Well, aside from the problem that we don't have good comparable data from 75-100+ years ago for mental illnesses and general happiness/unhappiness, I'd bet anything that apparent increases in minor mental maladies per capita are just as related to some combination of the following:

(1) People with psych degrees needing clients in order to sustain their careers; that encourages diagnoses of conditions that require regular visits, If there aren't enough people who need counseling, then a lot of those folks will be out of work and/or will have a difficult time justifying their jobs in institutional settings, etc.

(2) Pharmaceutical companies having similar motivations,

(3) People hoping to acquire some type of government assistance and/or excuses for special treatment at work/special employment situations,

(4) Munchausen syndrome/factitious disorder, where people have a desire for attention/special treatment/etc.

Well, it seems to me that in the future, without mass TV viewing to rely on, advertising is likely to be more targeted, dispersed, invasive and diverse.


More targeted.

See neuromarketing:, for example:

"Neuromarketing engages the use of Magnetic Resance Imaging (MRI), electroencephalography (EEG), biometrics, facial coding, eye tracking and other technologies to investigate and learn how consumers respond and feel when presented with products and/or related stimuli (Kolter et al., 2013). The concept of neuromarketing investigates the non-conscious processing of information in consumers brains (Agarwal & Dutta, 2015). Human decision-making is both a conscious and non-conscious process in the brain (Glanert, 2012). Human brains process over 90% of information non-consciously, below controlled awareness; this information has a large influence in the decision-making process (Agarwal & Dutta, 2015). "


More dispersed/invasive:

More on subways, buses, taxis, lifts, anywhere where people congregate. Louder, flashier etc.


More diverse:

Constant innovation. What was that movie with Cruise where he gets offered a Guinness by a hologram? Coming soon... — Baden

Yep. You ain't kidding! And that's just the stuff we know of. Who knows what else is being planned.
Do we want to know? Can we handle the truth? (to quote another Cruise movie). My knee-jerk reaction is to say, yea! bring on the truth, the more the better; i can take it. But it might be paralyzing and nauseating, beyond anything Sartre, Orwell, or others have described.

I am very suspicious of the cellphone and tablet. The phone is like a spy in my pocket, ready to rat me out in a second. The smartphone may be too clever by half. Tape covers the cameras when not in use, though I suppose the microphone theoretically could be used remotely by other parties. I hope to (insert favorite Divinity here) that I'm just being paranoid and over-imaginative. What is the term for it? Big data?

I should apologise for starting this with advertising; it has rather misled people. One can resist advertising, avoid it perhaps, but advertising is merely an example of a way of thinking about people that pervades the eduction system, politics, entertainment, the workplace, every facet of society.

Shall we start again with a different example? Psychology and education? — unenlightened

Why don't we just swallow the whole kielbasa and analyze what is wrong with "every facet of society"?

I there is something wrong with society that has not always been wrong, then it has a beginning. You seem to be suggesting that the problem began in the late 19th / early 20th century when Wundt, Ebbinghaus, James, Pavlov, Dewey, Skinner, et al started building 'scientific psychology' with measurement, observation, theorizing, and so on.

Or, do you have some other starting point in mind? Maybe the industrial revolution and modern capitalism? Surely all that didn't have anything to do with infecting every facet of society with a depersonalizing instrumental approach, did they?

Other?

In English we say "I am cold."
In German, it's "I have cold."
Russians say: "The cold is upon me."

Greek scholars say that Homer should be read the Russian way. All the stuff we think of as internal psychic forces is external in Homer. It's like the psyche turned inside out.

They would probably think we see ourselves as divine. — Mongrel

Thanks for sharing that excellent point. Didn't know that. I wish i had been raised with another language besides English. It might give some different perspectives, as you imply. And sometimes having another perspective can make quite a difference. Very admiring of people who speak two and three languages! (tho i has enuf trubbles wif Inglish! :D)

Somebody call Karel Capek! We discovered Marxism!

Sorry... couldn't resist

aside from the problem that we don't have good comparable data from 75-100+ years ago for mental illnesses and general happiness/unhappiness... — Terrapin Station

Going back to 1916, no. But post WWII, which is 70 years ago, I think there is comparable information. the General Social Survey is around 40+ years old, Gallops surveys go back 70 years. (Gallop, Inc. generously declares "For more than 70 years, Gallup has built its reputation on delivering relevant, timely, and visionary research on what humans around the world think and feel. Using impeccable data...") While the diagnostic standards for manic depression, schizophrenia, psychosis, catatonia, and so on might have been and might still be a bit dicey when it comes to telling one illness from another, these severe illnesses have always been obvious, whatever the cause was thought to be.

I agree that the definitions of the minor mental illnesses aren't comparable. The Freudian diagnostic regimens were tossed out the window, and pre-1960s and post-1960s diagnoses isn't readily comparable. I have no idea what, exactly, a practitioner meant by "hysteria" for instance.

