Surviving Depression- Corporate Devolution verses Earth
Excerpt read by author from her new book Surviving Depression in a Depressing World, an Ecological Perspective
Now in Paperback and Kindle on Amazon.
Corporate devolution verses Ecology and Biophilia by Carlita Shaw
Most qualified therapists who treat depression are in a compromised position. They may agree, yet never verbally admit that we do live in a depressing world. Some might secretly share this opinion, but their work and function are to focus on helping the patient. The work of a therapist or counsellor is help facilitate a path to help the patient balance their internal turmoil. To help the patient find a way to mental and emotional health and mentor the patient while they become more in touch with their more valid feelings. A therapist or counsellor, can help a patient process, realise and release their emotions in a safe space so that the patient can become more functional again and not feel overwhelmed, or doomed or hopeless. While therapists and counsellors do a great job at this, very little consideration has been given to the role of our environment or that nature plays in our mental health.
Not much is talked about in mainstream psychology regarding our lack of connectedness to nature. Yet in contemporary society, the rise in depression and suicide in the west is exponential. Westerners have lost their ancient knowledge and myths that helped us maintain a connection to Earth. Our current lifestyle keeps us separated from Nature. Ecotherapy or eco-psychology has only recently begun to emerge in Western civilisation as a subject in academia for therapists and counsellors to consider regarding our relationship with nature. Eco-psychology is more widely practiced in the United States. In contrast, it is hardly known in Europe. In the UK, it's only starting to emerge as a necessary bridge to reconnect with nature.
In other developing countries, Eco-psychology isn't necessary since it comes under other names in indigenous cultures. Their connection with Earth is a spiritual way of life for people living off the land or people living in the forests. The Inca and Mayan cultures offer blessings to Pachamama and the ancestors, people in the Forests, have their own spiritual relation-ship with the forest as consciousness in itself that they speak to through entheogens, by using Shamans and plant medicine such as Ayahausca. These are traditions and customs, which involves celebrating nature and detoxing the mind and body to maintain a strong connection to nature and Earth. Similarly, we can find the same echoed in Native American mythology, Aboriginal Dreamtime stories, Nature and their ancestors and the same in various African cultures.
Today, in this political and economic and environmental crisis, we cannot deny that what we do to nature and what we put out into our external environment is coming back to us through the ecosystems and having a detrimental effect on human mental and physical health.
Many of my hypnotherapy clients and friends have talked to me over the years about feeling overwhelmed by current world events. There is a global rise in depression in response to environmental destruction. Some people feel that the current level of political corruption driving this is so deep that there is nothing we can do to change things. These people will often use the words 'us' and 'them', them being the oligarchy, the control system, or many know them as secret societies that control the puppet charade paraded in the theatre of politics. It is easy to feel overwhelmed when you become aware of these issues. I too, at times felt overwhelmed and believed that the level of environmental devastation, animal and human exploitation was not something we could easily change after dedicating my whole life to this field.
I have worked in the environmental field for around fifteen years and unfortunately, the more I learned, the more it has affected my internal emotional and mental state. The conclusions I came to, were that the powers that be, conveniently ignore a lot of the sustainable solutions to many of humanities problems. Solutions that some authorities purposely create obstacles to access in order to stop people switching to. How they do this is by not providing the supporting infrastructure for these solutions and keeping these solutions repressed or hidden from the public. If governments truly cared about the environment, they would advocate and advertise these available solutions, and instead of putting money into war, they would invest more funds into technological advances that are environmentally friendly for energy production, food production, fuel, and alternatives to plastic pollution. This is explored in more depth in my first book The Silent Ecocide.
Meanwhile, we are to continue to rely on the archaic systems that make money for the predatory aristocracy, eroding the quality of life for ordinary people and contaminating the environment. Corporations have a great deal of power to control economic resources, more so than most people can imagine. Lobbying is an accepted form of legal bribery in the United States because politicians earn substantial sums of money - hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars from corporations through lobbying agencies. This is one of the driving forces of ecocide and the reason why environmental laws are quickly being destroyed by politicians.
