.”  She exposed the of the DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.)   The writers of the DSM (a manual used by medical professionals to diagnose patients with mental illnesses) decide what personality characteristics or behaviors constitute mental illness.  As the DSM authors are mostly conservative white males, their definition of mental illness is biased and arbitrary.   For example, homosexuality was once listed as a mental illness until the writers of the DSM changed their minds and decided it wasn’t.  Just like that, millions of homosexuals were cured of “mental illness” by the fickleness of a DSM author’s pen (or perhaps keystroke.)

Psychologist Bruce Levine (www.BruceLevine.net) has also been decrying the mental health system’s emphasis on medicating rather than assisting people in solving their problems. 

Unfortunately, such whistleblowers appear to be a minority.  The majority of psychologists, social workers and psychiatrists are, like most of us, afraid of losing their jobs.  Even more disturbing is that many of them are just as unable to think for themselves and to recognize flaws in the system on their own.  Perhaps we need a psychologist to analyze the psychologists, to find out why so many of them are addicted to conformity.

Celebrity advice! Get your advice here! Solve all your problems, lose weight and be happy!

Just ask a celebrity!

Searching for the meaning of life?  Want to know why we’re all here?  Is there life after death?  Or maybe you just want to lose weight?  I’m rich and famous, so of course I can answer all of those questions for you.  Remember I’m rich AND famous, and you are not.  Therefore, I am better, i.e., superior–at least by society’s standards.  By that, I don’t mean that I think I’m superior to you.  I just mean that I’ve achieved more than you as far obtaining material wealth and prestige are concerned, so obviously I have better success skills than you.

What I mean is that, obviously, I am your superior, which isn’t to say that I believe I’m better.  It’s just that I am better, as far as what other people might say.  Well, a better way of putting it might be that I am better than you  at attaining success and that most people would agree that I must know more than you do about some things… Okay, about everything.  I mean, I must have done something right.  Right?  After all, I made it big.  You didn’t.  So what’s your point?  Why do you point?  Stop pointing!  I’m successful and you’re not.  Okay?  So learn from me.  Pick my tiny brain.  Nit pick…

So listen up, crumb. (Yep, you’re the crumb off my after dinner dessert.  And you’re my greatest fan.  So thank you.  For worshiping me, crumb.)

Oh, and by the way, buy my book, watch my TV show, go see my latest film, stand in line for hours to get in the audience to watch me on the Tonight Show, Today Show, Evening Show, Morning Show, No Show, or whatever the bleep show I’m on.  I’ll tell you all about my depression, my child-rearing style, my hangups and hangovers, my latest divorce, the suicide(s) I attempted, the cocaine I injested and the situps I do every morning.  Gotta keep up those abs, ya’ know…  Very important.

At the supermarket checkout line I read the cover of “Good Housekeeping Magazine.”  Actress Valerie Bertinelli  smiled brightly on the cover.  The headline read (and I do quote!):

“You Can Choose to Be Happy.”  Then underneath it added:

“Valerie Bertinelli: on how she makes every day a good one–and her most wonderful wedding moment…PLUS her 100-calorie treat.”

Okay, first let me say that I admire Bertinelli.  The actress is about 50 but she looks like she’s 20.  It’s wonderful that she takes care of herself,  and that she has overcome her own personal obstacles.  She comes across as down-to-earth and genuinely a nice person in public appearances.  Clearly, she expresses a positive attitude toward life–at least on the front cover of magazines and on interviews when a camera records every facial expression, every offhanded remark, and when she is, of course, trying to sell a book, TV show, film or weight loss method.

