April 23, 2013
The United States is a deeply
unhappy place. We are a nation that is absolutely consumed by fear,
stress, anger and depression. It isn’t just our economy that is falling
apart – the very fabric of society is starting to come apart at the seams and it
is because of what is happening to us on the inside. The facts and
statistics that I am going to share with you in this article are quite
startling. They are clear evidence that America is a nation that is an
advanced state of decline. We are overwhelmed by fear, stress and
anxiety, and much of the time the ways that we choose to deal with those
emotions lead to some very self-destructive behaviors. Americans have
experienced a standard of living far beyond the wildest dreams of most
societies throughout human history, and yet we are an absolutely miserable
people. Why is this? Why is America #1 in so many negative
categories? Why are we constantly looking for ways to escape the pain of
our own lives? Why are our families falling apart? There is vast
material wealth all around us. So why can’t we be happy?
Just look around you. Are most
of the people around you teeming with happiness and joy? Sadly, the truth
is that most Americans are terribly stressed out. Yeah, many of them may
be able to manage to come up with a smile when they greet you, but most of the
time they are consumed by internal struggles that are eating away at them like
cancer.
So why is this happening? Is
modern life structured in a way that is fundamentally unhealthy?
Below I have posted a short excerpt
from a message that one of Charles Hugh Smith’s readers named Kenneth
Daigle recently sent to him.
I think that it does a good job of describing the incredible stress that many
people contend with on a daily basis…
Think about how our culture is now
structured for the average adult: STRESS,everywhere
you look–commuting in horrible traffic, as you want to scream in
frustration–money stress, to pay rent/house note, tuition, utilities, gas,
insurances, vacations, cable bill, rising food costs, and on and on and
on–stress from family problems, divorce, delinquency, drugs, crime, infidelity,
keeping up with the Jones, etc.
People have too high an expectation
of what they should have out of life, and get overly stressed over it all. How
does all of this manifest itself? A prescription drug culture (Zoloft, Xanax,
etc.) that tricks people into thinking a pill will knock back the stress, when
these drugs, in my opinion, only make things worse.
I am hearing more and more that
people just want to drop out from it all, as they are reaching a breaking
point, and have decided less income and dependency on entitlements will reduce
their stress, and is not so humiliating, so giving up working becomes more
acceptable, to KEEP ONE’S SANITY.
I know I am correct, from the
feedback I hear every day, and the financial media does not see this like I
hear it every day. People don’t want to admit that they are too weak to deal
with stress, so the financial pundits are not aware of this critical factor
because they don’t talk to Joe Sixpack.
Most Americans live lives of “quiet
desperation” that are punctuated by moments of great crisis. We spend our
prime years working for others (making them rich) in order to pay off
debts that we have foolishly accumulated (thus making the banks even wealthier). When
most Americans reach the end of their lives, they look back and wonder what
they actually accomplished.
James Altucher published an
incredible article the other day entitled “Why Do People Hate Their Jobs?“ It did a great job of describing what life is like
for the modern worker in America. The following are a few of the reasons
that he says people tend to hate their jobs…
-Jobs are modern-day slavery. We are
paid just enough to live and not more. You are punished if you ask for more.
*****
-We are often verbally abused on the
job and we take it because we think it’s normal that people would yell at us.
*****
-The government gets up to 50% of
your paycheck and then 10-20% of that goes to kill people on other parts of the
planet, including our own children.
*****
-From 7am to 7pm you are either A)
going to work, B) at work, or C) coming back from work. Hence, the times when
you can be most creative are garbage-compacted into your cubicle.
*****
-When you are paranoid at a job, you
are probably correct. THEY are, in fact, talking about you and backstabbing you
right now.
*****
-You realize that all the dollars
you spent on degrees to get you a job that will make you happy were completely
wasted. You were scammed but you can’t let the next generation know how stupid
you were so now you become part of perpetuating the scam.
*****
-Your spouse is tired of hearing
about your job after six months. And you couldn’t care less about hers. Ten
years later you wake up next to a total stranger. 40 years later you die next
to one.
*****
-When you were a kid you liked to
draw, and read, and run, and laugh, and play, and imagine a magical world.
You’re never going to do any of that again.
*****
-Over time everyone is getting fired
and being replaced by younger, cheaper, more temporary, more robotic, versions
of you. You see this but are afraid to do anything about it.
And of course when we get home from
work there is even more stress. In America today, we are witnessing a
breakdown of the family unlike anything we have ever seen before. The
United States leads the world in divorce and in single person households.
We are having an increasingly difficult time relating to one another, and many
of us drown our sorrows in our addictions. We are addicted to pills, to
alcohol, to food, to entertainment, to sex, to gambling, to shopping and to
anything else that will make us feel good and forget about our problems for a
while.
The following is a collection of
facts and statistics that prove that America is being absolutely consumed by
fear, stress, anger and depression…
-Suicide has now actually surpassed
car accidents as the number one cause of “injury death” in the United States.
-As I mentioned in another article, Americans will spend more than 280 billion dollars on prescription drugs during 2013.
-The percentage of women taking
antidepressants in the U.S. is higher than
in any other country in the world.
