Reflexive impotence amounts to an unstated worldview amongst the British young, and it has its correlate in widespread pathologies. Many of the teenagers I worked with had mental health problems or learning difficulties.
Depression is endemic. It is the condition most dealt with by the National Health Service, and is afflicting people at increasingly younger ages.
The number of students who have some variant of dyslexia is astonishing. It is not an exaggeration to say that being a teenager in late capitalist Britain is now close to being reclassified as a sickness. This pathologization already forecloses any possibility of politicization. Many of the teenage students I encountered seemed to be in a state of what I would call depressive hedonia. Very resonant passages about the immersive ambient affect of late capitalism.
Very sad to hear the news about Mark Fisher. Like Like. It reminds me of another good hearted being of our era: David Foster Wallace. All the books in the world on such ailments only explain the intellectual position, rather than what people suffer through which must be dreadful beyond belief. In my own life the dark cycles come and go, and when they come I return to the comic worlds of laughter to assuage the pain of such suffering doubts and mental anguish.
Listen to stand-up comedians and generally walk away from the dark thoughts that send me down the nihilist pipe and death-spin. I know I have a dark pessimistic side to my mind that tends to reinforce itself with the political and social malfeasance I see around me, but dwelling on it too long can send you into a state of becoming which can act like a strange attractor pulling you toward an abyss and sink hole.
