When we include politics in the mental health data, it becomes clear that this isn’t simply about gender. A 2020 Pew survey of over 10,000 people found that self-described liberals aged 18-29 were more likely than self-described conservatives of the same age to report suffering psychological problems over the last week. They were also more than twice as likely to say they’d ever been diagnosed with a mental health disorder. Furthermore, those who were “very liberal” were more likely than those who were just “liberal” to report poor mental health. The group most likely to report poor mental health was white liberal females, an alarming 56% of whom reported having received a mental illness diagnosis.
Crucially, controlling for worldview narrowed the gender gap considerably: liberal men were more likely to report poor mental health than conservative women. It would seem, then, that the mental health epidemic among girls and young women is associated with their tendency to have a more Left-liberal mindset than boys and young men — a difference that’s becoming more pronounced over time.
But why would Leftism be associated with poorer mental health? An analysis of data from 86,138 adolescents found, in line with the Pew survey, that between 2005 and 2018 the self-reported mental health of liberals had deteriorated more than conservatives’, and that this deterioration was worst for girls. The researchers blamed this on “alienation within a growing conservative political climate”. However, the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg debunked this explanation by pointing out that liberals’ mental health woes began while Obama was in power and as the Supreme Court voted to extend gay marriage rights — hardly a conservative political climate.
The real reasons may be deeper. One idea, more than any other, underpins the difference in outlook between liberals and conservatives. Central to Leftism is equality, backed by the idea that people’s fortunes and misfortunes are not their own doing, and therefore undeserved. As such, Leftism de-emphasises the role of human agency in social outcomes, while overemphasising the role of environmental circumstances. As the West has shifted culturally Leftward — due to most writers and artists leaning Left — the depiction of people as hapless puppets has become dominant.
Today’s Left-liberal culture teaches young people that their problems are not their own fault, but rather the product of various systems beyond their control. These systems may be sociological — late capitalism, systemic racism, the patriarchy — but increasingly, they are medical. A common example is “trauma”, a psychiatric term that has become a knee-jerk justification for everything from street crime to silencing opposing views on campus. It’s a word so overused that even clinicians fear it has lost its meaning. Most people, however, are happy to have their personal failings blamed on medical issues, because it absolves them of responsibility. It’s not your fault you violently lashed out, you have trauma. It’s not your fault you lack energy, you have long Covid. It’s not your fault you hate the way you look, you have gender dysphoria.
Pathologisation is also an effective way to manufacture sympathy. The co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Patrisse Cullors, responded to accusations she’d used donation money to enrich friends and family by claiming that the accusations had given her post-traumatic stress disorder, a diagnosis once reserved for rape survivors and war veterans.
Claims like Cullors’s are instinctively met with sympathy and even awe on the Left, where overeager attempts to destigmatise mental illness can end up glamorising it. On social media, young liberals now engage in “sadfishing”, a kind of digital Munchausen’s Syndrome, where people fabricate ailments for pity and clout; some, such as the TikToker “TicsAndRoses”, fake Tourette’s, while others fake multiple personalities. The power of mental health disorders to attract attention online has turned them into fashion accessories, cute quirks to help kids stand out from the crowd, or “part of my dating appeal”.
Unfortunately, these designer disorders are not just harmless labels; intentional pathologisation by influencers is causing unintentional pathologisation among viewers. Reports tell of adolescent girls suddenly developing “TikTok tics” after viewing videos of alleged Tourette’s sufferers. Others tell of adolescents presenting with multiple personalities after watching videos of people claiming to have dissociative identity disorder. As atomisation makes people more desperate for sympathy, and competition makes them more desperate for attention, it’s likely that sadfishing and its consequences will only worsen.
But as disturbing as all this is, victimhood culture is not the only force behind the pathologisation pandemic. It’s been abetted by a medical industry that has its own incentives for exaggerating the prevalence of mental disorders.
Medicalisation — the tendency for clinicians to recategorise ever more things as medical issues — occurs because clinicians are just as human as their patients, and are therefore just as influenced by culture and their own personal biases. The 1973 Rosenhan experiment showed that psychiatrists who have been told that a healthy person is insane will begin to reinterpret that person’s ordinary behaviours, such as note-taking, as manifestations of their mental disorder. We saw this in the Tavistock scandal, where the staff of the infamous Gids clinic, conditioned by ideologues to look for gender dysphoria, became increasingly hasty to diagnose it.