I'd bet anything that apparent increases in minor mental maladies per capita are just as related to some combination of the following:

(1) People with psych degrees needing clients in order to sustain their careers; that encourages diagnoses of conditions that require regular visits,

(2) Pharmaceutical companies having similar motivations,

(3) People hoping to acquire some type of government assistance and/or excuses for special treatment at work/special employment situations — Terrapin Station

Yes, all of the above applies. Diagnoses are needed for return visits, but even more important, diagnoses are needed to get paid by insurance companies. And I would add that it isn't all scam and racket. Some therapists really are very competent and helpful. (So ask yourself, what kind of scam do philosophers have going to justify their existences on college campuses--and who else bothers to employ them?)

As for disability, some people have achieved disability status who seemed to be just fine, but in the US, at least, "disability" was always grudgingly awarded.

(4) Munchausen syndrome/factitious disorder, where people have a desire for attention/special treatment/etc. — Terrapin Station

I am more interested in Reverse Munchausen Syndrome where people feign sanity but are actually stark raving mad.

Yes, all of the above applies. Diagnoses are needed for return visits, but even more important, diagnoses are needed to get paid by insurance companies. And I would add that it isn't all scam and racket. Some therapists really are very competent and helpful. (So ask yourself, what kind of scam do philosophers have going to justify their existences on college campuses--and who else bothers to employ them?) — Bitter Crank

Good point about bills being paid, by the way. Specific diagnoses are very important for that.

I didn't mean to imply that it's (all) an overt scam. A lot of it is a "seeing everything as a nail because you have a hammer" phenomenon, and that's often well-intentioned.

What do we suppose that a theory of mind is for? Why did such a thing come about in the first place, besides for intraspecies competition? Isn't it just for manipulation?

Also, the more complex the inner world, the more distant the protagonist, the more difficult they are to discern at all.

Or, do you have some other starting point in mind? — Bitter Crank

As per my earlier aside, it's all Descartes' fault, with his 'thinking things'.

It is noteworthy that the other minds problem came to prominence as a philosophical problem only as recently as the nineteenth century, when John Stuart Mill gave us what is generally regarded as a version of the analogical inference to other minds. Mill's version has as its centerpiece the causal link between our mental states and our behavior. The problem was clearly enough waiting to be noted as far back as Descartes and his separation of mind from body and his view that only human animals had minds. However, it does not seem that Descartes noticed it as a separate problem. A similar situation would seem to apply with John Locke, given his belief that the mind of another is invisible (Locke, 111.ii.1, 404–405).

Before Mill, it would seem that Thomas Reid should be credited with seeing that there was a serious philosophical issue concerning other minds (Avramides 2001, ch., VI). Indeed, it seems that the first frequent use of the words ‘other minds’ is to be credited to him (Somerville 1989, 249). However, those minds are not observable. Nor is our belief that they exist to be reached or supported by reasoning. For Reid it is self-evident, an innate belief, that there are minds other than one's own.

The analogical inference to other minds held sway until about the middle of the twentieth century. Increasingly argued to be problematic, the analogical inference lost ground within philosophy. It was widely thought to be inadequate because of two of its features. The first was that the conclusion was not only uncheckable but was such that it was logically impossible to check up on it. The second was that the argument seemed to be an inductive generalization based on only one case. This second feature was thought to be problematic in itself but was thought by many to have as a consequence that each of us learns only from our own case what it is to be in pain or some other mental state. This consequence was thought to be completely unacceptable.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/#2 (Thanks to Terrapin for the link).

Thus the philosophical problem and its roots. So once the problem has been articulated, it is quite natural to do with humanity what has been so successfully done with nature - to depersonalise it. So yes, late 19th century, and the science of psychology begins, and the philosophy of mind is bypassed in the same way that the ancient gods of fire and sea and thunder were bypassed.

So our society has become too materialist, and so far as to treat people as objects, when we all used to be spirit beings with the utmost respect for one and other... ah the good ol'days.

(in all fairness, I have a difficulty understanding Un a lot of the time, which makes him particularly interesting to me.)

Presumably you're someone who sees advertising/marketing as an affront? We could explore why you feel that way about it. — Terrapin Station

If you read my earlier post, I find the entire entertainment industry an affront. The reason I feel this way is that it has transformed entertainment from an effective form of stress release, into a cause of stress. Therefore it is a self-perpetuating habit. We seek entertainment to relieve ourselves from our stresses, but the so-called entertainment just causes more stress so that we seek more entertainment. It's consumerism at its best (or worst), addiction, where the consumption of the product continually increases the need for the product. I may as well be paying my money to the local coke dealer.

No worries. I often speak off the cuff myself :).

