Countercurrents.org

Thirty-three years ago, I watched as a culture that had been sealed off from the rest of the world was suddenly thrown open to economic development. Witnessing the impact of the modern world on an ancient culture gave me insights into how economic globalisation creates feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, particularly in the young, and how those psychological pressures are helping to spread the global consumer culture. Since that time I have been promoting the rebuilding of community and local economies as the foundation of an ‘Economics of Happiness’.

When I first arrived in Ladakh or “Little Tibet”, a region high on the Tibetan plateau, it was still largely unaffected by either colonialism or the global economy. For political reasons, the region had been isolated for many centuries, both geographically and culturally. During several years of living amongst the Ladakhis, I found them to be the most contented and happy people I had ever encountered. Their sense of self-worth was deep and solid; smiles and laughter were their constant companions. Then in 1975, the Indian government abruptly opened Ladakh to imported food and consumer goods, to tourism and the global media, to western education and other trappings of the ‘development’ process. Romanticised impressions of the West gleaned from media, advertising and fleeting encounters with tourists had an immediate and profound impact on the Ladakhis. The sanitised and glamorised images of the urban consumer culture created the illusion that people outside Ladakh enjoyed infinite wealth and leisure. By contrast, working in the fields and providing for one’s own needs seemed backward and primitive. Suddenly, everything from their food and clothing to their houses and language seemed inferior. The young were particularly affected, quickly succumbing to a sense of insecurity and self-rejection. The use of a dangerous skin-lightening cream called “Fair and Lovely” became widespread, symbolising the newly-created need to imitate the distant role models – western, urban, blonde – provided by the media.

Over the past three decades, I have studied this process in numerous cultures around the world and discovered that we are all victims of these same psychological pressures. In virtually every industrialised country, including the US, UK, Australia, France and Japan, there is now what is described as an epidemic of depression. In Japan, it is estimated that one million youths refuse to leave their bedrooms – sometimes for decades – in a phenomenon known as “Hikikomori.” In the US, a growing proportion of young girls are so deeply insecure about their appearance they fall victim to anorexia and bulimia, or undergo expensive cosmetic surgery.

Why is this happening? Too often these signs of breakdown are seen as ‘normal’: we assume that depression is a universal affliction, that children are by nature insecure about their appearance, that greed, acquisitiveness, and competition are innate to the human condition. What we fail to consider are the billions of dollars spent by marketers targeting children as young as two, with a goal of instilling the belief that material possessions will ensure them the love and appreciation they crave.

As global media reaches into the most remote parts of the planet, the underlying message is: “if you want to be seen, heard, appreciated and loved you must have the right running shoes, the most fashionable jeans, the latest toys and gadgets”. But the reality is that consumption leads to greater competition and envy, leaving children more isolated, insecure, and unhappy, thereby fuelling still more frantic consumption in a vicious cycle. In this way, the global consumer culture taps into the fundamental human need for love and twists it into insatiable greed.

Today, more and more people are waking up to fact that, because of its environmental costs, an economic model based on endless consumption is simply unsustainable. But because there is far less understanding of the social and psychological costs of the consumer culture, most believe that making the changes necessary to save the environment will entail great sacrifice. Once we realise that oil-dependent global growth is not only responsible for climate change and other environmental crises, but also for increased stress, anxiety and social breakdown, then it becomes clear that the steps we need to take to heal the planet are the same as those needed to heal ourselves: both require reducing the scale of the economy – in other words localising rather than continuing to globalise economic activity. My sense from interviewing people in four continents is that this realisation is already growing, and has the potential to spread like wildfire.

Economic localisation means bringing economic activity closer to home – supporting local economies and communities rather than huge, distant corporations. Instead of a global economy based on sweatshop in the South, stressed-out two-earner families in the North, and a handful of billionaire elites in both, localisation means a smaller gap between rich and poor and closer contact between producers and consumers. This translates into greater social cohesion : a recent study found that shoppers at farmers’ markets had ten times more conversations than people in supermarkets.

And community is a key ingredient in happiness. Almost universally, research confirms that feeling connected to others is a fundamental human need. Local, community-based economies are also crucial for the well-being of our children, providing them with living role models and a healthy sense of identity. Recent childhood development research demonstrates the importance, in the early years of life, of learning about who we are in relation to parents, siblings, and the larger community. These are real role models, unlike the artificial stereotypes found in the media.

A deep connection with nature is similarly fundamental to our well-being. Author Richard Louv has even coined the expression ‘nature deficit disorder’ to describe what is happening to children deprived of contact with the living world. The therapeutic benefits of contact with nature, meanwhile, are becoming ever more clear. A recent UK study showed that 90 percent of people suffering from depression experience an increase in self-esteem after a walk in a park. After a visit to a shopping centre, on the other hand, 44 percent feel a decrease in self-esteem and 22 percent feel more depressed. Considering that over 31 million prescriptions for anti-depressants were handed out in the UK last year, this is a crucial finding.

Despite the enormity of the crises we face, turning towards the more community-based, localised economies represents a powerful solution multiplier. As Kali Wendorf, editor of Kindred magazine, says, “the way forward is actually quite simple: it’s more time with each other, more time in nature, more time in collective situations that give us a sense of community, like farmers’ markets, for example, or developing a relationship with the corner shop where you get your fruits and vegetables. It’s not going back to the Stone Age. It’s just getting back to that foundation of connection again.”

Efforts to localise economies are happening at the grassroots all over the world, and bringing with them a sense of well-being. A young man who started an urban garden in Detroit, one of America’s most blighted cities, told us, “I’ve lived in this community over 35 years and people I’d never met came up and talked to me when we started this project. We found that it reconnects us with the people around us, it makes community a reality”. Another young gardener in Detroit put it this way: “Everything just feels better to people when there is something growing.”

Global warming and the end of cheap oil demand a fundamental shift in the way that we live. The choice is ours. We can continue down the path of economic globalisation, which at the very least will create greater human suffering and environmental problems, and at worst, threatens our very survival. Or, through localisation, we can begin to rebuild our communities and local economies, the foundations of sustainability and happiness.

Countercurrents.org

Project Censored’s top 2010 story was “US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street,” highlighting that since 2001, “eight of the most troubled firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional candidates, presidential candidates and the Republican and Democratic parties.” It’s no surprise that they own them, what Wall Street Watch.org showed in a March 2009 Essential Information and Consumer Education Foundation report titled,”Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America.”

The accompanying press release said:

Over the past decade, “$5 billion in political contributions bought Wall Street freedom from regulation, (and) restraint.” From 1998 – 2008, “Wall Street investment firms, commercial banks, hedge funds, real estate companies and insurance conglomerates (the FIRE sector)” spent over $1.7 billion in political contributions and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists, in return for which:

– they were freed from regulation;

– could speculate on financial derivatives and an alphabet soup of securitized garbage, including asset-backed securities (ABSs), mortgage-backed securities (MBSs), collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), collateralized bond obligations (CBOs), credit default swaps (CDSs), and collateralized fund obligations (CFOs) – combined, sliced, diced, packaged, repackaged, and sold in tranches to sophisticated and ordinary investors, many unwittingly through mutual funds, 401(k)s, pensions, and the like;

– could merge commercial and investment banking and insurance operations;

– bilk investors and the public through fraudulent schemes; and

– get trillions of bailout dollars when the economy crashed.

For decades, Wall Street and successive governments colluded to defraud the public, using various schemes to transfer wealth from them to the privileged. Carter spearheaded deregulation Nixon and Ford began by hiring Alfred Kahn to head the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). The 1978 Airline Deregulation Act followed. It dissolved the CAB, removed industry restraints, eased consolidation, and subsequent bills deregulated trucking and railroads – the 1980 Motor Carrier Act and 1980 Staggers Rail Act, following the 1976 Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act.

Carter also phased out interest rate deposit ceilings, and gave the Fed more power through the 1980 Depository Institutions and Monetary Control Act, removing New Deal restraints and enabling subsequent administrations to go further.

Under Reagan, energy deregulation followed, notably oil and gas, then electric utilities under GHW Bush and Clinton, the result being high prices, brownouts, and Enron-like scandals. In the 1980s, the 1982 Alternative Mortgage Transactions Parity Act led to exotic feature mortgages with adjustable rates or interest-only. They carry low “teaser” rates for several years, after which they’re adjusted much higher, often making loans unaffordable, especially for low-income, high-risk borrowers using subprime and Alt-A loans.

The 1982 Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act deregulated thrifts and fueled fraud, so much that the Savings and Loan crisis followed, hundreds of banks failed, and taxpayers got stuck with most of the $160 billion cost. In 1987, the Government Accountability Office (GOA) declared the S & L deposit insurance fund insolvent because of mounting bank failures.

In 1988, global regulators imposed minimum bank capital requirements, known as the Basel Accord or Basel I, enforced in the G-10 countries.

In 1989, the Financial Institutions Reform and Recovery Act abolished the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and FSLIC, transferring them to the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and FDIC. It also created the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to liquidate troubled assets, assume Federal Home Loan Bank Board insurance functions, and clean up a troubled system.

Clinton era telecommunications deregulation let media and telecommunication giants consolidate, gave new digital television broadcast spectrum space to current TV station owners, and let cable companies increase their local monopoly positions.

His 1994 Reigle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act let bank holding companies operate in more than one state. In 1996, the Fed reinterpreted Glass-Steagall to let bank holding companies earn up to 25% of their revenue from investment banking. The 1998 Citicorp-Travelers merger followed, combining a commercial/investment bank with an insurance company ahead of the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, also called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) authorizing it.

Some Background

During the Great Depression, the Bank Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall) created the FDIC, insuring bank deposits up to $5,000 and separating commercial from investment banks and insurance companies, among other provisions to curb speculation. Senator Carter Glass was its prime mover and got Senator Henry Steagall to go along by including his amendment to protect deposits. Glass believed banks should stick to lending, not speculate, deal, or hold corporate securities. He blamed them for the 1929 crash, subsequent bank failures, and the Great Depression. The Bank Act of 1933 passed quickly to curb them.

No Longer since the Neoliberal 1990s

Later weakened, it still curbed abusive practices until GLBA repealed it, let commercial and investment banks and insurance companies combine, and facilitated consolidated power, fraud and abuse that followed. Other deregulatory rules permitted off-balance sheet accounting to let banks hide liabilities.

In 2000, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) passed, legitimizing swap agreements and other hybrid instruments, at the heart of today’s problems by ending regulatory oversight of derivatives and leveraging that turned Wall Street more than ever into a casino.

In her book “It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street,” former insider Nomi Prins explained CFMA as follows:

“That act ushered in tremendous growth of unregulated commodity trades through its “Enron Loophole (for its Enron On-Line, the first Internet-based commodity transactions system to let companies) trade energy and other commodity futures on unregulated exchanges.”

