How to Deal with Our Current ‘Death Spiral,’ Session 2

Special Topics in One World or None

*The Zoom Link for today’s live session is far below.

This is the second of a three-part series on the “Prescriptions for Survival” we have issued through the World Mental Health Coalition. The first one, issued in March 2020, dealt exclusively with the Covid-19 pandemic. However, by December 2021, after no action had been taken against the former president for his instigation of an insurrection in January of that year, a different kind of “Prescription” was deemed necessary. Hence, we issued the following:

There have been great consequences to the first Trump presidency. Some of them I have called, “Trump Contagion,” to illustrate the spread of fixed false beliefs, paranoia, violence, and criminality among Trump followers—as well to describe the spread of belligerence and brutality in international affairs and multiple other domains. For example, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, seemingly senseless at the time, may not have occurred without Donald Trump’s first term. Hence, in March 2022, we issued our “Prescription for Survival 2022,” with the following mandate:

NOW at this two-year anniversary of our initial “Prescription for Survival,” we are confronting multiple emergencies on many fronts. The gross mishandling of the Pandemic has further exacerbated Economic Inequalities and resulted in tragic failures to deal with the severe Climate Crisis. Global Conflicts are accelerating, even raising the risks of Thermonuclear War. Furthermore, we now face an increased likelihood of new Covid variants coming from impoverished countries with low vaccination rates and limited public health capacities. Underlying this ominous world situation is an overall crisis of Collective Mental Health about which we recently stated: “Our social, economic, and political system is driving us to collective suicide.”

HOWEVER, there are ways to confront this dire situation. The World Mental Health Coalition now issues our new “Prescription for Survival 2022” with five urgent, interlinked items that all intersect with Societal Mental Health. In addition, to protect society, we must determine ways to evaluate professionally the mental as well as physical health of senior political leaders, just as is done in many countries for senior business and military leaders. We must also recognize that there is a major Mental Health Pandemic, now reaching critical proportions in the United States and other countries, manifesting in the rates of suicides, homicides, and collective violence. When a lack of critical remedial action, and augmentation only of exacerbating factors, becomes a threat to the survival of our species, we unmistakably enter the domain of Medicine and Mental Health, which is the reason for our Prescription and professional intervention.

OUR FIVE NEW AND EXPANDED PRESCRIPTIVES:

1) Emergency funding is necessary for vaccinating the entire world against Covid-19 in the shortest possible time. The sooner we do this, the more effectively we can protect the Global Population against further devastating Covid outbreaks, variants, and prepare for possible new Pandemics. Wealthy nations have selfishly and shortsightedly hoarded vaccines in ways that have caused large regions of the world to be minimally vaccinated—and therefore cause more contagious and potentially vaccine-evading variants that then spread worldwide. The cost of rapidly implementing this remedial recommendation is less than the normal increase of the U.S. military budget this year alone, making it by far the most cost-efficient way to protect everyone.

2) Urgent steps must be taken to rescind the misnamed “Free Trade” and “Globalization” policies the wealthy North has wrongfully and deceptively pursued for some time. These policies have grossly benefited rich nations and mega corporations, at the expense of real free trade and global wellbeing. If we can successfully reverse these self-serving and onerous policies that have escalated inequality and injustice, we will at the same time improve Global Mental Health as well as support the foundation for Democracy everywhere.

3) Immediate attention and education are required to deal with the serious problems resulting from the elevation and empowerment of psychologically dangerous national leaders. It is estimated that such dangerous individuals occupy 10% of power positions worldwide while being responsible for 90% of global atrocities. As has now become apparent in the United States, the failure to diagnose, restrain, and hold accountable a dangerously mentally-impaired President has also substantially further escalated the Public Mental Health Crisis. In a multi-disciplinary way, professionals must work together to contain this Crisis, which contributes to the spread of criminality, violence, economic dislocation, crumbling institutions, deaths, drug misuse, and a widespread culture of psychological abuse for political gain.

4) Immediate steps are needed by all nuclear weapons-possessing nations to ratify and implement the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The currently still-expanding “MAD”, or Mutually Assured Destruction, state of world affairs must urgently be declared incompatible with life. We must transform our world into being nuclear weapons-free, with a rejuvenated and strengthened United Nations and potent international law institutions.

5) Implementation of the 2015 Paris and the 2021 Glasgow International Climate Agreements, as well as the recommendations in the alarming United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Reports, is imperative. Widespread denial of scientific truth, gross governmental malfeasance, extreme corporate disinformation, and unconscionable capitalistic excesses are propelling our world with accelerating speed to climatic catastrophe. Sustainable habitability of the Planet must now be humanity’s urgent priority, requiring unprecedented emergency measures.

Later in 2022, we issued the following “October Update”:

NOW, in October 2022, with about 1 of every 300 Americans dead from Covid, and with nearly 500 persons still dying daily of Covid, the United States has still not taken the necessary steps as urged by the Medical and Scientific Experts. Consequently, we feel the imperative to add the following important additions to our previous Prescriptions.

1) A full and complete investigation into the true origins of Covid…. If the Government will not fully and honestly pursue this investigation, the academic and scientific communities, as well as the major media, must do so independently and vigorously.

2) Recognition that the Pandemic is not over…. our previous recommendations to empower and substantially increase cooperation and funding for the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as to insulate the National Institute of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and academic experts from political and pharmaceutical company interference, take on ever greater urgency.

3) Assurance of mental health in the highest position in the Nation wielding Presidential Powers…. We renew our plea to the leaders of our country that basic mental health standards be applied to the U.S. Presidency and those in the immediate line of succession and that reforms be made to the 25th Amendment so as to render it actually usable and not just theoretical.

We can imagine the hardships we would have avoided, and could avoid still, were we to heed these “Prescriptions”. Of course, there is the issue of what a dear political scientist colleague, Richard Falk, has recently highlighted as “the transition problem”: the challenge of transitioning from an unjust, destructive system to a just, life-affirming one. We will discuss these approaches to this next week, when we present our “Prescription for Survival 2025.”

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