In the news today:
— Alice Munro’s daughter calls her out for staying with her husband, even after knowing that he abused her daughter.
— Trump orders his zombies to strategically backpedal parts of the Project 2025 doctrine so as not to scare voters (and to bring in the undecideds to his camp), and no one of any power or importance is paying attention.
— the Democratic Party is chasing its tail, again, and squandering whatever time or efficacy they might have still had.
— the GOP a candidate for Governor in North Carolina just gave a fiery sermon in which he clearly and blatantly endorsed political violence (“Some folks need killing.”) and far too many Americans even batted an eye.
There is no more room for maturity, nuance or even kindness in this country anymore.
It has been inculcated and insinuated and threatened out of the fiber of this country over the last ten years and there is no way to bring it back right now.
Apparently, the only way forward is to “fight.”
But fight whom? And how?
*********
What I need to be reminded of, every day and sometimes several times a day, is that depression does not operate in a vacuum.
Sure, there may be some chemical impulse involved; our bodies are holistic systems and chemical impulses can inform, and be informed by physical and emotional stimuli.
They can, however, also be informed by social and political stimuli.
And this is what reminds me that my depression is not my fault.
Let me say that again, a little louder for those in the cheap seats:
MY DEPRESSION IS NOT MY FAULT.
I did not create it, and I do not feed it. It is not an inherent character flaw, though some want desperately for me to think that it is. My depression does not exist in a vacuum, separate and apart from everything else that exists in the world.
That is why I need to be reminded that to be depressed in this world today is to be aware, is to be shackled to a system that benefits from keeping me depressed and benefits from making me think it is all my fault. The grand myth of capitalism is that my state of existence can be changed if I pull myself up by my bootstraps, save some money each payday, stay hydrated and stay healthy so I can work endless hours a week for someone else, and in so doing I can stay housed and secure.
That is a lie.
And I know it’s a lie because of how much goddamed money is spent every day on advertising to try and convince me that coloring inside the lines will get me ahead, if not today then someday.
Not gonna happen. The game is rigged.
Depression and capitalism have a direct connection. Depression and capitalism are flip sides of the same coin. The difference between me and someone who is not depressed, who is always healthy and secure and comfortable, may be as simple as the fact that he and I are not working with the same coin.
Because in capitalism, we can’t. For a wealthy capitalist to be healthy, safe and secure, many others must be unhealthy, unsafe, and insecure. The condition of the former relies on keeping the latter in a state of dependence on the system that keeps them down. There are two ways to escape this dependency: accruing enough wealth to avoid it, or dying. The people who own and operate the system do not care if you die. But if you accrue too much wealthy quickly, they will get nervous, because with enough wealth and influence you can change things, and the powers that be do not want anyone to change anything.
To be depressed is to be aware that the game is rigged, and to understand how and why you are on the short end of the stick.
What’s the cure for such depression?
Well, meds may help, if only to keep you on killing yourself or someone else. And counseling as an adjunct to that may be useful as well, though if you want to see meaningful change then the counselor isn’t the right person to talk to. And if you can access these things without breaking your bank, do it. Because we need for the aware people to stay alive and be aware and say something. For real change to happen, the depressed person needs to call bullshit on the whole system in any way possible, and to take actions of any size to gnaw away at the machinery to help bring it down.
Write.
Draw.
Sing and dance.
Take incriminating videos of the systems at work, and share them widely.
Play with children and keep them as far away from the machinery as you can, while they’re young enough to form healthy memories that can inform their adult choices.
Share your excess with others who are in need.
Don’t be afraid to engage in a little petty theft if you’re up against the wall and your next meal depends on it. The capitalists will tell you that when you steal, you’re stealing from the store employees, but you’re not. You’re stealing from the capitalists, who steal from their employees anyway no matter how “honest” you are on a given day. So if you must steal to avoid starving, don’t feel guilty about it. You’re starving because someone far more powerful than you wants you to. They benefit from your having less of everything you need to survive, and to thrive.
Pool your resources with others so each of you can live on less. Find a job where you can earn just what you need to to keep body and soul together, and if you can get away with working less than full time, do it. Time isn’t money; you can always make more money but you cannot make more time. Every part-time worker who chooses to remain part-time is stealing their time back from capitalism and spending it in other, more human-scale and beneficial ways.
Remember that we will all die someday, each of us. Embrace your mortality so it might inform how you will live each day. Capitalists thrive on our fear of death, and use all their powers to convince us that living forever is the more desirable option. It’s also a lie. We can take back our death and own it for ourselves. It won’t prevent my death but it will be real and it will be my death, and no one can take that from me.
Every now and then, things will get hard. The owners of the systems will win, and you will suffer.
But nothing lasts forever, not even suffering. The pendulum swings both ways. I try to remind myself of this whenever I can so that I don’t go off the deep end. I try to remind myself that my depression is not my fault, and it’s not of my making.
Suffering does not preclude or prevent art, joy or love. (In some ways, these things may be intensified by the experiences of suffering, but I am not the scholar who can facilitate an in-depth discussion of that point. As always, Your Mileage May Vary.)
The conditions that caused it happened long before I was born. Sadly, they will exist after I die. So my life will have to be a series of little rebellions every day. The best I can hope for is that someone else will see what I am doing, and choose to follow suit in their own distinctive ways.
It’s not ideal, but it’s the best I can hope for, and on my best days it’s a pretty good best.
(P. S. Dear Mom and Dad — please don’t be mad at me. You didn’t know. You couldn’t know at the time. I believe that if you did know you would have tried to do something. I hope that if there’s a glimmer of your knowing left anywhere in the universe you’ll be proud of me. I love you.)
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