I think Fischer in capitalist realism talks about how liberal world order refuses to acknowledge the rise of mental health issues like depression with the societies we exist in.
Yeah exactly, I was meaning to say that they indivudualize it and deny a social causation for it. Fisher puts it way better than me.
"The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its depoliticization. Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital’s drive towards atomistic individualization (you are sick because of your brain chemistry). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals (we can cure you with our SSRls). It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism"
Absolutely. Imagine you have a mentally disorder that makes you depressed, you feel worthless, you feel worthless and anxious. This sucks and would suck under all economic systems.
But then, because you live under capitalism, your disorder means you can't make money and you end up unemployed.
This means you don't have any money and under capitalism we measure the worth of individuals in money. Besides the odd psychotic libertarian nobody wants to say this quiet part out loud but it is evident that the capitalist world works this way. Seeing the stuff you can't do that other people can because they have money, dealing with the nasty shit other people with more money can buy their way out of gives you a concrete material foundation for your feeling of worthlessness and exclusion.
Then everyone from random assholes on the internet to government bureaucracies to your child family members feel obliged to tell you how bad a person you are, how you are lazy and stupid and the only person to blame for your misfortune, how you could have just pulled yourself up by the bootstraps and how you deserve to suffer. Everyone seems to go out of their way to tell you stuff that confirms your worst and most destructive thoughts, the system seems set up to keep you sick.
And even if you can hold on to a job doing so is hard when you have to deal with a faulty brain at the same time. You get stressed and anxious just doing normal stuff but you have to keep going as you can't afford to slow down and just do the amount of work you can manage while also maintaining your sanity.
Capitalism is a fuck. It is to our mental health what lead paint, asbestos and coal dust is to our physical.
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I think Fischer in capitalist realism talks about how liberal world order refuses to acknowledge the rise of mental health issues like depression with the societies we exist in.
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Yeah exactly, I was meaning to say that they indivudualize it and deny a social causation for it. Fisher puts it way better than me.
"The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its depoliticization. Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital’s drive towards atomistic individualization (you are sick because of your brain chemistry). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals (we can cure you with our SSRls). It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism"
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A good portion of psychological issues will be fixed by better living conditions
Absolutely. Imagine you have a mentally disorder that makes you depressed, you feel worthless, you feel worthless and anxious. This sucks and would suck under all economic systems.
But then, because you live under capitalism, your disorder means you can't make money and you end up unemployed.
This means you don't have any money and under capitalism we measure the worth of individuals in money. Besides the odd psychotic libertarian nobody wants to say this quiet part out loud but it is evident that the capitalist world works this way. Seeing the stuff you can't do that other people can because they have money, dealing with the nasty shit other people with more money can buy their way out of gives you a concrete material foundation for your feeling of worthlessness and exclusion.
Then everyone from random assholes on the internet to government bureaucracies to your child family members feel obliged to tell you how bad a person you are, how you are lazy and stupid and the only person to blame for your misfortune, how you could have just pulled yourself up by the bootstraps and how you deserve to suffer. Everyone seems to go out of their way to tell you stuff that confirms your worst and most destructive thoughts, the system seems set up to keep you sick.
And even if you can hold on to a job doing so is hard when you have to deal with a faulty brain at the same time. You get stressed and anxious just doing normal stuff but you have to keep going as you can't afford to slow down and just do the amount of work you can manage while also maintaining your sanity.
Capitalism is a fuck. It is to our mental health what lead paint, asbestos and coal dust is to our physical.