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Welcome to the Asylum

“The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression—which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide. Welcome to the asylum.

When the most basic elements that sustain life are reduced to a cash product, life has no intrinsic value. The extinguishing of “primitive” societies, those that were defined by animism and mysticism, those that celebrated ambiguity and mystery, those that respected the centrality of the human imagination, removed the only ideological counterweight to a self-devouring capitalist ideology. Those who held on to pre-modern beliefs, such as Native Americans, who structured themselves around a communal life and self-sacrifice rather than hoarding and wage exploitation, could not be accommodated within the ethic of capitalist exploitation, the cult of the self and the lust for imperial expansion. The prosaic was pitted against the allegorical. And as we race toward the collapse of the planet’s ecosystem we must restore this older vision of life if we are to survive.”

INCOME INEQUALITY IS BAD FOR SOCIETY. REALLY BAD.

“Societies with more income inequality have higher infant death rates than other societies:

Societies with more income inequality have higher rates of mental illness than other societies:

Societies with more income inequality have a higher incidence of drug use than other societies:

Societies with more income inequality have a higher high school drop out rate than other societies:

Societies with more income inequality imprison a larger proportion of their population than other societies:

Societies with more income inequality have a higher rate of obesity than other societies:

Individuals in societies with more income inequality are less likely to be in a different class of than their parents compared to other societies:

Individuals in societies trust others less than people in other societies:

Societies with more income inequality have higher rates of homicide than other societies:

Societies with more income inequality give less in foreign aid than other societies:

Children in societies with more income inequality do less well than children in other societies:

The authors sum it up pretty simply: : “Th[e] dissatisfaction [measured in this data is] a cost which the rich impose on the rest of society.”

note to the sleepwalkers

ravaging vampires without restraint

they pierce and plunder land and sea

to supply their endless greed

and sustain our programmed habits



you continue as if you’re not a witness

to the coldblooded rape of the earth

you go on as if the threat is distant

compared to urgent matters at hand



too busy to care, too busy to think

you have places to go, people to see

games to play, work to do, money to make

shows to watch, things to buy and bills to pay



what will it take to move past the noise

and see outside the comfort zone

that has been drawn for you?

when that time comes, will it be too late?



when the toxic rains come down on us

and burn the crops that feed you

and the famine reaches your family

will you see it then?



when the oceans turn to poison

and the life within them ceases

and white-sand beaches are no more

will you see it then?



while you support the fight for your country

you have failed to defend your planet

not thinking to ask where you’d be

or what your country is without it



do you see it yet?

do you see that the blood

dripping from their fangs

is the blood of your mother?