In de eenzame cockpit van onze levens

Depressed, me? Don’t even mention it. I feel fine, I’m perfectly efficient, happy, dynamic, energetic, and most of all competitive. I go jogging every morning and I’m available for over time. It is the philosophy of the low cost airlines, you know? And the philosophy of the perfectly deregulated economy where everybody is demanded to give ceaselessly the best, in order to survive. After this suicidal mass murder air companies are invited to double-check the psychological conditions of the workers. Pilots should not be maniac, depressed, melancholic or panic-prone. And what about bus drivers and policemen, steel workers, and school teachers? Everybody will be subjected to psychological screening in order to detect and expel from the labor market those who suffer from depression. Good idea indeed, except that the absolute majority of the contemporary population should be put on leave. It’s easy to target those who are officially labeled as psychopaths, but what of all those people who suffer from unhappiness, try to keep calm but might fly into a rage in dangerous situations? Hard to distinguish between unhappiness and looming aggressive depression, and the proportion of people who suffer from despair is growing and growing. The frequency of psychopathology has been on the rise in the last few decades, and according to the World Health Organisation, the suicide rate has increased by 60% in the last four decades, and is dangerously high among the youngsters. What in the last four decades has been pushing people to run and willingly embrace the black dog? There is a relationship between this incredible surge in suicidal propensity, and the triumph of neoliberal coercion to compete. And also between the spread of psychic frailty and the loneliness of a generation that is meeting people only through a connected screen.

Franco ‘Bifo’ Beradi in In the lonely cockpit of our lives (Verso)