“Medical labels encourage us to look inward, to pathology in our genes, hormones, and brains. social and political explanations encourage us to look outward, to the condition of our lives.”

No. No. No Carol Tavris, I don’t want to hear that. I want to hear some hard cold facts. The kind of facts that punch you in the face.

You mean the kind of incontrovertible facts Harold Jaffe spits? Like:

The U.S. has vastly widened the disparity between rich and poor, committed itself to the construction and privatisation of prisons, discharged its mental patients into the streets, fatally marginalised the aged, corporatised whatever could be corporatised, one would expect that psychiatrists would at least consider certain deviations from the norm to represent a political response.

Hold on a minute. Is any of that true?

You wanted facts, now what are you going to do with them? Probably nothing. Probably just go back to flicking through your Facebook and Twitter feed like everybody else in this connected world.

Technology has certainly changed us. Changed us into beasts. The kind of beasts that stand around in the field smoking grass all day until they wind up in somebody’s slaughterhouse and onto someone’s plate.

Yes, technology is causing humans to behave like mere machines. By taking over what were once fundamental functions, algorithms, robots, and consumer devices have begun to dissociate us from our own humanity.

It’s a cautionary tale.