on covid-19 and mental health

It’s practically a truism at this point that COVID-19 has had horrific effects on the mental health of people writ large. Depression and anxiety have ravaged millions during the past few years, as this disease has cast a long and painful shadow over the early 2020s. 

I believe that the dominant conversation surrounding the issue of mental health has been quite limited and failed to address the scope of the issue. The focus of the mainstream mental health advocacy during COVID was that people suffered from not being able to connect in person with loved ones, and having their daily routines affected tremendously. During the earliest periods of the pandemic – when the disease was cloaked in uncertainty, and countless were trapped in lockdown – these concerns were especially prescient, and they have continued to hold relevance in a world plagued by isolation and loneliness. This mass trauma should not be understated, and such pain deserves acknowledgment and relief.

However, such advocacy has failed to acknowledge is the uncomfortable fact that witnessing people blatantly ignoring COVID protocol and endangering those around them has proved incredibly detrimental to those especially concerned and/or marginalized by the pandemic. 

 

Immunocompromised and disabled people have had their COVID-related concerns brushed off time and time again, as mainstream mental health advocacy delegates a certain class of people as the people whose peace of mind matters most. The right of abled and non-immunocompromised people to forgo mask-wearing for their mental health has trumped the right of those concerned about rising infection to feel safe in their communities. Governments, major media outlets, and institutions have begun to care – selectively – about mental health. Immunocompromised people have been largely abandoned, as their mental health has been continually de-prioritized. This is grossly unacceptable.

“Mental health” is a nebulous term recently thrust into the limelight that often classifies vast swathes of diverse people as sharing universal desires. The specific needs of marginalized people are frequently ignored as neoliberal mental health activism upholds the dominant strata of power in order to ease the suffering of a privileged few. Without accounting for the power dynamics that shape our world, calls for change ring hollow and inadequately contend with the scope of the problem.

Conversations about the mental health of immunocompromised people have barely begun to break through to the mainstream. The reason for this is simple: their voices are inconvenient to people who want to “go back to normal” without considering the real human cost. Immunocompromised people have been left to fend for themselves in a hostile, uncaring world.

If we are to confront the thorny issue of mental suffering during the pandemic, the first thing we need to do is confront the questions that belie our “common sense”: ‘What is mental health? Who is suffering, how, and why?’ Such critical interrogation is the groundwork upon which we build a mentally well world. 

Recommended reading: Abled-Bodied Leftists Cannot Abandon Disabled Solidarity to “Move On” From COVID, Pandemic Year 3

on jan 6 2021

 The events of yesterday should not be regarded as un-American.

They were horrific, sickening, and absolutely abhorrent, and deserve full condemnation. Yet they were simply a bold manifestation of the American culture of white supremacy and fascism that has existed since the founding of this country; and has only been strengthened and emboldened by Donald Trump since the 2016 presidential election. They were not a deformity in American politics. This disgusting display was an explosion of centuries of systemic racism, the subtle racism that has been underlying United States politics has simply come to light. Do not treat Trump like an aberration, he is a manifestation of systemic, deeply-rooted racism. This is America.

This is not the fall of democracy; democracy in the United States has always been an illusion. The United States was never a democracy - this government has relentlessly dehumanized people of color and created countless barriers for marginalized groups to vote; therefore preventing any true "will of the people".

We can have a president who comes into power after losing the popular vote; proving the little impact that genuine popular opinion holds, and innumerable incarcerated people cannot vote at all. Black people are disproportionately arrested; therefore losing their political power, an act of unjust and undemocratic repression. Our Election Day is not a federal holiday, and working-class people who cannot take the day off are hindered in their ability to vote. Moreover, this country constantly presents two presidential candidates who serve only a privileged class, regardless of whether they are Democratic or Republican - although it is worse in the latter party, there is bipartisan sheer and utter disregard for marginalized communities. Electoral politics consistently do painfully little to fight systemic issues. Regardless of what impeachment proceedings are enacted, there will always be prejudice in mainstream political discourse - unless we choose to fight it. 

The police negligence towards this behavior represented the support that authority offers towards fascism and nationalism; as racism is built into the system, it is fruitless to believe that the police as an entity will protect civilians of color. White supremacy is all too tolerated.

The police, as an institution, do not protect marginalized people; they protect property, and they protect the existing social order. The police brutality displayed against Black Lives Matter, disability justice, and Standing Rock protests stands in sharp contrast to the complete lenience displayed with the violently racist and antisemitic riots - the police are a critical component to the institution that these rioters strove to protect and uphold. As we saw yesterday, the police could have used nonviolence when dealing with peaceful protestors demanding equality; and yet they chose not to - their allegiance should be painfully obvious to all. 

Resistance is critical. 

