HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has proposed to investigate the negative medical impact of SSRIs. An alarming number of American citizens consume these mind-altering drugs. Much can and will be said on the many medical risks these drugs pose. I will leave such investigations to others. There are, however, social and political impacts of these pills worthy of our notice.

Tocqueville’s insight into the totalizing nature of the democratic social state provides the background for understanding the sinister reality behind these drugs. They serve to medicinally democratize the souls of those reliant on them, accelerating the work of the democratic revolution pharmacologically.

Don’t take the democracy pill.

 

Tocqueville’s Democratic Dystopia

Tocqueville looked on with a sense of “religious terror” at the “democratic revolution” unfolding before him. He felt that the movement of democracy was inexorable, and he did not like what he observed as he looked “not differently, but farther” than his contemporaries into the fate of countries animated by its irresistible force.

He observes that “the principle of equality…is the supreme law in democratic societies.” All things flow, in some way, from it. From common political practices, to social mores, it intrudes on every part of the democratic world. For this reason, Tocqueville foresees in American democracy the fated doom of greatness.

While it is true that democracy nobly elevates the low of estate to a higher status in society, the great and noble are simultaneously unjustly lowered. “By hatred of privilege and embarrassment over choosing, one comes to compel all men, whatever their stature might be, to pass through the same filter.” Of course, even despite these tyrannizing strictures, some will always possess the native ability to accomplish “extraordinary things,” but, “a multitude of little preliminary exercises,” removes their spark of ambitious energy so that when they are free to pursue lofty goals, “they have lost the taste for them.”

As stated above, Tocqueville believes that the movement of democracy is providential, and thus unstoppable. Yet, he does not look at the future of democracy with joyful anticipation. As he says “I let my regard wander over this innumerable crowd composed of similar beings, in which nothing is elevated and nothing lowered. The spectacle of this universal uniformity saddens and chills me, and I am tempted to regret the society that is no longer.”

Only from the perspective of “the all-powerful and eternal Being whose eye necessarily envelops the sum of things,” can Tocqueville plausibly conceive of this change in the world as positive. Tocqueville says “it is natural to believe,” that God prefers “not the singular prosperity of some, but the greatest well-being of all.” Whether a belief in this movement as a part of a scheme of cosmic justice be natural or contrived, democracy’s apparent practical effects in this life are unquestionably troubling.

When speaking on American mores, Tocqueville noted the power of law and religion. Americans, and democrats generally, tend to shy away from activities or possessions that are unlawful or otherwise forbidden. However, other things “the use of which is permitted by religion and morality; to these one’s heart, one’s imagination, one’s life are delivered without reserve.”

For example, certain kinds of drug use are not allowed. Most laws and religious traditions condemn the use of hard drugs like heroin or cocaine. However, unhealthy food, digital devices, alcohol, and (now) marijuana are all generally more permissible. These things often become a primary object of pursuit in democracies, “and in striving to seize them, one loses sight of the more precious goods that make the glory and the greatness of the human species.” The democrat who becomes devoted to these “vulgar pleasures… willingly settles into mediocre desires without daring to enter upon lofty undertakings: he hardly imagines them.”

Those alert and resistant to this tendency see society pushed every day closer to a constricted world, increasingly inhabited by a lazy, satiated, unambitious populace: an easily controlled populace. And so, small living quarters, commodified sexual gratification (pornography), delivery fast food, delivery weed, delivery Chinese-made junk (Amazon), etc. all allow the kind of life that makes ruling over a “democratic” people a simple matter.

Consider, finally, this troubling, prescient quote from Tocqueville:

“I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. Each of them, withdrawn and apart, is like a stranger to the destiny of all the others: his children and his particular friends form the whole human species for him; as for dwelling with his fellow citizens, he is beside them, but he does not see them; he touches them and does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone, and if a family still remains for him, one can at least say that he no longer has a native country.”

