Comment by 4oo4 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 4oo4 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

This 100%. Framing mental health as a purely individual or chemical issue distracts from the societal/cultural level problems you're hinting at.

I've come to the conclusion that a lot of what we call the mental health epidemic is really just late capitalism being fundamentally unable to meet human needs of spirituality and emotional belonging.

There's nothing inherently wrong with capitalism as a means to an end in an economic sense, but as an ideology and identity (as is especially pervasive in the US), it's extremely toxic. Capitalism in this sense dehumanizes people, and rewards and encourages lack of empathy and sociopathy. We're taught that it's OK to let people be homeless, starve, and die preventable deaths from lack of healthcare because it's their fault for not being able to succeed in a system that is designed to profit off their failures. We're told we can't fix these because of insufficient means, but in actuality it's a question of prorities and not wanting to midly inconvenience wealthy people to share small portions of their wealth to support the society from which they extract their wealth.

Being in constant fear for your survival because your wages haven't increased in years while the cost of healthcare, food, housing and education keep increasing is disastrous for mental health, that shouldn't be surprising at all. If you're in that position you might be told that your employer can't afford to pay you enough to survive, when in actuality they likely still have healthy profits that are redistributed only to senior management and shareholders.

Learning about the concept of internalized capitalism was a game changer for me. Once you decouple your self-worth from your perceived productivity for the economy/society (aka your value to wealthy elites), it's a lot easier for you to accept yourself and stop blaming yourself for something that's totally outside your control that you perceive to be as a personal failure.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2021/06/...

I definitely think there are broad societal trends contributing a lot to mental health issues, but I'm less convinced it's capitalism exactly (depending on what you mean by "capitalism" of course[0]). Two societal trends that seem significant to me and my own depression are a) emphasis on individualism over community, and b) rejection of religion.

That's fair, everyone's mental health journey is unique, and you deserve a lot of credit for working on yourself and figuring out what's contributing to your depression.

When I say capitalism, I'm mainly referring to it in the sense of "internalized capitalism", as an ideology. It's the idea that your self-worth is only as valuable as your income or economic output and that if you aren't capable of that, you aren't worthy of basic things like shelter, food, and healthcare and therefore don't deserve to live since you are a burden on hardworking people with money. I'd really encourage you to research that since it can help untangle assumptions you might have about yourself, based on what society has been teaching you is the "right" way to live and what expectations you should have of yourself.

I think the things we think of as societal trends contributing to social decay have capitalist ideology and assumptions as the underlying thing that ties them together. Capitalism promotes individuality over communities sharing resources because that increases consumption, since then everyone needs to buy their own instance of something. You're expected to leave home at 18 because that's just what you're supposed to do to be a "normal" young adult, even if you're not financially or emotionally ready, and that also means that you have to consume more to support yourself instead of your parents continuing to share with you. We're taught that "greed is good" and hoarding individual wealth and power is better than making small sacrifices to ensure the well-being of everyone in the community.

Personally, rejection of religion was a positive for me, since at a young age I recognized the hypocrisy of Christianity as it was being practiced versus how it was presented in the gospels. This article written by a priest articulates this feeling that I've had for a really long time, that most of what is called Christianity in the US barely resembles it:

> Inasmuch as the two major political parties in America are both “liberal” in the classical sense—the one devoted a bit more to something like John Stuart Mill’s economic philosophy, the other a bit more to something like his social philosophy, and neither of them to the communal ethics of Christian tradition—it is hard for most Americans to make sense of such views. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Christianity has never really taken deep root in America or had any success in forming American consciousness; in its place, we have invented a kind of Orphic mystery religion of personal liberation, fecundated and sustained by a cult of Mammon.

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/three-cheers-socialism

My self-esteem improved immensely once I became an atheist and stopped guilting myself and tried to stop living up to others' expectations of how I should think and act, and this helped me become a more open-minded and empathetic person. Though, I will admit that although there's a lot to be gained from rejecting organized religion (as a human institution), there's also a void of community and spirituality that's left.

Anyway, thanks for being open about your struggles.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com