Sharp & Sudden Rise in Mental Illness in America (video)

**Gandalf** · 01-18-2017 02:43 PM

It is a harder world today. Michael Moore, the Clinton supporter, talked about how his Dad worked at the company and the income provided for the family, had health care, a pension, plenty for all and likely a job that lasted for decades. You just don't get that anymore. Everything is about screwing the worker for more and more and the solution to societies ills? To reduce corporation taxes, to give tax breaks to the rich, to cut services because the rich are now hoarding all the money, to make the market God, to trample on Unions, to call anyone who says it is BS a Communist. It is rubbish and the rise of the machines means that a lot of young people are lost in their devices. I can't talk because I post a lot and haven't changed the world either. Still, the young have been handed a really bad set of cards and while the hippies set about changing the world and promptly gave up, the young today don't seem to be even trying. I was watching a documentary and the attitudes of the young Arabs was really impressive. They really would die for their cause and in the West nobody wants to even go hungry for a day. That's not true, you do get these strange young people in the video that you posted, but they seem so wayward and hysterical. Those college kids are not like most kids, they are the most extreme examples really.

**brocktonblockbust** · 01-18-2017 03:17 PM

The young people today aren't becoming eclectic, deep, flexible people because of WHAT, EXACTLY? Because they can't work 30 years at the same job?? Mehhhh, OK 25% I'll say that contributes to it.

**Gandalf** · 01-18-2017 04:05 PM

I guess most people are not eclectic, deep, flexible people. It is probably even harder to be one if you work at a company for 30 years too. 40 hours a week devoted to that, then another 40 hours sleeping, then another 25 cooking, cleaning, ironing etc. It doesn't leave much time in the calender to read up on philosophy, culture, revolution, and self improvement. Then if you have job insecurity, money worries, and don't know who you are, you are going to find it difficult too. I guess contemporary society doesn't allow many people to become eclectic, deep, flexible people. It's not as though everyone can just vanish for a decade in the pursuit of the meaning of life. You tend to be stuck in a box and it is difficult to get out of it. Still, that is making excuses for people a bit. I agree with you that people should be intellectually curious and that life should be for the pursuit of understanding, knowledge and awareness. It is my duty to read a book each week, to learn a little language, to look for ways to improve in some way. I don't understand how some people end up watching soaps 5 days a week. It's a waste of life.

**brocktonblockbust** · 01-19-2017 03:03 AM

You're right that most people are not deep or eclectic or flexible no matter what generation they are from. I remember being an undergraduate student studying "a tale of a tub" by Jonathan Swift ...have you ever read that? We had a big seminar filled with about 110 students and dr. Poirier was teaching it----a very well renowned English lecturer who was visiting us for one semester at Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey. These days I do not believe there are 110 Millennials in the entire country of the United States of America who could sit through A 2 hour and ten minute lecture on Jonathan Swift's a tale of a tub and actually understand it and write a 10-page paper about it.