Posts Tagged ‘society’

🏥 The Mental Health Crisis They Created 🏦

Posted: August 26, 2025 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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The system breaks us, then sells us pills.

They tell us it’s a personal failing. That anxiety is a chemical imbalance. That depression is a genetic curse. That burnout is solved with resilience. But look around: the conditions that feed this crisis are man-made.

“Doctors … argue that chronic stress, stemming from social problems such as financial distress, racism, and poor working conditions, is a key driver of mental health issues.” — The Guardian

We work longer hours for less pay. We doomscroll through endless cycles of bad news and empty distraction. We spend more time isolated in front of glowing screens than in human connection. The pressure is relentless—engineered to keep us consuming, competing, and collapsing.

“About one in four American adults suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year, and one in ten will suffer from a depressive illness, such as major depression or bipolar disorder.” — Johns Hopkins–derived data

And just when we break, they offer us a fix. Not by changing the system—but by medicalizing our despair. Big Pharma has turned misery into a trillion-dollar market. Antidepressant prescriptions keep climbing. ADHD meds are at record highs. Anti-anxiety pills sell like candy. And yet, rates of suicide, loneliness, and mental illness are higher than ever.

“In 2020, 20.3% of adults had received any mental-health treatment in the past 12 months, including 16.5% who had taken prescription medication for their mental health.” — CDC

“Today, a full fourth of U.S. women are on antidepressants.” — KevinMD / Harvard Health

This isn’t healing—it’s management. Profitable management. The more the machine grinds us down, the more pills they can sell us to function well enough to keep serving the machine. It’s a cycle of extraction: from our labor, our attention, and now our very psychology.

“The monthly antidepressant dispensing rate for females ages 12–17 surged 129.6% from March 2020 onward compared with beforehand.” — University of Michigan study in Pediatrics

None of this denies that meds can help. But let’s be clear: the crisis isn’t random. It’s not just “in our heads.” It’s the direct product of an economy built on overwork, digital isolation, and engineered anxiety. A society where meaning is stripped down to productivity, and hope is marketed back to us in capsules.

“Despite a significant rise in mental-health awareness and treatment … mental-health conditions are worsening. Suicide rates have increased by 30% since 2000, and nearly one-third of adults report symptoms of depression or anxiety.” — Time

“Between 1999 and 2022, antidepressant-related overdose deaths climbed; in 2022, there were 5,863 overdoses—comparable to heroin overdose deaths that same year.” — The Guardian

The mental health crisis wasn’t an accident. It was manufactured. And the ones cashing in are the same ones who built the conditions that broke us.

Wisdom is Resistance. Truth Over Tribalism.

💸 Bread, Circuses, and Billionaires 🍞

Posted: August 8, 2025 in Excess and Algorithms
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How manufactured distraction masks elite power grabs

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” — Steve Biko

We’re not fighting each other.

We’re being told we are.

While billionaires rig markets, write laws, and extract more than ever before, we’re fed a diet of distraction: who wore what, who said what, who to cancel, who to worship.
Culture wars and celebrity scandals dominate the headlines. Political rage becomes entertainment. Reality is replaced with performance.

Meanwhile, real decisions get made in rooms we’re not in.

Distraction is strategy.

Bread and circuses is policy.

The phrase comes from ancient Rome. Give the people food and entertainment, and they’ll ignore the empire crumbling around them.
Today’s version isn’t lions and gladiators. It’s 24/7 news cycles, viral beef, televised outrage, algorithmic dopamine, and the myth that “both sides” are the problem.

But both sides serve the same class.
The one you’re not in.

“The purpose of the modern media is to make the public passive and distracted, not informed and engaged.” – Glenn Greenwald

Who benefits from distraction?

Follow the money.

Culture wars don’t threaten capital.
They serve it.
If we’re busy hating each other, we’re not organizing. If we’re bickering about bathrooms, we’re not taxing billionaires. If we’re glued to gossip, we’re not watching the war profiteers, the surveillance state, or the bought politicians signing our futures away.

Distraction is not a side effect. It’s the point.

Manufactured chaos is cover.

Power prefers shadows.

The more noise, the less clarity.
The more conflict, the less unity.
The more fear, the more control.

Every celebrity trial, every TikTok feud, every political theater act keeps us from looking up. Keeps us consuming, not questioning. Arguing, not organizing.

“The press is not a watchdog. It’s a tool used by the powerful to manage public opinion.” – Matt Taibbi

We don’t need more sides.

We need more sight.

Start with the question: Who does this serve?
When the story goes viral, when the talking heads scream, when the rage is addictive—ask it again:
Who benefits from our attention being here?
Because the real theft isn’t always money.
Sometimes, it’s focus.

“You are being made to focus on the sideshow, while the tent burns down.” – Edward Snowden

anarchyjc.com // Truth over tribalism.
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More Literal & Metaphorical #WeightTraining Please

Posted: March 26, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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I love weight training. It is one of three things I recommend to every human being. It is one of the things I love that is actually good for me.

Weight training has positively impacted my life as much or more than any other external concept I’ve encountered while I’ve been alive. I’ve been regularly weight training for two thirds of my life now.

I don’t plan on stopping. All physical exercise is a marathon, not a sprint. Weight training is not something one does for a season, it is something one does for life.

Every year that goes by more and more scientific studies come out showing greater and greater benefits of weight training. Broader benefits and deeper benefits. Physical benefits, mental benefits and social/emotional benefits. Benefits for children and benefits for the elderly. Benefits for living longer and benefits for living a higher quality of life.

There has been and will continue to be resistance to weight training because of it being intertwined with bodybuilding. Male bodybuilders are to weight training as female instagram influencers are to yoga pants. They go hand in hand but only represent the egomaniacal extremes of the user base.