“It also sparked growth in the unregulated credit derivatives trades that bet on defaults of corporations or loans, which became the main ingredient in the hot new Wall Street financial gumbo. Credit derivatives were a type of insurance contract written against not just one corporation or loan but on investments that scarfed up bunches of subprime loans (junk) and stuffed them into the unregulated CDOs that imploded and hastened the greater lending crisis.”

Credit default swaps became the most widely traded credit derivative. As unregulated insurance bets between two parties on whether or not a company’s bonds would default, financial writer Ellen Brown asked in her April 11, 2008 article titled, “Credit Default Swaps: Evolving Financial Meltdown and Derivative Disaster Du Jour:”

What if “the smartest guys in the room designed their credit default swaps (but) forgot to ask one thing – what if the parties on the other side of the bet don’t have the money to pay up?” In late 2007, when the financial crisis hit, they didn’t, causing a “supersized bubble” to deflate.

New Deal reforms were enacted to prevent it. Deregulatory madness made it inevitable and the subsequent global economic fallout that continues – compounded by what Danny Schechter explained in his book, titled “The Crime of Our Time,” calling the financial collapse “a crime story (involving) high status white-collar crooks.” Their schemes included:

– “Fraud and control frauds;

– Insider trading;

– Theft and conspiracy;

– Misrepresentation;

– Ponzi schemes;

– False accounting;

– Embezzling;

– Diverting funds into obscenely high salaries and obscene bonuses;

– Bilking investors, customers and homeowners;

– Conflicts of interest;

– Mesmerizing regulators;

– Manipulating markets;

– Tax frauds;

– Making loans and then arranging that they fail;

– Engineering phony financial products: (and)

– Misleading the public.”

Worst of all, they got away with it, still do, and got trillions of dollars in bailout money as a bonus, free money from the Fed plus interest on Fed held reserves.

The Absence of Regulatory Oversight

Earlier New Deal reforms were long gone, but for the most part worked when in place. The Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 followed the Securities Act of 1933, requiring offers and security sales to be registered, pursuant to the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause. Previously, they were governed by state laws, so-called “blue sky laws” to protect against fraud.

The 1934 law regulated secondary trading of financial securities and established the SEC under Section 4 to enforce the new Act, later under the 1939 Trust Indenture Act, the 1940 Investment Company Act, the Investment Advisors Act the same year, Sarbanes-Oxley of 2002, and the 2006 Credit Rating Agency Reform Act.

The SEC was established to enforce federal securities laws, the security industry, the nation’s financial and options exchanges, and other electronic securities markets and instruments unknown in the 1930s, including derivatives and other forms of speculation. In principle, it’s charged with uncovering wrongdoing, assuring investors aren’t swindled, and keeping the nation’s financial markets free from fraud and other abuses.

That was then, but no longer. Under George Bush, the SEC was more facilitator than enforcer, a paper tiger, not a guardian of the public trust. It:

– turned a blind eye to fraud and abuse;

– protected Wall Street, not investors;

– neutered its enforcement staff’s authority;

– adopted voluntary regulation;

– let investment banks hold less reserve capital;

– freely use leverage;

– incur much higher debt levels; and

– pretty much do what they pleased, only occasionally punishing an offender with a wrist-slap.

Financial fraud prosecutions dropped sharply, practically never against powerful, well-connected firms, the Bernie Madoff exception because he confessed to his sons, and they turned him in for running what he called a “giant Ponzi scheme.”

Obama exacerbated the worst bad practices. Wall gets a free ride. Foxes guard the hen house. Inmates run the asylum. Regulators don’t regulate. Investigations aren’t conducted. Criminal fraud is ignored. Nothing is done to curb it, and except for Madoff, only small fries need worry. Washington protects the big ones, Obama assigning Mary Schapiro the task as his SEC chief.

She’s a consummate insider, spent years promoting Wall Street self-regulation, headed the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), was the National Association of Securities Dealers’ (NASD) chairman, president, and CEO, ran the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and is expert at quashing fraud investigations. Except for high profile cases too big to hide (like Countrywide’s Angelo Mozilo and Texas financier Robert Allen Sanford), she’s treaded lightly on the rich and powerful, is doing nothing to curb insider trading, front-running, market manipulation, and other abuses.

Even the Wall Street Journal, commenting on her appointment, said her regulatory record “shows she has infrequently pursued tough action against big Wall Street firms.” A year later, her job performance proves it, made easier by decades of deregulation.

In 2003, the Controller of the Currency, John Hawke, Jr. preempted state predatory lending laws (in violation of the 10th Amendment), meaning nationally chartered banks (including the nation’s biggest) would come under federal standards, not more stringent state ones. According to former New York Attorney General and Governor, Eliot Spitzer:

“Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.”

In 2004, Basel II replaced Basel I with more comprehensive guidelines, ostensibly to ensure banks hold capital reserves appropriate to their lending and investment practices. In other words, the more risk, the greater the reserves, but given lax regulatory oversight, banks pretty much do what they want, and Obama gives them free reign, all the easier with trillions in bailout dollars.

In 2007, the Fed’s Term Auction Facility extended loans to depository institutions with no public disclosure, unlike its discount window operations. In addition, global regulators let commercial banks set their own capital requirements, based on internal “risk-assessment models.”

Regulators ignored predatory lending practices. They:

– overrode state consumer protection laws to curb exploitive lending and other abuses;

– prevented victims from suing predatory loan issuing firms;

– freed Fannie, Freddie and giant Wall Street players to operate recklessly;

– let them hide toxic assets by off-balance sheet accounting; Financial Accounting Standards Board rules allow it, and the Security Industry and Financial Markets Association and the American Securitization Forum have lobbied furiously to keep them unchanged; in other words, to deceive the public by letting insolvent institutions look healthy;

– let them eliminate some of their own (Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros. and Merrill Lynch) to remove competition;

– abandoned antitrust and other regulatory principles;

– created too-big-to-fail institutions; and

– let them do anything they wished, free from meaningful oversight.

Credit rating agencies played their part as well because of their relationship with issuers. They ignored high-risk financial instruments, rated them highly, and duped investors to believe they were safe. The SEC could have intervened but didn’t. The 2006 Credit Rating Agencies Reform Act requires regulators to establish clear guidelines to determine which ones qualify as NRSROs (Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations).

The SEC is supposed to monitor their internal record-keeping and prevent conflicts of interest, but can’t regulate their methodology and must approve their standards even knowing they’re flawed.

One hand thus feeds the other. Conspiratorially, the regulator and credit agencies turn a blind eye to abuses, cry foul when it’s too late, then promise greater diligence next time. Change, of course, never comes, so next time is like last time until so extreme the whole system collapses, harming ordinary people the most.

After the 2008 Bear Stearns collapse, special lending facilities opened the discount window to investment banks, accepting a broad range of asset-backed securities, principally toxic ones, as collateral – what economist Michael Hudson called “cash for trash.” Numerous other programs followed, including:

– the 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (ESSA) establishing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to trade bad assets for good ones;

– the 2008 New York Fed administered Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) to lend up to $1 trillion on a non-recourse basis to holders of certain AAA-rated asset-backed securities (ABS) backed by newly and recently originated consumer and small business loans;

– Fed purchases of money market instruments;

– the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP) to subsidize toxic asset purchases with government guarantees; and

– trillions of dollars in bank bailouts; according to Neil Barofsky, the Special Treasury Department’s TARP Inspector General, banks got or were pledged up to $23.7 trillion, or the equivalent of an $80,000 liability for every American; in March 2009, Bloomberg reported that the Treasury and Fed “spent, lent, or committed $12.8 trillion” up to that point, and more was available for the asking, besides other free money at near zero percent rates plus interest on reserves held by the Fed.

Wall Street never had it so good. For the public, hard times are worsening as America sinks deeper into depression, a protracted one according to some experts hitting the needy and disadvantaged hardest. The land of the free is now the most callous, the result of what former Wall Street and government insider Catherine Austin Fitts calls a “financial coup d’etat.”

She explains the “pump(ing) and dump(ing) of the entire American economy,” duping the public, fleecing trillions of dollars, and it’s more than just “a process (to destroy) the middle class. (It’s) genocide (by other means) – a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by the scoundrels of our history texts.”

The scheme includes abusive market manipulation, “fraudulent housing (and other bubbles), pump and dump schemes, naked short selling, precious metals price suppression, and active intervention in the markets by the government and central bank” along with insiders trading on privileged information unavailable to the public. It’s part of a government – business partnership for enormous profits through “legislation, contracts, regulat(ory laxness), financing, (and) subsidies” – a conspiratorial plot to transfer household wealth to powerful special interests.

Here’s a taste of the consequences, courtesy of economist David Rosenberg on February 16.

He reported that “credit contraction continues unabated,” and the numbers are staggering:

– $30 billion in the past week;

– $100 billion in the first six weeks of 2010, “a historic 16% annualized decline;”

– since the crisis erupted in fall 2007, $740 billion, “a record 10% decline;” and

– “The fact that credit has dropped at a 16% annual rate since the turn of the year is testament to how the credit contraction is actually accelerating.”

And it’s broad-based:

– consumer loans down at a 12% annual rate year to date;

– real estate down 13.5% annualized;

– commercial and industrial loans down at a 19.3% annual rate; and

– short-term business credit down $14 billion year to date.

Rosenberg calls it “alarming,” especially “since the bulk of the fiscal and US dollar stimulus is behind us, not ahead of us….The era of the ‘green shoots’ is officially dead.”

Europe is mired in recession. Britain faces a possible 2010 sovereign debt crisis, spiking yields and raising borrowing costs, according to Morgan Stanley. Eastern European nations teeter on the brink of debt default. So do Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Ireland. A January 14 George Magnus Financial Times article titled, “Sovereign default risks loom” said:

“There is no peacetime precedent for the current speed and scale of public debt accumulation….The spectre of sovereign default, therefore, has returned to the rich world,” sparking fears of nonpayment, paying less than face amount, inflation, capital controls, special taxes that break private contracts, and/or currency devaluations, measures also threatening America given its crushing debt burden.

Yet according to Rosenberg, “the consensus community has no clue as to what the future holds,” forecasting rosy scenarios while Rome burns.