Do you mean, then, to disown the first if/then that you wrote? I'm only asking because it seems what you say here would mean that since you don't take a pre/post fall view -- there is no idyllic past we have lost -- the world as we know it now is better than the world before. But that doesn't seem to square away with the notion that everything is advertising all the way down in the event that we don't believe in this idyllic past (since I would take it as a negative if everything is advertising all the way down, at least)

but the so-called entertainment just causes more stress — Metaphysician Undercover

Why do you see it as causing stress? (I work in the entertainment industry, by the way.)

If that be the case then I'd say that yes, indeed, the practice of operating on people -- whether it be operating on ourselves or others -- is quite pervasive.

I'd almost go so far as to say that this might be unavoidable to some extent. Educational institutions, for instance, like parenting, don't treat students or children as equals, at least, and the establishment of any hierarchy is prone to objectifying those who are lower in the hierarchy, even with good intentions.

But perhaps it's better to say, rather than unavoidable (thereby reifying what is into what is necessary), to say that it occurs, and I'm uncertain, in some circumstances, what else to do -- even though I'd be interested in trying something else. (being, in principle at least, against hierarchy)

You know that the rise of psychological science allowed the mentally ill to be looked at non-judgmentally and therefore more compassionately. — Mongrel

I think this is only one contemporary attitude towards the mentally ill. But I would express uncertainty, at least, that this attitude -- though contemporary expression is often in the linguistic terms of psychology --was due to experimental psychology (itself something different, in my mind at least, from psychology simpliciter). The reason I say this is because psychology, as a whole, is equally responsible for even worse treatment of the mentally ill in many cases, at least if we use the presence of psychological language as our measure, and just to gauge by the 20th century. Because the mentally ill were deprived of agency they were also subject to rather horrible "cures" administered by experts.

So I would posit that psychological science isn't exactly the cause, but rather just how we express ourselves these days -- and some people take a compassionate approach and realize that the mentally ill are literally unable to perform some of the functions of modern living, and some take the "reformist" approach and subject the mentally ill to cures they couldn't understand anyway. (which is also to say it depends on in whose company you are in, when you admit your mental illness, whether you will be treated well or not)

Sort of similar to animal treatment, actually -- some take pity on animals, and others think of animals as objects, but neither treats animals as an equal. (a bit off the cuff, there -- just an association I made at the end)


Granted, this is only based on my personal experiences. Nothing terribly scientific in it.

Now this I have no trouble believing.

What you do or don't have trouble believing has no bearing on what's the case with my background, statuses, etc., though.

Objectivity is a path to a neutrality. It hasn't been that long since alcoholism was considered to be a character flaw. Identifying it as a disease allows us to drop the stigma and invest in treatment. Are there some who persist in thinking of alcoholics as bad people? Sure. Their view isn't the scientific one, though.

I think the very idea of mental illness is a scientific one.

Are you saying there are objective truths about you regardless of subjective judgement?

Are you saying there are objective truths about you regardless of subjective judgement? — m-theory

What do you think--would I be saying that?

I'll answer this question when you answer mine in a way that I would consider an answer.

Then I suppose you won't answer. Not that you would have anyway. That's been a theme with you all along.

I was just busting your balls a bit.
Relax.

I thought it would be funny to give you a taste of your own medicine.

Yeah, but seriously, I don't know if you've ever straightforwardly answered a question I've asked you.

I think turn about is fair play.

I've directly answered almost every question you asked me.

What do you think--would I be saying that?

Probably not, if only to be an ass. I could quote probably tens of examples for you, though, just from that one thread where we were talking about truth.

The reason I say this is because psychology, as a whole, is equally responsible for even worse treatment of the mentally ill in many cases, at least if we use the presence of psychological language as our measure, and just to gauge by the 20th century. — Moliere

Abnormal psychology, the study of mental illness, is a nice area of muddy water in my polemic, because it slides into medicine and medical research. Medical research also rests the objectification of people, and that gives rise to a complex ethical situation that demands at least, and amongst other things, informed consent. Which is problematic in the case of the mentally ill.

So not wanting to forbid medical research, obviously, we face a dilemma here which can only be resolved with a fudge of guardians or advocates or some such. But this is not the place to explore the complexities medical ethics really.

(Education thread to follow in a bit.)

Why do you see it as causing stress? (I work in the entertainment industry, by the way.) — Terrapin Station

Take sports for example. Once you start watching, you get a team. The question of whether or not your team wins, makes the playoffs, etc., becomes stressful. A win might make you feel good, but a loss will make you feel bad. The anticipation is pure stress. If I get into betting, that just brings the stress to a whole new level.

Different, but similar stress instigators inhere within the major forms of entertainment, music, movies, etc.. The stress produces and elevates the excitement of the show. The show may cause excitement, but excitement is just an elevated level of stress within the members of the audience. So the entertainment is designed to incite the emotions, and this itself is stress, which manifests in the excitement of anticipation. The entertainment is designed to create stress. Anticipation is a high level form of stress, being closely related to anxiety, and that's why sports are such successful forms of entertainment, the difference between winning and losing has what it takes to create anxiety.