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Nov. 23, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

25:45

2042 A Theory of Mental Health Part 1

Stefan Molyneux, Host of Freedomain Radio, advances a theory of mental health, and a way forward for society that does not require the drugging of helpless children and badly informed adults. http://www.freedomainradio.com

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	Hi everybody, it's Devan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	This is a theory of mental health.
	Now the first thing to understand when we look at the standard of, quote, mental illness, Is that, first and foremost, it is not the individual who's being diagnosed as ill.
	It is not the individual who's being diagnosed as ill.
	It is the society that is being diagnosed as healthy.
	And that is the fundamental error when it comes to questions of mental health.
	So, I'm going to give you some examples of this.
	This is from a magazine, Today's Parent, Fall 2011.
	Does my child have a mental illness?
	This is a mainstream popular magazine.
	Parents may not realize a child is struggling because they don't recognize the symptoms of mental illness.
	The warning signs listed below are by no means definite indications of mental illness, but they're worth talking about, especially when they appear in an extreme way.
	Pre-school separation anxiety, particularly when they were previously okay with separation.
	What this means is you've dropped your child off at daycare and your child is hysterical.
	Because we all know that daycare is not a normal or healthy environment for children to be in.
	Bedwetting after toilet training completed.
	Frequent tummy aches, headaches or tiredness with no physical explanation, which I guess would be examples of stress.
	Now you see here, nothing is mentioned about the environment.
	Is the environment the child in stressful?
	Is the child being molested, which happens sadly all too commonly?
	Is the child being abused by a sibling or a parent or a priest or a coach?
	No. You see, this is all about the individual.
	The individual is pathologized so that the society can be termed healthy.
	School age. School issues.
	These are signs of mental illness.
	Not wanting to attend school.
	Frequent lateness and absences, skipping tests, dropping marks, disruptive in class, or not paying attention.
	You see? You see? And this is the medication of children.
	On these brain-slaughtering psychotropic drugs, it is all about the child's failure to adapt to what is termed a healthy environment, which is these government-run schools.
	Now, of course, if these government-run schools were healthy, if these government-run schools were engaging, if they were conciliatory, if they were empathetic towards the needs of the child, then we wouldn't have graduation rates below 50 percent.
	Frequent tummy aches, headaches or tiredness with no physical explanation.
	Excessive outbursts of anger or aggression.
	See? It couldn't be teasing from peers.
	It couldn't be. Condescension or abuse or humiliation on the part of the teacher.
	Decrease in enjoyment of time spent with family or friends.
	Couldn't be. It couldn't be, you see, that as the child gets older and wiser, the hypocrisy and falsehood of friends and family is revealed to the child that the child becomes depressed that way.
	No, no, no. You see, society is healthy and therefore any failure to adapt to society must be ill health.
	You understand, this is a completely totalitarian and Soviet approach to what is called mental health.
	This is still occurring in China.
	Anybody who fails to fit in with an abusive system is deemed mentally ill and is drugged and incarcerated but this is exactly the methodology that is used here as Michelle Rhee said once about The failure of public sector unions in the education field, school unions, to adapt to the needs of students.
	Children are being sacrificed in order to avoid adult conflict.
	Conflict between parents and teachers.
	Conflict between principals and the union.
	And principals and teachers.
	All the children are being sacrificed for the sake of avoiding adult conflict and the necessary reform of corrupt and brutal institutions.
	Over the age 12, Psychological symptoms such as nervousness, excess worrying, sadness, or not wanting to get out of bed.
	Excessive outbursts of anger or aggression.
	And this one I love.
	All ages. Is there a family history of mental illness?
	With the implication that it's somehow biological or genetic, which is not true.
	No friends or socializing at school or parties.
	Couldn't be that the child finds the Engagement of his peers somewhat lacking.
	And this one I love.
	Compared to other kids their age, the child's behavior stands out.
	Compared to other kids their age, the child's behavior stands out.
	So not only is adult society considered to be normal and healthy by definition, but also all the children, all the children around, their average behavior is deemed normal and any child who deviates from that standard Is considered potentially mentally ill and must be drugged to get back in line.
	Well, this is madness.
	This is abuse. This is one of the most heinous crimes in the history of the world.
	Is the labeling and drugging of children who do not want to go to crappy schools.
	Who may not want to socialize with their peers.
	Who may want to not take tests.
	Who may not want to do homework.
	But of course homework has nothing to do with achievement in school.
	That's been proven again and again.
	The length and degree of homework has nothing to do with successful achievement in school.
	And so is the child accurately perceiving the faults and flaws and hypocrisies and immoralities within his or her society and not adapting?
	As a sign of health?
	Or is society deemed healthy by default, by definition?
	And therefore any failure to adapt to that society is a sign of mental illness.
