An adversarial debate on whether the increasing use of Prozac and Ritalin reflects the State's desire to suppress dissent.
A hundred years ago, neither adults nor children were on regular, state-rationed psychiatric drugs. If life was difficult, people coped on their own terms – they took a swig of laudanum, drowned their sorrows in gin, or simply endured with raw stoicism. Now, one in seven adults are on State-controlled anti-depressants like Prozac, and roughly three percent of boys aged 10 to 14 are on ADHD drugs like Ritalin. In some parts of America that figure rises to over ten percent, presumably meaning half the classroom is bouncing off the walls, while the other half sits staring like tranquillised owls.
What happened? The rise of the interventionist State, and its alliance with the medical establishment, is what's happened. Prescriptions for Prozac and Ritalin are not driven by individual demand. The pressure to medicate comes from the medical profession, backed by the preferences of the State.
One possible hidden driver, behind this massive medicalising of the mind, is suppression of dissent. Dissatisfaction with State-controlled life has to be kept down, if the elites are to maintain hegemony. Children may seem unlikely candidates for articulating opposition, but they’re dangerous because they haven't yet learnt to repress their natural reactions.
What happened? The rise of the interventionist State, and its alliance with the medical establishment, is what's happened. Prescriptions for Prozac and Ritalin are not driven by individual demand. The pressure to medicate comes from the medical profession, backed by the preferences of the State.
One possible hidden driver, behind this massive medicalising of the mind, is suppression of dissent. Dissatisfaction with State-controlled life has to be kept down, if the elites are to maintain hegemony. Children may seem unlikely candidates for articulating opposition, but they’re dangerous because they haven't yet learnt to repress their natural reactions.
KIKI: Romanticising the early twentieth century as a paradise of "coping on your own terms" is pure revisionism. People were not exercising autonomy; they were blindly downing unregulated patent medicines laced with morphine and cocaine just to survive the brutal gears of early industrial life. "Coping" back then meant locking your eccentrics in asylum cellars, letting addicts waste away in slums, or beating hyperactive schoolboys into traumatised silence.
What you call the "interventionist State" is just modern clinical progress catching up with centuries of hidden human suffering. People are not being chemically subdued to protect an elite hegemony; they are finally being given the basic biochemical tools to function in a complex world.
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What you call the "interventionist State" is just modern clinical progress catching up with centuries of hidden human suffering. People are not being chemically subdued to protect an elite hegemony; they are finally being given the basic biochemical tools to function in a complex world.
READ MORE