“How the Modern World Makes Us Mentally Ill”

[Klingsor]

Especially, wholeheartedly the first point. I have personally witnessed this attitude from two superficially diametrically opposite people: 

1) A new age hippie pothead blessed with better than average looks who believed you can “will” positive or negative things in your life, and that anything bad is your fault. Except ironically, for his own life, everything bad was always someone else’s fault.

2) An evangelical born again Christian totally enamored of “prosperity gospel”, the belief that if good things aren’t happening in your life, it’s because your faith in Jesus isn’t strong enough or you must be sinning. 

What’s the difference in these two pictures? They’re the same picture. 
 

 

[Klingsor]

The ugliest manifestation of this attitude is Lookism. The idea you are ugly or deformed because of something you must’ve caused, whether in a previous life or the here-and-now. Oh you have a small penis? That guarantees you’re going to be the next Adolf Hitler or Donald Trump. You must have eaten a baby in a previous life. 

[Klingsor]

Resolute and I spoke frequently about this. It’s the application of the principle of sufficient reason…the idea that the individual is a sufficient cause for itself and every consequence of its life, essentially making it God.