The ability of clinicians to see precisely the symptoms they’re looking for is facilitated by concept creep, the tendency for the definitions of disorders to gradually expand to encompass more people. The rise in autism diagnoses, for instance, can be largely attributed to a diagnostic widening of the autism spectrum. Concept creep occurs largely due to the Shirky principle, which states: “Institutions will try to preserve the problems to which they are the solution.” The motive is often financial; the number of pregnancies deemed to require caesarean sections has increased because this method of delivering babies is more profitable. Likewise, if you’re simply sad then medical companies can’t monetise you, but if your distress is reclassified as, say, gender dysphoria, those companies can sell you puberty blockers or surgical procedures. By 2021, GIDS accounted for a quarter of the Tavistock trust’s income. In the States, the sex reassignment surgery market was valued at $1.9 billion and is projected to have a lucrative annual growth rate of 11.23%.
So, we have a medical industry that is both financially and ideologically motivated to overstate the prevalence of illness, and we have a victimhood culture that encourages people to view themselves as oppressed by things they can’t control. In the middle of this we have ordinary people tempted to blame their problems on medical issues for the sake of easy answers.
These three entities together form a mutually reinforcing system. The late philosopher Ian Hacking, in his book Rewriting the Soul, details how in the 20th century, the press, the public, and the medical industry operated in tandem to create new forms of madness out of mere gossip. Prior to 1970, there were almost no cases of multiple personality disorder (now known as dissociative identity disorder), but after one case was well-publicised by the media, people began using the concept of multiple personalities to make sense of their own problems. In so doing, they began to conform, wittingly or otherwise, to the official symptoms of the disorder. When clinicians speculated that people may invent multiple personalities to deal with childhood sexual abuse, people began to do just that. Some even suddenly “remembered” being sexually abused, even though the concept of repressed memories has no basis in fact. Initially, patients reported having two or three personalities. Within a decade, the average number was 17.
Thus, patient reports influenced clinicians’ diagnoses, but clinicians’ diagnoses also influenced patient reports. Diagnostic criteria became prescriptive as well as descriptive; they told patients how they were supposed to feel and act. Hacking called this cycle of mutual reinforcement a “looping effect”, and it proved so powerful that it turned a couple of isolated cases into an epidemic. A similar looping effect, facilitated by a hyperconnected world, seems to be driving the rise in reports of mental illness today.
This is a problem because imagined sickness can cause real sickness. This occurs in two ways. The first is direct: in rural India, folklore tells that being bitten by a pregnant dog can make one pregnant with the dog’s puppies, and this urban myth has created a new illness: puppy pregnancy syndrome. Victims become so convinced they’re pregnant with puppies that they suffer panic attacks and even manifest symptoms of pregnancy, from persistent nausea to the sensation of puppies crawling in their bellies.
But the second way fake sickness becomes real is far more common and insidious.
Remember how Leftism de-emphasises human agency in the name of equality? Research shows conservatives tend to have an internal locus of control, which means they believe that their decisions, as opposed to external forces, control their destiny. Liberals, meanwhile, tend to have an external locus, which means they believe their lives are determined by forces beyond their control.
The American psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge used national survey data of adolescents to map their locus of control. Their findings were based on the proportion of respondents who agreed with statements such as: “People like me don’t have a chance at a successful life” and “Whenever I try to get ahead, something stops me”. They concluded that, since the Nineties, the locus of control for all teenagers has become more external, but the shift has been greater for liberals, and greatest for liberal girls. Further, when the self-worth of teenagers was mapped, using responses to statements such as “I feel my life is not very useful”, the data showed a universal decline in self-worth since 2012. Again, the decline was stronger for liberals, and strongest for liberal girls.
People with an internal locus of control, believing they control their destiny, tend to be happier and have healthier habits, like good diets and frequent exercise, while people with an external locus of control, believing they’re at the mercy of fate, have higher rates of anxiety and depression and are more likely to abuse drugs and neglect their health. When you believe you have no control, you don’t.
And thus, as society has liberalised, and medicalised, young people have lost both self-belief and resilience. Many have subsequently become trapped in a cycle where they feel distress, and pathologise it, causing more distress, leading to more pathologisation and more distress, which eventually becomes textbook anxiety and depression. The rise in diagnoses is therefore not simply an illusion caused by medicalisation; society is teaching kids to develop real dysfunctions.
