Exhaustion from exploitation: a serious threat to humankind's survival

Many current discourses and practices are used to camouflage the expression of, and the ecological and psychosocial causes of, exhaustion. Psychopharmaceutic drugs such as antidepressants, pain relievers, sedatives and prescription stimulants are used by many of us to manage acute exhaustion. At the same time, conventional medicine ensures that the causes of exhaustion remain widely hidden from the public gaze by creating illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) (See Shorter, 1992). If conventional medicine were to include contemporary genetics and psychoneuroimmunology research into considerations of the causes of illness, it would also have to include conditions such as Influenza, AIDS and Tuberculosis in the list of exhaustion-related conditions (see Pollmann, 1977; Ader, Cohen & Felten, 1991; Pert, 2005; Lindley, 2010; Marshall, 2011).

The causes of exploitation also remain invisible through our current sanitised education and manipulation through the mainstream media. Books used to teach business studies still portray a world in which competent leaders share their experiences at the water cooler. This is in stark contrast to the thousands of counselling and psychotherapy clients who, day in – day out, share stories about their managers' incompetence and bullying, overwork, and lack of resources.

Interestingly, while many politicians, on behalf of the wealthy elites, still seek to increase exploitation to increase the wealth of a few, an increasing number of people have consciously or unconsciously started to limit the impact of exploitation and exhaustion by, for example, refusing to start families, working from home, engaging in 'quiet quitting', reducing their working hours, and negotiating reduced responsibilities. They also postpone or abandon the purchase of new big-ticket items, such as cars, imposing dramatic changes across many industries that will further slow production and consumption.

Viewed from an in-depth psychological perspective, it is safe to assume that the future of humankind rests on our ability to identify and act on the psychosocial and emotional factors underpinning exploitation and exhaustion and to plan our transition to a small-scale consumption society. This will not be easy, but it may be our only chance to avoid serious societal destruction. It is suggested here that this means that we may have to:

• get trustworthy and unbiased information to understand the complexities of how the world works
• reflect on how our feelings inform our beliefs and actions
• overcome the bystander effect, which is our tendency to wait for others to act
• reflect on our confirmation bias, which is our tendency to seek evidence to support our current beliefs
• overcome the default effect, our tendency to avoid change, and
• correct our optimism bias and denial of the seriousness of our predicament

(see Wallace-Wells, 2019).

As this paper is nearing completion, the USA White House has abducted the Venezuelan President and announced that it will 'run' Venezuela with the plan to get easy access to its resources. With the USA now a rogue state, it might well be that parts of the world will experience even stronger levels of exploitation and exhaustion before a more humane and sustainable mindset can take hold.

Bibliography

• Ader, R., Cohen, N.,& Felton, D.L. (Eds.) (1991). Psychoneuroimmunology. Academic Press.
• Lanier, J. (2018). Ten arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now. Vintage – Penguin Random House
• Lindley, R. (2010). The soma. Createspace.
• Pert, C. (2005). Your body is your subconscious mind. Sounds True.
• Pollmann, W. (1977). Viren – Botschafter lebender Systeme. Piper.
• Shorter, E. (1992). From paralysis to fatigue: A history of psychosomatic illness in the modern era. The Free Press.
• Wallace-Wells, D. (2019). The uninhabitable earth: A story of the future. Penguin Random House.