As many of you already know, depression is a group of symptoms that inflicts countless misery upon the sufferer. This horrific disease (if we can call it a disease) can have many severe complications, including self-injury, suicide attempts, and completed suicide. Lately psychologists have found that it occurs in one in eight men and one in four women, afflicting 17% of the general population. Furthermore, they have found that three in twenty people afflicted with so-called "major depressive disorder" die through completed suicide.

Although very sad, these statistics are not surprising. When everyone looks out for himself, nobody looks out for anyone else. The materialist culture teaches them to put their own profit over the very survival of others. This causes them to feel unloved and unfulfilled, which (according to Transactional Analysis theory) causes them to become depressed. And then when they go see a therapist, he (in many cases) takes their money while doing almost nothing to ease their situation, another result of the market economy.

What else can capitalism be blamed for? Social inequality is one obvious answer. While capitalism has worked wonders for the rich people of America and for the corporations, it has led to the starvation of the citizens of many other countries. The introduction of "neoliberal reforms" into Russia has only brought sixty-six percent of the population into abject poverty, while their introduction into Brazil and Mexico has had all too similar results. Not to mention that forty-one percent of the world owns the same amount of wealth as the wealthiest two hundred people combined.

Another possible result of capitalism is religious fundamentalism in America. (Eighty-one percent of Americans are religious in some way.) When people are unloved, they tend to end up turning to the one being they have left: God. God is supposedly a being that will give them unconditional love and support, assuming of course that they try to follow him, whatever that means. (Religious fundamentalism is also a result of capitalism in that some religions were created in order to justify oppression of the masses.)

Yet another result of capitalism is the high divorce rate. In America one in two marriages end in divorce. And surveys have shown that money is the leading cause of marital strife. (Of course there was a period of time in which capitalism was rampant and divorce was quite uncommon, but that was mainly because people were hindered by their sex-role scripting.)

Capitalism has also led to the ruin of the environment and to the needless waste of nonrenewable resources. People often find that it's cheaper to destroy the environment than to keep it desirable for future generations.

Of course the majority of Americans have blissfully ignored all these consequences of capitalism while claiming that they are unchangeable reality and that there's no better system out there. This is blatantly untrue. Imagine a world in which nobody goes hungry. A world in which everyone has an equal right to health care. A world in which people work according to their ability and take according to their need. A world in which everyone works for the benefit of humanity rather than for their own profit. A world in which people are free to divorce, but do not choose to. A world in which people are neither driven to despair nor oppressed by a mass delusion.

Believe it or not, this world is far more than a dream. In fact, it is quite attainable if people show themselves capable of conquering their instincts and of cooperating rather than competeing. However, it shall only be attained if the oppressed masses realize that capitalism is the oppressor and that they, together, have the power to destroy it.

Sources:

(1) American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision. Washington, DC, American Psychiatric Association, 2000.
(2) Steiner, Claude. Scripts People Live: Transactional Analysis of Life Scripts. New York: Grove Press, 1974.
(3) Chomsky, Noam. Profit Over People. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999.
(4) http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_prac2.htm
(5) http://www.divorcereform.org/cau.html
(6) http://www.2-in-2-1.co.uk/marriageclinic/diffdisill/divorceremedy/

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