But honestly, do I need/want her advice on how to be happy?  The fact is, I don’t need her instruction.  I know why she is happy.  She’s bloody rich, for heaven’s sake.  Honestly, if she weren’t happy then that would be news to me.  Then I’d want to know why.  Not that money can buy happiness, mind you.  Of course not.  Who would suggest such a thing?  (Are you a communist?  Do you believe in helping other people?  Unhappy with extreme poverty and extreme wealth colliding with each other, like the fat guy who nonchalantly tosses his dinner into the trash, only because they forgot the mayo, then bumps into a skinny homeless guy  knocking him onto the street? Ah, then you must be a socialist.  For shame!)

Money just buys everything one needs in order to be happy–peace of mind, no more worry about debts, electricity and hot running water whenever you need it, vacations when you need time off, medical care when you’re sick, opportunities to take care of your health and to pursue your dreams and goals, plenty of chances to meet people with similar interests, to socialize and make friends, to eat when you’re hungry, to buy a warm coat in the winter, to drive rather than wait in the rain for a bus, to sleep when you’re tired–and on a real bed that doesn’t wreck your back!  When you’re rich, you truly are in control of your own destiny.  You can choose to be happy.  If you’re depressed and don’t know why, then hire the best psychologist, shaman, reiki master and massage therapist.  Or maybe you need an exorcist?  I’m sure that, for the right price, he/she will show up at just the right time to exorcise all those pesky demons.  Perhaps even God will appear.  For the right price.  Snap, snap!

Or perhaps you could take a vacation in Spain.  Wonderful weather there this time of year.  Relax!  Remember, happiness is a choice!  Go out to your stable and ride one of the horses for a while.  Play a little golf in your private golf course.  Go for a swim in that heart-shaped pool you just paid someone to build for you.  Watch your favorite film in that studio you hired someone to build for you on the lower level of your mansion.  (There are no basements where rich people live, not really.  No dark, dank, stanky, abandoned spaces haunted by the ghosts of Christmas past and unexpected floods.  Just lower levels.  And random bomb shelters where one might hide should a thief break in, just in case.)

Still unhappy?  If you’re unhappy with where you live, then move.  If you’re unhappily married, then divorce.  Need to lose weight?  Hire the best personal trainer.  Join Jenny Craig, Weightwatchers, the gym down the street or all of the above.  Start buying the healthy (and expensive!) food that’s better for your body.  Want to change careers?  Change them.  You can afford to quit your job and start over…  (Uh, do millionaires have jobs?  I think the more appropo term here would be “career” thank you very much.)

It’s we the poor people who don’t have choices. But what’s really odd is that the Valerie Bertinelli article wasn’t addressed to the wealthy elite but to us, the average Joe and Jane.  Huh?

Then I was on the Internet and got a glimpse of an article on Yahoo News:  “Buffy Star’s Advice for Young Moms.”  Oh dear, I have small children and really need some advice.  It’s tough sometimes being a “young” mom.  (I place “young” in quotes because Hollywood thinks you’re old if you’re not “18-to-look younger,” so “young” doesn’t even exist for women in Hollywood.  And once a woman hits 30, it’d old age, over-the-hill, rest  in peace, reserve your spot in the nursing home and make sure to purchase that cemetery plot, pure and simple.  However, an entire world outside of Hollywood holds a different view, hence I keep an open mind here as to whether a “mom” can be “young,” on the off chance that someone from Southern California may be reading this blog.)

Well, lucky for me (today’s my lucky day!) an actress (who thinks she’s young even though she’s a mom) and who starred on my favorite TV show has some answers.  Whew!  I was thinking I might need to ask my own mom, or my auntie, or my next-door neighbor, or perhaps the wise-looking woman who sits across from me on the bus every morning on my way to work.  But luckily, an actress has all the answers.

Film at 11.  Or 12.  Or at whatever the corporate media decides is the “right” time.   (I myself took acting classes and performed on stage BUT–and now this part is very important!–I am not rich nor famous–though infamous in some circles, one might add…  So of course my advice wouldn’t matter…)

So, yes, I really need to know what a millionaire movie star does when her two-year-old trhows a temper tantrum.  Does she…

–call over the nanny immediately and demand she handle the situation?

