Psychology/Psychiatry

Mass shootings have become routine in the United States and speak to a society that relies on violence to feed the coffers of the merchants of death. Given the profits made by arms manufacturers, the defense industry, gun dealers and the lobbyists who represent them in Congress, it comes as no surprise that the culture of violence cannot be abstracted from either the culture of business or the corruption of politics.

All it takes for a society to express fear, paranoia, confusion, and a sort of mad country (riffing on mad cow disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy) mental disease is a toxic brew of narcissism, propaganda, amnesia, planned and perceived obsolescence and a transnational economic barbarism against the collective masses, and we end up here:

Vice President Mike Pence’s tie-breaking vote to confirm US Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, marks the first time in history that a VP has issued the deciding vote to officiate a presidential cabinet appointment.

Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons,
Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,
But, with a little, act upon the blood,
Burn like the mines of sulfur.
— Othello (3.3.324-326)

I was emotional. They are only fossils, but they have been human beings and very quickly you make a connection with these people who lived and died here 300,000 years ago.
— Dr. Jean-Jacques Hublin, Department of Human Development at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany

I was emotional. They are only fossils, but they have been human beings and very quickly you make a connection with these people who lived and died here 300,000 years ago.
— Dr. Jean-Jacques Hublin, Department of Human Development at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany

Indeed, the young are tethered to a slumber land of no ideas or ideals. Shackled to the beasts of debt and endless consumer-rent-mortgage-fee-levy-tax-fine-surcharge-hidden add on Capitalism. They amble to the nearest Starbucks and find the plastic putrid world and shitty coffee essence safe, conformist, the place to snuggle in with Twitter-Snapchat-Instagram-Facebook-Spotify.

Anxiety and depression are at unprecedented levels worldwide and the numbers are growing. The World Health Organization (WHO) describes it as an epidemic, and estimates that 615 million people are suffering from one or other of these debilitating diseases. A staggering number, that in all likelihood is an indication only of the depth of the problem; anxiety as documented by the WHO, is primarily a developed nation’s issue.

Dr. Gus Abu-Sitta
Dr. Gus Abu-Sitta is the head of the Plastic Surgery Department at the AUB Medical Center in Lebanon. He specializes in: reconstructive surgery. What it means in this part of the world is clear: they bring you people from the war zones, torn to pieces, missing faces, burned beyond recognition, and you have to try to give them their life back.

It was the school holidays and there were lots of teenagers in my local park. I sometimes spot them meandering home, but I rarely see them en masse as it were. Blind to the bluebells, peacocks and glories of nature all around us, they were glued to their palm-sized screens. What were they so engrossed in – some kind of game or trivial video, a map of the park perhaps, unnecessary given the proliferation of signs? Are they texting, e-mailing, or trawling through the Internet, or all of the above?