| GREG-STRANGE.COM |
"If you haven't found something strange during the
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
PROVIDING SUBSTANTIVE COMMENTARY ON THE
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
Forlornness In The Fatherland
According to Edward Shorter in his book “A History of
Psychiatry,” the status of that branch of medicine which tries
to deal with problems of the human mind was of “unparalleled
sophistication” during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
in Germany. It’s too bad that didn’t hold up another century or
maybe the worst of Germany’s mass psychoses could have been
assuaged, saving the world tens of millions of lives and untold
destruction.
Be that as it may, Germany is now undergoing yet another
psychiatric problem on a mass scale, though one less
devastating to its neighbors and the world at large (at least so
far). According to research performed by a German health
insurance company, cases of depression among Berliners has
risen by 70% since 1997 and up to 70% of all Germans say they
are prepared to seek professional help for psychological
problems.
So, rather than the citizens of surrounding countries
trembling at the prospect of German incursions, hordes of
Germans are trembling at the prospect of having to get out of
bed each morning and face a new day. But what could be
causing so many normally vivacious, hard-working, productive
people to become afflicted with such a dolefulness of spirit?
It seems rather puzzling considering that Germany has
achieved the standard idyllic EUtopian state of government-
subsidized and government-sanctioned bliss with short work
weeks, long vacations, free health care, frowned-upon
religiosity, moral relativism, abortion on demand and even
legalized prostitution. It’s just a very groovy, post-Christian,
nonjudgmental, nanny state kind of existence, so what’s there
to be despondent about?
Mental health professionals blame the increase of
depression on the faltering German economy, which has seen
unemployment rise to a postwar record of 12 percent. Granted,
12% unemployment in a modern, highly developed Western
economy is ridiculous, but Germany has had chronically high
unemployment for many years without the prevailing Zeitgeist
becoming such that nearly three quarters of the population are
poised to go slinking off at any moment to find a shrink.
Maybe there’s more going on here, and maybe it’s a
precursor of what’s to come throughout Western Europe, as the
downside of the modern, social democratic welfare state
catches up with them. Maybe the conditions created by that
kind of state have worked in Germany to squelch vivacious,
hard-working productiveness, replacing that instead with a
dispirited torpor that permeates the fatherland like an
Oktoberfest hangover.
It doesn’t seem like rocket science to figure out that the
more a government does for its people, the less those people
will feel motivated to do for themselves. Consequently, the less
they do for themselves, the worse they may eventually feel
about themselves. Any psychiatrist worth his salt will tell you
that excessive dependency upon just about anything is not
healthy.
So maybe after decades of pursuing the perfect, socially
progressive welfare state, the psychological chickens have
come home to roost. Call it the law of unintended
consequences. You try to build a government-designed social
utopia and you end up with a country full of bummed-out
dependents.
If Christianity once was the opiate of the European masses,
it looks like it has simply been replaced by the opiate of nanny
statism. In any case, as religion ceases to be a meaningful part
of most people’s lives, the danger exists for a kind of
soullessness to fill the vacuum, further contributing to the
general malaise. Under such conditions some pretty crazy
things can happen.
Take Germany’s legalization of prostitution, for instance.
Reasonable people can argue till doomsday over the morality
or immorality of it, but what is inarguable is the absurdity of
the government threatening, as it did, to take away the
unemployment benefits of a young woman for turning down a
perfectly good job as a professional whore.
No one should be forced by one’s own government to choose
between prostitution and destitution, but it was just another
one of those unintended consequences. This particular
farcical consequence was the result not only of legalizing
prostitution, but also of German welfare reforms which said
that any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more
than a year can be forced to take an available job or lose her
unemployment benefits.
The government did consider making brothels an exception
to that rule on moral grounds, but decided it would be too
difficult to morally distinguish between them and bars, for
instance. Well, sure, it’s an incredibly difficult moral
distinction to expect the average government bureaucrat to
make. Imagine having to decide which is worse: mixing drinks
or . . . selling one’s body to dissolute strangers for loveless
profligate sex. It‘s the ultimate bureaucratic conundrum.
The German government may be able to legalize sex for
money, but unfortunately it can’t force its citizens to have sex
for the very purpose for which it was intended by nature:
procreation. Which leads to another reason for Germans to be
lugubrious: If the birth rate keeps falling, Germany could
eventually run out of Germans, and the prospect of population
replacement coming only through the immigration of
unassimilable Muslims won’t likely lift their spirits. If a
significant proportion of Germans are depressed these days,
their demographics are positively suicidal.
The papacy in Rome just elected the first German pope in
over a thousand years. Lord knows his countrymen could use
some spiritual guidance, but being, like most of Western
Europe, in a fairly advanced stage of post-Christian secularity,
all signs for the immediate future are that they will continue
their slide into moral relativism, spiritual bankruptcy and
forlornness. If that happens, the only growth industry in
Germany, other than harlotry, will be mental health services.
