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R E S I S T A N C E A N D S E L F - M E D I C A T I O N
D
o you regularly ingest any substance, controlled or
otherwise, whose aim is the alleviation of depression,
anxiety, etc.? I offer the following experience:
I once worked as a writer for a big New York ad agency.
Our boss used to tell us: Invent a disease. C o m e up with the
disease, he said, and we can sell the cure.
Attention Deficit Disorder, Seasonal Affect Disorder,
Social Anxiety D i s o r d e r . T h e s e aren't diseases, they're
marketing ploys. D o c t o r s didn't discover them, copywriters
did. Marketing departments did. D r u g companies did.
D e p r e s s i o n and anxiety may be real. But they can also
be Resistance.
When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we
are being g o o d Americans and exemplary consumers. We 're
d o i n g exactly what TV commercials and p o p materialist
culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead
of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratifi-
cation, and hard work, we simply consume a product.
Many pedestrians have been maimed or killed at the
intersection of Resistance and C o m m e r c e .
T H E W A R
O F A R T
R E S I S T A N C E A N D V I C T I M H O O D
D
octors estimate that seventy to eighty percent of their
business is non-health-related. People aren't sick,
they're self-dramatizing. Sometimes the hardest part of a
medical job is keeping a straight face. As Jerry Seinfeld
o b s e r v e d of his twenty y e a r s of dating: " T h a t ' s a lot of
acting f a s c i n a t e d . "
T h e acquisition of a condition lends significance to one's
existence. An illness, a cross to b e a r . . . Some people go from
condition to condition; they cure one, and another pops up to
take its place. The condition becomes a work of art in itself,
a s h a d o w v e r s i o n of the real c r e a t i v e act the v i c t i m is
avoiding by expending so much care cultivating his condition.
A victim act is a form of passive aggression. It seeks to
achieve gratification not by honest work or a contribution
made out of one's experience or insight or love, but by the
manipulation of others through silent (and not-so-silent)
threat. T h e victim compels others to come to his rescue or to
behave as he wishes by holding them hostage to the prospect
of his own further illness/meltdown/mental dissolution, or
simply by threatening to make their lives so miserable that
they do what he wants.
S T E V E N P R E S S F I E L D
1TJ
Casting yourself as a victim is the antithesis of doing
your work. D o n ' t do it. If you're doing it, stop.
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