This is the greatest danger of the pathologisation pandemic: belief in one’s sickness is self-fulfilling. It’s a disease not of any bodily organ but of hope itself, and it harms its victim by crippling their immunity to everything else.
If there’s a vaccine for the pathologisation pandemic, then the best candidate is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). This is a form of talk-based treatment based on the Ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism. Contrary to modernity, it teaches that our feelings are not always valid, but often deluded and self-destructive. The aim is to reframe harmful thoughts into alternatives that are more accurate, agentic, and soluble. So, instead of “The world sucks”, one could think “I feel like the world sucks right now”. Where pathologisation places problems outside your control, CBT places them within your control. Where pathologisation bundles many small issues into one giant insurmountable problem, CBT breaks down giant problems into small manageable pieces.
No form of psychotherapy has been as rigorously tested as CBT, and its effectiveness in restoring agency and reigniting hope is documented by decades of research. Some studies suggest CBT is gradually losing effectiveness, but this is mostly because CBT, like everything else in the social sciences, has been corrupted by amateurisation and the desire to be “inclusive” and inoffensive. The newest forms of CBT, such as “Transgender-Affirmative CBT”, are the opposite of classic CBT because they seek not to cultivate strength but to validate feelings.
More than ever, a return is needed to the original, Stoicism-based form of CBT, which has helped everyone from the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius, who governed Rome during a time of war and plague, to Vietnam POW James Stockdale, who used it to withstand torture at the notorious “Hanoi Hilton”. The ultimate cure to rampant pathologisation is to prepare the young to do battle against their greatest foe — their own minds — and to teach them a time-tested truth, bequeathed to us by history’s survivors: you are more than the things that happen to you. And you have as much control over your life as you believe you do.
Many of the misfortunes that befall you will not be your fault, but if you seek explanations for your suffering in things beyond your control, you risk falling prey to a culture and industry that are motivated to keep you feeling ill. Look within for the causes and, most times, you’ll find the cures. Modern society will tell you otherwise, of course, but it’s within your power to defy it, for you are not a helpless leaf in the wind but a mind that holds a world, which, depending on how you think, could be a Hell in Heaven, or a Heaven in Hell.
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SubscribeThe author articulates the mechanisms by which people approach their own agency, or capacity to control their own lives.
It’s my view that the complexity of life in developed societies has exceeded the cognitive capacity of a significant proportion of the population to be able to cope with
Do.people in general really prefer to be told what to do? The evidence from the pandemic is that perhaps, yes, they do. It may have come as an unpleasant surprise to many.
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Yes that’s a good counterpoint to an excellent article. Evolution hasn’t equipped us to cope with constant bombardment by terrible events in the news and the distractions of social media.
“Evolution hasn’t equipped us to cope…”
Then why are so many able to do it?
Still, lockdown does point to the fly in the ointment here. I have been a “stoic” all my life, but lockdown was not under my control; neither was it a fact of nature, nor of perception. It’s getting harder every day to differentiate The Science from The Sadomasochism!
Agreed. Why blame ‘evolution’ when the crux of the problem is that we have an uninformed public (thanks to the irresponsible and uncritical legacy media organisations). I believe that people make intelligent decisions when they have access to high quality information. We’re in an epistemic crisis.
They also need access to having been taught to think; many people today can retain information but ccannot process it.
No the don’t. They rely on their biases. There in not one scintila of proof that heaven exist but ppl believe it in mass.
They also need access to having been taught to think; many people today can retain information but ccannot process it.
No the don’t. They rely on their biases. There in not one scintila of proof that heaven exist but ppl believe it in mass.
Lockdown WAS under your,anyone’s control. You didnt have to do it. Just ignore or. I did.
Like some others did now we know.
Your answer applies to some things Jane, but we cannot just do as we please all the time.
Nice Ego.
Jane didn’t suggest doing as you please all the time. Just in this instance.
That’s true. We have to judge for ourselves.
Nice Ego.
Jane didn’t suggest doing as you please all the time. Just in this instance.
That’s true. We have to judge for ourselves.
Your answer applies to some things Jane, but we cannot just do as we please all the time.
I’m not convinced that we are well evolved to cope with the bombardment, which has only arrived in the last few years of our million year development. Many people do not exhibit outward signs of mental discord, but their brains might surely have been otherwise better utilised.
