When I was starting to recover from schizophrenia I joined Academia dot com and started reading studies and reports on the illness to see what the general academic and practical studies were finding. In general, I was surprised at the generally positive outcomes for patients and caregivers. 

If you generalised about older studies and experiences of patients from studies in the 1970s those ideas I feel have created a lot of the general stigma that we still live with to this day. Not to say every patient today is having positive outcomes but there has been a big shift from the initial lack of treatment options from the past.

Outcomes have improved but I don’t believe the general public or all of the people who think they know anything are aware of the new studies. Something that irks me is in a way knowledge is available but not necessarily available at the same time. Social discourse needs ignorance built into it to keep what is nothing more than a capitalist fear factory running. A machine of excretions.

You can only blame individuals for their own ignorance, and we are inherently ignorant of many things by default but at least we can know we are ignorant rather than just be ignorant. Because of Neo-Liberal pressures, the individual has to be self-obsessed and in survival mode which doesn’t help relieve the pressure but makes it more acute.

I realise I am jumping around a bit here but bear with me, the government and corporate interests need ignorance and self-interest to keep the fear factory, the breeder of ignorance and the ‘it’s all about me’ viewpoint from finding common ground. Social media is one way to let off steam in the pressure factory but even an article in a newspaper can be a cunning ploy.

For example, an article in a newspaper spoke of a Real Estate agent who raised the ire of people who offloaded their troubles on a platform in regard to real estate returns on properties. At the end of the article, (a carefully crafted article) there was a summary of the current real estate market. 

This way by showing two supposedly opposing viewpoints and opening with social media posts about a real estate agent talking about the housing market the newspaper can talk about the housing market without fear of raising ire and be seen to be onside even though they have simply played into the general ignorance of their own readers. 

They have simply affirmed their reader’s ignorance of the housing market, social media market and free media market designs to affirm ignorance and keep the fear factory paid and in good order.