In fact, “the depression is ongoing even if the most recent recession has faded; and in our view, the next one is not too far away especially now that the stimulus is soon to subside.” The contagion will be global, the fallout catastrophic because the worst is yet to come, what economist Michael Hudson foresaw in early 2009 saying:

“The (US) economy has reached its debt limit and is entering its insolvency phase. We are not in a cycle but (at) the end of an era. The old world of debt pyramiding to a fraudulent degree cannot be restored,” only delayed for a more painful day of reckoning. It’s coming according to Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881 – 1973) because:

“There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion.” It’s only a matter of sooner “or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”

Expect a deepening global depression; protracted economic, political, social, and institutional upheaval; mass unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and hunger; and severe repression to curb public anger. Blame it on decades of political influence buying yielding unprecedented returns for the privileged, but economic wreckage and catastrophic life changes for the rest. The price of excess is pain, lots of it for the world’s disadvantaged, the ones who always pay for rich peoples’ sins.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to the Lendman News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday – Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

COULD FOOD SHORTAGES BRING DOWN CIVILIZATION?

“In early 2008, Saudi Arabia announced that, after being self-sufficient in wheat for over 20 years, the non-replenishable aquifer it had been pumping for irrigation was largely depleted,” writes Lester R. Brown in his new book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (W.W. Norton & Company).

“In response, officials said they would reduce their wheat harvest by one eighth each year until production would cease entirely in 2016. The Saudis then plan to use their oil wealth to import virtually all the grain consumed by their Canada-sized population of nearly 30 million people,” notes Brown, President and Founder of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based independent environmental research organization.

“The Saudis are unique in being so wholly dependent on irrigation,” says Brown in Plan B 4.0.  But other, far larger, grain producers such as India and China are facing irrigation water losses and could face grain production declines.

A World Bank study of India’s water balance notes that 15 percent of its grain harvest is produced by overpumping. In human terms, 175 million Indians are being fed with grain produced from wells that will be going dry. The comparable number for China is 130 million. Among the many other countries facing harvest reductions from groundwater depletion are Pakistan, Iran, and Yemen.

“The tripling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices between mid-2006 and mid-2008 signaled our growing vulnerability to food shortages,” says Brown. “It took the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression to lower grain prices.”

“Past decades have witnessed world grain price surges, but they were event-driven—a drought in the former Soviet Union, a monsoon failure in India, or a crop-withering heat wave in the U.S. Corn Belt. This most recent price surge was trend-driven, the result of our failure to reverse the environmental trends that are undermining world food production.”

These trends include—in addition to falling water tables—eroding soils and rising temperatures from increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Rising temperatures bring crop-shrinking heat waves, melting ice sheets, rising sea level, and shrinking mountain glaciers.

 With both the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melting at an accelerating pace, sea level could rise by up to six feet during this century. Brown notes, “Such a rise would inundate much of the Mekong Delta, which produces half of the rice in Viet Nam, the world’s second-ranking rice exporter. Even a three-foot rise in sea level would cover half the riceland in Bangladesh, a country of 160 million people. And these are only two of Asia’s many rice-growing river deltas.”

“The world’s mountain glaciers have shrunk for 18 consecutive years. Many smaller glaciers have disappeared. Nowhere is the melting more alarming than in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan plateau where the ice melt from glaciers sustains not only the dry-season flow of the Indus, Ganges, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers but also the irrigation systems that depend on them. Without these glaciers, many Asian rivers would cease to flow during the dry season.”

The wheat and rice harvests of China and India would be directly affected. China is the world’s leading wheat producer. India is second. (The United States is third.) With rice, China and India totally dominate the world harvest. The projected melting of these glaciers if we stay with business as usual poses the most massive threat to food security the world has ever faced.

The number of hungry people, which was declining for several decades, bottomed out in the mid-1990s at 825 million. It then climbed to 915 million in 2008 and jumped to over 1 billion in 2009. With world food prices projected to continue rising, so too will the number of hungry people, leaving millions of families trying to survive on one meal per day.

“We know from studying earlier civilizations such as the Sumerians, Mayans, and many others,” says Brown, “that more often than not it was food shortages that led to their demise. It now appears that food may be the weak link in our early twenty-first century civilization as well.

“The world is entering a new food era, one marked by rising food prices, growing numbers of hungry people, and an emerging politics of food scarcity. As grain-exporting countries restrict or even ban exports to keep domestic food prices from spiraling out of control, importing countries are losing confidence in the market’s ability to supply their needs. In response, the more affluent ones such as Saudi Arabia, China, and South Korea are leasing and buying large tracts of land in developing countries on which to grow food for themselves.”

Among the countries in which large tracts of land are being acquired are Ethiopia and Sudan, both already heavily dependent on World Food Programme lifelines to stave off famine. In effect, the competition for land and water, in the form of land acquisitions, has crossed national boundaries, opening a new chapter in the history of food security.

Our early twenty-first century civilization is showing signs of stress as individual countries compete not only for scarce food but also for the land and water to produce it. People expect their governments to provide food security. Indeed, the inability to do so is one of the hallmarks of a failing state. Each year the list of failing states grows longer, leaving us with a disturbing question: How many failing states before our global civilization begins to unravel?

“Will we follow in the footsteps of the Sumerians and the Mayans or can we change course—and do it before time runs out?” asks Brown. “Can we move onto an economic path that is environmentally sustainable? We think we can. That is what Plan B 4.0 is about.”

Plan B aims to stabilize climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty, and restore the economy’s natural support systems. It prescribes a worldwide cut in net carbon emissions of 80 percent by 2020, thus keeping atmospheric CO2 concentrations from exceeding 400 parts per million. “In setting this goal,” says Brown, “my colleagues and I did not ask what would be politically popular but rather what would it take to have a decent shot at saving the Greenland ice sheet and at least the larger glaciers in the mountains of Asia.”

Cutting carbon emissions will require both a worldwide revolution in energy efficiency and a shift from oil, coal, and gas to wind, solar, and geothermal energy. The energy efficiency revolution will transform everything from lighting to transportation. With lighting, for example, shifting from incandescents to compact fluorescent bulbs can reduce electricity use for lighting by 75 percent. But shifting from incandescents to the newer light-emitting diodes (LEDs) combined with light sensors can cut electricity use by more than 90 percent.

At least one of the new plug-in gas electric hybrids coming to market can get over 200 miles per gallon of gasoline. In the Plan B energy economy of 2020, most of the fleet will be plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars, and they will be running largely on wind-generated electricity for the gasoline equivalent of less than $1 per gallon.

The shift to renewable sources of energy is moving at a pace and on a scale we could not imagine even two years ago. Consider the state of Texas. The enormous number of wind projects under development, on top of the 9,000 megawatts of wind generating capacity in operation and under construction, will bring Texas to over 50,000 megawatts of wind generating capacity (think 50 coal-fired power plants) when all these wind farms are completed. This will more than satisfy the needs of the state’s 24 million residents.

Nationwide, new wind generating capacity in 2008 totaled 8,400 megawatts while new coal plants totaled only 1,400 megawatts. The annual growth in solar generating capacity will also soon overtake that of coal. The energy transition is under way.

The United States has led the world in each of the last four years in new wind generating capacity, having overtaken Germany in 2005. But this lead will be short-lived as China appears set to blow by the United States in new wind capacity added in 2009.

China, with its Wind Base program, is working on six wind farm mega-complexes with generating capacities that range from 10,000 to 30,000 megawatts, for a total of 105,000 megawatts. This is in addition to the hundreds of smaller wind farms built or planned.

Wind is not the only option. In July 2009, a consortium of European corporations led by Munich Re, and including Deutsche Bank, Siemens, and ABB plus an Algerian firm, announced a proposal to tap the massive solar thermal generating capacity in North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. A German firm calculates that solar thermal power plants in North Africa could economically supply half of Europe’s electricity. Algeria, which has already completed its first solar thermal plant, has signed an agreement to supply Germany with solar-generated electricity. The Algerians note that they have enough harnessable solar energy in their desert to power the world economy. (No, this is not an error.)

“The soaring investment in wind, solar, and geothermal energy is being driven by the exciting realization that these renewables can last as long as the earth itself,” says Brown. “In contrast to investing in new oil fields where well yields begin to decline in a matter of decades, or in coal mines where the seams run out, these new energy sources can last forever.”

The combination of efficiency advances, the wholesale shift to renewable energy, and expansion of the earth’s tree cover outlined in Plan B would allow the world to cut net global carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020. In contrast to today’s global electricity sector, where coal supplies 40 percent of electricity, Plan B sees wind emerging as the centerpiece in the 2020 energy economy, supplying 40 percent of all electricity.

We are in a race between political tipping points and natural tipping points. Can we cut carbon emissions fast enough to save the Greenland ice sheet and avoid the resulting rise in sea level? Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to save at least the larger glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan Plateau? Can we stabilize population by lowering birth rates before nature takes over and halts population growth by raising death rates?

“Yes,” affirms Brown. “But it will take something close to a wartime mobilization, one similar to that of the United States in 1942 as it restructured its industrial economy in a matter of months. We used to talk about saving the planet, but it is civilization itself that is now at risk.

“Saving civilization is not a spectator sport. Each of us must push for rapid change. And we must be armed with a plan outlining the changes needed.

“It is decision time,” says Brown. “Like earlier civilizations that got into environmental trouble, we have to make a choice. We can stay with business as usual and watch our economy decline and our civilization unravel, or we can adopt Plan B and be the generation that mobilizes to save civilization. Our generation will make the decision, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come.”

(NaturalNews) What is it that stands between you and vibrant health? People who have spent a fortune on supplements, gotten plenty of exercise and bought high quality food still find themselves unable to answer this question. For many of them, the answer lies in neurotoxins hidden in even the most healthy sounding foods, including many foods labeled as organic. These ingredients often cause serious reactions, including migraines, insomnia, asthma, depression, anxiety, aggression, chronic fatigue, and even ALS. They may be responsible for the swelling numbers of children diagnosed as ADHD.

Almost everything in every kind of grocery store has additives that can cause reactions including asthma attacks, obesity, tinnitus, and restless leg syndrome. While 1 out of every 4 people is sensitive to neurotoxic food additives, only 1 in 250 is aware that these additives are the source of the reactions they are having.

Most neurotoxic food additives contain free glutamic acids processed from proteins. Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is probably the best known of the neurotoxins. However, there are many other names for these protein derived additives, including yeast extract, maltodextrin, carrageenan, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, dough conditioners, seasonings, spices, and whey protein concentrate. Even the pleasant sounding term natural flavors can mean the presence of additives toxic to the brain and nervous system.

Food additives are there to trick you into thinking what you are consuming tastes really great. They are an assault on your nerve synapses and a violent attack on the cells of your brain.

“Bet you can’t eat just one”

Remember that old slogan? Food and beverage companies use food additives because they make you crave more of what tastes so good. They cause nerve cells to cry out for repeated stimulation, keep you buying and consuming more of their products. People watch in horror as they pile on pounds and become food junkies without any idea of how they are being manipulated to further corporate interests. In addition to the benign sounding terms natural flavors and spices, manufacturers use other seemingly innocuous names for these additives on their labels, such as seasonings, broth, or gelatin.