–summon one of the servants to bring in one of the child’s favorite toys?

–check with the cook to find out what the child had been served for dinner earlier?  (Really!  I expressly ordered you to exclude high fructose corn syrup and MSG from the dessert!)

–or perhaps she texts the child’s tutor and demands she arrive immediately for an emergency instructional session.

Hmm…What would Zsa Zsa say?  (Paris Hilton’s just not glamorous enough.)

On another note, sort of…  I just recently read Barbara Erhrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed.”  Yes, I’d read through passages and chapters before.  The book’s been around for ten years now.  But this is the first time I’ve actually sat down and read it in its entirety, page by grisly page…

And after reading it now, several things have struck me about the book:

–the book was written ten years ago yet nothing has changed.  Nothing.  If anything, things have gotten worse for America’s low-income population.  Wages have remained stagnant and, in some cases, have lowered while housing and food costs have risen dramatically.  Chances are that many of the characters depicted in her book are now homeless.  Because when you live from paycheck to paycheck and suddenly the prices go up (while your wages remain the same), you’re not going to be able to pay your bills anymore, at least not on time. So Ehrenreich spent all that time and energy writing that book but nobody read it or those who did read it didn’t listen or react to its message.  So why bother?  Ehrenreich’s research is like the tree falling in the wilderness.  If no one hears it, does it make a sound?  If no one listens, does it even exist?

–I’ve lived it.  Yep, I could have been any one of the protagonists in “Nickel and Dimed.”  And well, we all know what has happened to me in the last ten years.   (I ain’t a mad bag lady for nothin’!)  Reading the book almost sank me into a deep depression.  It was a little too much of a reality check.  Have I really suffered that much?  So I understand American apathy.  It feels better to pretend everythings’ okay.  Let’s just pretend the problems aren’t there and they’ll just magically go away all by themselves, okay?  It’s okay.  Not.  And in a strange sort of way I felt as though I was harming myself by reading the book. So I read through it quickly and determined to not look at it again.  I’m going to gtive the book away so that I won’t be tempted to read it again.  Why?  Because not only was it depressing but it made it difficult for me to endure what I must endure on a daily basis.  It made me even more militant (“mad”, if you will ) than I already am on a regular basis.

Yes, my boss treats me unjustly.  Yes, I am underpaid and overqualified.  Yes, company policy violates labor laws.  Yes, I deserve better.  Much better.  Most of us who are poor or struggling financially do.  But what can any of us do about it?  I need to stick with the job and keep my mouth shut so that I can continue to afford to eat.  I need to “suck it up” as they say in some circles.  Being angry and militant doesn’t do any good when you have no choice.  And no choice is the only choice I have.

“What?” you might ask.  “You can write to Congress.  Tell them how you feel.  Go to protests, etc.”  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I’ve done it all.  For ten years, I’ve protested the Patriot Act and for ten years it has remained and it continues to get extended, extended, and extended.   But more than that, I’ve attended protests, written letters, signed petitions, made phone calls, attended meetings, volunteered my time, worked for nonprofits (that supposedly advocated for social change.)  Heck, must I engage in shameless self-promotion yet again?  Yes, I’ve made a documentary film (Rocky Mountain Homelessness) and other short documentaries about homelessness, about developing empathy and compassion for those less fortunate or those we just don’t understand.  I’ve written a book called Diary of a Mad Bag Lady (where do you think I got the name for this blog?)  I write and speak about poverty and homelessness as often as I can, but almost always I get the same response from people:  “I don’t give a s*it.”  So why bother?  Why attempt to change the minds of those who refuse to change?

–This leads to my final observation.  Barbara Ehrenreich must truly care about people.  I’ve met her a couple times and always she came across as genuine, caring and open.  She has done so much good for this country and, frankly, I don’t think she even gets the credit she deserves.  But undaunted, she continues to work hard to advocate for the poor and disenfranchised.  And she is an incredibly talented writer and speaker.