Mutual aid is extremely important - we must band together and help each other survive in a society deeply entrenched with prejudice. Solidarity and community care are absolutely essential. 

Furthermore, I implore allies to speak out and decry prejudice when they hear it. Please listen to us. We are counting on you.

on school

This is a summation of my critiques against the American education system. I simply say "school", but I would like to make clear - when I mean "school", I am referring to the general model of mainstream, traditional public/private school that dominates the education system.

I love learning, and I hate school.

I really do love learning - in my spare time, I read articles and nonfiction books, I listen to history podcasts, I watch educational YouTube videos. I want to learn all that I can about the subjects I'm interested in -  currently, primarily history, politics, and leftism. I want to become as knowledgeable as possible. I am passionate. I am driven. I love learning.

And yet - school consistently fails to foster that love of learning; as they have for years - my entire life, really, regardless of whether the school was public or private.

I am going to speak about school in its pre-COVID sense, as virtual/hybrid school has diverted from the norm; and I sense that, post-vaccine, this depressing norm will, unfortunately, be returned to - uncritically and eagerly. 

What good is a school with arbitrary rules and meaningless assignments? 

There are countless examples of the above - even in the most liberal schools, a school must significantly divert from the standard mold to offer an institution that offers education unfettered by trivial rules.

Meaningless assignments are abundant - busywork, not made for genuine mental stimulation, or to prompt deep thought, but for the memorization of information at best - this done so that this memorization can be recited on tests, and then quickly discarded from thought, until the arrival of exams. And, at worst, meaningless assignments are crafted simply for the sake of giving mental occupation/distraction, or to add a grade to the gradebook - two things so depressingly pointless, the existence of such busywork should be considered a moral abomination. It is an outrageous waste of time and energy. 

Arbitrary rules dictate many of the injustices of school, but especially that classes hold midterms and finals.

What good are midterms and finals? I see no purpose in being forced to cram heaps of information into my head when I will undoubtedly forget it soon after. I remember little from my previous midterms and finals, my experience in regards to my health is far more prominent in my mind.  

In ninth grade, I studied so hard for midterms my physical health deteriorated. Prior to the pre-midterm week, I recall feeling tired during the weekend when I studied - so I blared loud music in my earbuds and turned my laptop's brightness all the way up, to prevent me from falling asleep while studying.

Furthermore, on top of midterms, I was in track and field at the time - during my most intense study sessions, I would get home at around 5-6pm and study until after 11pm. There were days during my studying sessions for my ninth grade midterm that I finished my studying for the night and I simply sat there, at the kitchen table, too physically exhausted to move, waiting until I could gather the energy required simply to walk upstairs and brush my teeth, and then go to bed - and repeat the process the next day. 

I became ill from this arduous, repeated process, and had to retake one of my midterms after the initial date. 

This is not all - I have been plagued with anxiety my entire adolescent life, and exams have done nothing but exacerbate this severely. In tenth grade, I vividly remember my panic attack prior to the English exam. Before my Spanish midterm that year, I became so anxious before the test I was unable to speak. Both of these came after I had studied for countless hours for my exams, working dutifully to memorize the content (and I memorized content to pass the tests, but I seldom truly learned.) 

In tenth grade, I spent several consecutive hours during midterm week either studying for the midterms or taking them - I studied before and between my midterms, barely daring to cease for any semblance of a break. 

By my French midterm at the end of the week, I was burned out and completely exhausted. But I could not put the midterm experience behind me - on our post-winter break return to school, my French teacher mandated that we go through our graded midterms, and fill out a painstakingly detailed six-page form about them. The school did not allow me to move past the horrors of exams; I was forced to relive some of the stress and anguish from midterms instead of simply being allowed to move on to the next unit, or take time to truly synthesize the past content.

I can remember all of this far more clearly than I can remember the content I was studying. Therefore, I cannot support the concept of midterms and finals. 

One can say that this is simply my fault, for being overzealous; yet schools encourage and breed this behavior by creating massive tests with small windows to study for them. Yes, one can study in advance for exams, but they must balance the weight of exams with the steady stream of tests, quizzes, assignments, and papers, so it is virtually impossible to get a significant head start on their studies - furthermore, the exams often include material taught near the very end of the semester - forcing one to delay their studies. Therefore, students spend at least a week in literal hell - with momentous pressure on their shoulders, they are being subtly or explicitly told that their entire work for the semester - for months of learning - for any given academic course is simply worth a test packet. The summation of months is a single test that carries enormous weight, and students are denigrated and risk losing opportunities if they are unable to perform well under this severe pressure. This is inhumane. 

This is not an environment of learning. This is why, despite my joy when learning, I hate school. Not only do I hate school for putting me through this; I hate school for putting my friends through this. 