The problem there is, if 70% of all Germans really were to seek
state-provided psychological help for their blues, the social
welfare state would collapse like a house of cards. Then they’d
really have something to be glum about.
According to Edward Shorter in his book “A History of
Psychiatry,” the status of that branch of medicine which tries
to deal with problems of the human mind was of “unparalleled
sophistication” during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
in Germany. It’s too bad that didn’t hold up another century or
maybe the worst of Germany’s mass psychoses could have been
assuaged, saving the world tens of millions of lives and untold
destruction.
Be that as it may, Germany is now undergoing yet another
psychiatric problem on a mass scale, though one less
devastating to its neighbors and the world at large (at least so
far). According to research performed by a German health
insurance company, cases of depression among Berliners has
risen by 70% since 1997 and up to 70% of all Germans say they
are prepared to seek professional help for psychological
problems.
So, rather than the citizens of surrounding countries
trembling at the prospect of German incursions, hordes of
Germans are trembling at the prospect of having to get out of
bed each morning and face a new day. But what could be
causing so many normally vivacious, hard-working, productive
people to become afflicted with such a dolefulness of spirit?
It seems rather puzzling considering that Germany has
achieved the standard idyllic EUtopian state of government-
subsidized and government-sanctioned bliss with short work
weeks, long vacations, free health care, frowned-upon
religiosity, moral relativism, abortion on demand and even
legalized prostitution. It’s just a very groovy, post-Christian,
nonjudgmental, nanny state kind of existence, so what’s there
to be despondent about?
Mental health professionals blame the increase of
depression on the faltering German economy, which has seen
unemployment rise to a postwar record of 12 percent. Granted,
12% unemployment in a modern, highly developed Western
economy is ridiculous, but Germany has had chronically high
unemployment for many years without the prevailing Zeitgeist
becoming such that nearly three quarters of the population are
poised to go slinking off at any moment to find a shrink.
Maybe there’s more going on here, and maybe it’s a
precursor of what’s to come throughout Western Europe, as the
downside of the modern, social democratic welfare state
catches up with them. Maybe the conditions created by that
kind of state have worked in Germany to squelch vivacious,
hard-working productiveness, replacing that instead with a
dispirited torpor that permeates the fatherland like an
Oktoberfest hangover.
It doesn’t seem like rocket science to figure out that the
more a government does for its people, the less those people
will feel motivated to do for themselves. Consequently, the less
they do for themselves, the worse they may eventually feel
about themselves. Any psychiatrist worth his salt will tell you
that excessive dependency upon just about anything is not
healthy.
So maybe after decades of pursuing the perfect, socially
progressive welfare state, the psychological chickens have
come home to roost. Call it the law of unintended
consequences. You try to build a government-designed social
utopia and you end up with a country full of bummed-out
dependents.
If Christianity once was the opiate of the European masses,
it looks like it has simply been replaced by the opiate of nanny
statism. In any case, as religion ceases to be a meaningful part
of most people’s lives, the danger exists for a kind of
soullessness to fill the vacuum, further contributing to the
general malaise. Under such conditions some pretty crazy
things can happen.
Take Germany’s legalization of prostitution, for instance.
Reasonable people can argue till doomsday over the morality
or immorality of it, but what is inarguable is the absurdity of
the government threatening, as it did, to take away the
unemployment benefits of a young woman for turning down a
perfectly good job as a professional whore.
No one should be forced by one’s own government to choose
between prostitution and destitution, but it was just another
one of those unintended consequences. This particular
farcical consequence was the result not only of legalizing
prostitution, but also of German welfare reforms which said
that any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more
than a year can be forced to take an available job or lose her
unemployment benefits.
The government did consider making brothels an exception
to that rule on moral grounds, but decided it would be too
difficult to morally distinguish between them and bars, for
instance. Well, sure, it’s an incredibly difficult moral
distinction to expect the average government bureaucrat to
make. Imagine having to decide which is worse: mixing drinks
or . . . selling one’s body to dissolute strangers for loveless
profligate sex. It‘s the ultimate bureaucratic conundrum.
The German government may be able to legalize sex for
money, but unfortunately it can’t force its citizens to have sex
for the very purpose for which it was intended by nature:
procreation. Which leads to another reason for Germans to be
lugubrious: If the birth rate keeps falling, Germany could
eventually run out of Germans, and the prospect of population
replacement coming only through the immigration of
unassimilable Muslims won’t likely lift their spirits. If a
significant proportion of Germans are depressed these days,
their demographics are positively suicidal.
The papacy in Rome just elected the first German pope in
over a thousand years. Lord knows his countrymen could use
some spiritual guidance, but being, like most of Western
Europe, in a fairly advanced stage of post-Christian secularity,
all signs for the immediate future are that they will continue
their slide into moral relativism, spiritual bankruptcy and
forlornness. If that happens, the only growth industry in
Germany, other than harlotry, will be mental health services.
The problem there is, if 70% of all Germans really were to seek
state-provided psychological help for their blues, the social
welfare state would collapse like a house of cards. Then they’d
really have something to be glum about.