What Would It Look Like If Civilization Had A Nervous Breakdown?
By Dave Eriqat
18 January,
2008
Countercurrents.org
Nervous breakdown
Non-clinical
definition: general term for various emotional disorders causing severe
life disturbance.
Symptoms: inability to cope.
Causes: Extreme stress, emotional trauma, grieving, severe anxiety.
I recently read a fascinating article that referred to a discipline known as ponerology. [1] It captivated me because I had never before considered the hypothesis it raised: that our systems of government and commercial enterprise across the globe have been irreparably corrupted by a “critical mass” of evil people, who some have eloquently termed “pathocrats.”
That would explain so much about our world today and why everything seems reversed: what was once wrong is now right; truth, once considered noble, has given way to endemic dissembling; where we once championed helping people in need, today we push them away (as in the case of the homeless) or simply kill them (as in Palestine); knowledge is scorned, while unsubstantiated belief is embraced.
The world today reminds me of that excellent Star Trek episode, titled Mirror, Mirror, [2] in which in the midst of the transporter beam, several crew members swap places with their counterparts from an almost identical parallel universe, but in which everything is backwards: evil is endemic, violent ascension is admired, the administration of pain thinly conceals a latent pornographic lust, just like in the case of our own Abu Ghraib prison scandal. …
Because
of the length of this essay, it is presented as a PDF file, which
can be accessed
here
