The Lonely Road to Sanity
The psychology behind why living right in a toxic society is so hard
I’ve had a thought banging around in my head for a long time that goes like this: Radicals are right about everything except being radical.
What I mean by that is that the people most strongly critiquing our social, political and economic systems are correct in their critiques. We are living far beyond the carrying capacity of the biosphere, and we don’t need to. We could dramatically reduce our consumption of natural resources without a reduction in quality of life. Our economy is deeply unjust and still has yet to account for its roots in slavery, genocide and land theft. Our political systems are grossly undemocratic, and its lack of democracy makes its decisions unjust and unhelpful. Incarceration, especially racist mass incarceration, is counterproductive to creating public safety, and policing is an obscene bastardization of the protection and service our communities really need.
This, I hope you know, is all true.
But the thing is… being a radical feels like shit. The pain, the outrage and the powerlessness are a chronic illness. The utter alienation from the rest of your society while it barrels towards its suicide is enough to drive anyone insane.
