Great piece, Theo! The Mental Health Industrial Complex & its malignant consequences is a subject almost too big for words. Few have the skill sets & passion to tackle it. You have both along w/a deep-seated belief in the sanctity of life
My 15 minutes worth of notes:
Society has turned mental illness into a badge of honor for those who embrace victimhood & the attendant benefits:
-bestows unearned specialness & removes the assumed stigma of being ordinary
-explains away mediocrity
-helps assuage white guilt by bestowing victimhood
-explains away the anxiety that is a consequence of bad choices
-removes the responsibility for making hard changes
-removes the guilt of negative, even atrocious, behavior
-provides an enveloping community/tribe to those who feel the lack of it
-explains away bad parenting
-HIGHLY remunerative for schools
-a veritable font of of political cache, NGO$$$, jobs & the meaning/nobility that comes w/fighting on its behalf
-hard to measure effectiveness of dollars spent esp. when bad outcomes can so easily be blamed on racism, white supremacy, misogyny, disparities of all sorts, poverty & a host of others
-promotes a feminized culture
Alas, the victim path only reaps fetid fruits:
infantilization
lack of agency/resilience/gratitude
sociopathic behaviors
deceit/rage
blaming others for failures
a state of incurvatus in se
Bishop Barron wrote
"Lewis is illustrating here the Augustinian principle that sin is the state of being incurvatus in se (curved in around oneself). It is the reduction of reality to the infinitely small space of the ego’s concerns and preoccupations. Love, on the contrary, which is the very life of Heaven, is the opening to reality in its fullness; it amounts to a breaking through of the buffered and claustrophobic self; it is the activity of the magna anima (the great soul). We think our own little ego-centric worlds are so impressive, but to those who are truly open to reality, they are less than nothing." -- Bishop Barron
Great piece, Theo! The Mental Health Industrial Complex & its malignant consequences is a subject almost too big for words. Few have the skill sets & passion to tackle it. You have both along w/a deep-seated belief in the sanctity of life
My 15 minutes worth of notes:
Society has turned mental illness into a badge of honor for those who embrace victimhood & the attendant benefits:
-bestows unearned specialness & removes the assumed stigma of being ordinary
-explains away mediocrity
-helps assuage white guilt by bestowing victimhood
-explains away the anxiety that is a consequence of bad choices
-removes the responsibility for making hard changes
-removes the guilt of negative, even atrocious, behavior
-provides an enveloping community/tribe to those who feel the lack of it
-explains away bad parenting
-HIGHLY remunerative for schools
-a veritable font of of political cache, NGO$$$, jobs & the meaning/nobility that comes w/fighting on its behalf
-hard to measure effectiveness of dollars spent esp. when bad outcomes can so easily be blamed on racism, white supremacy, misogyny, disparities of all sorts, poverty & a host of others
-promotes a feminized culture
Alas, the victim path only reaps fetid fruits:
infantilization
lack of agency/resilience/gratitude
sociopathic behaviors
deceit/rage
blaming others for failures
a state of incurvatus in se
Bishop Barron wrote
"Lewis is illustrating here the Augustinian principle that sin is the state of being incurvatus in se (curved in around oneself). It is the reduction of reality to the infinitely small space of the ego’s concerns and preoccupations. Love, on the contrary, which is the very life of Heaven, is the opening to reality in its fullness; it amounts to a breaking through of the buffered and claustrophobic self; it is the activity of the magna anima (the great soul). We think our own little ego-centric worlds are so impressive, but to those who are truly open to reality, they are less than nothing." -- Bishop Barron
https://www.churchpop.com/a-bishop-explains-why-you-should-read-c-s-lewis-masterpiece-the-great-divorce/
Fantastic post! Fired me up. I will read the link. TY!