Misery Inc.

You're not good enough. You're not healthy enough. You have too much bad habits and not enough good ones. You're not happy enough. Your room, much like your life, is a mess. You've failed in life. You have to get better, right here, right now before it's too late, and here's how you can do that all by yourself...

Yes, we're all failures. That's the feeling I got when glancing through the Amazon top 50 bestsellers; the percentage of books in the category "self help" is astounding. Are we really that miserable? Or is it just that there's a big market for these self help guides, which would indicate that we are a sorry bunch indeed; why else would we go out in droves to buy them? So, yes, we are feeling miserable. Not only these books, anti-depressants as well have seen their sales figures rise enormously with an increase of 64% in America in 2014 compared to 1999. Also the number of suicides shows a steady growth, especially among white men, while women are twice as likely to take antidepressants. By the numbers: Antidepressant use on the rise. Maybe that proves antidepressants are effective, that they prevent women to commit as much suicide as men, or maybe it proves some other, more fundamental difference between the sexes; I don't know. What's clear though is that western liberal democracies aren't improving the sense of well-being and security of their peoples.

For me this is no surprise whatsoever; I've written numerous times about how everything in the free market world economy is aimed at keeping every individual wanting more. That's just a fact. And the problem is not necessarily the "wanting more" part of it, it's the "individual" approach that's deadly. The self help books, or their popularity is one way to recognize this; by implying that you can solve your personal shortcomings all by yourself, you simultaneously suggest that you also created those shortcomings all by yourself. It's the logical conclusion reached by blindly following the meritocracy myth, Ayn Rand's sick "great man" concept come alive; if you're successful in life, that's all on you, if you fail in life, that's also all on you, for the first to be true, and we want it to be true so badly, the second has to be equally true. We've been drenched with this lie, and the self help books prolong and capitalize on the lie.

Maybe we can try something else: instead of trying to help ourself, try to help someone else. Instead of trying to help ourself, try seeking help from someone else. Instead of trying to help ourself, maybe we should look around and try to identify the aspects of our environment that could have contributed to us feeling so miserable. And try to not see this as shifting blame or escaping responsibility, but as realizing facts about our existence, realizing that we are indeed the sum of all our experiences and the product of our environment. Realize that every add you've ever seen held within it this message: you're not good enough. The only way to become good enough is to go out and buy our product. Your very identity is made up of the material goods you're able to acquire. This is what we've come to believe, and it's just not true; the idea has quite literally been sold to us. So when our ability to purchase happiness has been eroded over decades, with wages not keeping up with inflation for half a century, it's no wonder we're feeling less happy, less accomplished. Pair that with healthcare and education being cut, student - and medical debts at a historical high, and it's easy to see how an entire generation becomes disillusioned with the world my generation has left them with.

"It's not me, it's us." This is Bernie Sanders' central message throughout his campaign. He's aware of how deep this neoliberal rabbit hole goes, and he's aware of the fact that there's no way one single person can bring about the change we need to dig our way out. His proposed policies will have a snowball's chance in hell if he's the only one voicing them, even when he's president. They will be opposed every step of the way, not only by Republicans, but a significant section of the Democratic party as well. Bernie will need all of you, my dear American sisters and brothers. Fundamental change for the good of most people never trickles down from the top, it always comes from large populist movements from the ground up. These movements have always relied on every individual's willingness to fight for someone else, for someone they'll never meet. The empathic ability to feel angry on someone else's behalf; even when you have a good healthcare situation, you should be able to get furious when you hear that hundreds of thousands of people go bankrupt or die even because they're not as lucky. And you have to believe that you are indeed lucky; the roll of life's dice starts with your parents and the place and time you were born, none of which are chosen by you. Jeff Bezos is not "self made" and the misery cast down upon society by him having so much wealth won't be solved with any "self help" guide.

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