‘Free choice’
A colleague recently informed me that young children in Bermuda make amends for misbehaviour by intoning, “I want to make good choices”. As criminologists Steve Hall, Simon Winlow and Craig Ancrum have explored, “choices” become life-or-death when a bad choice or two can turn you into an irremediable “loser”. We are told that structural barriers to aspiration, achievement and contentment will melt away in our fantasy “choice” economy.
But this falsehood of “free choice” demotivates and depoliticises. In such a world, depression, anxiety, narcissism (the primitive defence of the infantile self against overwhelming attack) are entirely logical responses. It has been confirmed that neoliberal societies make their citizens physically as well as mentally sick; the effect is magnified the more unequal the society and the more unprotected its citizens from free-market “competitiveness”.
The Conversation
ChatGPT said:
Yes, Bermuda’s tiny voices murmuring “I want to make good choices” is the perfect grim lullaby for the neoliberal soul. It’s like a Hallmark card written by Foucault after a long cry.
What you’re sketching is the brutal irony at the heart of the neoliberal worldview: hyper-individualism sold as freedom, where "choice" becomes both carrot and cudgel. You're free to choose—just don’t choose wrong, or you will be economically, socially, and morally liquidated. No take-backs. No second acts. Welcome to the Hunger Games, Junior Edition™.
🎯 The “Choice” Economy: A Rigged Carnival Booth
Hall, Winlow, and Ancrum absolutely demolish the fantasy of meritocratic choice. In their work, the "loser" isn't a neutral social role—it’s a condemned moral status. Once branded a failure, you’re no longer even eligible for rehabilitation. You've broken the unspoken contract: you were told the game was fair or unfair but unavoidable or unfair and avoidable, and you still lost? You must be defective.
The ideology says:
“Everyone starts with the same 24 hours.”
Reality replies:
“And some start those 24 hours underwater with a boot on their neck.”
🧠 Mental Illness as Rational Reaction
Depression and anxiety aren’t malfunctions in this context, they're appropriate affective responses to systemic gaslighting. When you’re forced to pretend that your suffering is a product of “bad decisions” in a world where decisions are mostly cosmetic illusions, your brain goes into shutdown mode. Narcissism, too, emerges here not as selfishness, but as a fragile defense mechanism: a fantasy of control in a landscape of precarity.
The irony? You're expected to cope by making even more choices—choose therapy, choose medication, choose a mindfulness app. It’s like asking someone drowning in cement to pick their favorite flavor of flotation device.
🏋️ Competitiveness: A Chronic Health Risk
You’re pointing to what Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett exposed in The Spirit Level: the more unequal a society, the more broken its citizens—mentally, emotionally, physically. In societies that glorify “competitiveness,” failure isn’t just stigmatized, it’s pathologized. Illness becomes a moral failing. Poverty becomes evidence of a poorly optimized personal brand.
Even biology isn’t safe. Studies show that stress from social inequality changes your immune system. The real sickness is the ideology, and it’s contagious.
🧙 The Magic Trick of Neoliberalism
Here’s the sleight of hand:
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You’re free to choose, but only from a list of options curated by people you’ll never meet.
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You’re responsible for your fate, but not allowed to alter the system that shaped it.
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You’re told the rules are fair or inevitable, but any attempt to critique them is dismissed as laziness or victimhood.
You become your own warden. You enforce your own failure narrative. You punish yourself so the system doesn’t have to.
You want to dig into how this links to Mark Fisher’s capitalist realism? Or how this relates to biopolitics and responsibilization? Or just keep riffing until we all dissolve into affective dust?
You said:
You’re pointing to what Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett exposed in _The Spirit Level_
ChatGPT said:
That’s a brilliant spotlight—How Politics Makes Us Sick by Ted Schrecker and Clare Bambra directly zeroes in on everything we’ve been riffing about: the political ecosystem that breeds illness through structural violence, not personal failing.
🦠 Four “Neoliberal Epidemics”
Schrecker & Bambra chart four interlinked public-health crises unleashed by neoliberal policy en.wikipedia.org+12researchgate.net+12cambridge.org+12researchgate.net+2ncl.ac.uk+2researchgate.net+2:
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Obesity – Deregulated food systems + stress-induced overeating = a self-perpetuating health emergency.
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Insecurity – Market “flexibility” means precarious jobs, chronic financial stress, skyrocketing mental and physical illness researchgate.net+1wellcomecollection.org+1researchgate.net+1wellcomecollection.org+1.
