eightpix

I met my partner 18 years ago. She started therapy regularly after our first five years together. She started to see some patterns in her behaviour, especially toward me, that she wanted to work on. Since then, she has decided she wants to become a therapist.

On the other hand, my journey started when I tried to access counselling 25 years ago. My GP tried to put me on an antidepressant immediately. I said no. Since meeting my partner and her starting her therapeutic journey, she has tried for a long time to get me into seeing a therapist. It took almost 15 years, but I started about a month ago.

Now, this first therapist has not been mind-blowing in any way. No breakthroughs, no revelations. Really, I don’t think we’re vibing. But, still, being able to say aloud some of the things that I hide from everyone else is, in and of itself, therapeutic.

The list, above, were my stumbling blocks, too. They still are. Add to the list that I’m an underemployed, visible minority, a father-of-two in a high-stress career, and that I refuse to “adjust [blithely] to a profoundly sick society.” I’d rather continue to feel my isolation and my detachment than walk into Walmart whistling and smiling at my good fortune.

All this to say (TL;DR) therapy comes from your own commitment to honest self-examination. Guided, surely, but at least attempted. It won’t be found in a pill, potion, or portent. I hope to find a therapist who can challenge me to do better.

I’ve always blamed marketing.

For those who don’t know: Over the last 80 years, public relations, marketing, and ad agencies have spent trillions of dollars using Freudian psychology to engineer humans to believe three things:

• youth is desirable — aging is death

• sex is satisfaction — denial is death

• success satisfies desires — failure is death

This is why youthful, feminine humans are used to sell products. They appeal to women who are conditioned into supportive roles and appearing desirable and men who are conditioned into seeking satisfaction and conquest of the desirable. A youthful, sexualized image yields success. Sex sells.

The person you can thank for this is named Edward Bernays. He is the father of public relations as an industry and wrote the book “Propaganda” in — get this — 1928.

Reengineering us to believe that a mid-40s single, black, mother of three who works two jobs and volunteers in the community on Sunday into the most desirable human image and we would have an entirely different world.

This world is based on the Paris Hilton sex tape.

DS9 does so much right. It is certainly on point in its treatment of moral gray.

Sci-fi all the way.

Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009) shows the fall of an empire (loosely, America) at the hands of their AI creations. I guess Rome or Britain could also sit in for America. This show aired while Bush the lesser was taking Afghanistan and Iraq apart piece by piece.

The Expanse (2015-2022) is the worthy heir to the throne of casting harsh light on the oligarchs and hegemons. Belters could be any people put upon by this corrupt system: migrant workers, Indigenous people, refugees, the unhoused, the descendants of the enslaved — anyone who was expected to bootstrap success.

Both are good shows. The Expanse is proving to be somewhat more resilient to the passage of time.

It was The Corporation for me. Then, I discovered Adam Curtis. Smartest Guys in the Room, some Michael Moore stuff, then I really started taking a look at War docs with Smedley Butler and Dalton Trumbo and Charlie Chaplin shouting at me from the 1930s and 40s. Errol Morris kicked ass in the Fog of War, John Pilger kicked ass in Occupation 101, and BBC kicked ass with the Death of Yugoslavia.

This was 20 or 25 years ago. All this seems trite by comparison to where we are now.

So there’s this Rick and Morty episode (s05e04)