But I can’t help but wonder why it is that when one of us who has actually experienced being “Nickel and Dimed” attempts to speak, write or even make a film about it no one seems interested.  Yet when a rich, famous celebrity lives for a short time (in a way that many of us must live for a lifetime) writes and speaks about poverty, people are clamoring to hear her story.  Barbara Ehrenreich, Michael Parenti, Noam Chomsky, et al., deserve our respect and undivided attention.  But why not just ask the recently unemployed guy down the street what he thinks?  Why not just listen to each other, to people in our own lives who are struggling?  Why do we need to worship an expert when it comes to validating or acknowledging our own suffering?  Could it be that those with so-called “liberal” or “progressive” leanings are just as elitist as everyone else?

(The inspiration for this blog was originally written on February 23, 2011)–

George Carlin moved on, and haven’t we all?

At the bottom of this rant is a response I posted on MoveOn.org’s blog.  MoveOn posted a classic George Carlin bit (see below) in which the late, great comedian tells the truth about the American dream, i.e.:  “you have to be asleep to believe it.”

Indeed, indeed…

I too once believed.

My eyes would fill with tears every  4th of July.  “Ah, we’re so lucky here in the U.S.,” I tearfully told myself.  I thought, quite melodramatically, of people who lived in third-world countries, or in the former Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany.  “We’ve been so lucky here in the U.S., so protected from real struggle,” so I thought.  So I believed.

If only I’d been a true psychic.  Then I would have known what my future here in the U.S. would be.  I would have saved up my money, packed up my bags and moved to another part of the world.  A place where health care, education, and “bootstraps” in general are available to those who weren’t born with all they needed to succeed but who were willing to work for it.  If they were given a chance.

A chance is something the U.S. only grants to its wealthy citizens.  The rest of us are just required to “suck it up.”

Ah, but there’s always suicide.  I wonder how many Americans have chosen that route.  Our media is so controlled by a wealthy few that I’m sure we’ll never know about those lost, forgotten Americans.

I personally want them to live.  I think that a lot of intelligent, thoughtful, kind, caring, socially-conscious people are depressed and suicidal right now because our society just doesn’t value those qualities in people.  Good luck to you in finding a job, in making friends, in surviving American society if you haven’t been sucked in to the rugged individualism and the focus on money and material things.  You won’t fit in.  You won’t “belong.” You won’t feel comfortable.  You certainly won’t be happy with the way things are right now.  But please, please, please don’t give up.  The world needs you.  That is something you don’t know because you feel very much alone.  The kind and the caring, the believers in a better world, the non-money-motivated are a very lonely species living in the wilderness that is the U.S. right now.  But if we could all come together…

Don’t commit suicide!  If you’re struggling right now, we need you!  We need your anger and depression to channel toward the effort toward social change!  I wish I could gather together all those struggling in this self-inflicted Great Depression and get us all to fight back together.  There is strength in numbers, as the saying goes.

Believing in the American Dream was my big mistake, but it did get me through each day (and kept me from getting depressed.)  I worked unbelievably hard–at times seven-days-per-week, earned tiny wages or sometimes no wages at all, struggled, went without eating to save money.  I was, after all, “paying my dues.”

Yes, believe it or not, I went hungry many times throughout my life.   In fact, you may not believe this, but I actually went for somewhere about two weeks without eating…much.  I say “much” because I could only afford to buy a can or two of vegetables and needed to stretch that out for a week or so while I was unemployed.  So I’d go for a few days without eating and mostly slept all day to conserve energy so that I wouldn’t need to eat much.  Then on days when I had a job interview or was applying for a job, I’d eat the can of beans or veges and hope to have enough energy to appear “hireable.”  I actually felt my body change.  Starvation began to make physical changes in my body.  There was a funny taste in my mouth, pangs in my stomach, of course, and some other symptoms I’d rather not mention.

