Ilkay

“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.”
― James Davies, 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.”
― James Davies, Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis

“Psycho-compulsion is therefore not just about instilling people with a so-called correct employability mindset. It is a mechanism for penalising deviation from what it defines as the right set of attitudes and behaviours. ‘What psycho-compulsion therefore attempts to do is silence alternative discourses to the neoliberal myth that you are to blame for your unemployment,’ said Friedli. ‘At the same time, it undermines and erodes alternative frameworks around which people can come together in solidarity to act against the social causes of worklessness.’ In short, psycho-compulsion not only pathologises and punishes a claimant’s dissent, it depoliticises the causes of joblessness (which discourages collective action), and it does so by resuscitating Margaret Thatcher’s earlier myth that unemployment can be reduced to character deficiencies.”
― James Davies, Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis

“One senses that for Schopenhauer, the world does exist, and it’s horrible, and there’s not much one can do about it.”
― Eugene Thacker, Infinite Resignation