Affluenza?

I was at a friends house last night and for the first time saw a copy of the book "Affluenza" by Oliver James.

I had time to read the introduction, and it is James' belief that a wave of unhappiness has swept the prosperous Western world, an illness based around the cult of possession and owning. Keeping up with the Joneses is making us all ill, with extreme examples of this existing, particularly in the USA.

All very interesting, but not that different from what Doctor Huber and the Socialist Patients Collective (known as the SPK in Germany) were saying in the 1970s. Indeed James even comments that he does not like the term mental illness, and that in many cases he encounters it is society making people ill - there is not an illness in the physical sense.

The debt he holds the SPK is huge. Lets hope James' followers don't end up following the SPK and blowing up the German Embassy in Stockholm!

Comments

[sushil_yadav]

In response to "Affluenza":

The link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues.

The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.

Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.

Subject : In a fast society slow emotions become extinct.
Subject : A thinking mind cannot feel.
Subject : Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys the planet.

Emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking.

If there are no gaps there is no emotion.

Today people are thinking all the time and are mistaking thought (words/ language) for emotion.

When society switches-over from physical work (agriculture) to mental work (scientific/ industrial/ financial/ fast visuals/ fast words ) the speed of thinking keeps on accelerating and the gaps between thinking go on decreasing.

There comes a time when there are almost no gaps.

People become incapable of experiencing/ tolerating gaps.

Emotion ends.

Man becomes machine.

A society that speeds up mentally experiences every mental slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.

A ( travelling )society that speeds up physically experiences every physical slowing-down as Depression / Anxiety.

A society that entertains itself daily experiences every non-entertaining moment as Depression / Anxiety.

Fast visuals/ words make slow emotions extinct.

Scientific/ Industrial/ Financial thinking destroys emotional circuits.

A fast (large) society cannot feel pain / remorse / empathy.

A fast (large) society will always be cruel to Animals/ Trees/ Air/ Water/ Land and to Itself.

To read the complete article please follow either of these links :

http://www.planetsave.com/ps_mambo/index.php?option=com_simpleboard&Itemid=75&func=view&id=68&catid=6

http://www.earthnewswire.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=89&page=viewtopic&t=11

sushil_yadav

[k]

The Socialist Patients’ Collective (SPK) never ceased to exist and it has prevailed again and again despite of the most averse circumstances while all the other currents and movements, at that time being considered "far more revolutionary", have failed long since and have terminated or surrendered, even if un-dissolved.

The SPK exists only as SPK within the Patients’ Front, as SPK/PF(H).

Note and pay attention that:
The SPK had and has

nothing to do with the RAF
nothing to do with the politico-activists of the so-called 68-movement
nothing to do with the so-called self-help groups and suchlike
nothing to do with the so-called anti-psychiatry or other medical or non-medical specialist disciplines
but it had and has to do with illness against Iatro-capitalism.

At that time only the SPK had referred positively to illness. No other political, socialist, communist, anarchist or militarist grouping was disposed to do the same. In the meanwhile, however, the PF/SPK(H) has spread worldwide stabilizing itself in the common interest and goal of opposing finally the doctors’ class, which has been murdering without punishment since thousands of years, at least with the beginning of a Patients’ Front and a patients’ class. The principle of propagation of the PF/SPK is called, just as it was then, Multi-Focal Expansionism (MFE). There is, for instance, PF/SPK(MFE) Austria (Patientenstimme, Patients’ Voice), and likewise MFE Spain, Greece and many others.

The PF/SPK(H)-texts are published by the KRRIM – Verlag fuer Krankheit (Publisher pro Illness); its actual address (since 5.5.2000) being: PF/SPK(H), KRANKHEIT IM RECHT, MA/HD/LU, Postfach 12 10 41, D-68061 Mannheim.

The only address for information on the SPK is:

PF/SPK(H)
KRANKHEIT IM RECHT
Pathopraktik mit Juristen
Strasse: U 5, 18, D-68161 Mannheim
Phone: +49-621-25366, Fax : +49-621-1564174
Internet: www.spkpfh.de
Huber himself, founder of the SPK, Dr.med., has entrusted all juridical matters concerning the SPK to Mrs. Ingeborg Muhler, attorney and MA in Computer Science, being herself an active member of the SPK already since 1970/71.

This means among others: who continues to repeat the false statements on the SPK has to face a fine of 250,000 EURO or a prison sentence up to 6 months. As a result of that, since 1995 nobody has dared to vouch personally for the false statements referred to above, neither in private nor in public, let alone stood a public trial on the relative charges. By the way, during a 3-years-period the best-before date of the aforementioned lies and reporters’ legends, which were being repeated with obstinacy for such a long time, has already been tested successfully several dozens of times.

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Text for entries on the SPK in the Encyclopedias of Brockhaus, Duden, etc.:

Socialist Patients’ Collective

The SPK was founded in Heidelberg, February 1970, by the frontpatient Huber, WD, Dr.med. The SPK-program: Turn Illness into a weapon!, keeps on being practicated and remains reality. The SPK, which has emerged from the Patients’ Front, declared its self-dissolution in July 1971 (strategic withdrawal). As Patients’ Front of the confrontation-patients this SPK had already existed since 1965, and it continues to exist and to be active without break in its continuing activity, that is as PF/SPK(H).