My friends are the people I love most in the world, and seeing them think poorly about themselves because they cannot meet impossible, unreasonable academic standards not only distresses, but enrages me. A true institution of learning does not communicate to students that they are worth a letter grade; a true institution of learning fosters a student's natural curiosity without constantly measuring, evaluating, and essentially ranking them. Students should be free to learn without the shackles of nonstop competition. Natural curiosity is a beautiful thing; and school seeks to suppress it, to create a student body of academic clones. 

School brutalizes a creative spirit. Innocent nonconformity is frowned upon in most instances, and often penalized. There is a mold one must fit, an ideal model, and if one fails to meet that - both in their schoolwork and in their self - they face social consequences from students, and academic penalization from teachers. (When I mean this in a non-social context - I mean it not in regards to plagiarism - but in regards to papers, tests, assignments - when one must meet strict requirements or lose points, regardless of the work's genuine quality.) How can one learn when one must survive by following the rules, and ignore their creative, independent spirit, begging for a release?

Obedience is truly the most valued attribute at school - students who break any of the dizzying array of constructed rules risk subjugation to public humiliation and harsh punishment. I have had a teacher call me out in front of the entire class - over a dozen of my peers - for falling asleep, after I failed to get adequate sleep due to staying up late, finishing homework, as has been typical for me in high school. Moreover, my struggle with depression has led itself to almost unending exhaustion - and self-hatred, which the teacher further heightened with her action. 

Countless studies have demonstrated that a school that starts at 8am is harmful to teenagers - and yet, many schools do. Students regularly go to school exhausted, and are expected to work at top performance in subjects they often have little to no interest in. Their critique and defiance of this system is seen as individual laziness - it is easier to place the blame on a student who often misses class, or comes late, than to question the system that led them to do so.

What do I want for school? I want the abolition of letter grades and unending evaluation - this only breeds the pitting of students against each other. Endless competition is severely unhealthy - it leads to pointless divisions, academic elitism, and social ranking, when we should be promoting community and unity amongst all students. I want a school that allows students to further emphasize their interests - instead of dictating that they follow a given curriculum and set of academic requirements. 

Furthermore, I want a school that benefits neurodivergent, disabled, and mentally ill students - a school that rejects ableism in all form - I especially want a school that allows that neurodivergent, disabled, and mentally ill students to live without the need to hide their true selves and/or worsen their health for assimilation and academic success. All marginalized groups face persecution in the education system - but for neurodivergency, disability, and mental illness, this persecution is written into the very curriculum. The model of the American education system is deeply harmful to these students - it cannot be altered with mild reforms and accommodations. 

To achieve and promote individuality, liberty, community, creativity, happiness, and learning in students - there must be a radical upheaval. Otherwise, placating reforms will only continue to delude students with the hopes of achieving an academic experience that is not driven by suffering - but without radical change, that can only be a dream. 

on social media and capitalism

After watching a small sampling of the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, I felt the need to compile a few thoughts I took away from it - as well as offer my own personal take, given my experience as a teenager growing up in the age of the Internet. To be clear, this is not meant to be a thorough critique of the documentary, of social media, or of capitalism more broadly - only a brief summation of my thoughts (which I may explore further in a later post.) 

This evening I began to watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix, and immediately felt unimpressed. The documentary warns of the dangers of predatory tech companies and their harmful impact on culture and society - a very valid criticism of Silicon Valley, to be sure. But the packaging felt incredibly disingenuous - perhaps, as a teenager, I am simply tired of what feels like the redundant anti-technology tirade. The tirade from school, and parents, that social media will rot my brain and ruin my mental health (a tirade which feels particularly hypocritical given the severe negative effect both have had on worsening my mental health, arguably a negative effect far worse than any website. But I digress.) As a teenager, I simply feel bored after hearing the generic, substance-lacking "social media bad" argument for the umpteenth time. I understand the harm social media does, I'm extremely plugged in and I've felt the pain of it firsthand.

But moreover, I think The Social Dilemma feels disingenuous on a larger, inter-generational scale as its emphasis on the dangers of "social media companies" seems to emphasize the former phrase more than the latter word in its warning. Social media companies are relentless in their exploitation of consumers for capital - they sell data to advertisers to push products onto their unknowing patrons; people who have downloaded an app for free and then quickly become immersed in a digital market using their every 'like' and swipe to subtly shift them into falling victim to empty consumerism. This is heinous; I could not agree more. However - it is unfair to act as if this is inherent to social media and not a simple extension of capitalism. No industry is above using manipulation to trick consumers into buying products they have no need for; capitalism is driven by profit and social media companies simply follow the profit-based model - they are simply alarmingly powerful due to the advance of technology. However, to act as if they are an entity more insidious than standard capitalism is a misconception; they are simply more effective due to their medium. They have the same goals as a standard corporation, their increased power is a matter of circumstance. Therefore, when criticizing the dark underbelly of social media corporations, it is imperative to understand that the root of many of the problems that stem from Facebook, Twitter, etc., are not unique to social media; they are a feature of capitalism. Profit is a necessary imperative; ethics are less important, and all measures towards creating a more ethical system are performative, PR stunts meant to whitewash the unrelenting exploitation.