	But this is totalitarian.
	This is what dictators do.
	To take an extreme example, if you were an unfortunate German youth in the 1930s and you were forced into the army and then you were forced into being a concentration camp guard, And you found yourself stressed and suicidal and depressed and anxious and all that.
	Would anyone say that the problem was your mental illness?
	No, of course not. They would say you were in an insane, evil environment and your failure to adapt it is actually a sign of health rather than a sign of illness.
	But of course, these people were drugged as well in the past.
	This is a fundamental approach that is taken by those in power.
	We are healthy. Our society is healthy.
	Any failure to adapt is a sign of sickness on your part.
	And you must be incarcerated, medicated, drugged, restrained.
	You must have your brain seared with electroconvulsive therapy.
	You must be put into a drug-induced coma.
	That's brutal. What astounding arrogance does it take for a society where millions upon millions of freshly minted, innocent, rational children are failing to adapt to a statistically vile, destructive, and abusive environment?
	What astounding arrogance does it take for society to say, the problem is with the children.
	The problem is not with the society that we've set up for those children to go into.
	The problem, you see, is with the children.
	The problem is not That parents go out to work usually very quickly after their children is born.
	The problem is not that babies are handed over to strangers who constantly cycle in and out of those children's lives.
	The problem is not that there are nannies who cycle in and out of the children's lives.
	The problem is not a lack of bonding with a consistent parental figure.
	The problem is not that children are dumped, like refuse, into these daycares where there are swarms of children equally traumatized through separation anxiety, constantly battling over a few toys and sharing ridiculous amounts of germs and infections with each other.
	While the daycare teachers attempt to wrangle the most difficult children, leaving the, quote, healthiest and least disruptive children to fend for themselves, In this Lord of the Flies with glue and plastic scissors environment, no. But what astounding arrogance does it take for us as adults to say, we are perfect.
	The only problem, you see, is that the children are refusing to adapt to our perfection.
	Come on! Environmental degradation, massive debts, continual wars, massive incarcerations of innocent people, a corruption of the police force, lying to get people into wars, to get nations into wars, the predatory Ponzi scheme of social security,
	the continuing influence of superstitious and excessive religiosity, Are we really going to stand in the court of the young and say we are innocent of all charges and only you are guilty of a failure to adapt to our rational and empathetic perfection?
	This is a crime that will boomerang upon us.
	Should we continue with it and should we not learn from the failure of the young to adapt as a sign of health, as a sign of the corruption of our system?
	So, here is a theory of mental health.
	Thank you.
	The purpose of the mind, its most fundamental differentiator, is conceptual.
	It is its ability to extrapolate properties from individual entities into a conceptual whole.
	I see this. I've been a stay-at-home dad for almost three years with my daughter.
	And I see this all the time.
	She learns what a chair is.
	She learns that there's another chair just like it.
	That's also a chair. Then she learns that anything that has four legs that you sit on that isn't a horse is a chair.
	She is continually attempting, and it's involuntary.
	It is the action of her mind.
	It is always attempting to extrapolate concepts from instances.
	That is the root of mathematics.
	That is the root of science. That really is the root of language.
	That is the root, the essence of what it is to be human.
	And that is the purpose of the mind.
	That is the muscle that the mind is continually exercising and attempting to strengthen.
	Now, we all understand that if you use your body in the wrong way, you will develop ailments, you will develop pain, you will develop discomfort, and you may damage your body perfectly.
	So if I walked around constantly bent over at the waist 90 degrees, I would end up with a fiendish and horrific and possibly permanent backache or disfigurement.
	Repetitive strain injuries, whether in tennis or dancing or any other form of weightlifting, repetitive strain injuries are using your body improperly.
	Think of carpal tunnel syndrome with a mass.
	You use your body improperly, you end up with pain.
	The mind is simply part of the body.
	The mind has a right way of being used and it has a wrong way of being used.
	And this stuff has been talked about for many years.
	Think about 1984.
	The concept of doublethink.
	The idea that you have to hold two contradictory ideas within your mind at the same time.
	That is using your brain the wrong way.
	Because it is claiming a universal concept.
	And then it is denying in the same moment or in the same action that universal concept.
	That is truth and falsehood, both universalized, both simultaneous.
	That breaks the mind. When I was a runner, I once had a cramp in both the front and the back muscle of my leg.
	Therefore, I couldn't stretch it out. That was unbelievable agony.
	Using muscles in opposition to each other will produce injury.
	And I'm going to put forward the argument here that what we call mental illness is the injury to the brain that results from its incorrect and repetitively incorrect usage.
	So, I'll give you a simple example.
	What is the value of truth in the parent-child relationship?
	Well, the value of truth is you say to your child, I want you to tell me the truth.