Restaurants are another place to find foods laced with neurotoxins. This is why restaurant food tastes so good. Neurotoxins have conditioned people to think restaurant food tastes so great they will stand in line to get a table, when what they are really paying money for is the privilege of having their brain cells destroyed.

Many people think if they avoid Chinese restaurants they can avoid neurotoxins in their food. But these hazardous chemicals are added to virtually all restaurant food from McDonalds to the most exclusive gourmet dining spots. A sign on the widow or on the package that says there is no MSG, simply means that another form of neurotoxin is used instead.

The FDA wouldn’t allow dangerous food additives, would they?

Unfortunately, the food industry is controlled by powerful conglomerates that have great political influence over the FDA and other government regulatory agencies. Naturally it is in the best interests of these corporations to defend their use of the neurotoxic additives that make their products so pleasing to the senses and so habit forming. Just like the tobacco industry, food corporations have no regard for the health of their customers but will stop at nothing to get their money. Until consumers realize what is being done to them and how they are being used, neurotoxins are here to stay. Kicking the addiction promoted by food additives is as difficult as kicking the nicotine habit.

Although the science of food technology has been around since the 1950s, consumers are just now waking up to the link between neurotoxic additives and their loss of vitality. Even when people understand the link intellectually, many are so hooked on the fabulous taste of adulterated food that they just can’t stop eating, no matter what it is doing to them. Others buy into the lame propaganda telling them that neurotoxic additives are safe.

Additives from natural sources can be highly toxic

MSG is natural. It is a sodium salt of glutamic acid, an amino acid. Originally isolated from seaweed, MSG is now made by fermenting corn, potatoes and rice. MSG is naturally present in high levels in tomatoes and Parmesan cheese. But MSG is highly dangerous to health. An early study reported that the inner layer of the retina was destroyed in neonatal rats receiving a single exposure to MSG. This is an amazing finding considering that humans are more than 5 times more sensitive to MSG than rats.

Another study used rats to determine the effects of exposure to MSG on obesity. Rats given MSG developed obesity, type II diabetes, and metabolic syndrome X. They also developed lesions of the ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus. MSG is a powerful disrupter of the endocrine system, creating havoc with meta-thermoregularory modulates like neuropeptide Y and leptin, and their target tissue, brown fat. It reduces the thermogenicity of brown fat while also suppressing food intake. This means that MSG makes a people gain weight even when they decrease caloric intake.

These findings explain how a person can hardly eat at all while still putting on weight. But these effects are not confined to MSG. The other substances classified as neurotoxic food additives produce much the same outcomes.

Natural flavors are isolates from naturally occurring products just like MSG. Many natural products including organic fruits and vegetables contain compounds that in isolation are extremely harmful. Some of these compounds are what make up the defense system of the plants. When the whole plant, fruit or vegetable is consumed as food, other compounds are present that neutralize their harmful effects. When taken from the plant as isolates, the compounds become no different in their effects than those created in a laboratory.

The word spice is another innocuous sounding germ, but in the world of food marketing, it is a word that has been manipulated to sound harmless when it really isn’t. People tend to think that the individual spices are not listed because the creator of the product doesn’t want to give away his secrets. This is not true. When the word “spices” is used, it is the tip off that toxic additives are hidden in the product.

Feeling your best involves learning to read labels

Neurotoxins are added to virtually every packaged food and beverage sold in almost every store. Not just packaged meal type items, but many of the ingredients used to create a meal.

Anyone wanting to avoid neurotoxic additives needs to know that there is a lot more to it than just looking for MSG on the label. MSG may be the most well known of the additives, but all the others are just as hazardous to health and as likely to produce a reaction. Even if products say “No MSG” or call themselves “all natural” or “organic”, it is almost a certainty that neurotoxic additives are in that product. There is no way to know unless you are willing to take the time to read the label.

When there are a hundred different kinds of neurotoxic food additives used being pumped into almost everything on stores shelves, trying to avoid them may seem like navigating a mine field. It helps if you are armed with a listing of what to avoid. The label of any product that is canned, frozen, bagged, bottled, boxed, wrapped, put in a carton, or offered in a take home dish or container needs to be examined because almost all of them contain neurotoxins. Check everything you suspect may have flavoring added to it, even coffee, tea bags, and bottled waters. You will be surprised. Be sure to check chewing gum and candy.

It may seem overwhelming at first to have to drag around a list of toxic food additives and examine every product you buy. But very quickly you will learn where to find the ingredient lists and what to look for. The key words will jump off the label right into your eye. As you become better at identifying products using these additives, you will also begin to notice how much better you feel. Those persistent symptoms that have been around for months or years will begin to disappear along with the unwanted pounds. By the time label reading becomes second nature and can be done in one quick glance, you will well be on the road to vibrant health.

Here is a list of what to look for. Arm yourself against corporate exploitation when you go to the store, and learn how to spend your money so that it benefits you, rather than someone else who has made it clear he doesn’t care whether you are healthy or not.

Neurotoxic Chemical Food Additives

aspartame
autolyzed anything
barley malt
beef base
beef flavoring
beef stock
bouillon
broth of any kind
calcium caseinate
carrageenan
caseinate
chicken base
chicken broth
chicken flavoring
chicken stock
disodium anything
dough conditioner
flavoring
gelatin
gelatinized anything
glutamate
gaur gum
hydrolyzed anything
kombu extract
l-cysteine
malt anything
malted anything
milk solids
monosodium glutamate
natural flavor
nutrasweet
pork base
pork flavoring
protein concentrate
protein extract
seasoned salt
seasoning
smoke flavoring
sodium caseinate
solids of any kind
soup base
soy extract
soy protein anything
soy sauce
spice
stock
textured protein
textured vegetable protein
umami
vegetable gum
whey anything
yeast extract

For more information see:

http://www.rtnc411.org/rtnc-list.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4676616/

http://www.answers.com/topic/flavoring-extract-and-flavoring-syrups-not-elsewhere-classified

About the author

Barbara is a school psychologist, a published author in the area of personal finance, a breast cancer survivor using “alternative” treatments, a born existentialist, and a student of nature and all things natural.

Reposted from NaturalNews.

Petroleum supplies slowly dwindle as demand rapidly soars. So the prices of gasoline and oil that supply modern societies with their industrial production of food will go up, up, and away. A radically different future than the oil-energized twentieth century is dawning.

Let’s face it: our world has become increasingly maddening. Bad news mounts each day: unending wars, financial crises, earthquakes, hurricanes and cyclones killing thousands, chaotic climate change, vanishing pollinating bees and polar bears, rising oceans, thinning forests and a host of human-created or – worsened threats. We live in uncertain times with an even more uncertain future. We face unprecedented, unpredictable converging threats. What can one do to remain somewhat sane? The ostrich approach of denial by burying one’s head in the sand will not be effective or life enhancing.

It is a good time for an increasing number of people to return to the multiple benefits and pleasures of growing at least part of their own food by gardening and farming. In addition to satisfying the need to eat and drink, farming can also help deal with depression, passivity, and other forms of psychological suffering. It can help treat both the body and the soul.

One of the many good things that farms based on nature’s patterns can do is help balance people. Much psychological suffering and even mental illnesses have to do with imbalances, which characterize modern society. Before turning to drugs, one can at least try visiting farms and perhaps volunteering to work there. Or one can connect with farms in collaboration with other treatment programs.

Farming can be done in ways that preserve the Earth and put humans in direct contact with it. “Small farms are the most productive on earth,” according to the May 11 New York Times article, “Change We Can Stomach,” by farmer and chef Dan Barber. “A four-acre farm in the United States nets, on average, $1,400 per acre; a 1,364-acre farm nets $39 an acre,” he writes. “Farming has the potential to go through the greatest upheaval since the Green Revolution, bringing harvests that are more meaningful, sustainable, and, yes, even more flavorful,” Barber contends.

Since growing one’s own food is not possible for everyone, it is also a good time to establish direct relationships with local farmers and shop more at farmers’ markets, farm stands, and by subscribing to Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs). Urban agriculture, farms on the urban fringe, and rooftop gardening are becoming increasingly popular. The large city of Havana, Cuba, grows 70% of its own food. Necessity will change how people get their food in the near future.

Many Americans take their food sources for granted, assuming that super-markets will be able to always supply them with what they need. Having lived in Hawai’i when delivery disruptions and the lack of transportation across the ocean left bare shelves in food stores, I know the panic this can cause.

The “Silent Tsunami,” “Misery Index,” and Mud Cakes

A “silent tsunami” of hunger sweeps the globe, reports the head of the United Nation’s World Food Program, Josette Sheeran, speaking in late April at a food summit in London. The heightened hunger threat endangers 20 million of the world’s poorest children and is pushing 100 million people into poverty.

“This is the new face of hunger – the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are,” Sheeran reports. “The world’s misery index is rising.”

During 2008 food riots broke out in the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. “You are seeing the return of the food riot, one of the oldest forms of collective action,” commented Raj Patel in an April 25 San Francisco Chronicle article. The University of California at Berkeley scholar wrote the new book Stuffed and Starved: Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System.

The World Bank estimates that food prices have risen 83% in three years; other estimates are in the 60 and 70 percent range. Even in the wealthy United States we have recently seen rationing of rice and other staples by food giants such as Costco and Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Clubs, the two biggest warehouse retail chains. Such trends are likely to continue and are creating stockpiling and hoarding.

“In the poorest districts (of Haiti), there is now a brisk trade in mud cakes,” writes Patel in an article titled “The Troubles with Food,” published at http://www.redpepper.org.uk/. “Mothers feed the biscuits, made with water, salt, margarine and clay, to their children. The cake puts a dampener on hunger, at least for a couple of hours, but leaves your mouth dry and bitter for several hours more,” he continues.

Industrial agriculture will be one of the many aspects of human life on the planet hit by the dwindle/demand oil trend and the related peaks of other fossil fuels, such as natural gas. Industrial agriculture depends upon petroleum in many ways – to run tractors and other machines, to make chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and to fuel the trucks that transport food an average of 1,500 miles from field to fork. Oil is the most important ingredient in most of conventional food. As the dwindle/demand rate intensifies, food will be less available and more expensive. Famine is likely.

Survival will require that more people return to an earlier energy supply – muscle power. As someone who made a transition in the early 1990s (while in my late 40s) from a livelihood based on college teaching and related intellectual activities to one based on farming, I can report that there are many advantages to such a change. I feel better as a result of living on the land, growing some of my own food, and sharing that organic food and the farm itself with others.

