| Things can only get worse. 07:23 - May 10 with 1173 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/10/britain-mental-hea
'Neoliberalism’s greatest triumph is to persuade us that, in Margaret Thatcher’s words, “there is no alternative”. In reality, the doctrine is an alternative to the much better lives we might have led. In the new book I’ve written with the film-maker Peter Hutchison, The Invisible Doctrine, we seek to drag this ideology and its disastrous impacts into the light and show how it can be overthrown to fulfil the promise of a better world.
The doctrine reached its apogee in Liz Truss’s 49-day meltdown, when she tried to apply neoliberalism to the ideological letter. But this was just the most extreme manifestation of what we have suffered since 1979. Labour softened some aspects but accepted privatised public services, brutally curtailed protest, deregulated commerce even further and allowed the financial sector to pursue reckless get-rich-quick schemes. It added a disastrous twist of its own, extending the private finance initiative to vast tracts of government provision – one reason for the crises suffered by hospitals, schools, prisons and other services today.
Amazingly, neoliberalism, despite all the breakdowns it has caused, continues to dominate. Labour, as the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, demonstrates through her irrational commitment to austerity and her stated intention to deregulate capital even further, seems determined to ensure there is no alternative.'
'How have successive governments got away with it? Through the endless promise of jam tomorrow. If we keep working harder, one day we’ll pay for the public services we need; one day we’ll earn the economic security we crave; one day we’ll have more leisure time. Will this magic day ever arrive? Of course not. Strong public services and economic security were never part of the plan. But to have us working ever-longer hours on behalf of capital? That is very much part of the plan.'
Arbeit macht frei.
|  |
| |  |
| Things can only get worse. on 07:26 - May 10 with 1141 views | GlasgowBlue |
Why did you have to invoke the Holocaust at the very end? Poor taste banksy. |  |
| |
| Things can only get worse. on 07:33 - May 10 with 1115 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Things can only get worse. on 07:26 - May 10 by GlasgowBlue |
Why did you have to invoke the Holocaust at the very end? Poor taste banksy. |
Thought about it, but decided it wasn't in bad taste....it's a prison of our own construction which has millions if not billions of victims when you consider its results.
Edit....also the result of a warped ideology.
"They break our legs and tell us to be grateful when they offer us crutches."
"Bigger cages, longer chains." [Post edited 10 May 7:34]
| |
| |
| Things can only get worse. on 07:33 - May 10 with 1109 views | Herbivore |
Edit out that last line as it's got very insensitive connotations, however the point about the corrosive effects of neoliberalism are spot on. It also endures not just because of the promise of a brighter future if we work hard enough but because it is the favoured political-economic model of the wealthy elite, who control the press, who in turn present any suggestions of an alternative as lunacy and perpetuate the idea that neoliberalism is somehow a natural state of affairs. |  |
| |
| Things can only get worse. on 07:46 - May 10 with 1063 views | victorywilhappen |
“Capitalist realism insists on treating mental health as if it were a natural fact, like weather (but, then again, weather is no longer a natural fact so much as a political-economic effect). In the 1960s and 1970s, radical theory and politics (Laing, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, etc.) coalesced around extreme mental conditions such as schizophrenia, arguing, for instance, that madness was not a natural, but a political, category. But what is needed now is a politicization of much more common disorders. Indeed, it is their very commonness which is the issue: in Britain, depression is now the condition that is most treated by the NHS. In his book The Selfish Capitalist, Oliver James has convincingly posited a correlation between rising rates of mental distress and the neoliberal mode of capitalism practiced in countries like Britain, the USA and Australia. In line with James’s claims, I want to argue that it is necessary to reframe the growing problem of stress (and distress) in capitalist societies. Instead of treating it as incumbent on individuals to resolve their own psychological distress, instead, that is, of accepting the vast privatization of stress that has taken place over the last thirty years, we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill?”
― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jan/03/comment.mentalhealth |  | | |
| Things can only get worse. on 08:00 - May 10 with 1005 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Things can only get worse. on 07:46 - May 10 by victorywilhappen |
“Capitalist realism insists on treating mental health as if it were a natural fact, like weather (but, then again, weather is no longer a natural fact so much as a political-economic effect). In the 1960s and 1970s, radical theory and politics (Laing, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, etc.) coalesced around extreme mental conditions such as schizophrenia, arguing, for instance, that madness was not a natural, but a political, category. But what is needed now is a politicization of much more common disorders. Indeed, it is their very commonness which is the issue: in Britain, depression is now the condition that is most treated by the NHS. In his book The Selfish Capitalist, Oliver James has convincingly posited a correlation between rising rates of mental distress and the neoliberal mode of capitalism practiced in countries like Britain, the USA and Australia. In line with James’s claims, I want to argue that it is necessary to reframe the growing problem of stress (and distress) in capitalist societies. Instead of treating it as incumbent on individuals to resolve their own psychological distress, instead, that is, of accepting the vast privatization of stress that has taken place over the last thirty years, we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill?”
― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jan/03/comment.mentalhealth |
Stress and mental dis-ease has indeed been commodisised by neo liberalism. There is nothing that the market will not jump on and attempt to monetise and profit from. | |
| |
| Things can only get worse. on 08:32 - May 10 with 939 views | Wacko |
| Things can only get worse. on 07:46 - May 10 by victorywilhappen |
“Capitalist realism insists on treating mental health as if it were a natural fact, like weather (but, then again, weather is no longer a natural fact so much as a political-economic effect). In the 1960s and 1970s, radical theory and politics (Laing, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, etc.) coalesced around extreme mental conditions such as schizophrenia, arguing, for instance, that madness was not a natural, but a political, category. But what is needed now is a politicization of much more common disorders. Indeed, it is their very commonness which is the issue: in Britain, depression is now the condition that is most treated by the NHS. In his book The Selfish Capitalist, Oliver James has convincingly posited a correlation between rising rates of mental distress and the neoliberal mode of capitalism practiced in countries like Britain, the USA and Australia. In line with James’s claims, I want to argue that it is necessary to reframe the growing problem of stress (and distress) in capitalist societies. Instead of treating it as incumbent on individuals to resolve their own psychological distress, instead, that is, of accepting the vast privatization of stress that has taken place over the last thirty years, we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill?”
― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jan/03/comment.mentalhealth |
Mark Fisher is great. His final book (taken from his lectures during the year that he killed himself) is particularly insightful:
https://guardianbookshop.com/postcapitalist-desire-9781913462482
Lived in Felixstowe |  |
| |
| Things can only get worse. on 09:03 - May 10 with 872 views | victorywilhappen |
Mark Fisher was a great thinker. Unfortunately he didn't get the support he needed (due to cuts) in his final days from the hospital in Ipswich.
On Vanishing Land is a good work. An audio essay by him and Justin Barton about a walk along parts of the Suffolk coast.
He is very much missed by many.
A big football fan in his youth > He was at Hillsborough I believe.
A second-wave hauntologist. [Post edited 10 May 9:09]
| | | |
| Things can only get worse. on 10:15 - May 10 with 765 views | thebooks |
| Things can only get worse. on 09:03 - May 10 by victorywilhappen |
Mark Fisher was a great thinker. Unfortunately he didn't get the support he needed (due to cuts) in his final days from the hospital in Ipswich.
On Vanishing Land is a good work. An audio essay by him and Justin Barton about a walk along parts of the Suffolk coast.
He is very much missed by many.
A big football fan in his youth > He was at Hillsborough I believe.
A second-wave hauntologist. [Post edited 10 May 9:09]
|
…Fall fan too:
http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/007759.html
(although don’t agree that HEH marks the end of their great work, but still…)
And yes, neoliberalism is making us ill. |  | | |
Login to get fewer ads
| Things can only get worse. on 12:47 - May 10 with 604 views | J2BLUE |
Couldn't agree more. |  |
| |
| Things can only get worse. on 14:24 - May 10 with 506 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Things can only get worse. on 12:47 - May 10 by J2BLUE |
Couldn't agree more. |
It's almost impossible not to isn’t it.....and yet here we are! | |
| |
| |
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.
