Sunday Musings: Seriously? That's a Mental Illness!

I expect most people would agree with me that our society seems to increasingly "medicalize" an array of things that once were considered a part of the normal spectrum of human experience.

More and more things are being "studied" and subsequently declared to be "Syndromes" or some other form of mental illness.

Politics as Mental Illness...

In the last three months or so, I have read separate articles that opined that "Conservatism" respectively and "Liberalism" were "Mental Illnesses."

The ridiculousness of both assertions aside, the deeper ill here is the notion that people increasingly fall for the temptation to label any form of disagreement with their perceptions as some sort of illness... rather than what is is: a DIFFERENCE.

And yet, I watch this thing becoming more and more normalized.

What's more, I watch people out on the street, holding tight to their false narratives in what very much looks like a state of mental illness.

Hi(y)storically Speaking: Spirituality as Mental Illness...

It has always amused and baffled me how many alleged values amount to little more than rationalizations for browbeating and condemning people whose impression of reality is a little different from our own.

If you "hear voices" while you stand in the shower, your certifiably "nuts."

If you actually believe there are beings from other galaxies flying across our skies in their spaceships, your state of mind is definitely suspect.

However, if you believe in some (usually white male) dude in the sky who runs the Universe... then you're just "religious."

What the frak is that about?

Science as Mental Illness...

These days, it seems like we're spending a good bit of time skirting the edges of a world where science is taking on aspects of mental illness.

If you actually believe what your eyes are telling you about what's in the Petri dish under the microscope you're potentially insane, unless how you "interpret" it happens to fit a specific narrative.

Of course, that narrative depends on who you happen to be asking. Which leaves us in the swampy territory where we have "facts of CONVENIENCE" rather than actual "facts."

Economics and Money as Mental Illness...

The fact that the stock market is toying with new all-time highs in the middle of what seems like a global economic meltdown has absolutely no bearing on what's happening in my bank account.

To show my own brand of mental illness, the stock market is about as "real" as rainbow unicorns.

Kidding aside, I have also seen it argued that Capitalism and Marxism (the economics of), respectively, are mental illnesses.

Really? Seems more likely that greed is a mental illness. Believing you need to keep accumulating when you already have enough for 1,000 families is surely a form of obsession, no?

Money is not "the root of all evil," and it actually doesn't say that in the Bible.

1 Timothy, 6-10: For the LOVE of money is the root of all of evil

People who condemn money conveniently forget that one word.

What's Interesting About All This...

What I find most interesting about all this is that I just covered some "New Classes" of mental illness... and they just happen to overlap with the exact same subjects many of our parents warned us about as things you're better off not bringing up at a party, lest everything descends into an unruly fistfight.

Funny, isn't it?

Anyway, from where I am sitting right now, the primary "mental illness" running rampant through our society these days is the INABILITY and UNWILLINGNESS to entertain perspectives different from your own as REAL and VIABLE POSSIBILITIES."

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone had an awesome weekend!

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Created at 20201004 20:32 PDT
0119/1346