I wonder if it is possible to apply the diagnostic models we usually utilise with respect to individual patients, to entire communities, and societies. Of course, pathophysiologically, we recognise epidemics, and pandemics, typically bacterial, like the plague, or viral, like flu or covid. Then we may talk more loosely about an epidemic of obesity, often conjoined with hypertension, hyperlipidaemia, and diabetes, a suite of disabilities that has previously been dubbed Syndrome X, long before Mr Musk gave his social media platform the same name.
Could there also be an epidemic of psychiatric illness? I read somewhere the other day (fake news for all I know) that 15% of the adult population of the UK is on antidepressant medication. Mid-January, it is quite credible that we are all a little low. Is low mood contagious? And perhaps, other mental states? Anger, desperation, dysphoria, even psychosis?
Reading the letters page of the Herald makes me think so. This is how I start my day, with a cup of coffee. Maybe I had rather go out for a walk. Yet I read all the letters. There are, for example, nine letters in today’s Herald. I occasionally write in, but not today. The total word count is usually about 2,500, so people can be quite expansive in what they say. By and large, the letters are well written. But the prevailing mood is not good. Let’s take an inventory:
- Both the US and the UK are in a state of decline, mired in corruption.
- Never mind Musk. The UK itself is mired in corruption (again). Brexit a disaster.
- Labour has hoodwinked us. “Savings” affect Society’s most vulnerable.
- An expression of fear at the prospect of Scottish Independence associated with bankruptcy, the slump of world markets, and the coming of war.
- Hypocrisy of the UK paying lip-service to a “two state solution” in the Middle East, while effectively supporting Israel in obliterating Palestine.
- The lack of public conveniences an absolute disgrace.
- Scottish education has collapsed, replacing the love of knowledge with the pursuit of a means to lucrative employment. Lamentable.
- Transient Visitor Levy a bad idea. Tourism industry already faced with substantial rise in staff costs.
- (By way of light relief) A Lampoon of Burns’ Address to a Haggis.
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face apart, it doesn’t make for light reading. The prevailing mood is one of anger. It’s bad enough on the printed page. Heaven knows how much worse it is on social media. But I never look. And there is desperation, a sense that the common man, and woman, are helpless in the face of overwhelming external forces, market forces, the machinations of the rich and powerful. Constructive ideas are few and far between. The state of the Health Service, for example, may be bemoaned, but creative solutions are not forthcoming. Elsewhere in the paper, I see that nurses are being trained for a specific role working in corridors. This is universally recognised as being completely unacceptable. Yes, but what is to be done? Hand-wringing, apparently. The collective mental state we all share arises from a sense that the individual is impotent. And oddly enough, this mental state seems to affect even people who appear to exercise a degree of clout. My impression of the Labour Government is that they have come to realise that the leverage they have available to affect the “change” they trumpeted before the election, is extremely limited. We seem to be in the grip of sinister external forces. It’s an antique view. Our fate is in the lap of the gods.
Internationally, the situation is even grimmer. The Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan etc. A week today, Mr Trump commences his second term in the White House. He has his baleful eye on Canada, Panama, and Greenland. He wants to open up the north-west passage to trade. Once the Greenland ice cap has melted, he can mine for nickel and cobalt. Drill, baby, drill. Meanwhile, Pacific Palisades is reduced to ashes. The Grand Old Party doesn’t see a connection there. LA is apparently burning because the fire hydrants were poorly resourced and maintained.
With respect to “the world stage”, there is another highly relevant report in today’s Herald. The Royal Mint is issuing a £2 coin to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the death of George Orwell. The coin depicts the image of an eye, which on closer inspection is a camera lens. This is encircled by the quote, “Big Brother is watching you”. There is another inscription round the coin’s edge that is surely an animadversion on the current Zeitgeist: “There was truth and there was untruth”.
It is salutary to think that, but for the publication of Animal Farm and 1984 at the end of Orwell’s short life, he would have been remembered as a minor novelist, essayist, and political pamphleteer. Yet now, 1984 still grows more prescient by the day. I recall the depiction of three huge power blocs across the world – Air Strip 1, Eurasia, and East Asia. Or perhaps, US/UK, the EU, and China?
The darkness in 1984 is unrelenting. We should take it as a warning, but not succumb to it. “If there is hope,” wrote Winston Smith in his diary, “it lies with the proles.” And although Winston became rather disillusioned by the proles, I think he was right. Hope lies within the hearts of ordinary, individual men and women, trying to work together in concert, and in harmony. So next time I write into the Herald, I hope to have something positive, and constructive, to say.
jamescalumcampbell 