So when you are researching solutions to these environmental problems and find these things out, there is no valuable long-term conservation solution to the ecological crisis. The only thing one can do with this phenomena is to raise awareness on solutions and what each of us can do individually. The problem is a reflection of flawed governance, neglecting to protect natural resources for profit, a crisis in human consciousness.
It doesn't take an expert to work out that human society is profoundly dysfunctional and many of us are finding out how shockingly corrupt society is, in the political and economic systems we previously put our faith, taxes and service into. It is becoming very apparent to many in the Western system, that the systems set up, are designed to make the 1 percent elite richer, rather than to serve humanity or to resolve any of the dysfunctional aspects of society that need to be addressed.
The word ´´career´´ is a programmed illusion that people are invested in and it is not until we are knocked by economic loss that we realise. Especially in times of global financial crisis, the only way to survive today's volatile economy is to be able to adaptive and acquire new skills to transit from one profession to another or from one country to another.
This is a time when automation is taking over many professions and when 1 percent of the world's wealthiest people are raking in 87 per cent of all financial wealth made in one year, as documented in the statistics of 2017, it is testimonial that we live under a corrupt financial system that only benefits those in power and is continuously hammering down the rest of humanity. If we don´t change this, it will get far worse.
The increased level of air pollution and toxins in our food and water are also a sign that the world would benefit from becoming more holistic and sustainable. We are our environment, physically and mentally, and if we already treat the environment as a dumping ground, how does this reflect on our current state of consciousness?
Furthermore, our physical health is suffering, and the medical industry is profiting. It is no wonder that the rise in cancer and autoimmune illnesses are so high, additionally, the corporate government is treating the environment as an experimental laboratory and humanity as the involuntary lab rats.
At the peak of a technological boom, in a time when we have more wealth controlled by one million of the wealthiest people in the world, the consequence is more poverty, which shows we need a more economically sustainable system that considers the parameters of the environment. Why do people not question why there is no homogenised progress in modern technology, how can we have wi-fi, but not alternative energy to produce wireless electricity?
How come people are still driving cars with engines that use petrol which hasn't changed since 1885? Yet we have access to new technologies such as compressed air cars, hydrogen fuel cell cars and electric cars, but no infrastructure to encourage people to use these alternative green vehicles. The reason being is all this technology is available for people to have a freer better quality of life, but it's being kept from us to keep us in stasis so the elite can protect and maintain their wealth and power.
Despite more people being aware of the environmental problems we have far less environmental conservation jobs and ecological science is the lowest-paid scientific job today, than it was forty years ago. There is no such thing as real conservation laws while corporations own politicians who rewrite environmental laws to suit the corporate agenda. The deterioration of environmental laws is an essential example of political and democratic devolution. It's hypnotic hypocrisy that many are captive in continually campaigning to change, however its the system that requires an update.
The word 'de-moc-racy' makes a mockery in today's version of what democracy looks like, in the West.
Other products of corporate devolution are the repression of natural cures for cancer and other illnesses and diseases. The pharmaceutical industry sees natural cures as a threat to their profit-making agendas, rather than allowing these alternative choices to co-exist with their monopolised synthetic pills in a multi-billion dollar industry.
A Fresh Perspective on Depression
Anyone that is not profoundly saddened by current global events are either in denial or very disconnected from the Earth and their true nature. Depression is an intelligent and empathic responsive sign of a healthily functioning human being to the current crisis. To be feeling depressed in such times shows that those of us affected by what is happening in the world around us, have awareness and are compassionate and caring. The problem is that the undiagnosed mental illness of psychopathy and denial (of people in government and of people that hold positions of power, who are exploiting their status for the benefit and profits of a small group of elites). Their mental illness is a psychopathy dominated by an obsession with making money and controlling humanity as a priority sacrificing nature and human life. The suffering of others, environmental degradation and species extinction is the ultimate price we are all paying.
In these times, the requirements to be in a position of power, the main qualification is a lack of sentience, or empathy and a complete disregard for the rights of nature, let alone human rights. When this is the case, how are we supposed to transcend the powers that govern us, if this system is being run by the mentally unfit and which is destructive to our environment and therefore the future of humanity?
