![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 7 of 7. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Christ_empowered on July 9, 2016, at 19:35:24
The economy hasn't recovered. May never recover. We have plenty of new billionaires. Everybody else...welcome to The New Normal. Work more for less and learn to love it.Advanced degrees often don't help. I can think of a couple adjuncts with masters degrees who live with their parents, no disability situation or anything...straight up financial necessity.
Then there's me. I said "I'm Bipolar, I think," they doped me up...and put me down for a personality disorder (told me it was Psychotic Disorder NOS). Dementia, shock treatments (involuntary), blah blah blah....
...now, I asked "Do you think Szasz may be correct?" and they said "You're severely Bipolar I." I take meds. The stupidity/dementia seems to have miraculously resolved. I'm doing college-level work successfully. And yet...
..the future looks kinda bleak. I don't think I'm the only one.
Sick societies=sick people. Hopelessness has overtaken The American Dream. Sometimes, I think we're always at each others' throats, aggressive, because more of us are doing more, competing more, to get less. Rage reigns supreme.
Done now.
Posted by Zyprexa on July 9, 2016, at 23:35:18
In reply to 21st century US making me crazy, posted by Christ_empowered on July 9, 2016, at 19:35:24
I agree..
Posted by jonhed on July 10, 2016, at 4:54:47
In reply to 21st century US making me crazy, posted by Christ_empowered on July 9, 2016, at 19:35:24
I agree. It can be applied on the whole world i think.
Sweden big time.
Posted by shadowtom on July 12, 2016, at 1:28:10
In reply to 21st century US making me crazy, posted by Christ_empowered on July 9, 2016, at 19:35:24
I haven't posted to these forums in a while, but I did want to come back here real quickly to say that I share many of the feelings and observations that you put forth in this post. I don't at all mean to put any individual, group, or culture down when I say this, but I think that our health as a species is unquestionably in a state of serious and progressive decline. The mental and physical health conditions that those of us who use this site live with could be said to be one symptom of the sickness that afflicts our collective humanity, but I think that pretty much anyone who pays any attention to the news these days knows that this "symptom" that I mentioned is far from the only one.
In our attempts to do everything faster and more easily and to outperform one another, we've created a society where many of us have become very much separated from both the natural world that we live in and one another; where some of the solutions that we've come up with to our problems are creating more problems (which then create even more problems, creating a vicious cycle); where we spend much of the time that we used to be spending doing things that machines now do for us using different types of machines where we interact with one another in a much less personal manner than we used to and where we have an increased tendency to pay attention only to the types of ideas and messages that we want to pay attention to; where we seem to pay less attention to the core messages behind many of our religious belief systems that focus on love and respect for our fellow humans, for ourselves, and for nature and the divine; and where the desires of our corporate leaders to increase profits have oftentimes come at the expense of our planet, the other life forms on this planet, and much of the human life on this planet (well, probably all of it, at least to an extent). I could go on, but in a nutshell, I think that we've created a way of life that in many ways seems to be unsustainable -- where we're destroying the environment that we need for our health and our survival little by little, and where we're doing serious damage to one another economically, physically, mentally, and spiritually.
As you said, rage reigns supreme, and the future looks bleak, but I think that we can turn things around. Somehow though, I think that repairing the damage that we've endured is something that we'll be most successful at if we rise above the cycle of hurt, rage, destruction, unkindness, and disconnection from nature and one another that we've found ourselves in. My point in writing this post is not to point fingers at anyone or to judge anyone for any part that they might have played in bringing about the problems that I've mentioned here. God knows that the extent to which I've contributed to many of the problems that I've identified here is far from small, and the same is probably true for many of us, but judging one another and judging ourselves is only going to hold us back from making the changes that we need to make to bring about the more peaceful, prosperous, healthy, and loving group of human communities that we're capable of becoming. We need to forgive one another and work together to create the kind of future that we'd all like to see.
Tom (the former Tomatheus)
Posted by jonhed on July 12, 2016, at 3:57:17
In reply to Re: 21st century US making me crazy » Christ_empowered, posted by shadowtom on July 12, 2016, at 1:28:10
Good post, i agree with some.
But don't you think that we need to help and provide help for the world now as it is and the people who suffer right now to?
(i don't think you mean that we shouldn't, but just a question.)Cause the world is what it is, and everything is where it suppose to be to some extent, like the moon is where it should be and the sun is in it's place, i'm in my apartment right now and obviously i'm suppose to be here now and soon eat lunch and go to work.
I just mean that we need to do what we can to help those who suffer now and not be thinking of this time era as the end of all good.
Hasn't there been a lot of alike time eras before?
It comes and goes, and we did capture this era, our children another era and so on.:-)
Posted by shadowtom on July 12, 2016, at 13:10:38
In reply to Re: 21st century US making me crazy, posted by jonhed on July 12, 2016, at 3:57:17
Thank you for your response, Johned. To respond to the question that you posed, yes, I most certainly think that doing everything in our power to make the world as it is now the best that it can be and providing help and assistance to those who need it are of the utmost importance. And I think that you're right that if we spend too much time thinking of this time in our history as "the end of all good" that it's only going to get in the way of doing good things and could possibly lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
I know that I spent a lot of time in my last post describing various problems that we face and that reading about such things can be, well, depressing. But I'm not trying to say that "the end is near" as much as I'm trying to say that we in some ways seem to be headed in a direction that doesn't seem to be so good and that we can change course and move in a better direction by addressing the problems that we face in a way that's carefully thought out, that places a strong emphasis on fixing our problems' root causes, and that takes both the short-term impact and the long-term impact of our decisions on our planet and the life forms that inhabit it (human and otherwise) into consideration.
I don't claim to have all of the answers, but I think that on a larger scale, we can come up with solutions to the problems that we face, even if it might take a long time to solve a lot of our problems. And again, I don't see the ideas that I'm putting forth as being the only solutions to every problem that we face, but some of the things that I think we ought to consider taking a very close look at would be our relationship to technology; our relationships with ourselves, one another, nature, and the divine; and the choices that we make with respect to how we spend our time, how we spend our money, how well we meet our needs and those of our fellow human beings, and how we organize ourselves into communities and address our needs through our social institutions. Various cultures have indeed faced difficult times before, but I tend to think that the challenges that we currently face are in some ways unique because we now have the power to use technology in ways that could produce a range of outcomes that is so much larger than it's ever been before. Along the lines of what I've already written, I think that the decisions that we make pertaining to how we use technology should be well thought out and should be focused on how we can do the most good above anything else.
Tom
Posted by jonhed on July 14, 2016, at 8:58:04
In reply to Re: 21st century US making me crazy » jonhed, posted by shadowtom on July 12, 2016, at 13:10:38
Yeah i agree.
Just like do discuss things with people who seem to have a clue about things :-)And you do.
I'm very worried about the future to, especially with the technology..
I miss being near human beings and not computers..
This is the end of the thread.
Psycho-Babble Medication | Extras | FAQ
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.org
Script revised: February 4, 2008
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/cgi-bin/pb/mget.pl
Copyright 2006-17 Robert Hsiung.
Owned and operated by Dr. Bob LLC and not the University of Chicago.