Many people do not exhibit outward signs of mental discord, but their brains might surely have been otherwise better utilised.
Yes, good point. Opportunity cost.
Whilst stronger individuals may handle the constant chaotic bombardment better than others, in a finite lifetime, that person’s attention and time may well have been far better spent if it wasn’t being sponged up by the chaos machine.
There are many people who don’t listen/watch the news or do social media, and are blithly unaware of much that goes on. Ignorance is bliss?
There are many people who don’t listen/watch the news or do social media, and are blithly unaware of much that goes on. Ignorance is bliss?
Many people do not exhibit outward signs of mental discord, but their brains might surely have been otherwise better utilised.
Yes, good point. Opportunity cost.
Whilst stronger individuals may handle the constant chaotic bombardment better than others, in a finite lifetime, that person’s attention and time may well have been far better spent if it wasn’t being sponged up by the chaos machine.
On the evolution point, there has been work done on this specifically, and it seems that humans can manage up to about 100 social connections well.
Which doesn’t negate that fact that some human tribes were much larger than that, and that some of us today have many hundreds (or even thousands) of active friends, family and work relationships. But it seems that for most people that’s too much to manage, and as numbers of connections increase, the quality of those connections declines (as does satisfaction).
That makes sense. If you invite 1,000 people to your wedding, how much time are you spending with each, and are they really all your close connections, sharing an intimate experience with you? …on the other hand, if you had a wedding with 30 guests, it’s likely that the group connection and interaction would be very different, as would the power of the memories of the day, because depth of interaction is related to satisfaction and how much we ‘value’ certain people / relationships.
I would also posit that something similar may be true regarding our ability to process information (and make decisions, and take actions). Many great books have been written on this — the Paradox of Choice, and the observation that more choice can lead to less satisfaction — I won’t belabour that here. But take the news media environment; so much has changed in such a short time that it’s really astonishing that more people aren’t going a bit doolally, in my opinion.
I’m around 40yrs old. When I was in my teens the news would be switched on in the evenings for 30 mins or possibly an hour. Some days not at all, there were family things going on and no tv time. At the weekend the Saturday paper would arrive on the lawn in the morning, and be lightly perused and passed around by various family members over the course of Sat & Sun (front section for Dad; movie times pages for teens!). Most of this news, perhaps 80% of it, was local news. Things happening in our city or state. The remaining 20% or so would be ‘big’ stories, that were national news, or international news. So the world felt manageable in it’s size. We heard mainly about the things that affect us. We heard occasionally about a shocking murder, or a terrible natural disaster somewhere unimaginably far away.
Fast forward to now. We have a 24hr news cycle, run on a business model that must aggressively bid for your attention to drive ad revenues, which means provoking and sensationalising the stories. The barrier between local and global is gone. We are now saturated in the entire world’s scandals and miseries, multiple times a day. It’s like trying to drink from a firehose of chaos. I think it’s extremely emotionally destabilising for people, especially young people, to be bombarded with misery, disaster and hysterical narratives. It’s simply too much to manage. Many people can’t deal with it, and are subsumed in the madness, or radicalised, or pushed into depressive states (as the world just seems so awful, irreparably so).
Some people are strong enough to handle this, and have good filtering system, of sorts. But many people are clearly struggling to manage engaging with the whole world at once — it’s totally unmanageable. I don’t know how we solve this problem. This is the dark side of globalisation x the internet. It widened the frame from local to global, in a way that may be really bad for human mental health. Jaron Lanier has a few ideas on what to do, but almost nobody else is even talking about the problem, certainly not with any precision.
Agreed. Why blame ‘evolution’ when the crux of the problem is that we have an uninformed public (thanks to the irresponsible and uncritical legacy media organisations). I believe that people make intelligent decisions when they have access to high quality information. We’re in an epistemic crisis.
Lockdown WAS under your,anyone’s control. You didnt have to do it. Just ignore or. I did.
Like some others did now we know.
I’m not convinced that we are well evolved to cope with the bombardment, which has only arrived in the last few years of our million year development. Many people do not exhibit outward signs of mental discord, but their brains might surely have been otherwise better utilised.
On the evolution point, there has been work done on this specifically, and it seems that humans can manage up to about 100 social connections well.
