Our Rulers Are Literally Driving Us Crazy

Our Rulers Are Literally Driving Us Crazy

June 22, 2024

THE EMPIRE'S CAPITALISM - FOLLOW THE MONEY

Caitlin Johnstone

ADVERTISING, CAPITALISM, DYSTOPIA, MENTAL HEALTH, PROPAGANDA, U.S. EMPIRE

Our minds are being squeezed and squeezed harder and harder by the people who rule over us, our consciousness punched and kicked this way and that by a nonstop barrage of manipulation and abuse, and it’s costing us everything, and it’s costing them nothing. In fact, they actually benefit from our becoming more crazy.

It’s probably worth noting that the empire doesn’t actually lose anything from our society’s increasing mental health problems, and in fact actually benefits from them. Which is probably why everything in this dystopia is pointed at making everyone crazier and crazier.

In a society that is guided not by the pursuit of human thriving but by the pursuit of profit, there is no downside to all the underlings being depressed, anxious and overwhelmed all the time, so long as they’re still showing up to work and still consuming products. As long as the gears of capitalism are still being turned, it doesn’t matter whether the people turning them are enjoying their lives.

As luck would have it, it turns out that their depression and anxiety are themselves actually wonderful sources of profit. If the pressures of life in this dystopia make people miserable, you can load them up with lucrative products from the pharmaceutical industry to get them just functional enough to return to the office. Additionally, miserable people are reliably the best consumers, because their discontent drives them to spend their lives trying to feed the hungry ghosts inside themselves with an endless river of products.

We see this dynamic playing out in real time in the so-called “psychedelic renaissance”, with billionaires working to get psychedelic substances legalized not so that human consciousness can be liberated from its illusions and allow us to achieve our full potential, but so that compounds can be patented and prescribed for mental disorders in the same way as other substances in the pharmaceutical industry. The push is to use these drugs to treat ailments like depression, substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder so that people can become functioning cogs in the capitalism machine again, not so they can become self-actualized or realize that everything they’ve been taught about the world is a lie.

Reading by Tim Foley

Article with supporting links: https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/06/23/our-rulers-are-literally-driving-us-crazy/

Original: https://youtu.be/888T1mDfE-o

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I write about the end of illusions. 100% reader-funded writer. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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