Ilkay

“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

“...all sentient beings capable of suffering should constitute a solidarity against suffering. Out of this solidarity, we should refrain from doing anything that could increase the overall amount of suffering and confusion in the universe.”
― Thomas Metzinger, The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self

“Depression is worse than death; it is death with open eyes. Like the damned in 'No Exit', you have no eyelids, and the light never stops burning.”
― Hermann Burger, Tractatus Logico-Suicidalis: On Killing Oneself

“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