I often think that you can understand the trends of what’s happening in the mental health and substance abuse world. Meaning, what kind of drugs are people using right now. We’re probably a little past the middle of a terrible opioid epidemic. The trends of anxiety are becoming a more common psychological phenomenon that we’re talking about a lot. So why is this the case now as opposed to 10 years ago?
Our Culture Plays A Big Role in Substance Abuse
In my mind, those disorders are directly in relationship to what’s happening in the culture. The culture is moving too fast, everybody has anxiety. It’s like wow, okay, everybody’s using heroin.
Why are they using heroin? Well, heroin is one of those drugs that slows you down. Kind of slows down your heartbeat, slows down your system until you kind of nod off.
Well, to me, that’s adaptation. It’s an adaptive response to a society that’s moving too quickly. I think many of the ills that we’re all suffering have to do with a society that’s moving too fast on so many levels. The complexity that is required of us to function well in society. The amount of information that’s out there and that’s constantly being beamed into our lives.
It’s just happening so fast; how could I ever understand what’s really going on?
There are social norms that contribute to what’s happening in those realms, and there’s kind of a one-to-one correlation between all these things. It’s not always completely exact.
Propaganda, Marketing, and Algorithms
These have been going on for some time now–which maybe has to do with some of the blooming of psychedelic work that’s happening.
My dates could be off, but let’s say the 1950s, coming out of World War II, coming out of sort of national propaganda. There begin to be in the corporate world that concerted effort towards understanding marketing, understanding ideology, and understanding propaganda. How to get people to do and believe certain kinds of things. It became a kind of science in the corporate world.
That’s continued and been refined through the decades. We have companies like Facebook and Google that have algorithms tracking what we’re doing and feeding certain kinds of messages. Drawing us in to consume more and more content–to buy more things so that other people can make more and more money.
An interesting side effect of a society that begins to think about the value of everything in relationship to being bought and sold on a marketplace. Thinking about almost all things as a commodity. How much is it worth?
So, that very notion, meaning society as a marketplace, that begins to shape our consciousness. I’ve talked in previous videos about spirituality and the consciousness of the enlightenment. I could talk about the addictive consciousness, but there’s also a marketing consciousness.
Understanding the Marketing Consciousness
In a world where everything can be bought and sold on the market, what about me? Can I be bought and sold in the market? I mean, both literally, that’s happening. But also, like my personality, say when I’m going into a job interview. What am I doing? Well, I’m trying to sell myself.
What might I be doing here? I’m trying to sell myself and my ideas to you. In this case, however, I’m actually not. I’m trying to offer something of value, an education, but there are so many domains in which I’m selling myself.
What happens when a human being begins to orient themselves in a way where they’re thinking about themselves unconsciously as a commodity?
Well, we kind of know what happens, and I think Karl Marx was right about this, that the result of that is some form of alienation, some sort of disconnection from self. That’s in hyperdrive with social media and people taking pictures of themselves. Everybody has their own commercials basically that they’re marketing to everybody. We are in the hyperdrive marketing space. I don’t even think we understand that.
And in that space, what does that do to the consciousness of the people that are engaging in that? Well, they start to think about themselves as things that need to be marketed to other people, and that’s where their value lies.
Do you like my picture? Literally.
And in that sense, I don’t have much of a self, or at least I’m not connected to it because I’m just a commodity. I’m a thing that’s bought and sold in the marketplace like anything else. And what is the result of a human being that becomes alienated and disconnected from themselves? You don’t feel good.
Feeling Disconnected and Substance Abuse
It doesn’t feel good to be disconnected, unplugged, un-whole, right? And what do human beings do when they don’t feel good? They begin to try to find ways to feel good. We usually call those vices if they’re unhealthy. You can see the direct relationship between the trajectory the United States has been on–and some other countries–in terms of marketing, etc., now in hyperdrive and people using drugs and alcohol.
Well, if I’m just the thing, who cares if I stick a needle in my arm?
If we really think about that in a deep way, imagine somebody, or maybe know somebody, sticking a needle in their arm and pushing the plunger using heroin, the syringe, until they pass out.
For me it’s very metaphoric. I’m so disconnected from myself. I’ve lost so much value for my existence that I just want to disappear. It’s almost symbolic, like being nailed to a cross. It’s like, “Don’t you see how disconnected and how much pain I’m in?”
We have different coping mechanisms. Sometimes we cope by becoming workaholics–we get obsessed with our projects. The gym is an example. Which is all fine, but the root symptoms that we’re treating are the same: alienation, demoralization, disconnection, shame wounds, not feeling like we have a place, not knowing where we’re headed, not knowing what this is all about.
These deep existential issues. So, it’s always wise to look around what’s happening in society. It’s easy to look at somebody who’s suffering from addiction and say, that person sick, that person has a real problem going on. It’s much more difficult to go; actually, the whole society’s sick, and the fact that there’s so much addiction is a symptom of a larger societal ill.
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