	I want you to tell me the truth.
	And so truth is a universal value.
	But when the child says a truth that you don't like, then you consider that bad, right?
	So if you say to the child, I want you to tell the truth, and then the child goes over to her aunt's house and she says, Auntie, you're very fat.
	And you're like, don't say that!
	Well, you see, you have both made and broken a universal.
	Is it a true statement that the aunt is fat?
	Well, yeah, assuming that it's true.
	But you have said that truth as a concept, truth is a universal value, and therefore you must tell the truth.
	It's a good thing to tell the truth, but then when the child tells the truth that you don't like, Then you criticize that child for being undiplomatic, right?
	So when you want information out of the child, truth is a universal value.
	When the child produces information that is accurate but uncomfortable for you, truth becomes a negative value.
	It becomes something that you shouldn't do, that you can't do, that you mustn't do, that is bad, that is naughty.
	Or if you're into sports and your child says, well, wait a sec, if we lived on the other side of the street, we'd be cheering for the other guy.
	So isn't it just all made up?
	Or if you believe in some particular deity and your child begins to question the whys and the wheres and the hows of that and you don't have good answers, suddenly truth and questioning and curiosity and universalization becomes your enemy.
	Where you have irrationality, the clear and consistent conceptualization and universalization of the child's mind becomes something that is dangerous to you.
	And if you are mature and if you are wise and if you are empathetic and if you are considerate and if you are virtuous, then you will examine your own irrationalities rather than criticize the child for honest and open questions.
	How many people do that in society?
	How many societies do that as a whole?
	How many societies are willing to learn from the unpropagandized, freshly peeled and minted and curious minds of children?
	And to cast aside perhaps even thousands of years of historical prejudice, superstition and irrationality In order to learn from the originality, curiosity, and rationality of children.
	Well, until we learn from our kids, we have no right to teach them, because all we'll teach them is lies, for the most part.
	This is true of culture. Our culture is the best.
	Our country is the best. We are the best.
	Well, everyone says that.
	And so the child very quickly gets that that is not...
	particularly if the child goes to school with people from other countries and cultures or religions who all say our culture, our religion is the only true one or the only best one and all the others are false and so on.
	And that is a problem because a universal principle is put forward which is then immediately broken.
	To be more specific and more immediate hitting a child and saying Don't hit is doublethink for the child.
	It is the establishment of a generic and general principle, do not hit, and the violation of that through hitting the child in the moment.
	Evil is moral hypocrisy in action, in the moment.
	A simultaneous self-contradiction between word and deed is the definition of evil.
	And this produces great harm to the child.
	You say to a child, do not use violence to get what you want.
	And then the child goes to a school where they very quickly realize that the parents aren't putting them there by choice, but by force, by law, that the teachers are not paid by choice in the free market through the voluntary interaction and association of the parents, but the teachers get their money from the parents through property taxes, through force, through law, through violence, through the threat of jail and murder should they resist.
	And so the parents say, don't use violence to get what you want, and then the parents ship them off to a well-praised environment where force is used almost exclusively to get what everyone wants.
	What everyone wants, of course, except what the children actually need, which is rational consistency between word and deed, because otherwise the cramp, the tearing, the muscle break in the brain Produces the symptoms, I would argue, that we call mental illness, which is a symptom of social illness,
	a meme of irrationality and pomposity and moral hypocrisy that is inflicted and infected upon the innocent child's mind because the adults will not look in the mirror and see the grotesque masks of culture and religiosity and irrationality and nationalism Clearly and fix them.
	But in any corrupt and immoral system, it is the least powerful who are forever ground up into a paste to grease the wheels that must keep turning to maintain the illusions of the adults and to continue to grind fresh minds into the goo paste of propagandized nonsense.
	The fishbowl that thinks it's an ocean of irrational propaganda.
	The children who must always suffer, the least powerful, will always suffer in a corrupt and violent system.
	The other thing, of course, that happens is that children, through daycare and through school, and through a lack of one-on-one parental time or parental involvement, are thrown into a situation where there's no question that peers are the greatest influence on most children in the West.
	Peers are the greatest influence on most children in the West.
	Because of the withdrawal of adults.
	And the withdrawal of the adults is for both selfishness and for need, because the amount of taxation that is yanked and forced out of parents' hides is so extreme these days, so high.
	Both parents need to go to work, one to maintain the household, one to pay off the government, and there's nobody available to raise the kids.
	Everybody who works in the daycare and childcare industry is enormously overjoyed at this overflow of children spilling into their facilities or their institutions as a result of the children being yanked up into the realm of the productive by the skyhooks of state force.
	But we put these children in environments where peers are by far their greatest influence.
	Who they have to deal with is peers, not parents, not adults, for the most part.
