Author: vjmp

Is Angela Merkel the Yin to the Yang of Adolf Hitler?

hitlermerkel

Angela Merkel and Adolf Hitler are in many ways very similar, and in many ways very different. Both have been absolute disasters for Germany, but in entirely different ways, reflecting the 50-60-year cycle of the oscillations of the Great Pendulum of history.

Hitler was a disaster for Germany because of an excess of masculine energy. His time as leader was marked by ceaseless aggression against all enemies, real or imagined. In a world where only those with the will to commit violence were worthy of life, to rest was to die. His hubris was to believe that through an act of genius it was possible to go to war with France, Britain, the USSR and the USA all at the same time and to win.

If the fundamental masculine error is attacking when one should have stayed peaceful, the fundamental feminine error is a failure to act when one should have acted. In our societies today, this manifests as an inability to draw distinctions. It is not fashionable to say that another group of people is in any way different to ourselves. Drawing any distinction is seen as prejudiced – an act of hatred, which is one step towards building gas chambers for the undesirables.

Merkel’s passivity in the face of what amounts to an invasion of foreign, military age men, will prove to have been a disaster for Germany because of an excess of feminine energy. Ample warning was given as to the likely consequences of throwing open the borders. Merkel was told that some Islamists would use this as an invitation to enter Europe and commit acts of terrorism. She chose not to act on these warnings, perhaps naively trusting that the refugees would be good-natured.

After all, yin energy is against the very concept of borders as this necessitates a division of the Earth, which is of course a yang action.

We are currently in a feminine age as a consequence of the fear and shame created by the masculine excesses of World War II. This has been positive and negative. On the positive side, recent decades have been marked by a heightened degree of compassion towards many of the vulnerable in our own societies. On the negative, we have failed to act in time to protect ourselves against environmental and demographic threats.

This column believes that we are in an age of change. It is possible that, in the same way Hitler’s excesses led to a feminine age of tolerance and compassion, Merkel’s excesses may lead to a masculine age of confrontation and division.

Our Mental Health System is a Disgrace Because We Want it to be Cheap

canterburyhospital

The title of this article is the truth, whether it’s admitted or not. The mental health system of New Zealand is the way it is as it’s a cheap short-term solution that we voted for because, as a people, we love cheap short-term solutions.

There’s simply no way around the basic equation. People don’t work for free. If you don’t want to pay people to take care of the mentally ill, then cheaper ways have to be found. Currently our system works like this: if you report with a problem, you’re given sedatives until you stop complaining. Everything else, like spending time with an actual person who can help you solve your problems, is off the table because it’s too expensive.

The average national per capita funding for mental health services in New Zealand is $243 per year. This amounts to probably one hour with a psychiatrist (and associated clerical duties), per New Zealander, per year. Because of this tight funding, mental health care has to be denied to as many people as possible unless absolutely necessary.

I was once told that I was capable of taking 30mg of Olanzapine per night (a dosage which caused me to sleep for 12 hours a day), of working full-time and of completing a Ph.D., all at the same time. The sort of clown that can tell a mental health patient something this stupid is the sort of person that gets hired by a system trying to do everything on the cheap, because if you pay poor wages you get the dregs of the labour market.

Other ways of saving money include a policy of treating everyone who needs an invalid’s benefit as if they were malingering, lying, thieving scum first, and then maybe later as a fellow human being in need of help. Presumably the logic is that by treating everyone who comes to the mental health services as a probable benefit fraudster, many people with marginal cases are discouraged from seeking further help, which saves money.

If the mental health services are cut far enough, savings will be achieved when the most desperate kill themselves. Don’t think for a moment that this calculation is too cold-blooded for the Government – it isn’t. Every 25-year old mentally ill beneficiary that kills themselves saves the country about half a million in benefits over the course of their lives.

Consider that a study sponsored by the Academy of Finland found that “Well-developed community mental-health services are associated with lower suicide rates than are services oriented towards inpatient treatment provision” – in other words, paying to do mental health properly, rather than just putting an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, results in fewer people killing themselves.

This article from February describes how mental health services are being cut in Canterbury due to a lack of funding. If one takes into account that suicide is the second most common way for young people to die in New Zealand, it becomes apparent that recent efforts to save money by cutting mental health funding results directly in deaths by suicide.

Maybe New Zealand, as a nation, does not wish for anything else, as New Zealanders consistently vote for a political party that has a policy of underfunding mental health services.

Our mental health system may be a disgrace, but it’s one that we want to be a disgrace because it’s cheaper that way.

Are Establishment Forces About to Collapse Into One Party?

donald-trump-bernie-sanders-debate

In the world of the cyberpunk novel The Verity Key, politics has sunk to such a degenerate level that no-one has any confidence in politicians, no matter who they are or what they promise. In response to this, there is no longer any room for shame in politics. The left and the right have collapsed into the Establishment Party, which doesn’t even pretend to stand for anything other than the naked self-interest of the powerful.

Francis Fukuyama wrote about a ‘Great Pendulum’ that swung back and forth throughout history every half century or so and whose oscillations heralded new ages and epochs. A Taoist might understand this as the dynamic between masculine and feminine, in which the excesses of one kind of energy lead naturally to the rise of the other.

The Great Pendulum may have swung the furthest to the right in the 1940s and 1950s, which were characterised by nationalist wars and widespread acceptance of eugenics and the physical elimination of those considered unworthy of life. The revolution against this way of thinking occurred in 1968, and was marked by student protests, LSD and Woodstock, culminating in the ‘Summer of Love’.

If the pendulum has swung left since then, and if this swinging left has been characterised by gay marriage, liberal immigration laws for people from impoverished countries, and the obesity epidemic, then perhaps it has been half a century since 1968 and the pendulum is about to swing back. The mass sexual assaults and terrorism so far in Europe this year might see 2016 remembered as the ‘Summer of Hate’.

If it does, we may see a revaluation of values that indicates the pendulum will swing to the masculine side once again, as it last did in the Victorian Age that marked the height of the British Empire, one of the most audacious attempts to impose order upon chaos ever devised.

Donald Trump may be a harbinger of this revolution. Then again, the real opposition for Trump may come from within his own party, in the form of the Establishment favourite Ted Cruz. Certainly Donald Trump destroyed his opponents in the Republican primaries by appearing as more of an alpha male, which might suggest a shift away from the consensus politics of the last 50 or so years.

Bernie Sanders might not represent a swing to the right, but his rise in influence could nonetheless reflect a switch to a more rational way of trying to improve the lives of the citizenry, as opposed to the trend-based, emotion-driven, suffocating maternalism represented by Hillary Clinton.

Seen in this way, Clinton and Cruz have more in common with each other than either does with their opponent in their party primary. This might turn out to be the embryo of what will one day become the Establishment Party.

In Europe, a different process might lead to a similar result. Already in some European countries, France and Sweden the foremost, there is an open conspiracy to deny all media time to the growing far-right parties. This conspiracy might turn out to be the last stand of the regressive left as the momentum of the great pendulum proves unstoppable.

If the far-right parties continue to grow, all other parties might come together in some countries to resist them. These new parties will be grand coalitions of conservatives, social democrats and perhaps even Greens, and will be Establishment Parties in all but name.