Teenage Depression and Boeing.

Dennis Muilenburg head of Boeing, salary $1.7m + bonus $13m (up 27% from last year) said, “safety is our highest priority.” But Boeing employees spoke of different priorities; stripping out costs, rush it through, lie to get it through the FAA tests. So was Muilenburg lying? I doubt he thought so. He was simply the top exec protecting his company and its shareholders, minimising damage and focusing on the positives: Any top exec would do the same. In law a company or corporation is treated as a person, strange when they don’t breath air or have human feelings. So it’s hardly surprising that top execs become imbued with the same ethic responding purely as a corporate entity; they become dehumanised. Lying would be a human failing and how could he have such a thing? The old film, ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ was less sci-fi than a dreamlike recognition of this rise of corporatisation. And at the other end of the scale today’s teenagers suffer from something similar. They know viscerally they are human but at every turn they are diverted from it and frustrated at being unable to embody it. They become depressed, which in itself in the current medical model refutes their right or desire to be a successful human being. They are ‘ill’ and need a pill. Even talking therapies can’t really shift what is at root an external social malaise. They are the entertained generation perceiving life as little more than fame and celebrity, good looks and selfies. But like Muilenburg they didn’t start out that way. Bit by bit their very humanity has been reduced, blinkered by a million glossy mores. They wanted to explore but had to learn, they wanted to play but had to conform, they wanted to express but had to please, they wanted excitement but were given safety. They want to be proud of their achievements but they’re working in McDonalds. As a result, like Muilenburg they don’t have the language. Where he doesn’t know lies when he says them they can’t quite grasp what it is they’re missing.