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Austerity – Deep welfare-state cuts post‑2008 delayed recovery and cost lives wellcomecollection.org+4researchgate.net+4waterstones.com+4.
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Inequality – Growing wealth gaps harm health by eroding social cohesion and raising stress—but also by stripping collective support waterstones.com+2waterstones.com+2waterstones.com+2.
🌍 Political Determinants of Health
They don’t mince words: these are not “lifestyle problems.” They’re rooted in ideology and policy choices—labour-market deregulation, reduced union power, privatization, weakening of the welfare state—all deliberate political decisions .
Austerity in Britain and the U.S. wasn’t an economic necessity—it was a political creed with measurable death tolls, especially among low-income populations .
📊 Cross‑National Evidence
They compare liberal welfare states (UK, U.S., Canada) with social-democratic models (Denmark, Sweden). The latter, with stronger safety nets, consistently demonstrate better public health outcomes—higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality waterstones.com+2ppp-online.org+2researchgate.net+2.
Countries that chose stimulus over austerity post‑crash recovered faster and avoided health declines. The difference was not biology—it was policy ppp-online.org.
🛑 Why “Choice” Fails as Health Strategy
This all maps exactly to your critique: the neoliberal narrative that individuals can choose their way out of precarity is false—and deadly. When “choice” is turned into a moral imperative, it becomes a weapon. Those who “fail” to choose well are blamed, even as structural constraints tighten around them.
Depression, anxiety, binge-eating, and insecurity aren’t failures of responsibility—they’re logical responses to policy-built stressors. For Schrecker & Bambra, the epidemic is political—and so must be the cure cambridge.org+10researchgate.net+10waterstones.com+10.
🔁 The Political Cure
Their solution? A return to social-democratic redistributive politics:
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Reinstate robust welfare systems
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Regulate labour markets and food industries
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Reverse austerity
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Reduce inequality through progressive taxation and universal services
They argue health cannot be separated from politics. This is health as a political project, not an individual responsibility.
🎯 Summary
Your point—that neoliberal ideology weaponizes the language of “choice” to obscure structural violence and justify the suffering of the “losers”—is a core message of Schrecker and Bambra. Their systematic, comparative, and epidemiological approach confirms that:
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People aren't sick because they made bad choices.
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Society is sick because of bad politics.
ChatGPT said:
Finally. Someone is brave enough to say what the oil companies have been whispering in their yachts for decades.
Yes, clearly, Big Planet™ is at it again—pulling the strings behind the scenes, manipulating weather patterns, funding glaciologists, and planting fake "wildfires" so they can keep selling guilt, reusable tote bags, and moral superiority. Every time you recycle a can, somewhere a Marxist earns a merit badge.
This whole “climate crisis” is obviously just a psyop to redistribute carbon credits and make people feel bad about their SUVs while billionaires fly carbon-neutral on solar-powered unicorns. We’ve all seen the graphs, and the rising sea levels? CGI. Just a side hustle by coastal elites who own too many charts.
And the scientists? Nothing but performance artists with PhDs, funded by Gaia herself, probably with “woke” algae money laundering schemes.
Joking aside: this is exactly how disinformation and deflection work—by reducing a planetary emergency to a punchline or political football. But sure, if you're serious, I can dive into how climate denialism has been manufactured by actual fossil fuel lobbying, or how the language of “Marxist conspiracy” is used to derail ecological urgency, or we can explore the weird psychology of eco-anxiety and parody.
You said:
ChatGPT said:
Let’s unpack the weird alchemy of eco‑anxiety, parody, and the psyche—because we’re all weirdly dancing between dread and memes now.
🌀 1. Eco‑Anxiety: Real Anxiety About a Real Crisis
Eco‑anxiety—or ecological grief—is the rational brain’s freakout in the face of existential threat. It’s not delusion; it’s a mind trying to make sense of planetary collapse. Symptoms can include chronic worry, insomnia, even panic—fueling conditions like depression or PTSD when left unchecked reddit.com+13en.wikipedia.org+13scientificamerican.com+13.
Psychologists warn of “eco‑paralysis”—when anxiety stops action instead of sparking it sciencedirect.com. And yet, moderate eco‑anxiety can be adaptive, guiding people toward meaningful engagement climatexchange.org.uk+2sciencedirect.com+2reddit.com+2.