-In 2010, the average teen in the
U.S. was taking 1.2 central nervous system drugs. Those are the kinds of drugs which treat conditions
such as ADHD and depression.
-Children in the United States
are three times more likely to
be prescribed antidepressants as children in Europe are.
-According to a recent article by David Kupelian,
“one-third of the nation’s employees suffer chronic debilitating stress, and
more than half of all ‘millennials’ (18 to 33 year olds) experience a level of stress
that keeps them awake at night, including
large numbers diagnosed with depression or anxiety disorder.”
-Tens of millions of Americans use
alcohol and drugs to numb the pain that they are experiencing. In the
United States today, there are about 28 million Americans with
a drinking problem and about22 million Americans use
illegal drugs.
-There are also tens of millions of
Americans that try to deal with anxiety and stress by eating. Of all the
major industrialized nations, America is the most obese. Mexico is #2.
-Back in 1962, only 13 percent of
all Americans were obese. Today, approximately 36
percent of all Americans are obese.
-Many people try to escape from the
pain of reality by getting lost in entertainment. Incredibly, the United
States is tied with the UK for the highest average number of hours spent watching television each week.
-According to the Pew Research
Center, only 51
percent of all American adults are
currently married. Back in 1960, 72
percent of all adults in the United
States were married.
-At this point, approximately one out of every three children in America lives in a home without a father.
-For women under the age of 30
living in the United States today,more
than half of all babies are being born out of wedlock.
-In the United States today, it is
estimated that one out of every four girls
is sexually abused before they become adults.
-If you can believe it, there
are 20
million new STD infections in the
United States every single year.
-It is estimated that about one out of every six Americansbetween the ages of 14 and 49 have genital herpes.
-America has the highest incarceration rate and the largest total prison population in the entire world by a very wide margin.
Fear is one of the primary things
that motivates the American people, and that is a very powerful weapon that can
be used against us.
As I wrote about yesterday, those that commit acts of terror want to get attention and
they want to create fear.
And that is exactly what the Boston
Marathon bombing accomplished. It captured the attention of the nation
for days on end, and it absolutely paralyzed the entire Boston area with fear.
When we allow ourselves to be
terrorized, we actually encourage more terror attacks. When we give
terrorists what they want, it just encourages more psychos to commit acts of
terror. If you don’t believe me, just check out the following links that
I found posted on The Drudge Report on Monday…
The appropriate response to a terror
attack is to refuse to be terrorized. Yes, we should also work to expose
and punish the individuals, organizations and governments that are behind
terror. But we should also not let terror change how we live our lives,
and we should definitely not allow terror to be used as an excuse to rip our liberties and freedoms away.
Sadly, as Ron Paul has detailed, some of our politicians are already calling
for “tighter security” in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing…
Sadly, I expect this week’s tragic
attacks in Boston to be used to justify new restrictions on liberty. Within 48
hours of the attack in Boston, at least one Congressman was calling for
increased use of surveillance cameras to expand the government’s ability to
monitor our actions, while another Senator called for a federal law mandating
background checks before Americans can buy “explosive powder.”
I would not be surprised if the
Transportation Security Administration uses this tragedy to claim new authority
to “screen” Americans before they can attend sporting or other public events.
The Boston attack may also be used as another justification for creating a
National ID Card tied to a federal database with “biometric” information. The
only thing that will stop them is if the American people rediscover the wisdom
of Benjamin Franklin that you cannot achieve security by allowing government to
take their liberties.
But no matter how much liberty and
freedom we give up, we will never be 100% safe. Bad people are always
going to do bad things, and unfortunately we are probably going to see some
pretty nightmarish things in the years ahead as the world becomes even more
unstable.
If we allow the bad guys to get us
so frightened that we throw out the U.S. Constitution and abandon our liberties
and our freedoms, then we are the ones who lose.
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Yes, the years ahead are going to be
tough. The economic collapse is going to accelerate greatly, there will
be tremendous natural disasters, there will be war in the Middle East and there
will be other problems that we cannot even conceive of right now. At the
same time, the American people will continue to become even angrier and even
more frustrated. According to a recent Pew Research survey,
the percentage of Americans with a favorable view of the federal government is
now at an all-time low. As the economy crumbles, there will likely be
great civil unrest as people demand solutions. Unfortunately, our
problems took decades to develop and they will not be solved overnight even if
we did have good people in office.
So why am I saying all of this?
And why am I constantly warning
about the coming economic collapse?
Is it because I want to create fear?
No, just the opposite of that.
I am a watchman on the wall.
In ancient times, a watchman would
warn the people when the enemy was approaching.
When you receive the warning, there
are a few different ways that you can respond to it…
#1 You can become consumed with fear
and run away from the enemy. Unfortunately, cowards never get the victory
in the end.
#2 You can dismiss the warning and
pretend that the enemy is not approaching. But then when the enemy comes
you will be completely unprepared.
#3 You can do everything possible to
get prepared to face the enemy that is coming with strength and courage.
And that is how I would encourage
all of you to approach the coming economic collapse and the other great
problems that we will soon be experiencing as a nation.
Do not be afraid.
Instead, be strong and courageous
and prepare well for the storms that are coming.
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