Drapetomania was a "mental illness" proposed in 1851 by an American physician who didn't understand why black slaves wanted to run away from their conditions. To him, their enslavement was such a better situation than whatever they had in their original country that they should feel grateful for the "privilege" of being enslaved, hence the idea that their tendency to run away was due to a mental illness, and not a totally reasonable response to an insane environment.
Nowadays it is easy to see this idea as ridiculous. We love to see the past as being a series of dark ages from which we have risen from, because it makes the present (and thus, us) seem so much more reasonable in comparison. And yet my claim is that many institutions in power haven't fundamentally changed with regards to how they view servitude, which leads them to view people as being afflicted with something similar to drapetomania.
The main example that comes to mind is the fact that children and teenagers who do fit in the insane institution known as school are given various labels to identify them as problematic. Mainly, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). The latter one is particularly egregious, because it's basically saying that the child is "irrationally" angry against authority figures and cannot comply to orders. The same thing happens at work, especially if you have to deal with a manager who doesn't listen to anything you say.
Nowhere does the idea appear that the problem lies with the authority or the structure of school. Systemic problems are never blamed on the institution but rather on individuals, and that inversion I claim is the main reason why the general structure of drapetomania, identifying the insanity in individuals rather than the structures they are forced to contend with.
Systemic problems are blamed on individuals for a variety of reasons, but the main one lies in the asymmetry of power, the fact that institutions hold far more power, and have far more inertia than individuals do. As an individual, you need to go to school or work, and then adapt to their ways of functioning far more than those places need to adapt to you, which is why they can get away with being incredibly toxic.
There is also no real feedback to make sure that things improve over time. Have you ever seen teachers and school directors talk to a kid? No, they just assume what is going on in their life, or through the intermediary of their parents, who aren't always on the side of the kids or simply do not know themselves what is going on in the kid's personal life. Same thing goes with jobs, you are merely an asset in the company's quest for profits, and if you do not comply you are seen as defective, and will be eventually replaced.
Even if a teacher has good intentions to help those in need, they simply do not have the time to give everyone personal attention and help. There are around 20 to 25 students per classroom, which is why classes follow a generic curriculum at a generic pace, much like an assembly line in the factory. What the system at large needs is obedience in a manner that is scaleable, not individuals who thrive in their own life, which is why schooling is such a traumatizing experience, it's the first contact with a collective which has its own needs and doesn't care about you as a human being.
Likewise at work, where the effect is even more pronounced because every employee is replaceable in one manner or another. There is no focus on making sure that the company is well fit to the individuals that build it because companies are stuck competing with one another, which means that their quest for profits and efficiency must take over whatever personal needs the employees have, which is why work is so dehumanizing. Thus, alienating work, overbearing managers, and a complete lack of concern about what people actually want are the norms in modern work.
I think the most practical first step is to recognize that you are not insane. It is very possible to live your entire life in insane collectives and believe you are the one at fault, but in fact this is not the case. Our world can be said to be inverted: rather than systems adapting to what individuals need, the latter need to adapt to the former in order for them to grow.
While this might seem like an inevitability in the arc of history, I claim that those systems are also intrinsically unsustainable, both in terms of their demands on energy which keep increasing on a finite planet, but also the way that they treat human beings. All that to say that something better is possible, but for now we will have to navigate the massively bloated and corrupt institutions we have in front of us.
Institutions make individuals feel like they are broken for not being able to meet their alienating demands, which is why it is very important to find things to do which are intrinsically valuable to you, so that you may learn the difference between the two: what the world demands of you, and what actually matters to you. It often feels like those two needs are at odds with one another, which is a testament to how unhealthy the system is, but without intrinsically enjoyable activities, including the activity that consists in doing nothing and simply taking in the beauty around us, life becomes an endless treadmill of self-coercion to accomplish meaningless tasks.
Another thing that the modern world tends to break down in people's lives is their sense of community. The system has no need for people to have one, it only needs workers that can maintain and expand it. In fact, it is preferable for the system to have rootless people, because those feel more compelled to contribute to it than anything else.
Perhaps you have seen those few people at work who eagerly go above and beyond the expectations at work, because they have nothing else in their life. They might have a family, but they don't have a larger community they are a part of, or a big project they want to work on for themselves, or a personal relationship with the Divine, none of that. They are essentially bugmen for the system, very useful assets, but whose lives tend to be quite sad because it is so hollow.
None of what I have presented is easy to live by, but then again, the important things in life rarely are. It takes a certain strength of character to be willing to see the fundamental flaws in our world. Not as a way to blame your personal problems on it, but rather as a simple recognition that, in the history of mankind, life has never been so alienating, rootless and atomized.
People need to be part of something greater than them, we could say that we are beings of worship, but when this collective is an insane system that extracts all that it can from nature and human labor, then those who reject it are not insane or selfish, they simply recognize a conscious truth that most are too afraid to see, which is that the system is fundamentally extractive and unsustainable, and not fit to human nature. There is no virtue in serving an insane collective, which is why one of the Ten Commandments forbids the worshipping of an idol, because to serve anything but God is madness.
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Mentalillness Powerdynamics Schooling Inversion Work
2026-04-12