 

Dealing with the Regime Hesitant

Happily for partisans of this revolution, one encounters little difficulty encouraging certain individuals to “fall back on themselves and consider themselves in isolation.” For such people, finding purpose in life is difficult. When a group of extremely attainable products and results is offered to them as the both the means and ends of life, they greedily grasp it.

However, some are not so easily convinced. The world does not wash over them like so many pebbles in a creek, but flows around them like an imposing boulder. They refuse to be moved so easily. These individuals must be dealt with otherwise.

Ted Kaczynski noted that such people are often labeled as “sick,” or else anti-social or maladjusted. They cannot “fit in” with society. They are compelled to attend to their troubled souls. At the request of family, friends, or employers, they submit to psychotherapy. The diagnosis of their friends is confirmed by this licensed professional: such people simply do not go along with society as they ought. They are labeled depressed, anxious, or something else of the sort.

Luckily, there is a pill that cures these ills. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) smooth out the bumps in the nonconforming personality. Where once a person experienced uncomfortable dissonance is soon found mellifluous apathy. They are now primed to accept the gifts the democratic revolution offers them. Some go so far as to argue that this sort of chemical softening is morally desirable and should thus be carried out covertly for the whole population.

SSRIs are used to treat mood and behavioral disorders. Their purpose is primarily to alleviate the feelings of misery associated with depression. In doing so, they notoriously cause “indifference,” in both emotions and behaviors. The drugs do lift the patient out of these valleys of the shadow of death. However, this is not the only effect. The lowest lows are relieved, but the highest highs also disappear.

There are of course serious dangers associated with these pills, not the least being that they are not “anti-depressants” properly speaking, as depression largely does not relate directly to the presence of serotonin in the patient. But even leaving aside the medical problems arising from widespread adoption of such a totalizing remedy, the impact on the soul of the individual and thus on the nature of the regime inhabited by countless such individuals cannot be safely ignored.

Rather than a full spectrum of color ranging from the darkest, most abysmal black to the purest, most brilliant white, capturing every mixture and shade of vibrant and dynamic reds, yellows, and blues found between those extremes, the person experiences the emotional equivalent of a world turned gray. There are no extraordinary emotions, whether good or bad. Much like Tocqueville said of people in democratic nations, in the soul of these unfortunate medicated democrats “almost all extremes become milder and softer; almost all prominent points are worn down to make a place for something middling that is at once less high and less low, less brilliant and less obscure than what used to be seen in the world.”

In the regime at large, it means instances of outstanding genius or utter degradation (for example) are almost unknown. In the individual soul, it means that neither moments of overwhelming joy nor crushing despair occur. Everything rests in a hazy, warm mediocrity.

This means, as Tocqueville saw, the aims of the great, or potentially great, will be lowered. In Bronze Age Mindset BAP makes a similar point, “We take the wolves and lions and leopards from among us when pups and break them with false ideas, vicious conditioning, and lately, drugs that would have lobotomized a da Vinci, an Alexander, a Frederick the Great out of existence in his youth.”

SSRI use has risen with the explosion of democracy in the past centuries not accidentally, or as an ancillary manner. The ideal image of the soul educated by the democratic social state, resembles minutely the soul thoroughly formed by SSRIs. The use of SSRIs, therefore, almost universally tracks with individuals seeking to “fit in” but insufficiently committed to the socialization of the regime.

In a certain way this all proves inevitable, given the existence of these pills. Plato devoted books 8 and 9 of The Republic to describing the types of souls each political regime resembles: oligarchic souls for oligarchies, timocratic souls for timocracies, and, of course, democratic souls for democracies. Accepting the idea that the democratic regime is largely composed of and critically sustained by such democratic souls, the long term success of a democratic revolution (like that seen by Tocqueville) would rest largely on effectively democratizing souls. Given this fact, no one should be too surprised that the revolutionary impulse would make use of so directly effective a weapon as medicalized democratization.