Our Crazy-Making Economy’s Endgame: Festering Frustration Seeking an Outlet
The consequence of policies that exacerbate injustice, inequality and double-bind demands is a madness that will find a social and economic outlet somewhere, sometime.
We all know crazy-makers: people who make contradictory claims about reality, who say one thing and do another, who change their stories constantly to justify their own pursuit of self-interest, who demand the impossible of others while giving themselves unlimited excuses.
When they can’t change reality to suit their purposes, they change their accounts of reality, and stick with the revised stories even when they are contradictory.
This describes the entire financial structure of the U.S.: crazy-making.
We all know the U.S. economy is diseased, and the Powers That Be are attempting to mask the sickness with contradictory accounts of reality.
To get ahead, you need a 4-year college diploma. But oops, the student debt you’ll need to shoulder acts as a brake on getting ahead. And it turns out many of those who became debt-serfs to get a diploma actually end up in jobs that don’t require a college education.
One reality–soaring student loan debt and diminishing value of the product, a college diploma–and two contradictory stories.
Systems theorist/anthropologist Gregory Bateson developed (with others) the concept of double bind, a psychological and social conflict in which contradictory demands generate a form of schizophrenia:
Unlike the usual no-win situation, the subject has difficulty in defining the exact nature of the paradoxical situation in which he or she is caught. The contradiction may be unexpressed in its immediate context and therefore invisible to external observers, only becoming evident when a prior communication is considered.
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