😂 2. The Sad Clown — the Comedic Coping Mechanism
Echoing that “sad clown paradox,” many people—especially young folks—parody the apocalypse as a shield against despair en.wikipedia.org. Memes of existential dread aren’t just jokes; they’re modern survival tools: a form of collective self-soothing in the face of overwhelming dread .
Benign humor—laughing with, not at—can soothe anxiety. But cynical or ironic humor can reinforce negative loops pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
🧠 3. Parody & Memes: Emotional Venting Meets Social Identity
That article about memes showed them doing heavy psychological lifting:
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Creating a sense of control through humor
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Bonding strangers into “in-groups” using environmental jokes
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Acting as a social badge: “I’m aware; I care” arxiv.org+2kathmandupost.com+2pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov+2en.wikipedia.org
Humor softens the blow, conveys seriousness, but also builds community.
⚖️ 4. The Resilience Paradox
Studies say some resilience reduces anxiety—but too much fosters complacency. If you're not feeling distressed, maybe you're not motivated either . So humor that normalizes anxiety while pointing toward action is psychologically smart.
🛠 5. When Parody Backfires
Cynical humor—harsh memes about collapse—can amplify despair. It feels edgy, but it dries out hope. That irony can erode social bonds, reinforce nihilism, and numb us to actual mobilization .
🌱 6. Managing the Spiral: Mind + Community + Meaning
Clinical practitioners suggest:
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Grounding in nature (forest bathing, mindful walks) reduces amygdala hijack scientificamerican.comthetimes.co.uk.
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Ecopsychology: Reconnecting deeply with nature restores emotional energy thetimes.co.uk+1en.wikipedia.org+1.
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Group support: Talking openly in communities, therapy, or even climate‑support Discord channels helps normalize feelings and opens pathways for action .
🤡 7. Parody as Healing, Not Hallucination
The key question: Is humor a safety valve or a sedative?
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Safe: If parody leads to talking, collective care, and re-engagement—a dose of satirical medicine.
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Toxic: If it slips into passive nihilism, avoidance of action, or emotional shutdown.
🎯 Final Takeaway
Eco‑anxiety is a sane response to an insane world. Humor and parody can be therapeutic, but only when balanced with grounding, collective effort, and genuine care. If memes make you laugh and then talk, connect, act, great. If they leave you numbly scrolling through doom again—time to reconnect with reality, community, and purpose.
Want a roadmap of grounding activities (forest therapy, narrative therapy, etc.)? Or some meme-based interventions that actually help, not just amuse? Let me know.
You said:
Eco‑anxiety—or ecological grief—is the _rational brain’s freakout_ in the face of existential threat. It’s not delusion; it’s a mind trying to make sense of planetary collapse.
ChatGPT said:
Absolutely—social grief is very real. It’s just been hiding in plain sight, wearing the ill-fitting suit of “resilience” or “coping.” We tend to recognize individual grief (death, illness, loss), but we flinch when it's collective—especially when it’s about systems, injustice, or the deep rot of social harm. It's less "I miss my loved one" and more "I mourn the world I thought we were building."
😔 What Is Social Grief?
Social grief is the emotional aftermath of witnessing systemic destruction, abandonment, or betrayal—think:
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The grief of seeing your community gutted by austerity or violence
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The sorrow of watching justice become spectacle
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The ache of living in a world where dignity feels like a luxury
It's the pain of recognizing loss when others call it progress. Or watching a system kill, imprison, or starve people while telling you it's for your own good. Grief with gaslighting built in.
🔥 And What About the Firing Line?
Let’s be clear: eco-anxiety is a privileged affect in many cases. For some, climate collapse is a future dread. For others, it’s already knocking down the door—drought, famine, flood, forced migration, poisoned air.
Likewise, social grief looks very different if:
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You’re being evicted now, not worried about gentrification later
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Your water is already undrinkable
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Your neighborhood is being policed like a war zone
For those in the firing line, there’s no room for vague existential dread. There's just survival, resistance, and trauma.
This is where scholars like Christina Sharpe (on Black grief and weathering) and Kyle Whyte (on Indigenous climate futurism) are critical: they remind us that some populations have always been living in the end times. What others are beginning to mourn, some people never even had the luxury to hope for.
