Undiagnosed Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is one of the most devastating mental conditions in existence. The term means “split mind” and refers to a condition in which the patient – or a large part of the patient – appears to be working against themselves. It’s a terrifying condition for both sufferers and their friends and family. This essay argues there’s a lot more of it in existence than most people realise.

In the same way that physical trauma from a knife or axe can cause a person’s body to split, psychological trauma from abuse or neglect can cause a person’s mind to split. The difference is that physical trauma is well understood, whereas psychological trauma is not.

For one thing, psychological trauma is often hidden. If a person cuts their arm open, it’s obvious to everyone that they’re injured. But if a person’s mind splits, they can often convincingly pretend to be well. Even so, the trauma exists, and if it is not treated it can manifest as all kinds of mental illness. Undiagnosed schizophrenia – schizophrenia that has not yet come to the attention of the mental health services – is one of the most common of these.

This condition is on the rise today because society is naturally traumatising. It’s naturally traumatising to work a full-time job for minimum wage, just to see most of it disappear in taxes and rents, or to live in a media environment where it’s not okay to be white, and, if you say that it is, you get a visit from the cops, or to live in a culture where spirituality is reduced to either worshipping an idol of a dead rabbi or nothing. Thus, there are a lot of people out there who are damaged.

Because society is so traumatising, and because there are so many damaged people in it, schizophrenia has come to appear more and more normal. In a vicious cycle, this leads to it getting diagnosed less. So there are a lot of people out there with split minds who are completely unaware that their minds are so split. Many of them have extremely difficult lives emotionally and socially, but are never able to figure out why.

These wretched masses are the undiagnosed schizophrenics.

The first sign of undiagnosed schizophrenia in another person is extreme moodiness. If a slight irritation causes so much rage that it feels like another personality has been brought out, chances are a split mind underlies them both. Schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder (dissociative identity disorder, or DID) are different conditions, and borderline personality disorder is different still, but they all overlap to some degree. If excessive moodiness is not part of DID or borderline personality disorder, it could be undiagnosed schizophrenia.

A deeply traumatised person will often react strongly to reminders of the trauma, even if those reminders are only subconsciously perceived. Thus, being asked to do something, even politely, can provoke a powerful anti-social reaction because it reminds the hearer of being ordered around by their parents. Such reactions are typical of undiagnosed schizophrenia.

Perhaps the most telling sign is self-contradiction. If a person claims to hold a certain moral value one moment and then deny it the next, something isn’t stitched together right in their mental fabric. This is also true if they say one thing and do another. This is especially true if a person doesn’t keep their promises, which often happens because they feel that one part of the mind made the promise and another part is being asked to keep it.

Another sign is substance abuse to deal with the suffering. As mentioned above, schizophrenia is a deeply unpleasant condition to live with. It’s common for people with the condition to use drugs in an effort to alter their emotions into something more tolerable. If someone’s natural state is so unpleasant that they need substances to cope, it’s very possible they’re an undiagnosed schizophrenia case.

The popular narrative is that people get “addicted” to drugs on account of that the drugs are inherently pleasurable. But this narrative misses the reality that some people are much more susceptible to habitual drug use, because their natural state is unhappiness. For the people who have schizophrenia, undiagnosed or otherwise, it costs enormous emotional and mental energy trying to figure out what’s going on. Without release in the form of substances, many of these people would crack.

Perhaps the most salient sign of undiagnosed schizophrenia is poor decision making. If a person consistently makes truly bad decisions, as if sabotaging themselves, there’s a very high chance they’re an undiagnosed schizophrenia case with one part of their mind working against the other. This goes double with the point above about substance abuse: if they keep sabotaging themselves with hard drugs, for no obvious reason, undiagnosed schizophrenia is very possible.

Taken together, these four signs often reveal an underlying pseudo-schizophrenic condition.

Undiagnosed schizophrenia is a vastly underestimated problem in our society. Only by taking trauma and mental health seriously can we hope to overcome it.

For more of VJM’s ideas, see his work on other platforms!
For even more of VJM’s ideas, buy one of his books!

If you enjoyed reading this piece, buy a compilation of our best pieces from previous years!

Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2023
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2022
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2021
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2020
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017

If you would like to support our work in other ways, make a donation to our Paypal! Even better, buy any one of our books!

Enclownification

The world is now familiar with the term “enshittification”. Coined by science fiction writer Cory Doctorow, it accurately describes today’s tendency towards lower quality and worse service in every facet of modern life. There’s another term we need to know to understand today’s Clown World: enclownification. This essay explains.

Enshittification is predictable: the quality of everything gets lower over time. Manufacturers of decent products start to take shortcuts in production, or substitute lower-grade materials for higher-grade ones, or they outsource customer service to a country that can’t speak English properly. The user experience is frustrating and humiliating.

Enclownification is not predictable. The quality might stay the same, but be harder to access, or be only available at certain times, or you might just get so confused by the craziness of it all that you don’t know what’s what anymore.

Enclownification is when things become absurd. Not necessarily bad, just absurd. The difference is that, with enshittification, you feel like you stepped in dogshit. With enclownification, you feel like the world is laughing at you.

A recent example: I was trying to install a printer. In attempting to make a WiFi connection, it turned out that my printer operates on one frequency GHz, and my computer another, and they were not compatible. Who knows why they were manufactured this way? Then I tried plugging in the USB cable, which allowed me to print but, for some unfathomable reason, not scan. Scanning required that I register an account with the scanning software, which was then able to detect the printer but not connect to it over USB. So ultimately I could only half use the printer.

I could imagine the customer relations department of the printer manufacturer getting inundated with complaints about this lunacy – and them having a good laugh about it rather than caring. That’s enclownification.

People frequently encounter enclownification through dealing with the Government. Anyone who has had the experience of waiting on the phone and then being randomly disconnected knows this. Likewise anyone who has called Department A, to be forwarded to Department B, to be forwarded to Department C, to be forwarded back to Department A.

The school system is perhaps more ruthlessly enclownified than any other aspect of today’s world. HONK HONK can be heard every time another Holocaust Awareness class begins. Unfortunately, the rulers of the modern West understand that manufacturing consent for their rule depends on brainwashing young people into accepting it. The best time to do this is while they’re too mentally vulnerable and soft to resist. Hence, young people are taught at school that their ruling class is the wisest, smartest and best of all ruling classes, their current standard of living the highest and their freedoms the broadest of any culture in history.

Race relations in general have been enclownified by the Brown Communist narrative that Western societies are structurally racist, and therefore that even the most wretched, broken and impoverished white person is an oppressor and riding high on inherited privilege. This has led working-class whites and working-class blacks and browns, who would otherwise have had class in common, to resent each other.

The narrative that white men are privileged, and therefore that disprivileging young white men is racial justice, is pure Clown World. Yet it endures. So many young white men have been disadvantaged by diversity, inclusion and equity practices that some call it a lost generation. The enclownification of the workplace can be seen in the difficulty that young white men have finding work today, no matter how high their education or experience levels.

Class relations have been enclownified by the above phenomena plus the severe inaffordability of housing in the modern West. This has led to a situation where anyone in line to inherit housing is doing extremely well, but anyone who isn’t is looking at a lifetime of poverty: the feudal era in all but name. Many a person will have sat down, looked at their mortgage numbers, realised that they won’t pay off their house until after they’re dead, and laughed about it, because otherwise they would have cried.

The most totally and utterly enclownified aspect of modern life, however, is spirituality. Russell Brand is the face of this phenomenon. Brand’s shamelessly performative evangelism – which began in the wake of a series of sex crime accusations – would normally convince no-one. But because widespread enclownification has affected people’s judgment, he is able to convince millions that he’s sincere.

The spiritual enclownification of today is summarised in the Clown World Fork. This concept describes how people are directed to choose between soulless, meaningless, atheistic materialism on the one hand or delusional, hypocritical, junkie-dream Christianity on the other, and strongly discouraged from exploring genuine spirituality. Anyone who does explore genuine spirituality is pathologised as a schizophrenic by the mainstream medical system (to the sound of honking).

The solution to enclownification is for things to start making sense again. Confucius spoke of beginning the process of restoring society with a “rectification of names“, a widespread movement to use language as accurately as possible. This would minimise disorientation and confusion, leading to a more harmonious society.

