When People Break

Thank you. An LJ user I follow bradhicks once used the term "furnace of Moloch" to describe how America treats its human capital.

In our past disagreement over health care, for example, I do not dispute that it would be a human good if we could magically give every person excellent health care. My disagreement has to do with practical means of accomplishing this in a society laced with assumptions, historical facts, bureaucratic inertia, capital and human investment, and last but not least, mythology and moral panics.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

David Gerrold modifies this slightly: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet domestication." (emphasis added)

I feel that the truth is somewhere in between.

We live in one of the most enlightened, kind and benevolent civilizations that has ever existed on this planet. This gives people like you and me the leisure to glimpse not only how far we've come, but how very much farther we have to go.

Another way to look at it: as humankind we are all under inexorable sentence of death, living between the pronouncement of the verdict and its actual carrying out. Sometimes events in life put this into sharper relief: being diagnosed with cancer, losing a loved one, being a witness to an atrocity of history such as the Holocaust or Rwanda, events on the battlefield of the soldier or the "streets" of the police officer.

I would add to your lists of escape the following phenomena:

-- alcohol use as a legal drug, which a few make large profits from despite enormous social costs (half of persons arrested and half of persons treated in the emergency room are under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time)

-- the shifting role of marijuana and its creeping legalization for the useless (i.e. "medical marijuana") but not for the workers

-- illegal drug use among all segments of society, but especially heroin as a prolonged means of relatively painless suicide, cocaine and other stimulants as "superchargers" for the elite classes to try to keep up with their workloads, and both crack and meth as the self-medication of the poorest and least capable of other means of escape

-- the mass increase in the use of antidepressant and other psychiatric medications, prescribed legitimately for what can only be called an epidemic of depression, stress disorders, anxiety and other conditions

-- the dramatic rise in addiction to both the Internet and to online gaming / virtual reality such as Worlds of Warcraft and Second Life

Suicide can be thought of as the canary for how much stress a population can take, so your analysis is apt on this point.

In an environment filled with death, Frankl had the opportunity to observe both passive suicide (failing to do the utmost to survive, such as choosing to share food with another prisoner) and active suicide (self harm, resistance and/or escape attempts). The latter was exceedingly rare, surprisingly so given the conditions, although historical cases do exist.

Murder-suicide is a familiar phenomenon although again very rare. Individual cases tend to get much more attention, such as Jason Rodriguez in Florida and the shooter at Fort Hood.

Violence as a reaction to stress has three places to express itself: public crime on the streets, workplace violence, and domestic violence in the home. Guess which one is least reported, easiest to get away with, and has the most long term damaging effects for the victim, society and even the offender?

http://www.ncadv.org/files/DomesticViolenceFactSheet(National).pdf

>> And who's going to want to buy or rent a place where a murder or suicide happened?

You, if you ever stay at a motel or hotel. This is a sufficiently common occurrence in the hotel industry that they have established procedures and clean-up crews on call.

-- the shifting role of marijuana and its creeping legalization for the useless (i.e. "medical marijuana") but not for the workers

Oh, fuck the everloving hell out of you with a rusty music stand, genius. Assuming you don't mind consigning all cancer and HIV/AIDS patients to the "useless" bin, patients with spasticity in conditions like multiple sclerosis are able to use cannabis for muscle relaxation and... keep working. Obviously they're not working as airline pilots or neurosurgeons, but they're continuing to function at a much higher level than would otherwise be possible. Similarly, the neuroprotective effect in delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol and related cannabinoids allows people to, wait for it, keep working without the much more debilitating side effects of drugs commonly prescribed for migraine syndrome and seizure disorders.

What the hell have you been smoking? Clearly not a big diggity-dank bowl of research on actual patients in the 14 US states that have medicalized.

"Useless" isn't a personal attack on everyone who uses marijuana discreetly, appropriately (i.e. not before work, around children, etc.), and privately for pain control for very specific chronic conditions, like seizure disorders, migraine syndrome, and inoperable neuropathy? I.e., me? Please explain to me how that wasn't ad-hom right from jump. I seriously want to hear an explanation of how I'm "useless" despite continuing to produce both creative and scholarly work, and even causing some students, slowly but surely, to understand the gorram semicolon.

You seem to be confusing medical use of marijuana with addictive use by those who give in to the haze and drop out of life. Please don't.

You also appear to be denoting disabled persons as being without purpose or function in society. Again, please don't.

When discussing macro-issues, particularly with respect to the dominant paradigm, analysis of existing phenomena can sometimes be mistaken for agreement, reification and/or defense.

Please read my remarks above and below with this disclaimer firmly in mind.

The concept of the "deserving" and "unfortunate" versus the "undeserving" and "lazy" is embedded all throughout our society's decision making processes.

I agree that marijuana should be completely legalized. This does not change the fact that medical marijuana is only palatable to the powers that be because those who benefit are largely outside the workforce. (If it allows some to keep working, so much the better ... the larger the supply of labor, the less each laborer is worth.)

The unemployment rate, especially the "true" rate, is a measure of the power that employers have over their human capital.

As for disability, the idea that only those who have worked are eligible for disability payments itself separates the "worthy" (ie insurance for injured workers) from the "unworthy" (born with or suffering from conditions that preclude participation in the workforce.). The term "useless" (which should have appeared in quotes, my bad) is only with respect to the aforementioned furnaces. "Unfit for use (by the powers that be) except as scaffolding, or firewood" is closer to the meaning I intended, with apologies to Muyashi.

Personal attacks and unprivileged attempts at censorship are rejected with equal portions of derision and contempt. My apologies to those who took personal offense at generic and sweeping remarks; none was intended.

My daughter is getting disability payments (whether she ought to be or not is a separate issue), despite not having ever held down a regular full-time job.

One does not have to have worked to get disability payments.