Excellent work! Thomas Szasz would talk of the west as a pharmocracy - I think this gets at what you are saying.
I've been thinking recently that the current political formula of the west is something like 'We, the regime, will take care of you, and you will be happy and healthy'. Doing things to improve health, physical and mental, is seen as a justification for almost any course of individual and government action, whether it be taxing sugar, promoting antidepressants, abortion, racial justice, climate policies (after all Thunberg herself sees global warming as the cause of her mental health conditions!), the development of AI and automation running our lives, and so on. Of course, many of the policies meant to make us happy and healthy are actually working against it, thereby perpetuating an abusive relationship between the totally subjugated and dependant populace upon a cruel government. Yet, until the political formula is challenged, way down to its metaphysical assumptions about the nature of man, the regime, whether it be this set of elites or a counterelite, will persist.
That's all to say - good essay, really made me think!
Excellent work! Thomas Szasz would talk of the west as a pharmocracy - I think this gets at what you are saying.
I've been thinking recently that the current political formula of the west is something like 'We, the regime, will take care of you, and you will be happy and healthy'. Doing things to improve health, physical and mental, is seen as a justification for almost any course of individual and government action, whether it be taxing sugar, promoting antidepressants, abortion, racial justice, climate policies (after all Thunberg herself sees global warming as the cause of her mental health conditions!), the development of AI and automation running our lives, and so on. Of course, many of the policies meant to make us happy and healthy are actually working against it, thereby perpetuating an abusive relationship between the totally subjugated and dependant populace upon a cruel government. Yet, until the political formula is challenged, way down to its metaphysical assumptions about the nature of man, the regime, whether it be this set of elites or a counterelite, will persist.
That's all to say - good essay, really made me think!