I have found my local place. In 2003 I accepted a great job offer in Hawai’i, but after a couple of wonderful years, I felt so homesick that I returned to my farm.

So this is a report from the farm front, which focuses on some of the psychological benefits of farming.

The multiple consequences of a diminishing supply of humanity’s major energy source at this point in history will include hardships, stress, and suffering. There are many ways of dealing psychologically with such matters, including with family, friends and professional counselors. This article will explore what I have come to describe as agropsychology and agrotherapy.

I was trained to be a counselor. Quite frankly, I was not good at doing individual therapy. I got too emotional and involved. I did not adequately develop the necessary professional armor and shield. I did not take enough distance from the people I was working with or have enough “impulse control.” So I shifted more to teaching, group work, and writing. In the time since my more conventional psychological training some forty years ago, self-disclosure and emotional men have become more acceptable as sex roles and professional codes have evolved.

Ecopsychology and Ecotherapy

Sierra Club Books published Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind in l996. The term refers to the emerging synthesis of the psychological and the ecological. The book’s editor, Theodore Roszak, writes that “ecology needs psychology, psychology needs ecology.” Roszak reports on a l990 conference entitled “Psychology as if the Whole Earth Mattered.”

The Sierra Club plans to publish the book’s sequel Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind in March of 2009. My chapter “Farming, Sweet Darkness, Poetry, and Healing” is scheduled to be part of that book. After finishing my contribution I began to realize that what I was writing about could be called agrotherapy, which is the practice of agropsychology, which are sub-sets of ecopsychology and ecotherapy. Farms have historically been healing places, for both those who live and work there and those who visit. Farm tours and even overnight farm stays are becoming increasingly popular as examples of ecotourism. The Small Farm Program at the University of California at Davis, Sonoma County Farm Trails, and Daily Acts are among the many groups that promote such tours.

Simply put, by living on a farm and working the land on a regular basis, I have become a healthier person – physically and mentally. In recent years I have been hosting an increasing number of farm tours at Kokopelli Farm in the Sebastopol countryside, Sonoma County, Northern California. Community, school, and religious groups, as well as families and friends, come to the farm, which grows mainly organic berries and fruit and cares for chickens.

My visitors tend to feel better from their time on this traditional farm; something positive usually happens to them. Being outside in nature can benefit people. People typically loose sight of chronological time. They can fall into berry time or chicken time, which tend to be slower than the human-made clock, and often more fun and stress reducing. They sometimes lose their restraint and order, wanting to sprint ahead, or go off the path, as if they were animals, which they are.

Chicken Wisdom and Agrotherapy

This year I returned to teaching psychology, part-time, at Sonoma State University. I sometimes take chickens as Teaching Assistants (TAs). For example, I took two sweet silkies on Valentine’s Day; they modeled being love birds as they cooed and cuddled, one even feeling safe enough to lay an egg.

Chickens can teach many things, such as surrender to what is, joy at the dawn, transformation of throwaways into jewels, and love of the Earth within which chickens take their dust baths to help them get rid of parasites. Chickens offer incredible eggs, humor, joy, and beauty. That other two-legged can teach chicken wisdom, that of a prey, to humans, who are predators. It includes, but is not limited to, the following: delight in simple things (like worms), keep dancing, recycle, snuggle into the earth, slow down, combine vulnerability and hardiness.

Agrotherapy is not therapy-as-usual. It happens mainly in the open, outside an office, a building, a city and without a defined time limit. The freedom to wonder and to meander characterize being outside. One does not enter the same human-made setting each time; farms are seasonal, as humans are, and are constantly changing. The therapists-of-the-outdoors include trees, berries, birds, bees, chickens, the moon and stars, the clouds, crow congresses and others who can help relieve stress, anxiety, suffering, and even sickness.

Tears sometimes come to the eyes of city folk when they sit on the ground beneath the giant redwoods or sprawling oaks at my farm. Something from their personal or collective memory seems to get activated. We listen to the wind and hear various sounds within it. Within just a few minutes I can usually feel a change in my guests. This is not a “talking cure.” It is non-talking, opening to the other senses. There is not therapeutic couch or chair; the forest provides a comforting bed upon which one can relax and reduce their stress.

My presence on such tours is more as a guide who can point things out, including patterns in nature and persons, and pose strategic questions, than as an expert to make book-based diagnoses and human-devised treatments. Farming – like therapy or personal growth – is a process with no clear beginning or end. There are products along the way, but the topsoil, for example, takes thousands of years to make. Perennial trees and berries planted by one family member can endure far beyond his or her lifetime into that of descendents, continuing to provide beauty and healing.

An email I sent to a local online listserve about agropsychology generated the following response from Jennifer York, the owner of the Bamboo Sorcery outside my hometown of Sebastopol:

“I can vouch for what you call “agropsychology.’ It saved me as a youth in my recovery from a traumatic childhood, and now in middle age. I am once again finding great healing, joy, and contentment in growing my own garden and raising my own farm animals (chickens, rabbits, and someday dairy goats, I hope!) for food, fun and deep connection with the cycles of life and death. For me it is a spiritual, as well as a practical avocation. I recommend it. Besides, it may come in very handy someday.

“In the meantime I am having fun, and feel good about sharing the experience with my six-year-old daughter. I believe it is creating a sound foundation in her for the future. I have great gratitude to my deceased parents who were Back-to-Landers in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, and who exposed me to this rich and life affirming way of life.

“My husband says he can tell how happy I am by how much dirt is under my finger nails…and it’s true.”

In his book Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines Peak Oil theorist Richard Heinberg includes a chapter titled “The Psychology of Peak Oil and Climate Change.” He writes, “The next few decades will be traumatic.” One resource that Heinberg refers to is the work of eco-philosopher Joanna Macy with respect to workshops on “despair and empowerment.” In them people are encouraged to deal with their grief, and thus feel their connection to the Earth.

Ecopsychology and ecotherapy can take many forms, including agropsychology and agrotherapy. These recently conceptualized fields can make a contribution to the larger fields of psychology and psychotherapy and thus to the healing of people and of the nature of which we are an integral part. Humans often seem to battle nature, whereas participation and collaboration with it seem more healthy, which these developing forms can support.

Reprinted from Dissident Voice.

Exposure to more television and other electronic media during the teenage years appears to be associated with developing depression symptoms in young adulthood, especially among men, according to a report in the February issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Depression, the leading cause of non-fatal disability worldwide, commonly begins in adolescence or young adulthood, according to background information in the article. “The development of depression in adolescence may be understood as a biopsychosocial, multifactorial process influenced by risk and protective factors including temperament, genetic heritability, parenting style, cognitive vulnerability, stressors (e.g., trauma exposure or poverty) and interpersonal relationships,” the authors write. Media exposure is another plausible influence, since teens are exposed to an average of eight and one-half hours of electronic media per day.

Brian A. Primack, M.D., Ed.M., M.S., of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and colleagues used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to determine exposure to electronic media among 4,142 adolescents who were not depressed at the beginning of the study in 1995. The teens were asked how many hours they had spent during the last week watching television or videocassettes, playing computer games or listening to the radio (the survey was conducted before DVDs or the Internet became widely used). They reported an average of 5.68 hours of media exposure per day, including 2.3 hours of television, 0.62 hours of videocassettes, 0.41 hours of computer games and 2.34 hours of radio.

Seven years later (at an average age of 21.8), participants were screened and 308 (7.4 percent) had developed symptoms consistent with depression. “In the fully adjusted models, participants had significantly greater odds of developing depression by follow-up for each hour of daily television viewed,” the authors write. “In addition, those reporting higher total media exposure had significantly greater odds of developing depression for each additional hour of daily use.” Given the same amount of media exposure, young women were less likely to develop symptoms of depression than young men.

Media exposure could influence the development of depression symptoms through many different mechanisms, the authors note. The time spent engaging with electronic media may replace time that would otherwise be spent on social, intellectual or athletic activities that may protect against depression. Media exposure at night may disrupt sleep, which is important for normal cognitive and emotional development. In addition, messages transmitted through the media may reinforce aggression and other risky behaviors, interfere with identity development or inspire fear and anxiety.

“Psychiatrists, pediatricians, family physicians, internists and other health care providers who work with adolescents may find it useful to ask their patients about television and other media exposure,” the authors write. “When high amounts of television or total exposure are present, a broader assessment of the adolescent’s psychosocial functioning may be appropriate, including screening for current depressive symptoms and for the presence of additional risk factors. If no other immediate intervention is indicated, encouraging patients to participate in activities that promote a sense of mastery and social connection may promote the development of protective factors against depression.”

Reprinted from JAMA and Archives Journals.

by Sheryl Walters, citizen journalist

(NaturalNews) Spicy foods add an incredible amount of flavour to food. As ethnic foods become abundant, chilli and spicy food is increasingly popular. The good news is that adding spice to our food has a range of benefits for our health and wellbeing.

Chillies have long been used in traditional medicine, probably first by the Aztecs. In Russia, a drink called Nastoyka (made from chillies soaked in vodka) has also been taken as a healing remedy.

Reduced Cancer Death Rate

Scientists have proven that capsaicin, which is responsible for the burning sensation when we eat chillies, can kill cancer cells, indicating that people could at least prevent the onset of cancer by eating spicy food. This is because it is a natural antioxidant, meaning that it defends against disease causing toxins.

According to the World Health Organization, countries where diets are traditionally high in capsaicin have significantly lower cancer death rates for men and women than in countries where little spicy food is consumed.

Dr Timothy Bates who made the discovery, says that “This is incredibly exciting and may explain why people living in countries like Mexico and India, who traditionally eat a diet which is very spicy, tend to have lower incidences of many cancers that are prevalent in the western world.”

According to Bates, capsaicin attacks the power house of the tumour, thus killing the cancerous tumour cells and reducing tumour growth without harming the surrounding healthy cells. Capsaicin has been found to inhibit the growth of cancer cells in laboratory studies.

Prevents Dangerous Blood Clots

As well as preventing cancer, researchers have also noticed that people who consume large amounts of chilli peppers experienced a lower incidence of thrombo-embolism, or potentially dangerous blood clots.

Scientists have studied the medical records of countries where spicy foods are regularly consumed, and found that people who eat a diet high in chillies experience a much lower incidence of blood clotting diseases. It has now been scientifically proven that capsicum is able to break down blood clots.

Other Benefits of Hot Super Foods Include:

- Chillies are anti inflammatory, so they prevent and relieve arthritis.

- Lower Blood Pressure Naturally- Going hot increases the circulatory system and maintains strong cell walls.

- Chillies are a fantastic remedy for Cluster Headaches and Migraines, and can be put on the temples to sooth the pain. Some researchers are even investigating the effects of snorting it up the nose!

