Are we "the land of the free and the home of the brave"; "one country under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all"; "shining city on a hill"; "And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea" ,and " children are our most precious resource" or, are we a nation of hypocrisy myths, legends, and folktales that are stereotypes that disguise and conceal conscious and unconscious motives of a powerful minority ? Currently, our country is composed of red states and blue states, without liberty and justice for all. We are certainly not the land of the free. We are the home of income inequality, political division, decreasing lifespan with an inordinate amount of hate, death, despair, anxiety, fear and loss of our children and adolescents. The article titled "It's Not Deaths of Despair.” Its Deaths of Children found in the April 9, 2023 edition of the New York Times illustrated statistically our hypocrisy . Unconscious motivation , resistance and defense mechanisms are a few factors making it difficult to change the reality of today’s socioeconomic and political sickness ?
Philosophically, “Know thyself “ - self-knowledge goes back to the time of Socrates. Socrates challenged people on their understanding of certain concepts such as justice. According to Socrates , people exhibited ignorance based on a lack of self-knowledge and he believed that limiting this deficiency would have the happy consequence of gaining greater knowledge of one's fellow man. Knowing oneself, one would also be knowing others
in the 17th century. the first thinker that had a clear concept of the unconscious was Spinoza. He believed that men "are conscious of their own desire, and are ignorant of the causes whereby the desire has been determined." In other words, the average man is not free but lives under the illusion of being free, because he is motivated by factors unconscious to him. Spinoza believed that the very existence of unconscious motivation constitutes human bondage and the attainment of freedom was based on an ever-increasing awareness of the reality inside and outside of man. Adam Smith wrote that the economic man "is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention." Nitschke said. "My memory says I've done this. My pride says I have not done it; my memory yields." Marx wrote "it's not the consciousness of men that determines his existence, but on the contrary, it is their social existence that determines consciousness. “ In other words, social reality molds an individuals' thinking and manners. This social existence are producers of man’s conceptions of ideas and that consciousness can never be anything else other than conscious existence. It is the existence of man that is his actual life process.
Freud wrote that individuals repress the awareness of their most significant experiences. This results in a conflict between man’s unconscious reality within self and the denial of that reality in his consciousness and therefore. deceives himself continuously. Freud recognized that most of what is real within ourselves is not conscious and most of what is conscious is not real, Truth is difficult to establish. Most desires are unconscious. What is conscious is a rationalization which hides completely what man does not want to know. Man is unable to satisfy his desires without sensing his conflicted moral judgment . This results in the formation of defense mechanisms as in a rationalization . The person “ never “ discovers the contradiction between the reality of his desires within the fiction of his rationalization . Man goes on acting according to his desires with repression while refusing to admit or acknowledge the existence of what is repressed,
It's time to address the violent reality taking place in our country. It's not surprising that our life expectancy is proceeding in the wrong direction. We have the largest military budget in the world and seem to have been at war “ forever . “ Individually, we have more firearms proportionally than any other country, and are number 1 in murders .
This country has propagated clichés, ideologies and delusions regarding its "greatness." Statistically, on so many measures, compared to other countries, we lag behind. Moreover, Karl Marx suggested that the social reality of socioeconomic conditions are responsible for man’s history. If so, living in a violent country suggests that many are hateful with prejudice and exhibit hostility toward ourselves and toward fellow men. In other words, too many are alienated and hostile .
On the other hand, we've tackled and solved enormous technical and medical problems. We have created the bomb , explored outer space and private citizens can go 50 miles above the earth. And yet when it comes to social ,moral and ethical problems, we are inept. Are we so narcissistic and egotistical , that we value human life just for some ? Are our primitive unconscious instincts like murder repressed and behind our economic and political ideologies ? We seek to destroy ourselves and others with little consequence or remorse for those that are murdered.
Human irrationality , death and loss is taking place today. The New York Times article had the following facts: 1. Lifespan in the United States is decreasing . Americans are now dying younger than in China, Cuba, Czech Republic, and Lebanon. 2. One in 25 American five-year-olds won't live to see 40 . 3. Firearms or homicides accounted for 6.9% of deaths for 19 years old or younger and suicide for 6.8%. Car crashes , accidental drug overdoses and other accidental deaths called unintentional injuries accounted for 18.4%. 4. More than twice as many kids died from poisoning including drug overdoses as from Covid- 19 ; more than three times as many died of suicide; more than four times as many died from homicide and more than five times as many died in car crashes and other transportation accidents. 5. Mortality is decreasing for those without college degrees. Individuals at every percentile of income are now dying sooner than their counterparts in Britain. 6. Black Americans on average can expect to live 5 fewer years than white Americans. Black American men have lower life expectancies than men in Rwanda, Laos and North Korea. 7. White Americans can expect to live 7 fewer years than Asian Americans. 8. Life expectancy in the black belt of the deep South is 20 years lower than that of North of the Mason-Dixon line and West of the Mississippi. 9.Individuals live longer in counties in support of Joe Biden compared to those living in counties that supported Trump 10. If you make it to retirement age, you can expect to live about as long as your counterparts in other wealthy countries even though you spent much more money on health care. 11. Gun homicides were responsible for children ages 10 to 19 and increased more than 39%. Drug overdoses for that age more than doubled in 2021. 12. Most of the increase in pediatric mortality was among males. 13. Deaths from overdose are higher among white children and teenagers .14. Deaths of despair are rising among white, middle-aged men who won't reach 80 years of age.
Are children our most precious resource ? The above article statistically exposed the myth regarding our children and adolescents. People with guns are killing our precious resources. If we valued our young, we would do more and be in concert with mental health practices and meaningful firearms legislation .
In summation, unprecedented firearm violence suggests a widespread epidemic. To deal psychologically with this sickness , requires self-knowledge with attention to the unconscious societal reality of forces affecting humanness . Next, we have to acknowledge the destructiveness of our impulses , passions and human needs, which is the irrational reality of harming self and others. Then , we have to understand how the social institutions of religion, education, politics, criminal injustice and capitalism interact and distort man's beliefs ,morality ,ethics and actions within his primitive emotional makeup. Then a critique might allow us to better understand our reliance on illusion and provide the resources to confront our unconscious desires , our resistances and reliance on defense mechanisms. On the other hand, direct attention to states which have the lowest number of deaths per 100,000 of the total population In order to see what they're putting in the drinking water. For instance : Hawaii 3.4 ; Massachusetts 3.7 ; New Jersey 5 ; Rhode Island 5.1 and New York 5.3. Red state Mississippi is statistically last with 28.6 and according to an Hawaiian Proverb ,“ Truth is not changeable. “
Reference
Bottomore, T. B. Translation from Marx's Economics And Philosophical Manuscripts.
Freud, Sigmund. The Ego and the Id.
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