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One in six people in this country are mentally ill. One in four of you will be admitted to a mental hospital during your life. The reason for this is the consumer society where the politicians are obsessed with economic growth and ignoring the quality of life.

In the Sixties the pundits were saying that we would have more leisure time in the future as automation would reduce the need for labour.The opposite has happened and whereas fifty years ago,or less, one person could support his whole family now both have to go out to work. The result is that children are becoming neglected in a society where the average child only sees their parents for ninety minutes a day. Propagandist say it was less years ago but this is obviously false because the mother was with the child all day until school age.

Advertising encourages us to consume more and more and the result is the destruction of the planet. We need to return to a simpler way of life where the family is at the centre of life and only one person needs to go out to work. The consumer society is not progress but insanity. Economic growth cannot be infinite because resouces are finite.

Mike freeman

To true Mike, I know I am nutts for a start. They said computers would make life easier,,, fukin idiots I now have 4 on my desk and suffer from radiation exposure. To make life easier all the town and city regeneration projects have Wi-Fi included so you can take you laptop to the pub with you so you can work while you have a beer. Soon you will not be able to get away from a PC................Then they take over.

Phil McC

I guess becoming Amish ain't such a bad idea!

eroticartist wrote:

[SNIP]

Economic growth cannot be infinite because resouces are finite.


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A standard text when I was studying economics at uni in the late 70s was E J Mishan's "The Costs of Economic Growth"

Originally published in the mid 60s, it's still well worth reading today.

[quote]One in four of you will be admitted to a mental hospital during your life.[/quote]

The average person has around 25 close friends -includes family members- and between 80 and 150 aquaintences at any time. This theory holds up in tribespeople in Africa & South America also, along with herders over Arabia etc. Chimpanzee & bonobo groups are of simular sizes in the wild. In simple terms, we have around 25 people we can trust & have a comfortable conversation with, and around a hundred more we say 'good morning' to. Paleantologists studying human evolution are using this theory to determine group sizes in early humans.

My point telling you this? Well that means I have 4 'mentally ill' close friends right now, and 6 of them will be admitted to a mental hospital during their life. Of associates, upto 20 of them are mentally ill at present, and 35-40 will be admitted to a mental hospital.

I know no one who's been admitted to a mental hospital.


I doubt your '1 in 4' calculation, of mental hospitalization is correct Mike.



An interesting theory about family time with kids, on which I've studied a little.....

Historians continually find across the globe that during the last 1000 years 'both' parents would have worked on a farm (over 14 hours a day), or travelled for days hunting while women collected fruits. This was a daily occurence that was essential to a families survival. Human children were probably cared for by grand parents or close relatives. Early tribes would have cast aside old or sick members as they were extra mouths to feed. During a winter or drought, these 'hangers on' would just have taken food away from healthy adults who contributed to the tribe. So the theory goes that old & sick people 'had' to contribute.

Humans are probably the only animal where the parents don't die after their 'child rearing' years. We're the only animal where grand parents are just as caring to their grand children as they were their own children. In other words, grand parents who evolved strong ties to grand children, contibuted to the group and weren't cast aside to die.

Groups who had 'caring grand parents' were more likely to survive a hard winter becuase they had 50% more parents looking for food. Thus, natural selection favoured humans that grew old and looked after grand children! Darwin does it again! lol!

Putting this into a modern perspective, children should grow up perfectly normally only seeing parents for a few hours a day, as long as they get emotional support from a grand parent or elder relative. I child in 2006 see's more of his/her mother than a child of 1000-100,000 years ago would have. It's only the birth of the industrial age, and people living in large towns that has brought the 9am-5pm era for fathers, while mother stays at home. A pretty recent event when you compare it with human evolution.

C.J,

Looking at the Amish way of life it is obvious from the lack of crime that the consumer society results in mass psychosis and violence.
Mike.

When i was a kid just after the second world war the consumer society hadnt kicked off this side of the pond as this country was so much in debt to the USA that it wasnt until the 1960s that there was anything much in the shops you could buy other than food which then was very expensive compaired with today, but the 60s was considered a boom time and people had money to spare and credit became easy to get and we all wanted new cars, washing machines, fridges etc. there was also a property boom and people started to buy their own houses, all on borrowed money and the only way it can work is by inflation so your debts are virtually wiped out over a period of time or you think they are, but apart from property and utility bills most other items are now in deflation, the consumer market today is reliant on the property market if that takes a dive then we are all fucked!sad!

AGREED!!

Sam,

One can't rely on personal anecdotes about the number of people in the UK who are mentally ill. We have statistics about the number of people admitted to hospitals and the millions of prescriptions each year for Prozac,for example, that prove my point. Also it is a thing people hide from others.

I am concerned with contempory society and not historical perspectives. However you mention the role of grandparents and this is true. In recent history the extended family has been replaced by the nuclear family and the granparents end up in old people's homes.

But mothers are not at home now are they. Both parents are forced to go out to work just to make ends meet and we still have the highest rate of debt in Europe. Everyone is being squeezed until pips squeak.
Mike.