A society or system that is rigid, steeped in secrecy and closed to developing its core systems, has become stuck in a corrupt, archaic system of stagnancy that sees anyone that re-quests or tries to improve, evolve or update this system as a threat to itself. It is at this point that such a governing system becomes something else, it is no more than a predatory virus, in the way that Paul Levy describes the Wetiko virus in his book, a virus that has infected humanity, the Wetiko is a name that came from Native Americans when describing White Man's mental illness. It has become a threat to the planet and hence the survival and evolution of humankind. Many of us are going through different stages of realizing this, considering that the rise in depression indicates psychological symptoms of the collective unconscious, (the noosphere), a reaction to the world in its current state of an ecocidal apocalypse. We may think that these feelings of frustration, anger, grief and depression are a reflection of personal problems and of course, yes we all do have our emotional baggage and insecurities to work through. Still, the bigger picture is that these symptoms are indications that some-thing is deeply wrong with the core of modern human society. The global rise in depression is a reflection of this.
There are beautiful things that the western world has done for people, independent artists and musicians, scientific advances in surgical medicine, inventions, technological developments, innovations and pioneers. Still, we also need to apply innovation and change to society's core systems to become more holistic and environmentally friendly, because society currently has a toxic and predatory nature that we could do without in modern capitalism.
The notion of business with immediate profit has created our collective dysfunctional ideas and beliefs about ourselves in relation to nature and other species. There is a great deal of ecological ignorance and misunderstanding and political manipulation of environmental science to suit government agendas. Imagine if we were all ecologically educated in primary and secondary schooling and education was enhanced by improving ecological literacy. What if we had the opportunity to select environmentally-minded politicians in decision-making governance. The outcome would be abundant natural resources, clean water and energy for all, sustainable societies focused on evolving human consciousness and knowledge and an ecologically peaceful planet.
In some approaches to treating and understanding depression relating to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Gestalt Therapy, depression is understood as an adaptive process to a stressful environment. In most cases, the patient has withdrawn themselves in various ways from engaging in a world. I personally, like Jeff Foster's view on depression, which is the need for the individual to conserve energy, to withdraw and take a deep rest. The only problem is we also need to function to work, pay our bills and keep up with the rent. Nevertheless, we cannot argue with our subconscious needs, and sometimes this takes a higher priority. It is about accepting that when we are depressed, this is a time when our inner self requires more in-depth nurturing, rest, self-awareness, holistic healing. We must take time to strengthen the body and mind, to regain momentum to physically, mentally and emotionally interact with the world.
In such times, we will turn to psychologists, and if we can afford it, psychotherapists for pills and medication when we are experiencing thoughts about suicide, these can help us through the darkest days. Yet, we must take responsibility to try to maintain ourselves when we have our strength back to make some changes that could help us manage depression more sustainably, so as not to become overly dependent on pills in the long-term.
Ecologists study and look at different biological and abiotic systems, mainly related to eco-systems and how they work in relation to one another. Should one ecosystem become dysfunctional, what has caused this, and how does it affect species and the rest the ecosystems. From an in-depth ecological perspective, depression is an indication that human understanding of itself in relation to the natural world, needs an upgrade. We need to change since we lack respect for our environment and are polluting it at alarming rates. This is why auto-immune diseases, cancer and depression have risen with industrial and technological development. As a result, more toxic chemicals accumulate in our air, oceans, soil and water and cause severe pollution with irreversible consequences.
The academic books, journals, nor doctors can identify a single cause of depression. Immunology research has determined that the immune system is a significant factor. The gastrointestinal tract is the largest immune organ in the human body, which is continuously being ex-posed to environmental pathogens. What we put into our body or breathe in impacts our immunology and brain. We need to take into account that environmental pollutants, and chemical toxicity in our food and water cause autoimmune problems that affect our brain. These factors cause symptoms of an over-active immune system.
Depression is a product of symptoms related to this; therefore, a healthy external environment would reduce the number of people suffering from depression. If only we had a government that cared about the environment and people’s mental health!