Which doesn’t negate that fact that some human tribes were much larger than that, and that some of us today have many hundreds (or even thousands) of active friends, family and work relationships. But it seems that for most people that’s too much to manage, and as numbers of connections increase, the quality of those connections declines (as does satisfaction).
That makes sense. If you invite 1,000 people to your wedding, how much time are you spending with each, and are they really all your close connections, sharing an intimate experience with you? …on the other hand, if you had a wedding with 30 guests, it’s likely that the group connection and interaction would be very different, as would the power of the memories of the day, because depth of interaction is related to satisfaction and how much we ‘value’ certain people / relationships.
I would also posit that something similar may be true regarding our ability to process information (and make decisions, and take actions). Many great books have been written on this — the Paradox of Choice, and the observation that more choice can lead to less satisfaction — I won’t belabour that here. But take the news media environment; so much has changed in such a short time that it’s really astonishing that more people aren’t going a bit doolally, in my opinion.
I’m around 40yrs old. When I was in my teens the news would be switched on in the evenings for 30 mins or possibly an hour. Some days not at all, there were family things going on and no tv time. At the weekend the Saturday paper would arrive on the lawn in the morning, and be lightly perused and passed around by various family members over the course of Sat & Sun (front section for Dad; movie times pages for teens!). Most of this news, perhaps 80% of it, was local news. Things happening in our city or state. The remaining 20% or so would be ‘big’ stories, that were national news, or international news. So the world felt manageable in it’s size. We heard mainly about the things that affect us. We heard occasionally about a shocking murder, or a terrible natural disaster somewhere unimaginably far away.
Fast forward to now. We have a 24hr news cycle, run on a business model that must aggressively bid for your attention to drive ad revenues, which means provoking and sensationalising the stories. The barrier between local and global is gone. We are now saturated in the entire world’s scandals and miseries, multiple times a day. It’s like trying to drink from a firehose of chaos. I think it’s extremely emotionally destabilising for people, especially young people, to be bombarded with misery, disaster and hysterical narratives. It’s simply too much to manage. Many people can’t deal with it, and are subsumed in the madness, or radicalised, or pushed into depressive states (as the world just seems so awful, irreparably so).
Some people are strong enough to handle this, and have good filtering system, of sorts. But many people are clearly struggling to manage engaging with the whole world at once — it’s totally unmanageable. I don’t know how we solve this problem. This is the dark side of globalisation x the internet. It widened the frame from local to global, in a way that may be really bad for human mental health. Jaron Lanier has a few ideas on what to do, but almost nobody else is even talking about the problem, certainly not with any precision.
You do exactly what the article says, blame outside forces. Maybe there is some truth to that, but it leads you to ignore what you CAN do and then into the pathology described.
OK “Cope” was obviously the wrong word. Not sure what the right word is but the whole social media/24 hour global news deluge is entirely novel and we are only beginning to understand its effects. We can exercise personal responsibility (and abstain) until the cows come but we’ll still have to live with the fallout from those that don’t. And they are probably the future.
You were right first time Simon – the incorrect word in this thread is “blame”. In pure factual terms, our brains have not needed to develop/operate the necessary filtering/coping mechanisms until very recently.
You were right first time Simon – the incorrect word in this thread is “blame”. In pure factual terms, our brains have not needed to develop/operate the necessary filtering/coping mechanisms until very recently.
Yes walking with only a right foot makes a circle over and over again. One also has 2 sides in a brain. Don’t be so scared of the Left side.
OK “Cope” was obviously the wrong word. Not sure what the right word is but the whole social media/24 hour global news deluge is entirely novel and we are only beginning to understand its effects. We can exercise personal responsibility (and abstain) until the cows come but we’ll still have to live with the fallout from those that don’t. And they are probably the future.
Yes walking with only a right foot makes a circle over and over again. One also has 2 sides in a brain. Don’t be so scared of the Left side.
Can’t have progress without progressives.
Perhaps move the rock on top of you to move forward.
“Evolution hasn’t equipped us to cope…”
Then why are so many able to do it?
Still, lockdown does point to the fly in the ointment here. I have been a “stoic” all my life, but lockdown was not under my control; neither was it a fact of nature, nor of perception. It’s getting harder every day to differentiate The Science from The Sadomasochism!
You do exactly what the article says, blame outside forces. Maybe there is some truth to that, but it leads you to ignore what you CAN do and then into the pathology described.
Can’t have progress without progressives.
