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“I have asked them to pay attention to what they have just said. In particular to their use of the phrase “mental illness”. While it is true, i continued, that people in deprived situations are likely to suffer a great deal more than those who are more affluent, on what grounds are we correct to use medical language to describe that suffering? Do we use it because we have simply been taught to use it or because we have objective that it is somehow better to medicalise such suffering than it is to view it as many social scientists might as non-medical, non-pathological yet understandable human response to harmful social, relational, political and environmental conditions?”
― Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis
― Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis
“Persuading people they have more power than they do and ignoring the very real social barriers to attainment primes them for self-blame when reality fails to deliver. The worst extremes of phoney empowerment, argues Frayne, can be found in the trite aphorisms of the self-help industry, where popular psychologists ascribe to us almost magical abilities to alter circumstances despite the harsh realities constraining us. In a world where problems like disadvantage, unemployment and work-related distress are so socially embedded, downplaying the very real obstacles to opportunity is regularly experienced as yet another form of punishment, yet another form of blaming and shaming the individual.”
― Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis
― Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis
“If our basic needs were neglected: our need for safety, economic security, loving connection, autonomy, self-realization and meaningful work, our need to feel equal and respected, then poor emotional well-being will be an inevitable result. Materialism was therefore an unhelpful response to various deprivations. A culturally endorsed coping mechanism that ultimately backfired.”
― Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis
― Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis
“Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous—indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.”
― River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
― River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
“What we need is a profound rethinking of the nature of suffering itself, and what it is trying to highlight and ask us to change. We need to repoliticise emotional discontent in the minds of teachers, parents and policy-makers, rather than continue reducing it to dysfunctions that allegedly reside within the self. We need to acknowledge that suffering also reflects family/socio/political dynamics we would do well to better acknowledge and address.”
― Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis
― Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis
Marxism and Ideology
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A discussion group for works such as Althusser's On the Reproduction of Capitalism or Marx's The German Ideology ...more
Philosophy
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What is Philosophy? Why is it important? How do you use it? This group looks at these questions and others: ethics, government, economics, skepticism, ...more
The Atheist Book Club
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In these gilded halls we shall discuss the presence of the atheistic viewpoint in the written form. Are you a fan of Douglas Adams' scientific view of ...more
Ilkay’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Ilkay’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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