Posted by boB on April 17, 2000, at 21:39:48
In reply to Re: Do you think its just the age in which we live????, posted by Mark H. on April 17, 2000, at 20:44:55
You fellas are talkin sense here.
The different conditions of our time, which I consider hypermanic, make unhappiness seem more inappropriate. Social factors have criminalized poverty, and not only have insane asylums been shut down (good thing - those were snake dins where the orderlies were often more sick than their poor drugged charges), but we no longer have poor farms, and building codes make it increasingly impossible for people in this country to live in the way our ancestors did for hundreds of generations. Around the world, colonialism followed by this latest tidal wave of unregulated money markets is disrupting communities like a hurricane. (sorry sort-of a mixed metaphor). These things make social misfits more obvious, and our tendency to construct an artificial world implies that we should somehow adjust misfits to be more like "normal" people.
On the other hand, we had it coming. In recent centuries, childhood especially was a very brutal experience, certainly in European cultures, but also in many rural and tribal cultures. I don't want to overstep my anthropological expertise in regard to back-woods cultures, so I mostly am referring to Eurpean cultures, where beatings were the norm and psychological depravation of children was considered to be good nurturing.
Women, too, were severely abused and treated as property. A move toward towns and cities infected European culture with diseases that married our culture to pathogens that, in their infectious state, subtly destroy mental function, and perhaps carved out genetic malformations. For members of minority groups in the U.S.... for blacks, native americans, asian americans, and late 19th century and early 20th century European immigrants, the stain of prejudice and stigmatization emotionally scarred families for generations. African Americans were particulary injured by a brutal culture of slavery that disrupted families and replaced them with the master's whip, a culture from which they were released, with no resources, to make thier own way in a nation that continued to exploit their labor, failed to prosecute lynchings and on more than one occasion put black business and residential areas to the torch. And yes, us fine white males were injured by our misguided notions of our own authority.
My GOD I am glad the 20th century is over!!!
Well, this psychopharmacology is coming up with some fairly precise meds to treat some of the symptoms, and to better care for some of the disorders that came along with the human race genetically. But many of the disorderly mindsets that are being reduced to biological terms were the result of either overreaching and too much unrealistic expectation, or a lack of opportunity and the lack of the basic physical and mental resources needed for survival.
What we are not getting out of the research community that is becoming so articulate in neurological issues is a spirited contribution to the understanding of cultural anthropology, of social psychology or of the immediate neurotropic impacts of our highly artificial and unsettled culture. Addiction, neuroscientists have suggested, is a biological process that is much the same whether the addiction is to opiates, to tobacco, to chocolate, or to sex. Researchers have hesitated to bite the hand that feeds them by soundly indicting consumer addiction.
We have some of the same problems as we ever had, a few of which are worth treating with meds. I say everyone is free to medicate as they choose, and we would all be better off with a better understanding of appropriate choices of meds.
But the medicine we need the most might not be a pill, and the people that understand the way our brains work might be in a good position to help us all swallow that medicine if they can risk tenure and funding to say what needs to be said.
poster:boB
thread:30376
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000411/msgs/30402.html