No Lives Matter Anymore. What Happened To Us?
It seems like No Lives Matter anymore. Why is that? It appears that this growing apathy for humanity devolved further into the 21st century. What is going on?
Every day we read headlines in the news like at least 13 killed and 62 others wounded over the long weekend in Chicago, a 6-year-old-boy-shot-Virginia-teacher, 5 children among 8 dead in Utah murder-suicide after wife sought divorce, at least 2000 people have been killed or injured in mass shootings since 1999 to name a few headlines in the recent past. And then there is the fact that from 1999 to 2021, more than one million people died from a drug overdose and that number has gone up exponentially since 2021.
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) that once advocated lobotomies to treat mental health problems now recommends pharmaceutical “therapy” for adults and children. Children are being prescribed antidepressants at a rapid pace with no regard to their developing brains. It is a fact that more Americans are increasing their dependence on antidepressants in the 21st century.
And then, there is the strange phenomena that children can choose their gender. As of May 2024, the APA continues to advocate "gender affirming care" for "gender diverse" youth (aka minor children) as does the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and American Medical Association (AMA). In fact, they all support “gender affirming care” as medically necessary[1] and they say that they are saving lives and will point out their data to prove this. Still waiting for all that data. Clearly, the APA, AAP and AMA did not discuss this issue with any other voices of dissent, like those who have already “de-transitioned.” And anyone who disagrees is a “hater” of some type and discriminating against transgender children, “who are at risk of suicide.” Did the doctors explain to that minor child (and parent) that they WILL BECOME a patient for Life?
It is hard to distinguish between Aldous Huxley's Soma and antidepressant use. Numbing the mind helps ease the worries of 21st century life. How did we get here?
Are these drugs changing the psyche of Americans? Or is it that America has become a spiritually vacuous society more interested in consuming and fuming, which turns out to be stressful?
[1] What does medically necessary mean - will the insured get reimbursed?
Dependence on the government continues to rise in the 21st century. Is there a correlation between dependency on the government with increasing opiate drug use, antidepressant drug use, and the fact that church attendance for Christians has seen a plunging drop since the beginning of the 21st century and it is now below 50% of the population?
Or have too many people thrown out the baby Jesus with the bathwater (dogma)? A lot of people do not believe the dogma of various Christian religions, so they do not read the Gospel. But what if people read it from a philosophical point of view? Jesus said to “Love our Enemies.” At first glance, that sounds like a silly thing to ponder. It takes a minute to chew on that thought and figure out what Jesus meant, but at a minimum, from a philosophical perspective, if more people thought about it and accepted it as Truth, it could change hateful energy into positive energy. As much wisdom as philosophers like Epictetus opined, who else asked us to love our enemy? But since too many people associate the Gospel with dogma, it falls on deaf ears. Imagine if Hamas followers read the Gospel and pondered on the idea to Love our Enemies?
And do these trends towards a spiritually vacuous society have anything to do with more and more Americans playing the victim card? Didn’t they get the memo that Americans do not “identify” as victims? American roll up their sleeves and go to work to be self-reliant, to support themselves and their families.
In the past, Americans did not identify as victims. Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass were born into slavery. They could easily argue that, yes, they were victims, but both refused to do so, and instead, they embodied what it means to be an American and improved the lives of themselves, their families, and many other Americans as a result. Frederick Douglass argued that the Constitution would set them free, and he was right.
One of the worst outcomes for anyone is to become dependent on anyone else, and especially on the government. This CNN article dated from 2012 asks, Why the U.S. has a culture of dependency? It stated that “49% of the population lives in a household where at least one person gets some type of government benefit.” That was over a decade ago and dependency on the government went haywire during/post Covid.
So, taxpayers spend trillions of dollars a year to create dependency on the government. This cannot be good for a society, and as Alexander Tytler predicted, creating dependency is the last cycle before tyranny in a democracy. That makes sense; when one becomes dependent on the government for housing and food, essentially, that dependent person is a slave to the government for its sustenance. "Creating the Welfare state did what slavery couldn't do."
There are plenty of studies proving that children flourish better with both parents in the home, yet the trend against that idea continues to climb in the 21st century.
Mother Theresa predicted that no lives would matter when she said: “But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion?”
Abortion is an emotionally charged topic since it is very personal, and most people do not want a government to make that decision for them, but at a minimum, the debate should be discussed honestly and labeled honestly. For example, terminating a growing fetus is ending life, aka death. So, a person is either pro-death or pro-life. Pro-choice isn’t an accurate term, since choice comes in the form of either women saying “no” or women and/or men choosing to use birth control, and sadly, abortion is often used as birth control, but it is still killing a living being. If sex is not a choice, then it’s rape and that is a crime. At least we can be honest about it; one is either pro-life or pro-death. Once we are honest, we can have a debate and more than likely, the 10th Amendment should be the best outcome on this hotly contested issue since at least it allows the government to be closer to the people in each state to collectively decide what is best.
At some point in the latter 20th century, some of those unlucky, middle-class children who were born started going to therapy and discovered all the damage their parents caused them making them feel unloved, thus becoming a victim and estranging themselves from their horrible family and of course, needing a prescription for Soma.
Will We the People be able to end dependency so we can skip the bondage part of Tytler’s cycle by jumping back into spirituality? It’s not looking good…