A recent global survey on mental health and well-being places the United Kingdom next to the bottom of the table. Given our current economic, and political malaise, this is hardly surprising, though it does not lessen my sadness that so many of my fellows find themselves in such distress. Even war torn places like Ukraine, Iraq and the Yemen, scored better for their sense of mental well-being than us. We can only conclude therefore, since we are not at war, the things that oppress us are self-inflicted. They are like a cocktail of toxins we cannot help but habitually imbibe, and which are ruinous to the soul.
Depending on our experience of life, we will each have an opinion on the ingredients of that cocktail, but its manifest symptoms are various and now impossible to ignore. For me, the malaise is most immediately visible when I take to the roads, and find myself weaving around deep potholes. It’s also in the hollowed out state of the once prosperous towns I knew. It’s in the inability to secure a timely doctor’s appointment, and the collapse of healthcare generally. And it’s in the cost of living which, for so many of my poor benighted fellows, erases all thoughts of the future, for being able to see no further than the end of today. But most of all, it is in the sense there is no solution to any of it, that, actually, regardless of who governs, things will never get better.
It strikes me, then, the UK is not merely unhappy. It is suffering from something far deeper and more serious. The UK is suffering from depression, and depression, as anyone familiar with it will tell you, is not so much a feeling of unhappiness as an absence of vital energy. It is a paralysis of the spirit. At its root, lies an unshakable conviction of the purposelessness of living, and that trying to affect meaningful change is pointless.
We no longer take care of our appearances. We slob around in pyjamas, unwashed and unshaven. Our gardens go untended, our bins overflowing with rubbish. It’s all the same, and no matter what we do, it makes no difference to anything. As for our politics, it’s broken. Truth boils down to my opinion shouted up against yours, which means the most ruthless get to define the truth, even if it is a lie. Thus, we observe an endless drama of debate, rather like the fragments of a broken mirror, each reflective of all our personal nightmares. And our leaders, of whatever stripe, are but caricatures, animated by the forces of darkness. Vote them out? Why bother when they are all the same?
Yes, indeed, depression is a tricky business to deal with. It has us ignore even the potential sources of our own salvation. Many writers and artists are intimately familiar with it. They liken it to a black dog, and can give you chapter and verse on its moods. It is the see-saw between the emptiness of rejection, and the mysterious source that enables us to go on creating anyway. We seek meaning today, and in the same place, where yesterday there was nothing. And sometimes we find it. It’s all a question of connection with “the source”. What is the source, you ask. Well, it is the last great taboo. It is, as Alan Watts once put it, the taboo against knowing who you are.
In my current work in progress, the protagonist, Simon, finds himself in retreat. He is a castaway with the knowledge something has befallen the world. He doesn’t know what, exactly, only that it has gone silent. Yet, while this should be the central mystery of what drives the story, like our constant political intrigues, he finds it hard to care. He is a castaway who would rather not be rescued. He has withdrawn into a solitude that is the opposite of lonely. He has for company the beauty of the natural world, but also the blessings of an advanced technology. And yes, I would appreciate the company of a robot as wise as Simon’s.
Technology is, of course, in part, the cause of our dreadful malaise, but only because of our misguided use of it. There is also the fact human intelligence – emotional as well as intellectual – has failed to keep pace with it. Thus, the one thing that might save us – our transcendent nature – is so obscured we no longer believe in it. A truly intelligent artificial intelligence will point out our stupidity, and counsel us against folly. It will not triangulate opinion, and tell us what it calculates we most want to hear. Nor will it filter truths through the optics of image preservation, and shareholder value. These are both uniquely human pathologies. It will instead tell us what we most need to hear and without fear of giving offence, whether we like it or not. Thus, by clearing away the dross of self-delusion, Simon’s robot helps him to embrace that final taboo, and to actually begin believing in himself.
The problem is who we really are is so far from who we are led to believe ourselves to be. This means the journey back to ourselves is one that is rarely undertaken. Indeed, the distance is so great, we find ourselves ill prepared, or unequal to the task. This is especially so in individualistic cultures like ours, so steeped in materialism. But the greatest irony is that to truly know oneself is to discover the interconnectedness of all things, and to discover also the meaning in those connections, while the culture of individualism obscures them, and locks us in a prison of our own making. Knowing the source, knowing our selves, sets us free. Anything else makes us ill.
As I write, a general election has just been called, and thus another psychodrama is unleashed across all media. The breathless punditry are already out of the blocks and seem unanimous in predicting a change of political colours. I recall writing extensively about the last election. This time, I shall cast my vote, but I won’t be writing about it. I would like to think that if the mental health and well-being survey was taken again in another five years time, we’d be a little higher up the rankings by then, courtesy of a more compassionate and redistributive polity, but I wouldn’t put money on it. Instead, like Simon, we’d be better working on that last taboo, and changing things for ourselves, from the inside out. Outside in, isn’t really how it works, at least not to the best of health, and the mental well-being of either individuals, or nations.
The Rivendale Review 