Most people do not connect the increase in external pollution, chemicals in water and food to causing the global rise in depression. Still, we are our environment, and this is one indication of this irrefutable fact. We have gone over the ecological tipping limit of environmental and industrial pollution. The overuse of pesticides, industrial waste and geoengineering, the spraying of nanoparticulates, aluminum, barium, strontium, viruses and mycoplasmas. Toxic aerosol chemicals for weather engineering has been used for decades and is globally ubiquitous. This means even places where organic food is grown, it at risk of some sort of soil, air, water contamination due to aerosol spraying. Mycoplasmas, nanoparticles and chemicals can be breathed in or ingested with water or food and which can get trapped in epithelial tissues in the body, causing autoimmune and inflammatory problems that lead to depression and other long-term health problems.
The new 5G microwave Hz is also of great concern to scientists and its impact on our neural, endocrine and physical health, which is why scientists are warning people of a rise in Alzheimer's and Cancer. Therefore, in contemporary society, our internal biochemical, biological and mental ecology is severely disrupted and under constant attack. It is necessary to regularly detox your body to remove heavy metals, employing juicing, chelation, drinking only distilled water. Additionally, taking colloidal silver, Diatomaceous earth, Spirulina and Lugol´s iodine, all help combat these modern harsh environmental influences on our physical and mental well-being.
In most large urban cities, there is often a problem with air pollution, and it is difficult to believe that there are parts of China and Taiwan, where the air pollution is so harmful that people are unable to go outside even with a mask. They are buying bottled Oxygen from New Zealand to breath when they go out. During 2011, studies were done on mice exposed to air pollution. The effects caused inflammation in the hippocampus part of their brains, so learning, solving problems and symptoms associated with depression were detected.
Research on the human genome shows that only 10 per cent of all diseases are related to the genome; 90 per cent of all human illnesses are related to environmental factors. There is a growing body of theoretical and empirical work on the effects of environmental degradation and people's happiness and health.
One paper found that using a log-linear method for the panel of 21 countries for the period 1970-2005, showed that environmental degradation affects the happiness of people. As environment degradation increases, people's happiness decreases. Further economic growth is found to have a positive and significant impact on the happiness of the people, whereas wage inequality and cost of living had negative and significant effects.
Further references
Aviral Kumar Tiwari, (2011) ''Happiness and Environmental Degradation: What Determines Happiness?'', Economics Bulletin, Vol. 31 No. 4 pp. 3192-3210.
Carlita Shaw. (2015). The Silent Ecocide, a crisis of human consciousness. Chapter 2 explains in more detail about this and how mycoplasmas are in our bodies and environ-ment, causing an increase in illnesses such as cancer and autoimmune problems. (See US Military Patent number US5242820A - Pathogenic mycoplasma - Google Patents. See references in The Silent Ecocide, chapter 2). https://www.amazon.com/Silent-Ecocide-Environmental-Crisis-Consciousness/dp/1512365718
Dubos, R. (1968), So Human an Animal-How we are shaped by Surroundings and Events. Scriber Books New York. 267p.
David G. Blanchflower, Andrew J. Oswald. Happiness and the Human Development Index-The Paradox of Australia, NBER Working Paper Series 11416.
Stephen R. Kellert and Edward O. Wilson. 1993. The Biophilia Hypothesis. Island Press, Washington, DC.
Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell and John Gowdy ([email protected]). Environmental degradation and happiness. 4. Continued reference 4 from previous page-Ecological Economics, 2007, vol. 60, issue 3, 509-516
David G. Blanchflower and Andrew J.Oswald, Well-being over time in Britain and the USA 2004. Journal of Public Economics 88 (2004) 1359–1386
Blanchflower, D. G. and Oswald, A. J. 2005,‘Happiness and the Human Development Index: The paradox of Australia’, AustralianEconomic Review, vol. 38, pp. 307–18.
Carlita is an environmental journalist, author, project developer, hypnotherapist and educator who wants to share her insights and experiences to benefit people living with autism, anxiety, trauma, severe depression and suicidal thoughts. Here she talks openly about her life and gives an ecological perspective in her up and coming book, ''Surviving Depression in a Depressing World, an ecological perspective''.
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