Group Resilience in Regulating Pain
Recognizing our connection in helping others through distress
My previous effort to outline the economic underpinnings of our current problems and arguing for social reengagement to assuage the political divide is rooted in details which many across the American heartland are familiar, but for which those in American cities may be less aware. This divide mirrors a political fault line separating rural and city demographics.
For decades major American cities have seen a vast increase in development, capital infrastructure, and technical innovation which revitalized commerce in areas damaged by the downturns of the 1970’s and 80’s when large manufacturing left big cities for more cheaper labor pools in rural areas. The demographics of these cities were altered by the rise of financial services and especially of the concentration of specialized workers in the growing technology fields, thus these cities experienced gentrification where young white-collar workers flocked to cities offering, displacing lower-waged folks to outlying suburbs or cheaper areas of those cities with far less services and higher crime rates. At the same time, the 1990’s & 2000’s saw a further decline in American manufacturing while big box stores swarmed across small town America, greatly affecting the viability of small-business economies that supported much of the hinterland. Both of these dynamics have not only altered the economics of daily life for many in America, but created new problems whose causes seemed to be ignored or blamed on other factors. The concentration of the business and entertainment news media focused attention mainly on the coasts, while the economic changes in “fly-over” country have been largely ignored.
Across the heartland these vast economic changes cause considerable damage to individuals, families and communities. Only after the surprise 2016 election have considerable attention come to focus on the real hardships experienced on the rural side of the American heartland from the effects of globalization and Big Box capitalism. The loss of small-businesses, rural manufacturing, and much of the traditional energy sector (especially Coal) in these areas have caused great economic strain on family budgets and State services, creating a downward spiral and a lot of economic pain. It’s only been recent scholarship that’s come to recognize economic pain causes real pain.
Many whom suffer from layoffs, business failures, heavy debt loads, and bleak job prospects experience real physical pain. Over this same time period (2000’s-present), the medical field added pain management as a fifth vital sign. Doctors began treating pain with increasingly more potent painkillers, such as Hydrocodone and OxyContin, the latter marketed as non-addictive but found a decade later to be highly addictive. This introduced many to opioids, which in the most recent decade have become the largest health care crisis in the country, claiming 40K overdose deaths per year and millions hooked on their narcotic effects, many through no fault of their own. The enormous profits made by the Health Industry, and especially Big Pharma, created an epidemic and caused many to look the other way as people spent their life savings for pills, while others turned to theft to support their habit. Later, cheaper narcotics such as heroin flooded to the heartland to fill the economic niche for those whom couldn’t afford $200 a day habits of OxyContin.
And of course, not everyone deals with economic pain the same, and the majority are not hooked on opioids. However, the crisis has a great effect on both the communities in which we live, and upon the focus (or ignorance) of the problems by government and the hiding of individual responsibility behind the corporate veil. While the current administration eventually declared the opioid crisis to be a National Health Emergency, releasing important federal funds for treatment and prevention programs, the brunt of the costs are put upon the public, which the free-enterprise system looks for its next product and market to pursue unlimited wealth.
It is this ill-logic of corporate self-interest results in the burdening the public with much of the risks while protecting private interests to make unlimited profit. It leads to societal dysfunction, which manifests not only in the opioid epidemic, but similarly in the 2008 Banking crisis, which saw trillions of public dollars used to rescue private banks “too big to fail.” This same pattern occurs across every sector, from Energy and Farming to Arms Manufacturing and War Services companies. Each of these industries receive subsidies from the Federal Government, assumed largely as tax breaks, price floors, or tariffs, the costs of which are largely paid by the public. While the tiny minority of wealthy individuals owning large corporations accumulate most of the high profits, they often avoid paying high US tax rates, usually lower than simple wage-earners. Additionally industries burden the public with public health risks, which contribute greatly to the high costs of health care and insurance, yet their contribution is largely invisible in public accounting of cause and effect. Corporate media portrays these issues as compartmentalized and often with the Government or segments of the population targeted as scapegoats.
These are structural problems created by a system largely governed by the economic self-interest of corporations mandated to grow profits in industries organized to stifle competition. Often times, it is not simply the industry itself that pushes for corporate interests within say the Pharmaceutical industry, but increasingly much of the Western Business community as a whole, since the financialization of the economy involves most corporations engaging in the trading of securities in order to augment their bottom line. From the early 1970’s, financialization contributed only a small fraction of the overall economy, while over the course of the next three decades it came to assume the vast majority of all economic activity in total dollars. The relaxation of rules prohibiting the big commercial banks from gambling on their customers’ savings had disastrous results with the 1995 repeal of the Glass-Steagall act. And now, the global derivatives market provides an arena where corporations can gamble in a market worth many 1000’s of Trillions of dollars, many times bigger than the actual world economy. It was this confluence of deregulation and failure within the derivatives markets which produced the 2008 Global Economic recession, with many of the problems pushed into the future and onto future generations in the form of debt obligations, and most of all, in unsolved problems of Monopoly Capitalism.