Furthermore, Internet/social media addiction is a grave problem that even I, someone exhausted with the emptiness of anti-technology propaganda, cannot shy away from. I spend the majority of my waking hours with my eyes glued to a screen and I take absolutely no pride in it. There are countless others in my boat, I recognize that, and by no means do I undercut the issue. However, the root cause is frequently being ignored. From my own personal experience, social media has been a major coping mechanism for my depression - the mindless scroll keeps my mind occupied from my sometimes constant stream of intrusive thoughts. Social media has provided a distraction for me when a distraction was what I needed most, and I remain reliant on social media as it entertains me without the need for me to focus (an impossibility when I am especially depressed or anxious.) It is an empty relief to keep my mental illness at bay - and mental illness is a growing epidemic amongst youth. In Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher wisely linked the rise of neoliberalism and depression - and the second always follows the first, does it not?

There is something painfully depressing about constant commodification, the constant demand to incessantly produce and labor under exploitative conditions - to sacrifice your dreams and aspirations to work exhausting hours in a low-paying job towards a meaningless career to afford to meet your basic needs. The privatization of every industry, the denial of basic needs - neoliberalism is depression-inducing, and the rise of social media with neoliberalism has resulted in an environment where depression is a reality for the majority of teenagers, who feel reluctant at their prospects due to capitalism. Therefore, the empty, shallow entertainment of social media - the TikToks, the memes - all allow for some relief from the painstaking reality of our overly privatized, profit-oriented society. A society that marches us to our inevitable climate heat-death in the name of fossil fuel money and manipulates poor teenagers to enlist to fight useless wars for the sake of bloodthirsty imperialism. Of course depression is on the rise; our societal suffering is well-documented and blatant - to alleviate the issue of social media addiction, we need to go deeper than encourage youth to delete Instagram. We need to ease the pain so that the relief does not become the endless, mind-numbing refreshing of a feed, but if social media were to cease to exist, then young people would only become immersed in other addictive behaviors. I do not think that upending capitalism is a quick and easy solution to alleviating this crisis, but it is necessary to recognize the root cause.

In addition - there was some mention of dysmorphia, as in the case of "Snapchat dysmorphia". This can be directly linked to capitalism - there are countless companies that profit off the insecurity of (primarily) women. Firstly, they invent the insecurities - they use subtle advertisements to alert people that they have an undesirable feature - it may be natural and perfectly healthy, but with this manufactured insecurity, companies can sell fad diets and weight-loss products that consistently fail to produce long-term results to keep endless consumers, as well as makeup and beauty products that perpetually need endless purchasing to retain the manicured look that, for women, becomes the norm. Social media doubtlessly exploits this with airbrushed filters - so that the polished becomes typical.

It is advantageous to capitalism to offer these faux solutions to people to alleviate problems that exist because capitalism dictated that there is a beauty standard one must replicate - but the beauty standard is unattainable. It is paradoxical - no matter how beautiful you are in accordance with the Eurocentric beauty standards that capitalism adores, there is always a solution on the market to make you closer and closer to the impossibility of perfection. Therefore, people are led to work constantly to make themselves more beautiful - but capitalism worsens their body dysmorphia, leading to despair and self-hatred. Once a vulnerable person is introduced to this vicious cycle, they are locked in - a lifetime consumer. It is painfully difficult to escape. This is exacerbated with social media, with the constant display of other peoples' bodies, but to say that social media has invented this problem from nowhere is laughably incorrect.

And onto some more frivolous concerns. There is something, surely, to be recognized about the irony of Netflix creating this documentary. While I don't mean to become the grinning well-dweller from the familiar, "We should improve society somewhat" / "Yet you participate in society. Curious!" comic, Netflix is a corporation, and therefore a perpetrator of harm in the capitalist system. To criticize social media companies as an evil unlike any other, while the film and television industry are both rife with glaring problems that warrant a separate post (a separate blog - a separate book, really), is somewhat ... ironic, I suppose, although this may be more of a personal, cynical gripe. Netflix has used these dramatic, shadowy effects in the production of The Social Dilemma to fearmonger viewers in a way that feels ... cheap, and reminiscent of the anti-drug propaganda from my elementary and middle school health classes. The manufactured drama, the cliché shots - they are intended to scare, and it made me feel irritated, the way I have after watching a tacky anti-smoking ad in seventh grade. I understand the dangers of social media without edgy camera angles, thanks.