Fruits of Western Civilisation

Trouble Children – My Response to the NY times article (http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20A13F 7345B0C728DDDA80994DE404482)


A wise person once said “A measure of a civilization lies in its prisons. If that wise person was still around today I am certain they would rephrase the above to “A measure of a civilization lies in the drugs prescribed to its children”.

So the method of scientific quantification and observation began and we were told science would solve all the problems facing men, we no longer need to believe in an all power deity, “we are in a civilized age”. I would like to begin my review and discussion of the subject with a small dialogue between a wise person and an unimportant individual.

Unimportant individual: What do you think of Western Civilization?
Wise Person: I think it would be a good idea.

At the time we found this wit charming and alluring because it challenged the status quo. Today I wonder whether the truth buried in that humor is finally being realized. When a child of age 7 is being diagnosed of clinical depression, something is really very wrong.

The areas bound in this article can be expanded to so many spectrums of questioning; it would be ironic if I ended up taking a “drug” to ease my indecisive nature. The result of which I will be able to report to my very qualified american psychiatrist and be prescribed a medication in return. The age of our forefathers was a time of great development and change in all arenas. They faced hardship in Wars, faced changes at home in all sorts of revolutions and counter revolutions – life had changed and they no longer knew what was true. Some even had to walk miles to get fresh water or walk through 5 feet of snow everyday to get to school or work. How simple I say all that was, o how beautiful the notion of measurable difficulties was.

Regardless of the nature of hardships faced by man in the past, the problems that are now embedded in the McBread and McWater of our children’s diet is unprecedented in so many ridiculous ways we no longer realize the unnoticeable doomsday heading towards us. The theory was if a problem occurred you would pay homage to your doctor, a few pills swallowed and all would be well. That worked, for a while at least. But now that we have medical “experts” who no longer are able to concur on so much, one must really ask “ how much do we really know? “ , and not just in medicine but in all arenas.

The problem of lacking sufficient knowledge in science is easily resolved by a theorist. A theory fills in the holes and the cracks seem gone. When problems occur however we must revisit our suppositions and correct the premises we once stood so firmly on. Modern science has been majestic in its service to mankind. No doubt. But how longer can we depend on artificial solutions to natural problems? A broken leg can heal with the aid of a plaster but a broken heart cannot be sown with a Prozac, or can it? Well, if you give the broken heart a medical term, say “romeo disorder”, then you can invest and market a drug for that symptom as long as it all sounds “official”. This article is very revealing in the sense that it doesn’t pretend, it does not conceal from the reader the overwhelming pressure on families from modern life. Something that is accidental of American thinking- the truth is visible, but only if you really want to know it will you see it.

When an american child can name at least 5 modern day disorders without blinking, truth is visible. Children of the west today are the fruit of modern mans civilization in its best. The child of today will be educated in fields and in methods we never even comprehended, they will face information intake at a rate only a 1976 Apple comp. could handle we thought. They will live on a diet of so many artificialities their body will crumple at the loss of the simplest crouton of food. Not only broken but also new built relationships of families where mum and dad separate only to allow mum and a new mum to live together has impacts on a child’s mind that is very unnatural. Science compounded with new social movements towards “free choice”, which sounds more like pre Moses era to me, is marketed as true freedom, has overwhelmed and bombarded the tender mind of a 7 year old to an extent that growth in all arenas remains a problem. The child of today who is lucky enough to remain mentally stable will one day will helps us set up a pension when we retire at age 65- that child will be on super macho coffee insinuated with a blend of artificial herbal society by the time he is married – perhaps on artificial reality pills to recreate the art of dreaming by the time they themselves reach pension age- if not earlier.

In realizing the border of the controversial analysis here, one must see that American children really are facing a threat of estrangement from the rest of humanity. Being a child born in a developing country, I still cannot name 5 mental illnesses which children face.

This depression of western society has to be realized in its entirety and not limited to children’s illnesses. The pieces of this puzzle need to be joined. We must admit modern medicine can not help us in all ways; pharmaceutical companies cannot give us peace. A hit on the head cannot be solved by another hit on the leg. Children do not need to be labeled with “ bipolar disorder” or anything for that matter. Fear of almost even referencing the English writer Aldus Huxley raises fear in me. Are we really moving towards a life where solutions to life are solved by corporations who have a profit margin to fill rather than an actual duty. We detest and criticize communism at its brutal history but how different are we really? Must I use the analogy of the fox and the wolf? Where the wolf was communism and the fox is a loose capitalistic system which derails and facades the problems and solutions of life in a well masqueraded manner until it is bound in so many terms that is unacceptable to not accept it? Until the realities of life that we secretly all resist but adhere to are interwoven in our very existence that to part from the status quo would be suicide? Who has done this and how do we escape it. Because as long as we seek only to multiply luxurious lifestyles for ourselves at any cost to society- we can only create more problems. Not rid of any. Unfortunately for Americans, the very start of their history was with a dream which sought to pursue betterment in all ways. Progress, enhance and enjoy the fruits of labor. Has America gone too far in blindness? Perhaps.

Children need to be children. American or non American. Perhaps the approach of free range chicken should be adapted tactically to children, where we let children wonder and graze without any cages or dark rooms of unhealthy conditions, where we let their feathers color and their bodies develop the way mother nature intended. Perhaps we might achieve such a goal, perhaps we might reach a moment in life where our bodies reach such a state that no more profits are possible and we HAVE to return to some of the naturalist approaches presented by our ancestors. Perhaps retreat will be better than “progress”. Or maybe we might soon build robots for all our work, in which case I question the reader “if there is no need for humans, will we even exist? “, for an answer I would recommend the successful (and profitable) Hollywood flick “ Bionic Man”. Irony seeps from the letters you are reading.