The Demoralized Mind (2016)
newint.org
newint.org
> This culturally generated demoralization is nearly impossible to avoid for the modern ‘consumer’.
> Rather than a depressive disorder, demoralization is a type of existential disorder associated with the breakdown of a person’s ‘cognitive map’. It is an overarching psycho-spiritual crisis in which victims feel generally disoriented and unable to locate meaning, purpose or sources of need fulfilment. The world loses its credibility, and former beliefs and convictions dissolve into doubt, uncertainty and loss of direction. Frustration, anger and bitterness are usual accompaniments, as well as an underlying sense of being part of a lost cause or losing battle. The label ‘existential depression’ is not appropriate since, unlike most forms of depression, demoralization is a realistic response to the circumstances impinging on the person’s life.
I imagined for a long time that I was depressed. It had never occurred to me that my condition of "existential depression", in the form of the Psalmist's Ecclesiastes, could be anything other than depression.
Overall this is a well written and cogent piece, although largely a rehash of Erik Fromm's thoughts on reification from 60 years ago (the author, Schumaker, acknowledges Fromm's "frame of orientation")
"unlike most forms of depression, demoralisation is a realistic
response to the circumstances impinging on the person’s life"
Raoul Naroll's "Moral net" makes a refreshing appearance. I see the destruction of support networks and moral vocabulary all around. While Schumaker claims demoralisation was limited to extreme situations, in my lifetime I have witnessed it as active anti-morale attacks, first from advertising industry entirely designed around sapping self-esteem, then an unholy alliance of "industry" and education systems that profit from intellectual insecurity and most recently from "social media" and big-tech domination of communication channels hell-bent on corroding our sense of personal agency.
There is some redemption in making the battle against the ennui of consumerism have meaning in itself, as the pursuit of cultural deprogramming, Optimistically, the "moral net" can be restored, but only by defeating its overt and very visible enemies.