Even the mechanised and somewhat demoralising and demeaning Western approach of labelling, categorising and dividing nearly everything for efficiency, productivity and relevancy (even monetary profit) is being, and has been, noticed for its actual inefficiencies, idleness and irrelevancy when it comes to life and its many intricacies, insights and Indigenous peoples that do and have demonstrated other (even better) ways of healing, especially in, around and from the toxic culture of contemporary times.

It’s not a question of romanticising Native ways, nor of aping Indigenous practices. But we can and must overcome what Wade Davis furiously calls ‘cultural myopia’, the sense that ‘other peoples are failed versions of ourselves. Or that they are ancient, vestigial creatures, destined to fade away, quaint and colourful humans who wear feathers. These are living, dynamic people who have something to say.’

The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté and co-authored with one of his sons – Gabriel Maté – is a brilliant book that constructively and humanely paints a realistic picture of and about trauma, illness and healing.

Plenty in it gave me pause for thought and consideration and it was interesting to read of the many related and interconnected issues and insights that are often missed or just ignored, but when discovered, learned from and developed compassionately and with constructive and assistive curiosity can really change an assumption, judgement even prejudice.

Some of the book’s passages made some good points in and around capitalism and its age-old and tired excuses as often it creates the problems that it advertises and extols products and services that can ‘solve’ them. At the very least they’ll hurt people and planet but make some monetary profit for someone or some badly set up organisation or pension fund.

We are fooling ourselves somewhat if we think that as citizens, individually and even among and between groups that ‘dare’ to be different to stand out from the crowd, we can change the capitalist- and neoliberal-way(s) society is ensnared. But, with steady and meaningful interactions, efforts and spirit, change at society’s roots can, does and will happen; it can seem just a shame that unequal and overblown state and governmental systems and institutions seem quite behind the times, despite no doubt some efforts at change and progress out of and from often a sense of nostalgia, power, tradition and class.

Still, just by taking on and espousing essentially marketed products that’ll answer a(n individual) need or want, services that look healthy or responsible if used and the many (marketed) patronising mantras, attitudes and approaches of the very system that fools us all into thinking individually (and is upheld as efficient and has productive, even valuable, choices on offer) that we can make a difference, are just foolish and clearly scared of losing their power over us if they’re found out; consumerism just tears apart true, honest and valued connections and communities and perpetuates those self-fulfilling myths that seek endless growth at any expense as long as the monetary profit keeps rolling in.

Anyway, enough of my words, here are Gabor Maté’s that impelled me to share them in an article with you and are well worth reading . . .

Of course, there is no ‘equality of opportunity’ in stress, any more than there is in economic life. The structure of a society based on power and wealth, with built-in disparities along racial and gender lines, leaves some people far more physiologically burdened than others. It is true that in a culture that recruits individuals and groups into a fearful competition against others, the psychological triggers for stress spare no social tier, but the fact remains that their effects are unevenly distributed. And while the personal stresses of a disconnect from the self and the loss of authenticity may cut across class lines, the allostatic strain imposed by imbalances of power falls most onerously on the politically disempowered and economically disenfranchised.

What, in our society, are the most widespread emotional triggers for stress? My own observations of self and others have led me to endorse fully what a review of the stress literature concluded, namely that ‘psychological factors such as uncertainty, conflict, lack of control, and lack of information are considered the most stressful stimuli and strongly activate the HPA axis.’³ A society that breeds these conditions, as capitalism inevitably does, is a superpowered generator of stressors that tax human health.

Capitalism is ‘far more than just an economic doctrine,’ Yuval Noah Harari observes in his influential bestseller Sapiens. ‘It now encompasses an ethic – a set of teachings about how people should behave, educate their children, and even think. Its principal tenet is that economic growth is the supreme good, or at least a proxy for the supreme good, because justice, freedom, and even happiness all depend on economic growth.’⁴ Capitalism’s influence today runs so deep and wide that its values, assumptions, and expectations potently infuse not only culture, politics, and law but also such subsystems as academia, education, science, news, sports, medicine, child-rearing, and popular entertainment. The hegemony of materialist culture is now total, its discontents universal.

In medical school I was trained to think of life and health in purely individualistic terms. That we have a hard time not seeing things this way is, itself, a quintessential feature of the ‘normal’ worldview engendered by capitalism. In this, as in much else, the medical system mirrors and reinforces the prevailing ethic. In an atomised, materialistic culture people are induced to take everything personally, to see their own mental and physical distress as misfortunes or even failures belonging to them alone. Take the picture painted by the former British prime minister Tony Blair, to this day a sought-after, well-remunerated spokesperson for the desocialising ethic-that is, for bleaching the ‘social’ out of society. Many health problems, he said, are ‘not, strictly speaking, public health problems at all. They are questions of lifestyle: obesity, smoking, alcohol abuse, diabetes, sexually transmitted diseases . . . These are not epidemics in the epidemiological sense – they are the result of millions of individual decisions, at millions of points in time.’⁵ This perspective denotes a blithe unawareness of the many studies linking all these ‘millions of decisions’ to trauma and stress, including the stresses imposed by low socioeconomic or occupational status, and poverty – a festering sore in British society since the dismantling of the ‘welfare state’ and communal institutions, along with the disempowering of labour unions. That underlying such ‘individual decisions’ is the social milieu fostered by late-stage capitalism seems not to have occurred to Mr. Blair, despite considerable evidence. This is no surprise: a refusal to recognise broad economic and political conditions as relevant to individual health and happiness is a core feature of materialistic ideology. No one inclined to connect those dots would ever be entrusted with the keys to the kingdom.

Gabor Maté The Myth of Normal

It is pleasing to know that many of the books I have and do read are interconnected (like Earth, life and society themselves) and often referenced in small ways by their authors that shows the threads of sanity and productive and meaningful aims, in amongst some slightly (or actually) backward times that do nothing other than perpetuate a lot of trauma (and reward its outputs) that affects many a leader (and pretty much all citizens despite the perverse clarity and intent they get ‘sold’ through) which hurts us all.

Pretty much the last part of the chapter that the above quoted passage was taken from, ends this article as well . . .

Disconnection in all its guises – alienation, loneliness, loss of meaning, and dislocation – is becoming our culture’s most plentiful product. No wonder we are more addicted, chronically ill, and mentally disordered than ever before, enfeebled as we are by such malnourishment of mind, body, and soul.

A great book is The Myth of Normal and, discovering it, was a great piece of happenstance for me as I was looking for another book in the section it was filed under in my library.

Its simplicity of cover, title and subtitle was enough to compel me to read its blurb and decide it would be well worth reading in its entirety.

It was.