20 Jul 2007

A study into the health of farmers in Queensland has found that 66 per cent had an unacceptable cholesterol level and 85 per cent had high fat diets. The report, by general practitioner Toby Ford, says that farmers should ride bicycles around their properties when mending fences to help improve their weight and cardiovascular health. The mental health of male farmers was also a major concern and the report suggested that some farmers were overeating to escape stress and depression. Dr Ford said that many problems could be addressed if farmers could learn to take a holiday to rejuvenate.

The West Australian, 20/07/2007

31 Oct 2007 | Escalating defaults in regional NSW
The latest credit default figures show an alarming increase of 35.5 per cent in NSW across credit cards, personal loans and mortgages. ......"

Considering that we're hearing zero about Mexico's
Katrina and 100% of crops lost in Tabasco and 1.7 mbpd
offline, I figure we'll be hearing zero about post PO
Depression rates as well.

"Dr Ford said that many problems could be addressed if farmers could learn to take a holiday to rejuvenate."

You gotta love that line.

You know, to your second home on the lake. LOL

Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens

Alan--

You must be referring to "clinical" depression -- a state in which people (and horses and dogs and cats, for that matter) feel completely powerless as individuals in their environment. The "feeling" of being depressed results from the breakdown of the bonds of solidarity that are required to keep social animals in a functioning society, and I personally believe it to be a fundamental drive (like hunger and sex) to require individuals who have strayed from the group to get back into the fold.

Human beings are individually weak, but collectively strong -- so powerful groups will form that vastly multiply the force of the individual members, and collectively strengthen them all. On the other hand, group dynamics always have to balance off the ability of self-interested individuals to profit individually from the group ("raiding the commons") and ultimately destroy that group, but ultimately forming new groups from the ruins of the old.

Since this sort of behavior is much older than the human species, and certainly pre-dates language, it has nothing to do with our cognitive, analytical, legalistic development as a species -- or at least, those faculties are mainly an appendage to a more fundamental behavior.

Modern market society deliberately breaks down natural groupings in order to create individuals who must become "consumers", and further, manipulates people into false groupings that have nothing to do with survival (Naomi Klein calls it "branding".) The natural tendency to form groups is perverted to "brand" people to CocaCola, Nike, Adidas, Toshiba, The Democrats... you name it. Whole university departments are devoted to creating and manipulating this false solidarity.

But of course, it has nothing to do with survival -- it just allows people to get rid of their feelings of "depression" by buying stuff.

Now we are in a transition phase -- there is beginning to be less "stuff", but there also has been a complete collapse of the old world of natural groupings. People don't "belong" to anything any more -- The Elks, the Masons, the Moose, the Eagles, The Grange, the PTA .. if they exist, they exist in name only in most towns.

I believe that is why "the other half" of America, the small towns, the rural areas, etc. as Alan mentions, are the last repositories of the groups that sustain human life -- and the reason that is where the volunteers come from.

Also, that is where to look for survival after Peak Oil -- people will do fine after the energy flood of the last 200 years has passed, but the society will be very different, and it will rely on human bonds, not hydrocarbon bonds.

People who are hit by unexpected catastrophe outside of their control (quake, tsunami, economic crisis, mass illness) may either rally round and show great inventiveness and what one might call community spirit, etc. or they may be become helpless and depressed, unable to act, playing up a victim role, lashing out at others, creating more damage and havoc, seeking scape goats, killing loved ones, committing suicide, and so on.

It all depends on the circumstances, the scope for action, liberty, and authority that is accorded to the afflicted.

Treating the ‘depression’ of individuals is a poor and hypocritical way of dealing with problems like that post Katrina.

The real issues are, the levees, Federal Gvmt. aid, housing insurance (possible or not) for low lying properties, etc. etc. (Alan may correct I don’t know much about it....) ..

Shunting these problems onto ppl ‘being depressed’ and maybe ‘needing treatment’ is a common cop out.

I was at a cross-sector, open-to-all Local Foods Summit in Kingston, Ontario on Friday and Saturday. Keynote speaker Thomas Homer-Dixon asked his audience to identify their residential locations. City? Many. Village or town? Many. Farmlands? Many. Suburbia? None. At a food distribution workshop later, another speaker asked if anyone had shopped at Wal-Mart in the past month. Again, none. Yes, these guys were preaching to the converted, but it was at least bracing to find the weekend was sold out, and to so many "aware" individuals.

Alan - people in the Empire today are working harder and harder and getting less and less. During the last Depression getting work was hard, but if you could get it, the money went FAR. People worked together. Families were coherent structures and there was a great feeling of unity among the working class. Hell there was the idea of a working class and pride in being part of it.

TPTB probably knew that if things kept going that way, that much spirit and unity and togetherness and flat-out moxie among the proles, there'd be a Revolution and they'd be out on their asses. So the years between then and now have been spent working up a system where there's cheap bread and circuses, people are worked harder and harder, and mutual trust is very low - in fact at a level only seen in destroyed societies like that of the Iks.

Hi Alan

Any figures -- statistical or anecdotal- on Post-Katrina domestic violence rates?

My sister in NYC works with poor female Latin immigrants -- legal & possibly illegal; she doesn't ask -- who seem to have a very high incidence of such.

It may be impolite to say, but perhaps this is cultural; or perhaps economic stresses are at least a contributing factor.