On another occasion, when I was once again unemployed, I could afford only about $1 per day for food, so I ate a small bag of chips and a few cookies every day and then ate a “real” meal (that consisted of a burger or taco) about once, sometimes twice per week.  This went on for about a month or so.  (Eventually, I was rewarded for my efforts with an $8 per hour part-time job.  And the rest was herstory.  Whoop dee doo!  Wish stories like mine hit the tabloids–instead of the rags-to-riches stories of struggling actors who become rich and famous, supposedly as a result of their hard work.  Right.  How about the story of a struggling American who works even harder yet never makes it ’cause he/she wasn’t born with money and connections in the first place.  Or worse, ’cause he/she refuses to sleep with the dirty-old-men of Hollywood,  refuses to shoot up the drugs or attend the bacchanal Hollyweird parties?  Sorry, but that doesn’t sell tabloids.  Next!)

Yes, believe it or not, somehow I survived for at least a month eating very little each day.

I thought I was strong enough to handle all that.  But there was one thing I didn’t consider (because I didn’t really have a choice anyway), and that is this:  I’m getting older.  Yes, with each passing day I’m getting older.  One day, I won’t be able to struggle like this.  My body won’t be able to handle it.  So then what?

And now, while I’m not “old” yet (not outside of Hollywood, that is), that day has come.

I just can’t do it anymore because now, perhaps as a result of these struggles, I have a lot of physical health problems that will probably kill me pretty soon as I don’t have the money to have them treated properly.  (I sure do hope the afterlife is better than this one!  But then again if it were, wouldn’t we all be committing suicide just to get there?  Just a question…. )  Perhaps that is the reason why we’re not allowed to really know for sure (until the time comes, of course) whether there actually is an afterlife.  Because we won’t put up with this one if we know there’s a better life to follow.  But then again, if that were true then why would we be forced to live this life in the first place?  Is this some sort of test?  A mere joke?  In other words, what is the meaning of life?  Guess we’ll have to check the old Monty Python movies to find an answer to that one.

But, as usual, I digress.

My point is, there is only so much a person can take.  A little bit of struggle is okay now and then.  Keeps us on our toes.  Keeps us grateful for the good times.  Makes us think “outside the box.”  But too much struggle can kill you both physically and mentally.  And when you’re dead you can’t do anything.  (Unless, of course, there’s life after death, which I’m hoping exists…)  But we’ve already addressed that in this wondrous and magical blog, haven’t we?

Which brings me to the real point of this blog:

Everything Carlin says here is true.  The man was a genius.  He was a hippie from out of the 60s who started out as a nerdy white guy but grew into his true persona, the man he was meant to be,  as time went on.  Like many of us, he grew further away from trying to conform and closer to becoming himself as he grew older.

Check out the Carlin of the 60s here:

And the evolution of Carlin becoming the hippie sage he was meant to become here:

Sorry that he is gone, as are so many idealists, from JFK to John Lennon.  (Though we do have Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart who are able to express their idealism–to the extent they can turn it into seemingly mindless entertainment…)  I wonder where the flower children have gone, the true hippies.  Did they ever really exist?  How did rugged individualism, selfishness and materialism take over?  How did we become, as a society, so cold and ruthless?  Okay, I already asked that question in another blog…

My response to MoveOn:

Problem is, our government is now a reflection of what we’ve become as a people:  greedy, selfish, disconnected from and unconcerned about each other.  We can’t change our government until we change ourselves.  If we can’t be kind, compassionate and giving toward each other, how can we expect CEOs and government officials to be?  If we can’t come together and trust and support each other to form communities, how can we come together to protest government corruption?  I was always amazed when I worked for nonprofits that engaged in the same corrupt practices as Walmart because they “had to” in order to thrive.  Really?  Then why bother protesting Walmart if we decide we “have to” engage in the same greedy, ruthless tactics in order to succeed?

