When People Break

>>I would consider a person's breaking point to have stages; there's the stage where you emotionally cannot cope any more, the stage where you become numb and shut down to external events, and the stage where you completely shut everything out becoming catatonic or - by this article's definition - suicidal or homicidal.<<

Those are good points about stages, and the third option of catatonia. I think that some people may snap very fast, without necessarily going through noticable stages, but that the majority of people do go through stages. That's vitally important because it allows time to stop the process.

>>Once I got there, I went and got therapy. Therapy and finding a job again was what got me to pull back up.<<

That's precisely the point: people are able to recover if they have the resources to do so, in this case therapy and a new job. If such resources are withheld, then recovery becomes difficult or impossible. So if we want to avoid terminal breakage and its collateral damage, we need to make resources available to people to need them, and watch for people who need them.

>> The resources to come back from the breaking point are just as broken as the system that notices whether people have reached the breaking point. We don't care enough. We turn a blind eye when a neighbor loses their job and falls on hard times. We don't help people find the therapy they need when they recognize that help is required. <<

Precisely.

>>We're selfish. And that is at the heart of why our system is broken more than anything else.<<

It's more than that, and worse than that. In America, selfishness is considered a virtue. It is taught. It is praised. It is rewarded. It is enshrined in law; for example, a corporation's obligation is to make money for its shareholders, not to provide quality goods or services to its customers. Furthermore, attempts to behave in ways that are not selfish are actively mocked and attacked. People who point out the damage done by selfish practices are mocked, attacked, sued, gagged, and otherwise abused by individuals and systems.

The problem with this, of course, is that selfishness is a terrible way to run a society. It isn't even a very good way to run an individual life. The reason for this is that nobody is self-sufficient. Sooner or later you will get sick, or injured, or tired, or run into something that you can't do or make for yourself. If you're a selfish person, nobody will help you out of love or compassion; they will only help you if you make it worth your while. But most people eventually come to situations in which they can't come up with enough resources to bribe others to help them, and so they suffer, and the selfish people nearby mock them for being in need and not having resources.

That's an ugly system, and not at all the kind of world I want to live in.

Too true. Hard work can easily be undone by outside circumstances. That's not a reason to avoid work, but it's a sharp reminder that work alone doesn't guarantee security.

>>This is where our vision of the "deserving" recipient of aid comes from.<<

That's true. The problem is that it's incomplete and skewed. It presupposes that rewards come in fair proportion to effort expended. In the American economy, this is not the case. If you are born with a vagina, you will be paid less than someone born with a penis. If you are born with dark skin, you will be paid less than someone born with fair skin. If the work you do is trivial but prestigious, you will be paid far more than someone whose work is crucial but derided. And for people with substantial wealth, it is possible to arrange things to get more money with no personal work required at all. When people believe that a system is meritorious but it really isn't, that creates a lot of stress and problems, such as we are seeing in the economy now.