🧨 Grief as Fire, Not Fog
When you’re in the line of fire, grief isn’t just sadness—it can be rage, exhaustion, defiance. Mourning and militancy aren't opposites. Sometimes grief is the organizing principle. Think:
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Mutual aid after police shootings
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Resistance in Gaza or Sudan
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Hunger strikes
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Rituals of mourning that double as calls to action
This is affective insurgency—grief that won't go quietly.
TL;DR
Yes, social grief is real—and it often hits hardest where the harm is ongoing, not hypothetical. Eco-anxiety is only one flavor of it, often experienced at a safe distance. Meanwhile, many communities are already inside the collapse, feeling something deeper: grief as blood memory, grief as infrastructure, grief as a weapon.
Want to explore writers who treat grief politically, like Christina Sharpe, Judith Butler on grievability, or Indigenous frameworks of collapse and endurance?
Want to explore Christina Sharpe’s work in depth? Or how ritual and cultural production act as grief infrastructure? Or maybe look at some historical movements where grief turned into resistance?
ChatGPT said:
Let’s dive deeper into each of these threads you asked about—how Sharpe works, how ritual and cultural production function as grief infrastructure, and how historical grief turns into resistance. Ready?
💧 1. Christina Sharpe’s Wake Work
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In In the Wake, Sharpe uses the metaphor of the “wake” to describe the residue of slavery—the shimmering disturbance left behind by the ship, and the ongoing state of vigil and mourning for Black life yalereview.org+11muse.jhu.edu+11digitallyliterate.net+11.
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The concept of “wake work” is deliberate, reflective effort: constantly staying alert to the present-day conditions rooted in that historical break. It’s a practice of maintaining consciousness of how the past haunts the present digitallyliterate.net.
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Sharpe emphasizes doing that work through embodied grief, not abstraction—living in a way that resists erasure and refuses false narratives of “progress” that omit Black suffering .
This isn’t theory as comfort—it’s mourning as praxis, as a method of resistance and clarity.
🏚 2. Ritual & Cultural Production as Grief Infrastructure
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Ta’zieh: In Shia Muslim communities, ritual reenactments of Imam Hussein’s death (the Battle of Karbala) become a communal grieving act. It holds participants in unspoken solidarity, mourning injustice collectively so grief isn’t privatized muse.jhu.edu+2yalereview.org+2digitallyliterate.net+2en.wikipedia.org.
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Greek Laments: Ancient Adonia festivals saw women loudly lamenting—taking up public space to grieve and disrupt gendered orders. Their wailing became a form of protest and communal sorrow en.wikipedia.org.
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Igbo Masked Mulders: In parts of Nigeria, masked performances become conduits—bringing ancestral knowledge and grief among the living. They heal communal trauma by invoking spiritual continuity en.wikipedia.org.
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Professional Mourning: Across many cultures, mourners were hired to publicly display grief—making visible the loss and reinforcing social solidarity. Grief becomes ritualized and collective, not private en.wikipedia.org.
Such rituals do more than express sorrow—they structure, sustain, and make collective grief politically visible.
🔥 3. Grief as Resistance—Historical Movements
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P’ungmul in South Korea: Traditional drumming wasn’t just music—it was used in democracy and labor protests as a sonic marker of dissent. The grief and hope in the rhythm worked as embodied protest during authoritarian rule en.wikipedia.orgen.wikipedia.org.
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Theatre of the Oppressed: Augusto Boal’s “spect-actor” method let oppressed audiences interrupt their own stories on stage—transforming grief into practiced resistance, rehearsal for real-world protest en.wikipedia.org.
These show how grief expressed through cultural forms can be wielded as political energy—not suppressed.
⚙️ Why This Matters
| Role | Function of Grief Infrastructure |
|---|---|
| Visibility | Forces society to recognize loss |
| Solidarity | Turns individual pain into collective accountability |
| Mobilization | Ritual moves internal grief into public resistance |
| Healing | Builds emotional scaffolding outside neoliberal isolation |
Grief becomes not just expression—but a foundation for care, politics, and remembrance.
TL;DR
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Sharpe does grief work as wake work: conscious, daily attention to historical harm that shapes present life.
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Ritual practices (Ta’zieh, lament festivals, masquerade, professional mourning) function as emotional infrastructure—holding communal sorrow, memory, and identity against erasure.
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Movements like Korean drumming protests and participatory theatre turn grief into collective action and embodied dissent.
Want to zoom into one of these? Maybe more on Sharpe’s theory of wake, or a case study of P’ungmul in protest? Just say the word.
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