Capitalism's Destruction of Childhood - By: Dr. Gabor Mate

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I have read about Dr. Gabor Mate and while I don't agree with some of the things he says, but there is some truth about the destruction of society caused by the ruling class that has enslaved us through capitalism. What are your thoughts about this?

Here are some video's where he talks about this.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03hfy0HOuzs[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt8dgbNEQKE[/youtube]

Yes he has got it right.

Humanity spent hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions, learning how to co-operate in small groups in order to survive. Our current economic system (consumerist capitalism) promotes individuality and requires the population to always feel in need of something, or to feel that they are lacking something, in order to make them consume.

Just look at any TV advert. They all have the same basic structure:

1 - They start off by showing you that you are lacking something, or that something you have is not good enough
2 - Then they show you their product which they promise will fill that gap
3 - Then they show a happy smiling consumer with the product to reinforce the idea that if you buy this product whatever is lacking in your life will vanish.

We can all see through this of course, but when you take into account that the average person is exposed to this kind of manipulative psychology multiple times a day, then it is easy to see why people are feeling unfulfilled or miserable about life.

But this all works for consumerism and those in charge of production because the more problems we think we have the more we are likely to consume what they are offering.

Competitiveness is a base instinct in all life, but co-operation has proved time and again that it can be the ultimate winner in survival.

without capitalism you'd be living in a cave right now

Capitalism as we know it came to be a lot more recently than you'd like to believe.

holy crap! autism is the result of this, we don't have the right social skills because of we arnt in the right envierment to grow up in, we are more detached from people becouse of the lack of socail skills, which make us better at competing in this kind of envierment. ext.
if you get what I mean

There is still the social garbage at the workplace.

And, people actually spend more time interacting with their workmates than with their own families, including their children.

The workplace largely substitutes for the family. And, it is a lousy substitute.

Commercials are not magical brainwashers. You either want a product or you don't. I don't want 99.99% of what I see advertised.

That's only because you're not a NT.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiiZrZTrOFY[/youtube]

to be fair Karl Marx predicted this over 170 years ago when he wrote about the 'sanctimonius bourgeoisie claptrap about the family when capitalism is destroying the family on a daily basis'.

While he's entirely correct, the person in the OP video is not covering uncharted ground.

true, but the problem is that capitalism has outlived its own utility. We've got to the stage where it is collapsing and is becoming regressive rather than constructive.

I would disagree, the community would get together to help build each others homes.

Enslaved by capitalism? Where are you chains. And no one is prevented you from "escaping:". What slavery?

ruveyn

Well, you don't need physical chains to be a slave. Countless cult leaders have enslaved people by manipulating their needs and wants to capture their minds. And yes, society does prevent you from escaping, at least from the cycle of work, taxation, and consumption. It isn't literal, and with the recent revival of homesteading, it's become a bit more possible to escape, to go build a ranch somewhere. However, society is increasingly dependent on taking orders. You take orders to pay taxes. You take orders from your boss to work harder for less wage. You take orders to buy a house or rent an apartment, because even to set up a shack in the woods is vagrancy. We are taught, from birth, that the correct way of living is to go to school, go to college, get good grades, and get a job where you sit in a cubicle and put off your dreams until retirement age, when the dreams you can fulfill are limited by the ravages of age. And even that light at the end of the tunnel is increasingly becoming harder to attain, as more and more, social security vanishes. From Kindergarten to dropout age, truancy is a crime. Non-degree jobs are becoming much, much harder to find. There goes your best years. And the rest is working for someone else, for the vast majority of people.

It is slavery. You have no choice. Work or starve. No longer can you go build a hovel somewhere and work the land to sustain yourself, as even feudal peasants could do, though as always they were require to give a portion of their produce to their lord. What you wear and how you present yourself is dictated by company policy. Your wage is not a result of a negotiation between you and the company, but a base wage. You must beg for a raise. And you almost never profit. If you're savvy or lucky, maybe, but most people live paycheck to paycheck, and pray Jesus that when we resign our lease the rent doesn't go up. And before you say, well maybe they should've been smarter and gone to school, some people just can't afford it. Some people screw up. There is a clear class system in this country, and the working class are the same old slaves as ever.

In the days of "slavery", an enormous number of slaves, both white and black, escaped. They did it through suicide. And increasingly, when faced with the soulcrushing anti-individual grind to make someone else money, many young people escape the same way.

Gabor is an outstanding professional colleague and a friend.

While I don't agree with all of his views, we have many, many shared perspectives, and his insights always provide cause for professional, political or personal introspection.

Who said that the existence of capitalism is a binary state?

There are hundreds of different capitalisms on the planet right now. Each of them is slightly different in how the marketplace and the public sector interact. Chinese capitalism is very different from Russian capitalism, which is in turn different from Canadian capitalism. None are perfect, none are entirely lacking in merit.

But what is true is that each of them are capable of being reformed--their excesses curbed, and their ill effects mitigated.

None of which circumvent the undeniable fact that however you vary capitalism, you end with unresolvable conflicts in interest when you divide society into economic classes.

Its telling that capitalism is at the end of its life when its constantly having to validate its position and justify itself against new ideas and alternatives.