Most people want to exercise and benefit from weight training for practical health benefits. Not because they are seeking external validation from strangers via their smartphone to compensate for an internal lack.

For every fitness influencer covered in athleisure shape ware from head to toe while they photoshop their selfies, there are 10,000 people who would benefit from going to their local gym, a few times per week, to see and feel tangible physical benefits of exercise, surprisingly quickly.

Warm up, lift some weights that challenge their effort and comfort level, do some cardio, stretch, cool down, go home, shower, and eat. Anything beyond that moves into intermediate and beyond which one can find infinite information on in the growing podcast and youtube fitness video sphere.

Weight training helped me in the deepest, darkest times in my life. From depression, to burn out, to grieving the deaths of both of my parents. It helped me to feel good, feel challenged, feel accomplished, feel pride, feel growth. I wish that for every person I meet which is why I recommend it to everyone regardless of demographic or type.

Weight training also makes for great analogies and metaphors. Meditation, another thing I universally recommend, has been called doing bicep curls for the brain. Seeking general challenges and discomfort has been called weight training for life.

More weight training for all and more weight training metaphors please.

Notice how I am yet to bring up aesthetics. Except to poke at the social media narcissists who use perceived visual fitness achievement as a fix for their addiction to attention. Aesthetics is a by product of weight training and exercise in general.

Exercising for aesthetics can be a path the dark side of the fitness world. See fit fluencers and steroid abusers. People who are chemically and surgically enhanced, making a living, by living and lie. Lying to anyone and everyone, including themselves, that their aesthetics can be achieved with discipline, consistency, and whatever products they are selling.

I’ve had multiple IFBB pros tell me when it comes to who is on gear/has had cosmetic surgery vs naturals; muscle mass volume to body fat percentage never lies, ever.

So use common sense, although I’m not so sure how common that is anymore.

But common sense would dictate all humans engage in some form of physical exercise unless they spend their days engaging in physical labor for the job/career.

Use it or lose it. That applies to your body and your mind. Physical and mental ailments and deterioration are often brought about by physical and mental inactivity. The happiest and most spry elderly are the most active. The saddest and slowest youths are the most sedentary. Use it or lost it.

More weight training for all and more weight training metaphors please.

We’re Not Done Until We’re Dead

Posted: February 27, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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We’re not done until we’re dead.

Done with what?

Our life’s work.

What is our life’s work?

What we spend our time doing.

Time, the one thing we can’t get back regardless of how rich or poor we are.

It is normal to spend the majority of one’s life just trying to survive as long as possible.

Human, animal, plant…survival and replication is the name of the game, the purpose of life.

But things have changed for some people in some parts of the world depending on external factors completely outside of their control that determine whether or not they can devote their waking hours to doing something that has come to be known as…thriving.

Not just surviving, but thriving.

Not just living moment to moment, minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year. But something the privileged say is greater than just going on until we can’t go on anymore.

Something greater than doing what I am capable of doing to live to see another day? Wonderful! I’m in, sign me up, mark me down, I love it, I want it. This means my all my necessities will be provided for me so I can focus completely on thriving right? Right?

No, I am still completely responsible for my own survival. But now, I have to choose to find, cultivate, and expend from within me an entire new being’s worth of focus, energy, effort, determination, and consistency to dedicate my life to something greater? Even though I still have to devote the majority of my waking hours to doing what I am capable of doing to make sure I don’t die homeless, starving, and dehydrated?

Luckily we can choose what to focus on. We can choose how to perceive things. We can choose how to feel. We can choose how to act and what to do.

Not by default though. After all, we would be urinating and defecating where we sit or stand without being potty trained. So we have to learn the theories, concepts, skills, tools, practices, habits, rituals and routines to develop and improve ourselves gradually, over time, patiently into a better more actualized version of ourselves.

How many steps is that? How many choices is that? How many days is that? How many years is that? What is the cost of that? Why is it up to me to do all that? Shouldn’t they be teaching us those things in school? Shouldn’t that be paid training on how to live rather than pay to play?

Luckily we can choose what to focus on. We can choose how to perceive things. We can choose how to feel. We can choose how to act and what to do.

I suppose trying to be a better person is a better use of leisure time than watching tv. But what about people who don’t have leisure time?

That’s out of my control or ability to influence. The best thing I can do is focus on improving myself without negatively impacting others. No harm, no foul. Becoming a better version of myself may even end up having a positive effect on the people around me. That is certainly a good thing. To positively impact the people, places, and things around us.

It would be nice to know why we have to discover this on our own and do it on our own when in America we are forced to spend the first quarter of our lives being educated. Educated in what? For what? Now I have to spend the rest of my life learning and applying knowledge that will actually benefit me pragmatically?

I thought I was done learning. I thought one day I would be done working.

We’re not done until we’re dead.

Done with what?

Our life’s work.

What is our life’s work?

What we spend our time doing.

#Climate & #Capitalism Crises

Posted: January 4, 2024 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional, Excess and Algorithms, Frackishima
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The narrative and perception on climate change mirrors that of capitalist economies in so many ways.

Trying to manufacture consent to view the issue in a way that it can be achieved at the micro level, when in fact the only success at mass scale is at the macro level.

We love to embrace scientific change if it gives our favorite influencer or podcast host something to sell and/or talk about. We love science when it finds ways to improve products and services.

But putting science to use for the masses beyond medicine has been a no go for generations.

There is more than enough money, land, and resources to change the way life is lived on planet Earth so that the way we live is more sustainable and has less negative impact on the world we live in.

But we don’t do these factual, documented, measurable things because it would negatively disrupt the capitalist system and it’s beneficiaries.

No different then kings sending the serfs to war over personal disputes with other royal families. Just on a larger scale. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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