	And then we say when they get older that they should not be subjected to peer pressure.
	Well, if they should not be subjected to peer pressure, why did we subject them to peer pressure for a decade or more before they become teenagers?
	This is all mad hypocrisy.
	When we say that the educational system is put in place to educate children and then we refuse to listen to any of the complaints that the children have about their educational system, that is mad hypocrisy.
	That is mad hypocrisy. That is like saying that Christmas is all about the children and then giving your two-year-old a hair dryer because you need one and you're going to use it and then say that they're ungrateful because they're not thanking you for the present.
	If it's about the needs of the children, we should listen to the needs of the children.
	If it's not about the needs of the children, but rather an educational system, but rather around minimizing the conflict, Between and among adults, then let's say, well, sorry, you have to go to this school because the system has been set up long before we were born, which we're not going to fight, where we're forced to pay for it.
	You're forced to go there, and you have no say, and we have no say.
	We've just got to ship you off, and we're really sorry.
	Hopefully you can get some valuable education out of it, but it's a wretched and brutal and violent system, and we have no control over it.
	Sorry, you've got to go. At least that would be honest.
	At least that would be honest. But of course we're all afraid that children are going to tell the truth, right?
	We're all afraid that children are going to tell the truth.
	If you don't teach your child that there's no such thing as a deity, of course, because that would be teaching a conclusion rather than a methodology, and we need to teach our children how to think, not what to think.
	But we're all afraid that if we step our child through the reasoning that shows there's no such thing as a deity, Which they won't actually need.
	My daughter's almost three and she has no concept of a deity because it's not been inflicted on her.
	We're all afraid that our children are going to speak the truth to other children which is going to get us in trouble with their parents and so on.
	We all understand that.
	And then we say to children that you should resist peer pressure, right?
	Although we're afraid of other parents.
	We say to our children you should tell the truth, but you can't tell the truth about gods.
	Do you see? It's madness.
	We are providing so many mixed messages to our children that it's a miracle that any of them come out with any integrity and self-knowledge and capacity for rational thinking.
	This is one of the reasons why there are so few.
	Eighty to ninety percent of parents are still hitting their children in the 21st century.
	Still hitting their children.
	Twenty-five percent of parents hit their children before their children are one year old.
	Infants. Infants.
	And then we have the gall to say to children who hit other children, you must not use violence to get what you want.
	You are two, I am thirty.
	I can use violence to get what I want.
	You cannot, must not use violence to get what you want.
	I have much higher moral standards for a two-year-old than I do for a thirty-year-old.
	And then we wonder why children grow up with their brains in pain.
	To have a standard of mental illness, we must have a standard of mental health.
	The standard of mental health cannot be relative to social irrationalities.
	It cannot be. Because that is to say that the irrational and the anti-rational are the standard of mental health.
	But of course, we define insanity as acted out irrationality.
	You think someone's following you.
	Nobody's following you. There's no empirical evidence, right?
	You understand? We define mental illness as that which is against reason and evidence.
	And therefore we cannot define mental health as that which conforms to irrationality since we define mental illness as that which conforms to irrationality.
	They can't both conform to irrationality.
	Rationality comes from the world.
	It comes from physics. It comes from nature.
	Irrationality comes from human beings.
	I can say two rocks and two rocks make five rocks, but the rocks themselves will not conform to my madness or to my irrationality or to my mistake, to my error.
	Therefore, mental health, mental health, if it is associated with empiricism and rationality, which by definition it must be, mental health must be those states of minds, those beliefs, those philosophies, those universals, those ideas which conform Which conform to reason and evidence,
	which means that our mental health is defined relative to reality, relative to empirical, testable, scientific, mathematical reality.
	It is defined for reality and against the social madness called culture, called religiosity, called nationalism, called superstition, called the bigotry of my group Be Better.
	And so, if we define mental health as the correct appreciation, understanding and integration of the principles of reason and evidence that had arrived from reality, from objective, empirical, sensual reality itself, Then we understand that it is conformity to the madness of human social irrationality that is illness.
	And it is an illness or a dysfunction that is transmitted through the abuses of power and the exercise of power over children that those in authority have.
	The priests, the teachers, the daycare workers, the parents, the aunts, the uncles, even the elder siblings.
	It is the moral attack upon the rationality of children that produces or aggregates into social irrationality the individual irrationality that is inflicted through moral attacks upon children.
	And drugging them is one of the greatest evils, one of the greatest hypocrisies.
	That is visited upon these helpless and dependent children.
	And until we stop doing that, and until we start questioning the supposed perfection of this wretched and monstrous system that we are burying the healthy and tender and growing minds of our children under, to rot in a vat of psychotropic brain-killing drugs, we have no right to imagine the perfection of our system.

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