The Treason of the therapists

The Treason of the therapists

Emanuel Pastreich

As millions wander through vapid environments trying to figure out how their lives were destroyed, a pernicious new species of the predator has emerged, one who earns his keep, or even amasses private fortunes, by pretending to be helpful to the worker while intentionally protecting the interests of the rich and powerful, covering over the horrific destruction of human institutions, and promoting the false narrative that all problems originate within the self, within the mind of the individual. 

I am speaking of the therapist, the psychologist, the paid mental health professional who, for his or her pound of flesh, is recommended by the moneychangers to all those who suffer from mental and spiritual anguish as a solution---certainly the only solution that your medical insurance will offer a co-payment for, the only solution that your associates will consider as within the range of acceptable behavior.

One of the most nauseous incarnations of this new species that roam the wasteland once known as America is Dr. B. J. Fogg, director of the Behavior Design Lab, at Stanford University. What a great term, “behavior design lab” –perhaps he has grant from DARPA? 

This man has a “New York Times bestseller” book out entitled Tiny Habits: The Small Changes that Change Everything. 

Of course Dr. Fogg is not actually a professor at Stanford University, but he does represent perfectly the treason of the intellectuals who were entrusted to help the citizen, but who have joined forces, in secret, with the multinational corporations who are tearing our society apart. 

Dr. Fogg explains the tragedy in our daily lives thus. “If you are one of those, maybe billions of people, whose habits and routines have changed as late, you are not alone. It’s been a crazy time and our context, our environment, has changed around us.

Don’t feel bad that those habits have slipped away from you. Just recognize that is how behavior works and it is not your fault.”   

Doctor Fogg creates a powerful fog of the mind, avoid any discussion about the manner in which our society was ripped apart by the super-rich in search of endless profit. He merely says that “it’s been a crazy time.” Instead of identifying the criminal class that has destroyed the health, the lives, and the minds of working people, Dr. Fogg offers a false bit of comfort, saying sympathetically, “it is not your fault.” 

But, but…no one thought it was his or her fault until Dr. Fogg made that foggy suggestion. He is planting a false explanation for the crimes we witness in our minds through covert means. 

But his crimes run far deeper than that. 
His book suggests that the way to improve the world is not to form mass movements and build an independent economy that can resist and replace global capital, but rather that we should just modify our behavior, starting with which is easiest. 

Don’t try to understand the monopoly of the means of production, exchange and distribution by unaccountable multinationals. Just try to have family dinners together again like in the old days.

He never suggests in his lectures that perhaps you cannot have those family dinners anymore because your children are so depressed and alienated by an economic system designed to exploit and to destroy them. 
He never hints that the social networks and commercial entertainment in which your family is drowning were designed to be addictive and to isolate and manipulate users so that they can no longer interact naturally with those around them. 

The treason of the therapist, the betrayal of the public intellectual is grotesque. 

We have psychologists telling citizens at hospitals and clinicsthat they are patients who suffer from internal psychological malfunctions of their own creation, the results of hormones and imbalances. These paid-for experts will never say to their patients that they are victims of class warfare.

These fake experts keep on prescribing medications marketed by the big pharmaceutical corporations, and they take kickbacks, seen and unseen, from their dark masters.
Their goal is not to cure, but render the citizen docile and helpless, to addict them to chemicals provided by the corporations, and to make sure that no one starts to organize an effective opposition to the destruction of society by the billionaires. 

Equally grotesque is the misuse of meditation and Buddhist philosophy as a means of obscuring the ruthless exploitation of the worker. For example, Amazon, a brutal multinational corporation dedicated to destroying local businesses and working people to death, has introduced ZenBooths in its warehouses where exploited workers who feel stress can go to meditate. 

Amazon pays lawyers, private police, and undercover operatives to suppress any efforts by workers to organize. It bribes local officials to stay out of the way. But Amazon has wisely invested in this pseudo-psychology of meditation that blames the worker for his or her suffering.

출처 : Korea IT Times(https://www.koreaittimes.com)