I think it has less to do with not wanting to lose comforts as much as it has to do with hypernormalization, which you’d think Curtis would be familiar with since he made a fucking movie named… hypernormalization.
What Curtis I don’t think has discussed enough in regards to is is capitalism and psychology. The unfortunate truth is the best way to make a living as a psychologist in the West is to work for a private corporation making advertisements and/or propaganda, or working for a government making propaganda. In other words, creating media that normalizes all this on purpose.
By and large, beyond the limitations of our technology that Curtis has covered in detail, the biggest way you normalize these things is with psychology. We have the smartest and most capable psychologists working against the common good for most people.
Even on a personal level, when you’re seeing a psychologist for mental health help for yourself, if you tell them about how stressed you are because you’re not making enough money, yet you’ve done “all the right things,” but you’re still struggling and it is weighing on you… Well they can’t prescribe “money” so they just shove antidepressants in your face, telling you “these will help.”
(Aside: undoubtedly, this isn’t meant to be some kind of take-down of modern psychology, many, many people need things like anti-depressants and anti-psychotics to function. I’m speaking almost exclusively about people who are mostly okay mentally, but their mental state is damaged by their poverty.)
In many ways, instead of addressing major problems, we teach people in our society to take drugs to avoid thinking about the major problems. We have psychologists using their training to promote advertisements or propaganda to make us question our own knowledge and how we feel about our own lives.
In past revolutions, the ruling class simply didn’t have access to this kind of knowledge of how humans and groups of humans function psychologically. Through this knowledge, there is a finer grained control over modern society than there has ever been.
How do we begin to fight the work of the people who know the most about how to exploit the human mind? I’m not sure there’s an easy way. I think others in this thread are correct, we’re more likely to see “the revolution” begin in the global south, far away from the influence of the US and Europe.
I saw a talk with a therapist recently when she said the most difficult kind of patients she had were the poor ones, when they problem was capitalism and she don’t know what to do.
I don’t believe these professionals have much to do as well in a therapists patient relationship.
Yes, to be clear, I’m not trying to vilify average psychologists who want to help people. Generally, if you’re willing to choose to make a lot less money by helping people directly, you’ve already shown yourself to likely be a halfway decent person.
I would say most psychologists aren’t bad people as much as they’re decent people working within the bad framework of the system in which they exist. The therapist you’re referencing is correct: it’s not really their fault that they don’t have the tools to help people broken by capitalism. I don’t think these people are purposefully pushing ignoring reality, but they can’t 1. promote things that could cause their client harm (revolution) 2. magic up new ways to fix people’s live under capitalism. So they’re stuck, and that sucks for their clients, and for them.
I think it has less to do with not wanting to lose comforts as much as it has to do with hypernormalization, which you’d think Curtis would be familiar with since he made a fucking movie named… hypernormalization.
What Curtis I don’t think has discussed enough in regards to is is capitalism and psychology. The unfortunate truth is the best way to make a living as a psychologist in the West is to work for a private corporation making advertisements and/or propaganda, or working for a government making propaganda. In other words, creating media that normalizes all this on purpose.
By and large, beyond the limitations of our technology that Curtis has covered in detail, the biggest way you normalize these things is with psychology. We have the smartest and most capable psychologists working against the common good for most people.
Even on a personal level, when you’re seeing a psychologist for mental health help for yourself, if you tell them about how stressed you are because you’re not making enough money, yet you’ve done “all the right things,” but you’re still struggling and it is weighing on you… Well they can’t prescribe “money” so they just shove antidepressants in your face, telling you “these will help.”
(Aside: undoubtedly, this isn’t meant to be some kind of take-down of modern psychology, many, many people need things like anti-depressants and anti-psychotics to function. I’m speaking almost exclusively about people who are mostly okay mentally, but their mental state is damaged by their poverty.)
In many ways, instead of addressing major problems, we teach people in our society to take drugs to avoid thinking about the major problems. We have psychologists using their training to promote advertisements or propaganda to make us question our own knowledge and how we feel about our own lives.
In past revolutions, the ruling class simply didn’t have access to this kind of knowledge of how humans and groups of humans function psychologically. Through this knowledge, there is a finer grained control over modern society than there has ever been.
How do we begin to fight the work of the people who know the most about how to exploit the human mind? I’m not sure there’s an easy way. I think others in this thread are correct, we’re more likely to see “the revolution” begin in the global south, far away from the influence of the US and Europe.
I saw a talk with a therapist recently when she said the most difficult kind of patients she had were the poor ones, when they problem was capitalism and she don’t know what to do.
I don’t believe these professionals have much to do as well in a therapists patient relationship.
Yes, to be clear, I’m not trying to vilify average psychologists who want to help people. Generally, if you’re willing to choose to make a lot less money by helping people directly, you’ve already shown yourself to likely be a halfway decent person.
I would say most psychologists aren’t bad people as much as they’re decent people working within the bad framework of the system in which they exist. The therapist you’re referencing is correct: it’s not really their fault that they don’t have the tools to help people broken by capitalism. I don’t think these people are purposefully pushing ignoring reality, but they can’t 1. promote things that could cause their client harm (revolution) 2. magic up new ways to fix people’s live under capitalism. So they’re stuck, and that sucks for their clients, and for them.
You make an excellent point pointing out the weaponization of psychology in service of the status quo. This is often overlooked.
I think my wake-up call was probably the two psychologists from Spokane, WA, USA who helped Bush engineer his torture program. If you can justify the use of psychology for torture, you are definitely ready to justify it for societal control.