Thought-Provoker: the oppressive State

Overbearing and oppressive government control can reduce wellness and happiness. Humans need to self-determine. People differ in their needs for control, freedom, autonomy and privacy. Those individuals placing greater emphasis and importance on these core needs/requirements can suffer from societal oppression---their quality of life can be considerably reduced by threats to these core needs.

Modern western society, now more than ever, severely compromises these core human needs: we are being surveilled and monitored, and government and business enterprise demand more and more of our personal information than ever before. There are increasing checks and balances and hoops for individuals to jump through in order to gain employment. Normal human movement is becoming more restricted and there are more rules and regulations in place for people to abide by. The notion of being innocent until proved guilty is now being replaced by an assumption of guilt, until proved innocent. The so called era-of-terrorism has enabled governments the world over to intrude more in our lives, under the guise of keeping constituents safe. Indeed, this fear-mongering and falsehood has severely undermined our right to privacy and freedom from government interference.

There are others who condone such behavior by government. There are a variety of reasons why they might do this: some have limited control, freedom, autonomy and privacy needs; some fall for the threat propaganda; others are in denial and defensively respond by actually increasing support for controlling agents and policies; others may have very limited capacity for insight about the implications of government oppression and, therefore, blindly endorse government as being benevolent and having constituents best interests at heart.

Compromised privacy and reduced control, freedom, and autonomy, are very real threats to the mental health, overall wellness and happiness of people in western society today.