For more of VJM’s ideas, see his work on other platforms!
For even more of VJM’s ideas, buy one of his books!

If you enjoyed reading this piece, buy a compilation of our best pieces from previous years!

If you would like to support our work in other ways, make a donation to our Paypal! Even better, buy any one of our books!

21st Century Signs Of A Slave Mindset

Many people believe that slavery ended in the 1860s in America, in the 1820s in the British Empire, and it hasn’t existed since then. In reality, slavery just changed forms. It became more subtle.

In truth, our rulers don’t need to put chains on our bodies, because they already have chains on our minds. In the 21st Century, people are made into slaves not through beatings but through relentless, all-pervasive media propaganda, psychological brutalisation in schools, unforgiving work schedules and an irrational, capricious government. This mental beatdown creates slave mentality, of which various signs are evident.

The first and most obvious sign that a person is spiritually a slave is being against freedom. If they don’t understand what motivated the American Revolutionaries, they are very likely to possess powerful slave sentiments. Note that this doesn’t mean free people necessarily support degeneracy: the degenerate is as much a slave to their biological impulses as anyone is a slave to anything.

Freedom as a philosophical concept is rejected by all spiritual slaves. They simply don’t understand the pleasure that comes from exercising free will. Ever the yin element, they prefer to be directed.

A slave mentality is often present in cases where a person doesn’t understand the important freedom issues of the day. Those who vote against cannabis freedom in the various referendums want the government to tell them what they’re allowed or not allowed to do, which is pure slave mentality. Someone without a slave mindset will naturally try to maximise their agency. Thus they support freedom as a general principle.

A second sign of a slave mindset is a tendency to lick upwards and kick downwards. The tendency to fawn towards one’s social superiors and abuse one’s social inferiors is extreme in many Third World cultures, and Western travellers immediately notice.

The tendency exists in Western countries too (but to a lesser extent) as it reflects an aspect of human nature: when enough fear is put into a person they become vicious. This viciousness is the reason for the abuse of the weak. In contrast to the truly belligerent, however, those with slave mindset do not challenge the strong.

A third sign is respecting violence more than intelligence. In a normal, healthy society, people think further than their immediate environment. Those who are the best at that naturally gain esteem and rise in the social hierarchy, where they are given power to make some decisions on behalf of the collective. This is natural because the survival of the tribe is best served by giving the most power to those who have the deepest understanding of reality.

In slave morality, normal morality is inverted. Long-term thinkers are resented, and short-term, impulsive thinkers are prized. Anyone who thinks long-term is assumed to be weak, nerdish, sickly of mind. Thoughtfulness is hesitance is weakness. Being “tough” is more important than being wise or intelligent. Thus, the most thuggish and aggressive are at the top. The slave doesn’t see such people as thuggish, of course, but rather cool, fun, spontaneous, powerful etc.

A fourth sign is perhaps the most subtle, but also the most characteristic: resentment. As Nietzsche understood, slaves feel immense resentment at the strength and beauty of free people. A person deep into a slave mindset will feel resentful at life itself. If a person resents the role that Fate seems to have placed them in, and makes life harder for others thereby, they are a certainty to possess a slave mindset.

A perpetual bad mood is a clear sign that a person knows they’re a slave and can’t get over it. If a person is constantly surly, disagreeable, sullen – chances are very high you’re dealing with a slave mindset.

A fifth, and probably the most telling sign, is that a person has given up. There is a great word in Swedish called ‘uppgivenhet’, which means ‘resignation’ in English, but which literally means ‘given-upness’. A person’s level of slave mentality correlates highly with their level of uppgivenhet.

Much like the dog that has been shocked so many times that it lacks the will to take an obvious escape offered to it, a person who has given up will do nothing to better their situation even when presented with opportunity. Those who, when given freedom, spend it watching television, mindlessly scrolling, gossiping or boozing are slaves by any other name.

It’s best to avoid people who demonstrate these five signs of a slave mindset. They won’t lead you into physical bondage but even worse: psychological enslavement.

For more of VJM’s ideas, see his work on other platforms!
For even more of VJM’s ideas, buy one of his books!