Reality check: Americans voted for Reagan then Bush.  And Reagan is rated as one of the most–perhaps the most–popular of US presidents!  Americans voted to budget cut programs that help the poor.  Talk to most Americans about social injustice and you’ll hear, “It’s their own fault.”

The average American is walking around thinking, “If you lost your house, that’s your fault. You shouldn’t have signed the mortgage.  If you’re in debt, that’s your own fault.  You shouldn’t have used credit cards.  You shouldn’t have taken out loans to go to college.  If you don’t have health insurance, that’s your fault.  You should just get a job that pays better and that provides health insurance.”

No one wants to ask the questions: Why do people need to use credit cards in the first place? Why do poor students have to take loans out in order to get an education?  Why are people having trouble paying for things and paying off their debts?  Why are so many people in debt?  Why are so many people unemployed?  Why are so many intelligent, talented, competent people unable to get an education or obtain a job while we see incompetent buffoons attaining positions of power and wealth?  And isn’t that dangerous–to allow the incompetent to attain positions of power but to prevent the best and the brightest from succeeding just because they weren’t born with money and the “right” connections?

Nope, it’s just easier to blame the victim than to look at our faulty system and try to form solutions.

Sad but true.  The whole country’s going to have to fall with a thud, and we’ll become a third- world country before the average American “wakes up” and decides to care about their own community.

social responsibility vs. self responsibility…. Rush Limbaugh, are you reading this? Are you reading anything? Ever?

Response I wrote to “Sue,” a rather trollish commenter on activist-psychologist Bruce Levine’s blog.  http://www.BruceLevine.net

Sue, you’re right, we do need to look at ourselves and ask ourselves how our politicians are actually reflecting our own greed and selfishness.

However, our problem is not lack of self-responsibility.  Americans are very good at taking responsibility for OURSELVES.  Our problem is that we’re not taking responsibility for each other.  We are in desperate need of social responsibility in this country.  Interestingly, some countries are too socially responsible:  Asian countries, for example, where conformity supersedes individual freedom.  “Conform or be cast out…” as Geddy Lee of Rush once sang.  I’m certainly not an advocate of eliminating all individual freedom or individualism.  It’s the extreme, self-involved, “rugged” individualism that is disturbing.

Ironically, rugged individualism, our selfish desire to think only of our own individual needs and to ignore the needs and rights of others, is leading to the destruction of our individual freedoms!  Who would have thought it!  As humans we were made to take care of ourselves AND each other.  We all suffer when we tip that balance.

The Rush song, “Subdivisions” says it all:  (Leave it to the Canadians!)

“Growing up it all seems so one-sided,

Opinions all provided, the future pre-decided,

Detached and subdivided in the mass production zone.

Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone.

Subdivisions,

In the high school halls,

In the shopping malls,

Conform or be cast out.

Subdivisions,

In the basement bars,

In the backs of cars,

Be cool or be cast out…

…Where some will sell their dreams for small desires…”

Sound familiar?  We talk about self responsibility, about individual freedom yet we are oppressed  (not freed) by our inability to see outside ourselves, by our inability to connect with other people.

Yes, placing other people’s needs before our own can sometimes be dangerous.  We need to take care of ourselves too.  But right now, our country has swung in the opposite direction. We’re too self-centered, too individualistic.

A self-effacing need to conform and to put other people’s needs above one’s own can cause self-detachment and can be detrimental, yes.  But so can loneliness, isolation, feeling detached from society, having no one to rely on but yourself.  Why do we have to take things to extremes?  Taking responsibility for one’s self and working hard to solve one’s own problems are great ideas when one is in a quandry, but we still need to be able to seek out help from others.  And we should be ready and willing to help each other so that others will be available and willing to help us when the time comes.  Trying to solve our own problems alone because we’re too proud to ask others for help when we need it can cause some problems to become major disasters, unmanageable and unable to be solved.

