The Psychopaths Are Running The Asylum

It is so completely obvious to me that I cannot believe most of us do not see it, at least at a low level of awareness. An unnerving sense of something uncomfortable lurking in the depths of our minds. It is a sense of alienation and isolation from which we endeavour to distract ourselves with alcohol, drugs, shopping, movies, hobbies, working out, yoga, walks in the park, the new kitchen or bathroom or two weeks in the sun. Choose your distraction; it matters not. We are on the run.

By and large, by the time we hit our forties, many of us are at breaking point. Is it the job itself, the career I chose, my income, or is it my entire life? Is it my relationship or my fat and out-of-shape body? Is it all these things? These are individual points of disturbance, prominent features of our lives that are open targets for corporate marketing. Whatever it is, worry not. There is a solution for you. We are no longer concerned with the social good, not really. Our concern is for making stuff that sells. And as for workers, well, you're just an object, a resource to be managed.

So what is this that is so completely obvious?

We have collectively built a gameshow society. A Truman Show reality. We have freedom and autonomy in our lives to only a minor extent. We may seem to have control, but it's merely to the degree that we can experience a kind of pseudo-comfort. Generation after generation, we row in, complicit in its perpetual fabrication and completely asleep to its destructive nature. Life, and by extension work, has become so utterly abstract that we cannot see society for what it is. Sweet Jesus, just look at US politics! It is the epitome of the farce to which life has become. Surely, we would not have chosen this state of affairs if we thought we had a choice. We would not choose to pollute our water systems with chemicals and dump rubbish into the sea. We would not continue to consume endlessly until the earth is on fire. Nor would we leave our children in creches with strangers while giving our best hours and days to organisations that couldn't give a shit about us either way.

Yet here we are, all of us complicit in the madness to varying degrees. We, the masses, in our self-distraction, enable corporations to behave the way they do, to take unmitigated risks, destroy the environment, and murder and maim men, women and children in their pursuit of profit, power and control. They are psychopathic entities that would cease to exist if it were not for us. Yet, even while we see this all around us, something maintains our behaviour. Observing this makes it clear to me that we are not in control of our own lives and decision-making. More knowledgeable others play the tune, and we dance the dance. Bernays knew it. Le Bon knew it, too. It is the basis of all marketing, advertising, public relations, spin doctoring, and propaganda, and we lap it up.

I am optimistic, nonetheless. Eventually, one revolution will not lead to the next, and the crowd's need to be led will cease. Until then, the psychopaths are running the asylum.