However, at heart of the problem, the drive for profit has become valued over the health and well being of the average citizen. This logic creates and maintains an orientation of status to one valuing economic status above all others. Not simply have we elected an American President who owns a gilded golden penthouse, but much of what passes as the news or entertainment we consume focuses on the astronomical dollar figures of multimillion dollar salaries, billion dollar valuations of sports teams, or the overwhelming social conformity producing commercial industry creating invented wants of high priced luxury automobiles which line the gentrified neighborhoods of every American city.
Meanwhile, the effects of economic distress have real impacts on the health and lives on both sides of the American political fault line. Both sides have experienced drug epidemics to deal with economic distress, which have affected the prospects not only of people addicted to them, but more so their families and children and communities. This reverberates across time to future generations in the forms of decreased government services, educational opportunities and achievement, incomes and savings, etc. Perhaps even more devastating are the psychological effects of shame and despair, which create a social stigma that cause hiding of problems and the burying the emotional harm in isolated silence. And it is isolation from others which typifies our current modern age, which in the US results in levels of mental illness such as depression and addiction that are many times higher than anywhere else on earth.
And yet, the ethic of rugged individualism, meritocracy, and economic autonomy is actively promoted as a public ethos, while the health problem is largely ignored. Media pundits and intellectuals promoting libertarian economic principals, while often decreeing atheism and hostility towards foreign others, greatly amplify the logic of rugged individualism, financial self-interest, and the logic of individual risk management. Traditional forms of collective security and organization, from religious communities to community organizing, receive derision from this elite libertarian ideological milieu, while the pursuit of economic security and status are promoted. It is within this dynamic that the two sides of the political fault lines find themselves on the outside looking in, as financial elite pursuing policy and using divide and conquer tactics convince either side to blame the other. Even more, both sides are encouraged to blame outside influences for the faults of the system, whether it be Muslims for terrorism in lands deemed vital to Western Corporate interests, Russians for interference in Western elections, or China for pursuing its own interests in defiance of the West.
Pay no mind to the man behind the curtain, only it’s not a man or even a small cabal, but an entire system geared towards justifying an economic rationale at home while ignoring the many tentacles extended far and wide to markets and communities across the globe.
So what then is the prescription for our economic pain? That pain unites the majority of both rural folk and the city folk experiencing economic distress amidst this epoch of extreme economic inequality and an uncertain future. The world has always seen the ill-effects of the concentration of wealth, which leads to hardships and injustices suffered by regular folk, where power is used by the powerful to protect this imbalance. These are problems even those whom understand the system cannot solve without a vast change in consciousness by the public itself. And for that, the public must somehow regain its ability to regulate the ill effects of economic hardship and the fractured social landscape of modernity. This can only be solved in the reduction of political polarization, which comes from reengaging with each others.
Somehow, the public must regain the ability to gather in dialogue and deliberation, to engage publicly and bridge the political gulf that disrupts and consumes modern discourse in narrow channels focused on wealthy interests. The strength and security of human communities are found in our social relationships. These come from simply listening to and learning from the stories each one of us have experiencing life during these interesting times. When we engage with one another, it establishes a bond that can establish feelings of security. Within these social bonds are simple feelings of caring and empathizing for the shared plight of living in uncertain times that provide stability and assurance both now and in the future. Simply living alone with fears of the future can be daunting, but actually sharing them with others helps to discharge the stress a bit, and widens our perspective to see that others share those same fears and stress. There is comfort in shared sentiment, which ultimately can be used to everyone’s advantage to build positive sentiment for the future.
Ultimately, our future will be determined by how much we as individuals, affinity groups, communities, and ultimately nations can change our inner selves to be able to be resilient in the face of economic stress and pain, not only for ourselves, but most importantly, to provide that for others. For it is in our connections with each other that we can most help others deal with their pain. So many are dealing with it in isolation, when simply reaching out to them can provide the emotional stability to keep from resorting to self-limiting medications, entertainment distractions, or simply social withdrawal. We need a public energized and reawakened with the ethic of mutual support and empathy, rather than autonomous self-interest.
In past times, churches used to provide the traditional stability of communities and the services for those in need. So too, in modern times, do they continue to provide these important services for people, yet many congregations have faced severe reductions in membership and attendance, as people have lost both faith and commitment to their community members. Modern scholarship has found that those whom do attend services, no matter the religion or denomination, engage in more community service and are more focused on the well being of others, than those who do not. More over, those whom attend services give more of their money to charitable causes than those whom do not. While this cannot replace the services provided by governments or even private organizations, they serve as touchstones for the health of communities. And of course, the social and belief aspects of religious communities provide the social and emotional support that have helped people survive the most difficult of times across the annals of history. For having faith and sharing it with others strengthens the resolve and resiliency of communities. These institutions remain a most underutilized and important resource in providing support for whatever the future holds.
It is within the bonds of individuals together and in small groups which we find our greatest strength. This stems from the millions of years of human evolution, specially in the family. It’s time to expand our sense of family from simply those with whom we are related, to all whom we share community with. The real truth is that we are all related, literally the vast tree of human relations contains everyone whom has ever or will ever live. It’s time we recognize we are all sharing the same tree and that it becomes a healthier, happier, safer and more sustainable tree together rather than apart.
