Connor Beaton argues that depersonalization and psychosis are now the ambient condition of modern life, not just clinical diagnoses. He describes society's collective psyche as poisoned, with many people feeling detached, watching their lives through glass, and perceiving the world as irreparably broken. The true plague we face is psychological collapse, not biological.
Chapters
Depersonalization isn't just a sort of clinical term that I'm using here. Psychosis isn't just a sort of clinical term. It is the ambient condition of modern life. It is the water that we are swimming in. It is the air that we are breathing. The modern collective psyche has become poisoned. The well has become poisoned. You probably feel like you're watching your own life through a glass, or you feel like you are looking out in the world and you're like, man, everything's gone to hell in a handbasket, right? I'm sure that you've got different phrases for it, but you're looking out at the modern world and you're like, everything's effed, you know, why bother? And this destabilization has become this sort of core pillar and marker of our modern times, that the plague that we are living through and going to live through is not a biological one, it's a psychological one. It is the collapse of the modern psyche.