- A mood lifter, depression fighter, and powerful stress reliever. Capsicum increases endorphins and other mood elevating, “feel good” substances.

- Chillies can help protect us from common winter conditions. It may reduce flu symptoms, sinusitis, and respiratory problems. It opens everything up, makes you sweat, and boosts the immune system.

- A powerful remedy for Herpes Simplex flare -ups. You can rub a hot chilli straight on the skin to watch it disappear! Now available in the form of a prescription drug, capsicum ointment is applied to the skin to aid in controlling the pain associated with herpes zoster, also known as shingles.

- A natural muscle relaxant and pain reliever. We all know that putting something hot and spicy on muscular pain offers relief. Again, a hot chilli pepper straight on the skin will do the trick. There are also a number of creams that have capsicum in them to sooth and heal painful muscles.

- Chillies have been shown to have a positive effect on an overactive bladder and on people who have incontinence. It can block contractions that cause unpredictable loss of urine.

- Spicy foods can heal psoriasis and other skin conditions. Topical capsaicin creams have been prescribed to dry up psoriasis patches.

- Studies have shown that ulcers respond well to chillies. Hot peppers inhibit the growth of H. Pylori, the bacteria that causes certain kinds of ulcers.

- Capsicum is good for the skin because it is anti inflammatory and improves circulation.
- Spicy foods improve libido and sex drive.

So if you can handle your food hot, turn up the notch and enjoy the amazing healing benefits and added taste of spicy foods.

Also see:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/62447…

Reprinted from NaturalNews.

(NaturalNews) The US is sinking into depression, and as the result of globalization much of the rest of the world is being dragged along. Most people have never seen anything like this in their lifetimes. What they are witnessing is secular upheaval that will bring great change to beliefs, values and lifestyles. A new word is needed to describe it, as it is something much more than an economic depression. Maybe reconstruction will serve as the descriptive term for now.

Sowing the seeds of the coming reconstruction

Reconstruction means reorganizing and reestablishing, taking the pieces of what was old and re-fashioning them into something new. This new construction will owe its birth to the end of the cheap credit that has been the life blood of the U.S. economy, and the demand that people focus on something better. The stages in the death of the old order can be seen all around as greed gives way to fear, and euphoria turns into panic. Suspicion is running rampant.

The coming reconstruction will rise out of the current devastation after awhile. But right now, everywhere people look they see wave after wave of financial implosion. Falling home prices are driving homeowners to abandon their homes and their mortgages, and fire sale prices on foreclosed homes are driving prices into a steeper tailspin. Consumers are defaulting on their credit cards and auto loans, compelling banks to pull back on any more lending. These actions are sending the commercial real estate market into a downward spiral. Plummeting stock prices are signaling the destruction of hope for a better financial tomorrow. The panic on Wall Street is crushing Main Street businesses, paving the way for even more Wall Street panic.

Right now it’s a vicious downward cycle. Soaring unemployment rates and extreme financial hardship have arrived for millions of people in the U.S. The losses to many investors are staggering with even more devastation looming on the horizon. Deflation and falling prices that reflect falling demand will exacerbate the pain and extend the downward spiral.

The US bailout is a joke. The assets the government plans to buy and then resell at a profit are worthless, otherwise there would be a market for them and willing buyers would have already emerged. As the government tries to prop up banks that should fail and stock prices that should sink, it will be crushed under their weight. The outlook is very dark, but this darkness is just the sort of environment in which a new day dawns.

This is not the end of the world, just the end of a really bizarre era

Out of the ashes of all this destruction, reconstruction will slowly begin. It is only the mighty that can experience such a great fall. And mighty America is still a repository of resources and knowledge. Americans have a long history of doing it right, and they will get it together again.

Once people stop defining themselves by their possessions they will be free to define themselves by their ideas, values and beliefs. Once they are freed from the need to impress each other by what they have, they can be impressive by who they are and what they can do. When they stop putting possessions first, they can start putting people first.

When greed is replaced by appreciation Americans can throw away their anti-depressants and become happier people. They can stop thinking of entertainment as having people over to admire their possessions and start thinking of it as a chance to be with people they care about to exchange genuine ideas and thoughts. They can again become involved in the commentary of life. When people are freed from the endless hunt for more money and possessions they will be able to effectively parent their children who will then be able to lead emotionally healthy and productive lives. They can teach their children manners and respect, and maybe remind themselves of how to be mannerly and respectful. People’s possessions have become weapons they have used to define themselves against each other. When these possessions have been stripped away they will be free to again approach each other as equals.

When the energy of people is freed up from trying to get over on each other there is no end to how innovative and creative they can be. When wild spending changes into prudent saving they will have to take their intellects and resourcefulness out of storage and use them again. They will be called upon to be creative and innovate in their daily existences as well as in their vocations. When people stop being mindless consumers they can devote themselves to insight and understanding. Once they achieve this state, their possessions will again become meaningful as things to value and appreciate, rather than things to devalue and throw away.

Everywhere around there is evidence that nature abhors excess. When people give up excess they can become reunited with nature and experience the rewards of this union. They can once again have good mental and physical health. They can walk upon the earth and feel empowered by the simple fact of their existence. When they are no longer dazzled by the shine of their neighbor’s new car, they will be able to see the beauty of a sunset, a wood or a baby bird. In the collapsing economy people constantly felt bad because there was always someone who had a bigger house or a better car than they did. In the new economy where cooperation and ability are the rubrics, anyone can achieve almost continuous positive feedback.

The end of the destructive phase

America is still in the destructive phase. Before the reconstruction can begin in earnest, the destruction of the old must be completed. Right now, people need to think about how to get through the destruction so that they have some resources to begin again. They need to be aware of the breadth and scope of the collapse. The U.S. is still facing bank failures on a massive scale. The FDIC has a list of troubled banks with about 150 institutions where depositors need to be rescued. The bill for that is estimated at something like $80 billion. But when this list of potential failures was made public it did not include any of the large banks that have already failed or been merged with other banks with the help of the FDIC.

There are actually way over 1,000 financial institutions at risk of failure with assets of several trillion dollars, an amount that vastly exceeds the budget of the FDIC. The only way for people to protect themselves is to hold hard assets that have traditionally been considered stores of value in crisis times. This list is topped by gold, farmland, and commodities that people cannot do without. These types of hard assets may also fall in value during the deflation ahead. The point is that they will fall in value less than other types of assets.

The government has told Americans that the bailout will solve their problems, but the bailout addresses even less than the tip of the iceberg. It doesn’t include any of the costs for rescuing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the other government sponsored entities that are also holding bad debts. Nor does it address the loan portfolios of Fannie and Freddie that are continuing to implode.

When consumers get the picture, commercial real estate will undergo the same kind of harsh reality that has hit residential real estate. And when consumers can no longer pay the minimum on their credit card debt, the issuers of that debt will also be looking for a bailout.

Many people have made a sterling effort to stay current on their mortgage payments. After they lose their jobs, these mortgages will also fall into default. More houses will appear on the market, further depressing the prices at which they can be sold. As house prices continue to spiral downward there is no incentive for anyone to pay a mortgage when their house is worth less than what is owed.

Can the government continue to bailout everybody as the financial situation worsens? Obviously not, since the people who are losing their jobs will no longer be paying into the tax base.

And to top it off, there is the $180 trillion derivative market. For years financial wizards have cooked up complex financial instruments that few have understood but many have invested in. All this is yet to be unwound.

The markets have declared that the government interventions aren’t going to save the old system. It is clearly rotten to the core. It appears that the markets are going to bring down the system in spite of what the government does. This will speed the conclusion of the destructive phase.

Think of it as a huge group detox. While the toxins are being rid from the body there is a lot of storm and angst. But when it’s over, everyone is going to feel a whole lot better.

About the author

Barbara is a school psychologist, a published author in the area of personal finance, a breast cancer survivor using “alternative” treatments, a born existentialist, and a student of nature and all things natural.

Reprinted from NaturalNews.

When you are sick or injured, you want to know what’s wrong and what can be done. You want a diagnosis. A correct diagnosis reveals what is wrong, what is the preferred treatment and what is the likely outcome. For example, a diagnosis of pneumonia indicates a serious lung infection that can usually be cured with antibiotics.

While medical diagnoses are based on science, psychiatric “diagnoses” are not at all scientific. They do not reveal what is wrong, what is the preferred treatment, and what is the likely outcome. Nor are they reliable. Different psychiatrists who examine the same patient typically offer different “diagnoses.” Moreover, psychiatric “diagnoses” move in and out of favor, depending on a variety of social factors.

Psychiatric “diagnosis” is actually a labeling process, where the patient’s symptoms are matched with a grouping of symptoms listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM). As we shall see, this psychiatric “bible” was developed and is maintained by financial and political interests.¹

Sigmund Freud

Who decides what is normal or healthy and what is deviant or sick?

Before the 20^th century, life stresses were generally seen as spiritual problems or physical illnesses, and people turned to religious advisors and physicians for help. Medical doctors treated “hysteria” and “nerves” as physical problems. Psychiatry was restricted to the treatment of severely disturbed people in asylums.² The first classification of psychiatric disorders in the United States appeared in 1918 and contained 22 categories. All but one referred to various forms of insanity.

In 1901, Sigmund Freud revolutionized psychiatry by breaking down the barrier between mental illness and normal behavior. In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life,³ Freud argued that commonplace behaviors – slips of the tongue, what people find humorous, what they forget and the mistakes they make – indicate repressed sexual feelings that lurk beneath the surface of normal behavior.

By linking everyday behavior with mental illness, Freud and his followers released psychiatry from the asylum. Between 1917 and 1970, as psychiatrists cultivated clients with a broad range of problems, the number of psychiatrists practicing outside institutions swelled from eight percent to 66 percent.⁴

The social movements of the 1960′s opposed psychiatry’s focus on inner conflict and emphasized the social sources of sickness instead. Dr. Alvin Poussaint recalls the 1969 convention of the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

“After multiple racist killings during the civil rights movement, a group of black psychiatrists sought to have murderous bigotry based on race classified as a mental disorder. The APA’s officials rejected that recommendation, arguing that since so many Americans are racist, racism in this country is normative.”⁵

Growing the industry

In 1980, the APA overhauled the DSM. The Task Force established to create the new manual declared that any disorder could be included,

“If there is general agreement among clinicians, who would be expected to encounter the condition, that there are significant number of patients who have it and that its identification is important in the clinical work it is included in the classification.”⁶

In other words, the new DSM was not based on science, but on the need to maintain existing patients and include new ones who might seek help for any number of problems. A profitable and self-perpetuating industry was born. The more people could be encouraged to seek treatment, the more conditions could be entered into the DSM, and the more people could be encouraged to seek treatment for these new conditions.