If you enjoyed reading this piece, buy a compilation of our best pieces from previous years!

If you would like to support our work in other ways, make a donation to our Paypal! Even better, buy any one of our books!

Trickle-Up Economics

Since the 1980s, the solution to all questions of distributive justice has been “trickle-down economics”. The logic is that if we give all the money to the rich, they will spend it, and in doing so the money will trickle-down to the poor.

In actuality, the rich hoard the money, and use it as leverage to further impoverish and enslave the poor. They mostly do this by buying housing that the working class would otherwise have bought, and then charging rent to people who would otherwise have owned property freehold. The term ‘trickle-down economics’ has thereby taken on bad connotations for working-class Western people. It invokes visions of being pissed on.

After almost half a century of trickle-down economics, housing has never been more unaffordable. The average house in New Zealand costs ten times the average household income, and Australia, Britain and Canada are almost as bad. Wealth has become so generationally entrenched that many people now feel they’re living under a feudal-style system – except neo-feudalism has none of the community warmth and connection, nor any protection from a liege. In neofeudalism your village is the planet and your lord is the invisible government.

This outcome is inevitable. The rich already have enough money to meet their own needs. If they get more money, then, there’s nothing to spend it on except assets. These assets will usually draw rent in some form, so the rich end up with even more excess money, which buys more assets, capturing even more of the economy etc. The poor see more and more of their money going on rents; eventually they have to go into debt to meet rent obligations. At that point many of them reason that they have nothing to lose through political revolution.

So far, the existing arrangement in the West has not broken out into violence against the ruling class. This is possibly because Huxley was correct when he predicted the ruling class would have us too drugged up and confused to resist them. It’s possibly because the will to violence is still building. I believe that resentment has built to such a point that mass violence is only avoidable if drastic measures are taken soon. This is a similar situation to the one headed off by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

What I am proposing is a complete and total inversion of trickle-down economics: a universal basic income.

Because trickle-down economics has failed so totally, the reasoning is that the opposite of it is most likely to succeed.

The logic of trickle-up economics is that poor people have to spend everything they get in order to survive. I’ve been poor – you aren’t hoarding any money, because you needed to spend it already yesterday. Any windfall you might have is already earmarked for something else. That money gets spent on goods and services, which are usually sold by companies, which redistribute profits to shareholders. Much as with rent, the poor can’t avoid spending money on goods and services. Thus an upwards flow of money is unavoidable.

Therefore, if money was given to the people at the bottom of society – the poorest – it would “trickle up” to the wealthy again. The assets (not labour) of the wealthy would then be taxed to pay for the next round of universal basic income. The greedy among the wealthy will object to this, with the usual whinging about laziness, but the intelligent among them, being fully aware of the risk of civil war, will understand that only trickle-up economics is sustainable in the long term.

A universal basic income would have the practical advantage of relieving a great deal of personal economic stress. In the past there was much less such stress; a part-time job was often enough to make rent in a major city. Today the average worker works long hours with little left over after rent. With a universal basic income it would be possible to move to areas of cheaper housing and find part-time work, alleviating much of the demand pressure on housing in urban areas.

Other advantages are economic stability and efficiency. Businesses would be able to count on a set level of spending per unit of time from the communities they service. They could then deploy their goods and services to match.

Perhaps the best advantage of this system is that it would dampen the endless whining about who deserves what. The idea that someone “deserves” to eat and someone else doesn’t is antiquated, a remnant of the days when an excess love of leisure threatened the viability of communities. It’s tiresome to hear wealthy Boomers argue they have earned endless free money when young people are stressed to the limit just making ends meet. Let’s simply declare that everyone deserves enough money to meet their basic needs.

Our current system is set up to make the worker dependent on the employer. This is the logic of trickle-down economics, which continues because people continue to accept it. It’s time to stop accepting it, and demand something suited for the 21st Century: trickle-up economics!

For more of VJM’s ideas, see his work on other platforms!
For even more of VJM’s ideas, buy one of his books!

If you enjoyed reading this piece, buy a compilation of our best pieces from previous years!

If you would like to support our work in other ways, make a donation to our Paypal! Even better, buy any one of our books!