a new part of the problem

It is snowing again.  The rest of today's appointments are cancelled, and all of tomorrows are crossed off already.  I have not been kept away from work for two days in a row since 1978.  This will be a winter to remember.  Until next year.  It seems pretty clear that theses "hundred year storms" now happen almost every year.

Still there are those who will say that industrial production and energy sources have nothing to do with it. I guess it depends upon who is writing your pay-check.

But before the snow began I had the unenviable task of meeting with one of my patients.  It was difficult because this fellow has endured some of the troubles of Job.  He had been married and had two children with a charming woman, but much of the time she was out-of control.  She often drank heavily, and when she did she acted out in many other ways, sometimes leaving the family, and vanishing for a week at a time.  Sometimes her diappearances would end with a call from a hospital.  He would take her home, and nothing would be explained.  Sometimes some guy would call, just to see if she was OK.

About eight years ago, her luck ran out, and she died in an emergency room of a brain hemorrhage.  This left my patient with two children, the oldest was eight.

But I began treatment with this man in October of this year, two months after the oldest boy committed suicide. 

It is never easy to deal with parents who lose a child.  That is not the natural order of things. At best it leaves gaping hole that can only be thinly sealed over, at worst it can be fatal to the parents.

Awful as it is when something tragic happens by accident or illness it is worse when a child does it to himself. I have had to deal with this twice before in my long career.  One was somewhat easy to understand as the boy had been psychotic several times, and he had often done bizarre things which were unexplainable outside of his head.  The other was completely incomprehensible, as the young person seemed popular, happy, and reasonable.  Dealing with the grieving parents; all of whom were single parents at the time, can be pretty grueling, as there is nothing  anyone can really do to bring about a desired result.  It is already to late for that.

In this case the man had realized that his son was struggling. He knew that the boy had always felt like an outsider; he had actually mentioned it.  He had brought him to a therapist a couple of years ago, but the boy didn't really open up.  The father was pretty sure that his son had struggled with his sexuality, but he couldn't get him to talk about it.  The young man had few friends. He was clearly anxious in social situations, and avoided them if he could, even with the family. He had been a good student and seemed to like school.  He hardly ever missed a day. But more and more, he stayed by himself.

In this session though, this man brought up a point that I don't think would have been as important twenty or thirty years ago.  He said that he knew from his own experiences, and he could see from his son, that life today is very, very competitive.  It never seems to stop. It is true at work, in sports, at school, and even among friends.  Outside of a family, there are very few really supportive networks in this country.  Even churches are competitive.

This man had stayed out of work for a couple of years after his wife died, and he found that in order to get a job he had to not only compete with others for the job, but compete with others in his own company who had the same position (in sales and marketing) as he did. Trust and cooperation were talked about, but they put you at a disadvantage if they were actually practiced.  Everyone seemed to understand that.

He feels that this hyper-competitiveness was part of what made his son just give up.  He felt that the boy never had the confidence or the social skill to push himself through all of those situations that were constantly confronting him.  Competition in school, or to make friends, or to run track, or to get a job, or even among friends playing video games.; it was always about beating someone, pushing someone out of the way, or looking for an advantage.  If you couldn't do that, you would get knocked over and trampled upon, and then blamed for not being strong enough.

It runs rampant through my practice these days.  I see people who are unemployed, and feel invisible because no one even acknowledges their calls or emails. People who are employed are being pressured to work harder to keep their jobs or they will be easily replaced.  People with vital positions at businesses  feel a great deal of pressure to meet deadlines, to beat the competition, to keep their company in businesses.

President Obama talked about the need for America to create and innovate.  It's because the world has changed.  Many basic jobs are now unnecessary. They have been replaced by technology.  Farming, manufacturing, constructing, even selling, were things that people did for centuries in order to keep the world running.  They are all done now, but by machines of some type, and they need only 5 to 10% of the people to get them done.

It is much harder to just find a job, do it well, take care of yourself and your family, and live a life.  There is much more competition for much fewer spots, and the competition is not just from those around you, it's global.  Someone in India can pick up that phone, write a piece of software, and even read an X-Ray just as well as you. Robots weld cars, mix medicines, answer phones, take tolls, guard buildings, run trains, and do it better than people.

Many people are very scared.  And if you are hesitant and fragile to begin with, it could seem like too much, as it was, tragically, for this young man.

I believe that we live in a more difficult age than we realize.  Most people don't even acknowledge the problem yet.  I believe some of today's political craziness is the result of people who are aware of what is happening, and fear it so much that they need to work hard to deny its existence.

That makes arriving at a solution, or many different solutions, even more difficult.

We have to find new ways of living together on this planet.  The current ways are leading to a greater concentration of wealth and power than any time since feudalism.  It is not a healthy situation, nor one that can be peacefully sustained.  Much of Egypt's current uprising was the result of very high unemployment among it's young adults.



It will be fascinating to see how they deal with that problem.