By 1994, the DSM listed 400 distinct mental disorders covering a wide variety of behaviors in adults and children. Significantly, racism, homophobia (fear of homosexuality) and misogyny (hatred of women) have never been listed as mental disorders. In 1999, the chairperson of the APA’s Council on Psychiatry and the Law confirmed that racism “is not something that is designated as an illness that can be treated by mental health professionals.”⁷ Homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder until activists campaigned to have it removed.⁸

The women’s liberation movement condemned labeling symptoms of oppression as mental illnesses. In They Say You’re Crazy: How the World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal, Paula Caplan explains,

“In a culture that scorns and demeans lesbians and gay men, it is hard to be completely comfortable with one’s homosexuality, and so the DSM-III authors were treating as a mental disorder what was often simply a perfectly comprehensible reaction to being mocked and oppressed.”⁹

Caplan describes efforts to prevent “Masochistic Personality Disorder” from being included in the DSM. This disorder assumes that women stay with abusive spouses because like to suffer, not because they lack the resources to leave. Despite protest, “Masochistic Personality Disorder” was added to the 1987 edition of the DSM, although it was later dropped.

The inclusion of “Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder” (PMDD) in the DSM also raised a protest. According to Caplan,

“The problem with PMDD is not the women who report premenstrual mood problems but the diagnosis of PMDD itself. Excellent research shows that these women are significantly more likely than other women to be in upsetting life situations, such as being battered or being mistreated at work. To label them mentally disordered – to send the message that their problems are individual, psychological ones – hides the real, external sources of their trouble.”¹⁰

As soon as PMDD was listed in the DSM, Eli Lilly repackaged its best-selling drug, Prozac, in a pink-pill format, renamed it Serafem, and promoted it as a treatment for PMDD. By creating Serafem, Lilly was able to extend its patent on the Prozac formula for another seven years.

A marketing gold mine

The DSM is a marketing gold mine for the drug industry. The FDA will approve a drug to treat a mental disorder only if that disorder is listed in the DSM. Therefore, each new listing is worth millions in potential drug sales. Most of the experts who construct the DSM have financial ties to pharmaceutical companies, and every new edition of the DSM contains more conditions than the previous one.

Once the DSM lists a new mental disorder, drugs for that disorder are heavily marketed for everyone who might fit the symptom checklist. (Doctors are also encouraged to prescribe these drugs for “off-label use,” which means to anyone they think might benefit.) Not surprisingly, the   numbers of people “diagnosed” with a mental condition rise rapidly after a drug is approved to treat that condition.

In 2005, a major study announced that “About half of Americans will meet the criteria for a DSM-IV disorder sometime in their life…¹¹ How is this possible? Has it become normal to be mentally ill, or has the definition of mental illness expanded beyond reason? Both could be true.

Capitalism damages people in many ways. It’s also true that the more people can be labeled as sick, the more profits can be made from selling them treatments. In Creating Mental Illness, Alan Horowitz warns,

“…a large proportion of behaviors that are currently regarded as mental illnesses are normal consequences of stressful social arrangements or forms of social deviance. Contrary to its general definition of mental disorder, the DSM and much research that follows from it considers all symptoms, whether internal or not, expected or not, deviant or not, as signs of disorder.”¹²

Most people know the difference between normal behavior (such as grief over the death of a loved one) and abnormal behavior that could indicate an internal disorder (such as prolonged grief for no apparent reason). However, the DSM does not consider what happens in people’s lives. With one exception (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), the DSM lists and categorizes symptoms outside of any social context. As a result, DSM-based surveys artificially increase the numbers of people suffering from mental disorders and, therefore, the market for drug treatments.

DSM-inflated rates of mental illness are typically accompanied by the warning that not enough people are getting treatment,¹³ which serves to further expand the market for drugs. The question of whether all these people are actually sick is never raised, nor is the question of whether their symptoms might be linked to physical illnesses. 

Many physical diseases generate psychological symptoms. Researchers estimate that from 41 to 83 percent of people being treated for psychiatric disorders are actually suffering from misdiagnosed physical diseases like hyo- or hyper-thyroidism, heart disease, immune-system diseases, nervous system diseases (including multiple sclerosis) and cancer.¹⁴ Undiagnosed and untreated, these physical diseases can progress to cripple or kill. Furthermore, psychiatric drugs can worsen physical diseases, sometimes fatally. None of these “costs” are borne by the pharmaceutical industry – the most profitable industry in America.

Social control

Psychiatry has a long history of medicating the oppressed, including children, for social control.¹⁵

Schools force youngsters to sit still in closed rooms for long periods of time and force-feed them information that has no connection to their lives. Those who rebel are diagnosed with mental disorders (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, etc.) and forced to take mind-altering drugs. To preserve a crazy-making system, the healthy child must be made “crazy.”

Using DSM criteria, at least six million American children have been diagnosed with serious mental disorders, triple the number in the early 1990′s. The rate of boys aged 7 to 12 diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder more than doubled between 1995 and 2000 and continues to rise.

A 2007 survey of 8- to 15-year-olds discovered that nine percent met the DSM criteria for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The survey found that fewer than half of these children had been diagnosed or treated, “suggesting that some children with clinically significant inattention and hyperactivity may not be receiving optimal attention.” Noting that poor children were least likely to receive medication, the authors of the study recommend “further investigation and possible intervention.”¹⁶

Instead of addressing the oppressive social conditions that agitate children, psychiatry imposes conformity through medication. To force compliance with this oppressive system, access to insurance benefits, medical care and social services depends on “having a diagnosis.”

Most of the symptoms listed in the DSM describe human responses to deprivation and oppression (anxiety, agitation, aggression, depression) and the many ways that people try to manage unbearable pain (obsessions, compulsions, rage, addictions). Depression is strongly linked with poverty,¹⁷ and alleviating poverty can lift depression.¹⁸

The suffering of war veterans is labeled as a mental disorder (PTSD) instead of the inevitable consequence of war. These soldiers are sick because they have been violated. Their symptoms express their anguish and outrage at the barbarism they witnessed and perpetrated on others.  What’s sick is sending good people into the hell of war.  

Schizophrenia is designated as a mental illness that is assumed to be genetic. However, studies from several countries show that living in a city gives a person a higher probability of developing schizophrenia than having a family member with the disease. Moving from rural to urban centers increases the risk of developing schizophrenia, while moving in the other direction reduces the risk.¹⁹ City living is associated with increased stress and trauma, exposure to lead,²⁰ infection,²¹ malnutrition,²² and racial discrimination²³- all of which are linked with higher rates of schizophrenia.

Under capitalism, addressing the social causes of illness is politically risky and unprofitable. So psychiatry extracts the individual from society, splits the brain from the body, severs the mind from the brain and drugs the brain.²⁴

A sick society

Capitalism is a system that requires the majority to have no control over their lives and to believe that this condition is normal. Therefore, all reactions to inequality and deprivation must be viewed as signs of personal inadequacy, biological defect, mental illness – anything other than reasonable responses to unreasonable conditions.

During slavery days, experts argued that Black people were psychologically suited for a life of slavery, so there must be something wrong with those who rebelled.² In 1851, the diagnosis of “drapetomania”(runaway fever) was developed to explain why slaves try to escape.²⁶ Not much has changed. Today, exploitation and oppression are considered normal, and those who rebel in any way are considered to be sick or deviant and in need of medication or incarceration.

What’s the diagnosis for a sick society? We know what’s wrong. Most people are kept in sick social conditions so that a few can maintain their wealth and power. What is the treatment?  Putting human needs first would eliminate most human misery. Who will deliver the medicine? The majority must organize to take collective control of society.

I don’t expect this diagnosis to appear in the DSM anytime soon.

1  Kirk, S.S. & Kutchins, H. (1992). The selling of DSM: The rhetoric of science in psychiatry. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.

2. Horowitz, A.V. (2002). Creating mental illness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

3. Freud, S. (1901/1991). The psychopathology of everyday life. New York: Penguin

4. Shorter, E. (1997). A history of psychiatry: From the era of the asylum to the age of Prozac. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

5. Poussaint, A.F. & Alexander, A. (2000). Lay my burden down: Suicide and the mental health crisis among African-Americans. Boston: Beacon Press, p.125.

6. Spitzer, R.L., Sheeney, M. & Endicott, J. (1977).  DSM III: Guiding principles. In Psychiatric diagnosis, (Eds). Rakoff, V., Stancer, H. & Kedward, H. New York: Brunner Mazel.

7. Egan, T. (1999). Racist shootings test limits of health system and laws. New York Times, August 14, p.1.

8. “DSM and homosexuality: A cautionary tale.” in Kirk, S.A. & Kutchins, H. (1992). The selling of DSM: The rhetoric of science in psychiatry. New York: Aldine De Gruyter  p 81-90

9. Caplan, P. (1995). They say you’re crazy: How the world’s most powerful psychiatrists decide who’s normal. New York: Addison-Wesley, pp.180-181.

10. Caplan, P.J. (2002). Expert decries diagnosis for pathologizing women. Journal of Addiction and Mental Health. September/October 2001, p.16.

11 Kessler, R.C. et. al. (2005). Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Arch Gen Psychiatry. Vol.62, No.6, pp.593-602.

12. Horowitz, A.V. (2002). Creating Mental Illness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p.37.

13. Talen, J. (2005). Survey says nearly half of all Americans will be affected by a mental illness, some before adulthood. Newsday, June 7. www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-hsment0607,0,6745489.story 

14. Klonoff, E.A. & Landrine, H., 1997, Preventing misdiagnosis of women: A guide to physical disorders that have psychiatric symptoms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage 

15. Breggin, P.R. & Breggin, G. R. (1994). The war against children: How the drugs, programs, and theories of the psychiatric establishment are threatening America’s children with a medical ‘cure’ for violence. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

16. Froehlich T.E., et. al. (2007). Prevalence, recognition, and treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in a national sample of US children. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. Vol.161, pp.857-864. 

17. Duenwald, M. (2003). More Americans Seeking Help for Depression. New York Times, June 18. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/18/health/18DEPR.html

18. Costello, E.J., Compton, S.N., Keeler, G. & Angold, A.(2003). Relationships between poverty and psychopathology: a natural experiment. JAMA. Oct 15, Vol.290, No.15, pp.2023-9.

19.. Pedersen, C.B. & Mortensen, P.B. (2001). Evidence of a dose-response relationship between urbanicity during upbringing and schizophrenia risk. Arch Gen Psychiatry. Vol. 58, No. 11, pp.1039-46.

