It lies in the profit's interest that stress becomes individualized...

af Chapman, Stockholm, with the Royal Palace in the background.

[Updated July 28]. The Swedish professor in religion psychology Owe Wikström writes in his book “In praise of the slowness – or the danger of driving moped though Louvren”(2001) in my quick amateur-translation from Swedish that:

“Laying the blame for exhaustion on the individual solely is directly devastating, especially in times when fewer people has to do more things on a shorter time.

It lies in the profit's interest that stress becomes individualized [and that people start to blame themselves!!! Who are blaming themselves and who are not? The ones that ought to?? Or? We are punished for other people's doings???].

Structural reasons are momentary more expensive to take care of, but cheaper in longterm for the [whole] society.

That's the reason why it's important that the slowness' culture isn't made banal or becomes reduced to the private individual's task. It's also about politics and society.”

But of course each individual has a responsibility for her/himself, what she/he does to other people, to and for the society too!! But those two things, each individual's responsibility and the responsibility those with more power have, doesn't have to exclude each other or how you shall express it. There ARE things (structural) you can't master on your own!

Addition in the evening: Read Sunder Katwala (Guardian) in "When is inequality unfair?" And Paul Krugman in "Kings of Pain."

Addition July 28: When I read George Montbiot in "Politically Transmitted Disease" I had to smile a little. He ends his article with:

”When Unicef compared teenage pregnancy rates in different parts of the world, it found that the Netherlands had the rich world’s lowest incidence – five births per 1000 girls – and the US had the highest: 53 per 1000(16). Unicef explained that the Dutch had 'more open attitudes towards sex and sex education, including contraception.' There was no 'shame or embarrassment' about asking for help. In the US, however, 'contraceptive advice and services may be formally available, but in a ‘closed’ atmosphere of embarrassment and secrecy.'

Obama’s new budget aims to change all this, by investing in 'evidence-based' education programmes(17). The conservatives have gone ballistic: evidence is the enemy. They still insist that American children should be deprived of sex education, lied to about contraception and maintained in a state of mediaevel ignorance. If their own children end up with syphilis or unwanted babies, that, it seems, is a price they will pay for preserving their beliefs. The denialogues are now loudly insisting that STDs and pregnancies have risen because Bush’s programme didn’t go far enough. The further it went, the worse these problems got.”

Education and talking openly about those things seem to be preventive!! Even though some maintain that other programmes with worse results didn't go far enough.

He starts it as follows:

“All of us are in denial. Without it we couldn’t get through life. Were we to confront the implications of mortality, were we to comprehend all we have done to the world and its people, we wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. To engage comprehensively with reality is to succumb to despair. Without denial there is no hope.

But some people make a doctrine of it. American conservatism could be described as a movement of denialogues, people whose ideology is based on disavowing physical realities. This applies to their views on evolution, climate change, foreign affairs and fiscal policy. The Vietnam war would have been won, were it not for the pinko chickens at home. Saddam Hussein was in league with Al Qaida. Everyone has an equal chance of becoming CEO. Universal healthcare is a communist plot. Segregation wasn’t that bad. As one of George Bush’s aides said, 'We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.'

Collective denial has consequences. A new study by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows that during the latter years of the Bush presidency, America’s steady progress in reducing teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases was shoved into reverse(2).”