are you suffering from social anxiety and mental health issues if you are it's hardly surprising
i don't even mean just within the context of a global pandemic and the obvious political fissures
that are emerging but perhaps our systems even beyond current events are designed to engender
and exacerbate mental illness do you feel socially anxious right now are you concerned about how to
have interactions where you can only see 50 of the face are you worried about having a total
lack of connection do you feel somehow that you're not nurtured within that you're not good enough
that you're worthless that this is a difficult world to live in that out there somewhere people
are living a better life than you that you've somehow missed out on something crucial vital
and integral to the experience of being human well this is not a new idea religions are founded
books are written and i don't just mean modern self-help books such as the ones that i've written
great masterpieces of literature are constructed on this basis that we have become a lost
species that the problem of mental health is not an individual one but a social and
cultural one the late great mark fisher wrote in his book capitalist realism that mental
health problems are created by the alienation dissatisfaction and disconnection of the modern
world sebastian younger i think it's his name in his book tribe says that we couldn't if we were
looking to design a society to create mental health problems we couldn't do any better
than what we've currently done a culture that makes people feel alienated alone worthless we
tend to compare ourselves to one another in short if you want to be mentally healthy you're going
to have to find a way of severing yourself from the grid from the matrix of culture that pumps
you full of negative information i think that the problem is simply that we prioritize so strongly
economic at the economic advantages of the already economically advantaged that it biases
and warps the rest of culture in a direction that means that most people to some degree suffer but
the mental health problem is one that infects all of us and probably affects you more if you do not
have any economic facility with which to remedy it but like you know across my life i've known
enough people now that are like sometimes like properly world famous people that you'd think
would be right as rain or somehow reveling in the spoils of our society that are just desperate
broken and alone and the solution for them and you know me so i have to include myself in that to a
degree is the same as the solution for you to find connections that are outside the mediated space of
our capitalist culture what i mean is purpose a personal purpose what is the purpose of your life
right now what is the thing that is motivating and driving you how i would personally answer
that question is i want to have a connection with reality i want to stand in reality not
in the concepts constructions and inflections of a culture that sees me primarily as a consumer
and an agent of consumerism i recognize that practically i am a father in a family i have
an obligation to my partner and to our children i have all sorts of economic responsibilities
that i have to fulfill without being sucked into the very system that i am here critiquing my
purpose more broadly is to ensure that on a daily basis i am of service and use to other people
people from whom i can't get anything in return except that glow of good will that you get when
you know that you've helped another person i'm connected to a tribe of people that have
the same purpose as me in my case that's around abstinence and connecting to a higher power but
all of us can have that in short and the reason i mentioned sebastian younger is because he strongly
believes that part of the solution to our problem is in emulating and recreating the conditions for
which we are evolved we are evolved to be tribal animals if you're living a lonely atomized life
defined entirely by economic criteria you'll need to meet certain targets to pay certain bills to
stop yourself from going under then you as he says in his book are as detached from reality
as it's possible to be if you have no connection to nature if your own survival is mediated again
through economic structures that seem abstract to you if you're you're paid you you live in a house
you're ordering everything online what have we made ourselves we're just becoming like an avenue
a junction for this system that the systems that are meant to serve us have put have submitted
us subjugated us into their service for your social anxiety for your mental being for you
to reclaim some kind of mental health some nutrition some connection you are going to
have to create and replicate organic and natural systems outside the culture in the way that i
and the way i described you're going to need prayer and meditation you're going to need
connection to like-minded people you're going to need a connection to nature any one of those
things might be challenging for you in a way that i'm not considering because i don't understand
your likely economic or medical realities because i'm aware i'm coming at you from a time of great
at a time of great suffering the simple truth is this the spiritual life cannot be seen as
sundry secondary and ancillary add-on this is the main course the main course is your connection to
reality or your connection to god use whatever word you uh you know don't jar with you don't
wind you up if you don't have that connection if your well-being is entirely attached to things
that are beyond your control man that's a life of suffering i know this because i've been there
but check this out as a beautiful analog a metaphorical piece of writing from the great
hermann melville from his masterpiece moby dick i like this piece of writing because it's embedded
with archetypal information through his genius he accessed for those who don't know moby dick takes
place on a whaling ship like they're out looking for this whale moby dick who's obviously under the
surface of the water and therefore represents the monster under the water which all of us personally
identify with because all of us have within us primal drive such as our sexuality and our drives
to survive which include the need to like you know hunt and kill for example and that we have by and
large unless we have some means of connecting with them lost that connection and therefore we
live with a monster under the sea of ourselves this is how melville describes that situation
check it out consider the subtleness of the sea how its most dreaded creatures glide underwater
unapparent for the most part and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure
consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes as the
dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks consider once more the universal cannibalism of
the sea all whose creatures prey upon each other carrying on eternal war since the world began
consider all this and then turn to this green gentle and most docile earth
consider them both the sea and the land and do you not find a strange analogy to something in
yourself for as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land so in the soul of man there
lies one insular tahiti full of peace and joy but encompassed by all the horrors of the half
known life god keep thee push not off from that aisle thou canst never return
melville makes the case of staying on the terra firma of the acknowledged psyche the terrain that
you know the person that you know yourself to be not venturing off into the oceans of the possible
not relinquishing the ego not letting go now there's an obvious counterpoint to that there's
a clear argument for exploring these territories in fact for me the world of prayer and meditation
potentially psychedelic investigation is all about discovering and harnessing these latent powers but
as that beautiful piece of writing demonstrates this should be done with some degree of caution
there's no doubt that you would feel anxious at a time like this in a place like this in
a space like this with a creed like this in a world like this designed to keep you
trapped immobilized spending even under the most ludicrous conditions where the world itself is
calling out to us to awaken and the systems we have designed the man-made manacles of
our social and economic systems endeavor to keep us in chains try to find your own way back home
look for people that are on the same path as you awakened know that as these structures
were created alternative structures may yet be created and from this peculiarly apocalyptic time
there may yet be a cultural awakening because you are not suffering from social anxiety and mental
illness alone you are suffering as part of an epidemic an epidemic induced by willful ignorance
you