20. Calamai, P. (2004). Lead exposure in womb linked to schizophrenia. Risk also found if mother had flu: 1960′s U.S. data help unravel mystery. The Toronto Star, Feb. 15.

21. Opler, M.G.A. et al. (2004). Prenatal lead exposure, -aminolevulinic acid, and schizophrenia. Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol.112, pp.548-552.

22. St Clair, D., Xu, M., Wang, P. Yu, Y., Fang, Y., Zhang, F. Zheng, X., Gu, N., Feng,G., Sham, P. & He, L. (2005). Rates of adult schizophrenia following prenatal exposure to the Chinese Famine of 1959-1961. JAMA. Vol.294, No. 5, pp.557-562.

23. Joan Arehart-Treichel, J. (2003). Is schizophrenia a downside of urban life?  Psychiatric News (American Psychiatric Association) May 16, Vol.38,  No.10, p.37.

24. Ross, C.A., & Pam, A., (1995).  Pseudoscience in biological psychiatry: Blaming the body.  New York: Wiley.

25. Poussaint, A.F. & Alexander, A. (2000). Lay my burden down: Suicide and the mental health crisis among African Americans. Boston: Beacon Press.

26. Cartwright, S. (1851). Report on the diseases and physical peculiarities of the Negro race. New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal. May, p. 707.

Susan Rosenthal is a practicing physician and the author of POWER and Powerlessness (2006) and Class, Health and Health Care (2008). She is a founding member of International Health Workers for People Over Profit. She can be reached through her web site: http://www.powerandpowerlessness.com/ or by email: powerandpowerlessness@rogers.com

This article was origanily published on Dissident Voice.

‘The trouble with normal is it always gets worse,’ sang the Canadian guitarist Bruce Cockburn back in 1983. Seems he was on to something. Normal doesn’t seem to be working any longer. The new Holy Grail is happiness. At every turn are ‘how-to’ happiness books, articles, TV and radio programmes, videos and websites. There are happiness institutes, camps, clubs, classes, cruises, workshops, and retreats. Universities are adding courses in Happiness Studies. Fast-growing professions include happiness counselling, happiness coaching, ‘life-lift’ coaching, ‘joyology’ and happiness science. Personal happiness is big business and everyone is selling it. Being positive is mandatory, even with the planet in meltdown. Cynics and pessimists are running for cover while the cheerleaders are policing the game with an iron fist. Only the bravest are not being bullied into cheering up or at least shutting up.

But a society of ‘happichondriacs’ isn’t necessarily a healthy sign. No-one is less able to sustain happiness than someone obsessed with feeling only happiness. A happy and meaningful existence depends on the ability to feel emotions other than happiness, as well as ones that compete with happiness.

‘Happiness never appeared to me as an absolute aim,’ said Einstein. ‘I am even inclined to compare such moral aims to the ambitions of a pig. The ideals that have lighted my way are Kindness, Beauty and Truth.’

If we’ve become pigs at the happiness trough, it’s understandable. As higher systems of meaning have withered, life purpose has dwindled to feeling good. Innocence, the lifeblood of happiness, is obsolete. We live on cultural soil perfectly suited for depression.

Other happiness blockers include materialism, perpetual discontent, over-complication, hyper-competition, stress, rage, boredom, loneliness and existential confusion. We’re removed from nature, married to work, adrift from family and friends, spiritually starved, sleep deprived, physically unfit, dumbed down, and enslaved to debt.

Health professionals face new epidemics of ‘hurry sickness’, ‘toxic success syndrome’, the ‘frantic family’, the ‘over-commercialized child’ and ‘pleonexia’ or out-of-control greed. Too much is no longer enough. Many are stretching themselves so far that they have difficulty feeling anything at all. At its heart the happiness boom is a metaphor for the modern struggle for meaning.

We laugh only a third as often as we did 50 years ago – hence the huge popularity of laughter clubs and laughter therapy. We make love less frequently and enjoy it less, even though sex is now largely deregulated and available in endless guilt-free varieties. Yet we’re the least happy society in history if we measure happiness in terms of mental health, personal growth, or general sense of aliveness.

A society’s dominant value system dictates how happiness is measured. The native Navajos in the southwest of the US saw happiness as the attainment of universal beauty, or what they called Hózhó. Their counterpart of ‘Have a nice day’ was ‘May you walk in beauty’.

Personal satisfaction is the most common way of measuring happiness today (via something called the Life Satisfaction Scale). This mirrors the supreme value that consumer culture attaches to the romancing of desire and the satiation of the self. When measured this way, almost everyone seems pretty happy – even if it’s primarily false needs being satisfied. A high percentage of depressed people even end up happy when ‘personal satisfaction’ is the yardstick.

By the middle of the 19th century, social critics were already noticing how happiness was losing its social, spiritual, moral and intellectual anchors and becoming a form of emotional masturbation. In his classic 1863 work, Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill scorned this trend: ‘Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied,’ he opined.

Total satisfaction can actually be a major obstacle to happiness. Artist Salvador Dali lamented: ‘There are days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.’ To preserve the ‘rarity value’ of life one must resist wrapping heaven around oneself. Keeping paradise at a distance, yet within reach, is a much better way of staying alive. People who have it all must learn the art of flirting with deprivation.

The highest forms of happiness have always been experienced and expressed as love. But happiness is being wooed in increasingly autistic ways that lack this vital dimension. In a recent survey only one per cent of people indicated ‘true love’ as what they wanted most in life. Our standard of living has increased but our standard of loving has plummeted. The backlash against today’s narcissistic happiness is rekindling interest in the ancient Greek philosophers who equated happiness with virtue. Especially celebrated by them were loyalty, friendship, moderation, honesty, compassion and trust. Research shows that all these traits are in steep decline today – despite being happiness boosters. Like true love and true happiness, they have become uneconomic.

When author John Updike warned, ‘America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy,’ he was referring to the superficial mass happiness that prevails when economics successfully conspires to define our existence. I profit, therefore I am. To be happy, gulp something. Pay later. Novelist JD Salinger was so unnerved by the happiness conspiracy that he confessed: ‘I’m a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people are plotting to make one happy.’ The wrong type of happiness is worse than no happiness at all.

Governments are the biggest players in the happiness conspiracy. Any political action aimed at a more people-friendly or planet-friendly happiness is certain to be met with fierce resistance. The best consumers are itchy narcissists who hop, skip and jump from one fleeting desire to the next, never deeply satisfied, but always in the process of satisfying themselves. Our entire socio-economic system is designed to spew out this type of ‘ideal citizen’. Contentment is the single greatest threat to the economics of greed and consumer happiness.

Our ignorance of happiness is revealed by the question on everyone’s lips: ‘Does money make us happy?’ The head of a US aid agency in Kenya commented recently that volunteers are predictably dumbstruck and confused by the zest and jubilance of the Africans. It’s become a cliché for them to say: ‘The people are so poor, they have nothing – and yet they have so much joy and seem so happy.’

I never knew how measly my own happiness was until one day in 1978 when I found myself stranded in a remote western Tanzanian village. I saw real happiness for the first time – since then I have learned that it has vastly more to do with cultural factors than genetics or the trendy notion of personal ‘choice’.

So it didn’t surprise me that an African nation, Nigeria, was found recently to be the world’s happiest country. The study of ‘happy societies’ is awakening us to the importance of social connectedness, spirituality, simplicity, modesty of expectations, gratitude, patience, touch, music, movement, play and ‘down time’.

The small Himalayan nation of Ladakh is one of the best-documented examples of a ‘happy society’. As Helena Norberg-Hodge writes in Ancient Futures, Ladakhis were a remarkably joyous and vibrant people who lived in harmony with their harsh environment. Their culture generated mutual respect, community-mindedness, an eagerness to share, reverence for nature, thankfulness and love of life. Their value system bred tenderness, empathy, politeness, spiritual awareness and environmental conservation. Violence, discrimination, avarice and abuse of power were non-existent while depressed, burned-out people were nowhere to be found.

But in 1980 consumer capitalism came knocking with its usual bounty of raised hopes and social diseases. The following year, Ladakh’s freshly appointed Development Commissioner announced: ‘If Ladakh is ever going to be developed, we have to figure out how to make these people more greedy.’ The developers triumphed and a greed economy took root. The issues nowadays are declining mental health, family breakdown, crime, land degradation, unemployment, a widening gap between rich and poor, pollution and sprawl.

Writer Ted Trainer says before 1980 the people of Ladakh were ‘notoriously happy’. He sees in their tragic story a sobering lesson about our cherished goals of development, growth and progress. For the most part these are convenient myths that are much better at producing happy economies than happy people.

When normality fails, as it has today, happiness becomes a form of protest. Some disillusioned folks are resorting to ‘culture jamming’ and ‘subvertisements’ to expose the hollow core of commercial society. Others are seeking refuge in various forms of primitivism and eco-primitivism. Spurring this on is intriguing evidence from the field of cognitive archaeology suggesting that our Paleolithic ancestors were probably happier and far more alive than people today. The shift toward ‘Paleo’ and ‘Stone Age’ diets also reflects the belief that they had happier bodies.

There is an exquisite line by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche which touches on one of the keys to happiness: the need to appreciate ‘the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a moment’. Paradoxically, happiness is closer when we kneel than when we soar. Our own nothingness can be a great source of joy.

We usually hitch our emotional wagons to ego, ambition, personal power and the spectacular. But all of these are surprising flops when it comes to happiness. Today’s ‘success’ has become a blueprint for failure.

Visionaries tell us that the only happiness that makes sense at this perilous juncture in Earth’s history is ‘sustainable happiness’. All worthwhile happiness is life-supporting. But so much of what makes us happy in the age of consumerism is dependent upon the destruction and over-exploitation of nature. A sustainable happiness implies that we take responsibility for the wider contexts in which we live and for the well-being of future generations.

Sustainable happiness harks back to the classical Greek philosophies in viewing ethical living as a legitimate vehicle for human happiness. Compassion in particular plays a central role. In part it rests on the truth that we can be happy in planting the seeds of happiness, even if we might miss the harvest.

Some argue that as a society we are too programmed to selfishness and over-consumption for a sustainable happiness to take root. Democracy itself is a problem when the majority itches for the wrong things. But if we manage to take the first few steps, we may rediscover that happiness resonates most deeply when it has a price.

The greatest irony in the search for happiness is that it is never strictly personal. For happiness to be mature and heartfelt, it must be shared – whether by those around us or by tomorrow’s children. If not, happiness can be downright depressing.

John F Schumaker, a US-born psychologist currently living in Christchurch, New Zealand/Aotearoa, is the author of In Search of Happiness: Understanding an endangered state of mind (Penguin).

Reprinted from New Internationalist (NI)

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License.