Sue, the shipping clerk buys lottery tickets because he knows he’s never going to make a lot of money no matter how hard he works. The system is set up to keep poor people poor, to make middle class people poor and to help the mega-rich get even richer.

Your comment is presumptuous and judgmental.  You suggest in your comment that people are poor because they aren’t taking responsibility for something…  In other words, they’ve done something to cause themselves to become poor.  What exactly are the poor responsible for, Sue?  Are they responsible for the decisions politicians made to deregulate big corporations that are now often allowed to eliminate safety precautions that kept employees safe on the job, to pay their employees unliveable wages, and to outsource labor to third-world countries, unpunished by our government, while millions of Americans are laid off or demoted in the process?  Are they responsible for lower wages mismatched with higher costs of living?  Are they responsible for their bosses’ refusal to provide health insurance benefits?  Are they responsible for the U.S. government’s refusal to make health care accessible to all Americans?  Are they responsible for the high cost of medical care and of higher education?  Are they responsible for how other Americans choose to vote?  Are they responsible for choices made by other people?  by their landlords?  their bosses? their politicians?  Are they responsible for the opinions, ideas and choices of your friends Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, and Bill O’Reilly?

Whew.  Poor people sure are responsible for a lot of things.  Makes you wonder why they’re still poor.  With all that responsibility, shouldn’t they get paid more?

We all take responsibility for ourselves.  We wake up every morning, we get dressed, we go to work, we put up sometimes with abuse at work because we need that paycheck to support ourselves and our families.  Sometimes we put up with abuse at home because we can’t afford better living conditions.  It’s sad, even heartbreaking, what some people must put up with every single day.  Yet we’re doing the best that we can.  We take care of our families because we understand that beyond self-responsibility is social responsibility. So we don’t throw out our spouse and kids into the street, telling them to fend for themselves.  We work to support them as well as ourselves.  Not very ruggedly individualistic, is that?

When public libraries, parks, schools, roads, sidewalks, fire departments and police departments are budget-cut out of existence and we are all required to pay out of our own pocket for these services then we will see the importance of social responsibility.  Because then we will really struggle to pay for all those services and we’ll see how decisions made (not by us) but by a government (now controlled by large corporations) affect us. Actions and decisions made by other people affect us.  We can’t take responsibility for other people’s choices or the things they do.  We can only take responsibility for our own actions and, unfortunately, our own actions are not always enough.  No one is an island.  Not even you, Sue.  My guess is that your parents spent a lot of time, energy and money raising you as a child.  Did you ever consider paying them back?

Nor did you receive your education alone.  Your parents, teachers and surrounding community taught you whether you liked it or not.  You drive along a road that was built not by you but by someone else who stood outside toiling for tiny wages, most likely, to pave that road.  You watch that TV that was built by someone else, then distributed by a team of someone elses then sold to a store owned by someone else whose salesman or woman sold it to you.  Everything in your life, Sue, was influenced by someone else.  We are not islands but men and women.  Whether we like it or not, we are influenced by each other and we depend upon each other.  You can try to be alone, to be a rugged individualist.  But that would involve saving up some money to get on someone else’s boat or plane and travelling to an island where you’d have to rely on someone else to safely land you and then you’d have to be ready to hunt and gather your own food, to make your own clothes, to manufacture your own housing.  Can you do that, Sue?

My guess would be no.

It’s a little too complex to explain in this little blog here, but suffice it to say that we are all connected.  We do need each other.  To say that we are responsible for only ourselves is to show ingratitude, yes ingratitude, for all the various people who’ve come together to help you in some way (large or small) to live the life you’re currently living.  Think you’re responsible for the outcome of your life?  If you found out tomorrow (not on your own but after seeking help from a doctor) that you needed an operation in order to continue living, would you:

–seek help from someone else, i.e., a surgeon perhaps

OR

–decide to operate on yourself?