Is Re-Routing causing the spread of Anxiety and Depression?

[Just saw this important read: Gafni Attacks Over Lack Of Construction Of Ashqelon Hospital]

Air Canada employees are on strike. Canada's postal workers went on strike, too, and are now locked out. To which people have said, "That's okay; we have other airlines, and we don't mail anything anyway." The local news station polled listeners the other day, asking, "Are strikes an effective form of labor action anymore?"

I think the answer is likely No – and this is part of a much bigger issue, which is affecting people all over the world in a very negative way.

The issue is Re-Routing, to use Internet parlance.

From a networking perspective: When a network is populated with enough nodes, and features a high enough degree of connectivity between those nodes, each individual node becomes insignificant. If one node or group of nodes goes down, traffic just re-routes around them and the system continues to thrive.

The same thing is happening in our highly populated and highly connected world: There are so many people, and they are so highly connected, that each individual person loses special status, becoming eminently replaceable.

* You're on strike? I can find other workers, or I can eliminate your job altogether.

* You want to raise the cost of your goods or your service? I'll outsource to India.

* Think your television network is crucial, or you are an irreplaceable performer? Think again, there are 500 more like you.

* Want to protest the government's politics? You are a tiny, irrelevant demographic.

* Trying to make your mark in publishing? Best of luck; everyone has a blog, a book, a column.

* Philanthropy is your thing? There are millions of others doing it, too, and even your small local charities are drawing on grants from afar.

We're past the age of people being rendered obsolete by technology - now, we are rendered obsolete by each other.

Of course, not everything can be easily replaced, yet. Certain government services cannot be replaced, and so people cannot yet avoid government. Protesters who manage to attract enough friends – using that same population growth and connectivity – can still get noticed, albeit rarely.

The general rule, though, is that because there are so many people, and because they are so connected, no one is irreplaceable. The recipients of everything we provide can Re-Route around us.

And one major problem is this: Many of us, perhaps most of us, find our personal meaning and value in our relationships with others, and our ability to make an impact upon the world. Rav Chaim of Volozhin insisted that we were created only to help others, and Charlie Brown (להבדיל, fine) followed his lead. We rate ourselves based on how others view us, whether others care about us, whether others will remember us afterward. How does it feel, then, to discover that others don't think about us at all? That others don't need us? That others will find replacements for us fairly easily?

I suspect this is one of the reasons for the global growth in Depression and Anxiety diagnosis. The phenomenon is beyond any particular society and its pace, work habits, diet or values. I think it's partially attributable to the fact that people everywhere recognize that the world can Re-Route around them, and this realization is devastating.

Answers? Perhaps one answer is to find our satisfaction elsewhere; certainly, Kohelet would prescribe that. Perhaps another answer is to make ourselves valuable in small circles, or to people who can't find easy replacements. I don't know.

New (Jewish) Blog on Depression - Kindred Spirit

I’ve written about depression before, here and elsewhere, including in my Rosh HaShanah derashah from a few years ago, and a shiur linked here on halachic issues in treating depression.

And I’ve kept my link to Rivka of Ha'azina Tefillati in the sidebar for ages, visiting pretty much weekly, hoping she would come back and post again. She knows so well how to say what needs to be said to the world, to help people become more sensitive to depression and more open to people who are dealing with it. Look at this post of hers, for example.

Depression can be a killer, ending people’s lives even if the air is still travelling in and out of their lungs.

Depression can be a knife, severing relationships, stabbing marriages, carving up families.

Depression can be a cloud or a fog, in its milder form, sapping special moments of their joy, hovering with an ominous weight over days and weeks and months.

Depression can be a thief, stealing love and hope and satisfaction and happiness.

Depression can be an ex-communicator, forcing people to the fringe because they cannot face other people, or because they cannot find people who will accept them.

And it’s everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, in people who are blessed with cooperative biology and ideal coping mechanisms and in people who are genetically predisposed to funk or unable to respond resiliently to disaster. It’s in smart people and attractive people and hard-working people and creative people and, yes, funny and entertaining people. Highly intelligent people especially, actually. It’s in kids and teens and adults and seniors, men and women, everywhere.

It's not a death sentence, and it's not necessarily life in prison, either. For many people, there are treatments and therapies and friends and coping mechanisms and bootstraps that can take being tugged on every day.

But it can be on-going, requiring dogged, persistent therapy and a stick-to-itiveness that the depression erodes all too easily.

It requires friends and supporters who won’t flash in and out of people’s lives, but who will be there for the long haul, תמיד, who can deal with being rejected and resented and raged at when things are bad, without necessarily seeing the benefits of their presence and friendship.

I apologize for being so very heavy, perhaps pedantic with this post. I know that many of you know all of this, and could teach me a lot more about the topic yourselves. But I’m trying to reach those who don’t yet know, to convey an element of the seriousness in a few hundred words.

Why now?

Because yesterday I came across a newish blog called Kindred Spirit, by a woman who says, “I am a Jewish girl suffering from Depression fighting for hope and hoping for fight,” and I'm hoping you'll take a look at it, please.