Perhaps move the rock on top of you to move forward.
What happens to you if you do hold to an unapproved position on something? You know, one different than what they tell you? Will you hear unapproved positions on Ukraine for example?
Will you hear them even on Unherd, or will it always only be about smaller issues that give the illusion of freedom? We’re free to vigorously debate if chicken or beef is better on the menu of the Titanic and we call that democracy, but if we dare mention the rising water levels on the lower decks and speak an unauthorized truth (aka fake news), well, we now know there are all kinds of paid agencies, and the full power, authority, and threat of our angry-at-us democratic government behind it.
The passive submission of the masses is a desired effect, and also a managed effect. The information is all managed, and so is what can be safely concluded.
Just as God makes us only as free as our natures, and therefore we are not free to spread our wings and fly because we are not birds, so our Western governments only allow us to think as freely as the size and location of the overton window they manage over us. To do otherwise is not the path to safety or blessings.
They make that clear, and just like during Covid they encourage us and our neighbors to go after those who violate their wills.
The conservatives have more indoctrinating principles that ostracize people with other beliefs.
BTW which god ?
Allah or
perhaps Zeus the one who did the Virgin Mary.
Now see if you censor me !o!
The conservatives have more indoctrinating principles that ostracize people with other beliefs.
BTW which god ?
Allah or
perhaps Zeus the one who did the Virgin Mary.
Now see if you censor me !o!
The human animal is a gregarious species, so obviously for most people, individual freedom is an illusion. A dangerous mythology when set against biology. Self awareness, especially knowing your place, is key to good ‘mental health’.
The female species is.
The male species is not so much.
Unfortunately we’re condemned to existing in some form of essential but ultimately destructive symbiotic relationship so we have to try to get along.
The female species is.
The male species is not so much.
Unfortunately we’re condemned to existing in some form of essential but ultimately destructive symbiotic relationship so we have to try to get along.
You might like this lyric from the Fleet Foxes, a thoughtful hipstery American band, written in 2010:
I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I’d say I’d rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me.
A bit of Millennial maturity.
It would also be nice if a society promoted essays that dealt with facts. Or logic. If more men die of Covid then, by that very fact, more women will have long covid–because they will have survived it. Why more teenage girls? Because the young survive best.
I’d note you don’t get diagnosed with long covid if they don’t think you’ve had covid. Sure confirmation with doctor’s is a thing but it isn’t the entirety of the diagnosis. There are markers. Testable markers like inflammation. And here comes facts again, women tend to be more prone to auto-immune type disease than men. Something about our immune response can go haywire so it is entirely predictable that long covid would happen to women in greater numbers, even if more men weren’t too dead to get it.
But there are so many bald statements of sexism in this article that need to be addressed. The author seems to feel that self-reporting is the same as fact. It is not. Sure men say they are fine. And then they are 90% more violent both to others and themselves. Far from being happiest middle-aged white men, especially in conservative places, kill themselves at a far higher rate. You know who kills themselves least? Black women who are as a group about as liberal as they come.
Deaths of despair, dependence on social programs, poor education, poverty and broken families are all higher in those parts of the country which are conservative.
Meanwhile New York chugs along with purpose and drive, which tourists from other places will soon realize as they stand aimlessly in the middle of sidewalks while 8 million New Yorkers and a similar amount of commuters try get where they are going.
And that’s not even getting into the bizarre assertion that teen girls are more prone to social contagion. It is almost as if he hasn’t met a middle school, teen or college boy. Boys used to read, play outside, do drama, do anything. Now all they do is hang about on video games, swear at strangers and occasionally pick up an AK and kill classmates and strangers. Or join gangs. And kill neighbors and strangers. Which is so so much better.
Girls fret with their friends and go to college and other technical schools that will give them a future. It’s just such a passive, sick choice on the part of girls.
We should all be “healthy” like men.
I mean seriously dude? How can you say that with a straight face?
Suicide rates are actually higher in solid democratic states like N. Hampshire, and Vermont than in the deep South. Deaths of despair are primarily the impact of the dissolution of the social ties and institutions (church, family, community) which conservatives prize so highly.
Sociological research by Bradford Wilcox has shown that suicide rates are in fact higher in communities and social groups that have been deprived of these institutions. This is also evident in the reports of the commission for children at risk, which show a clear correlation between harmful behavior and social anomie.
Thank you for providing solid evidence backing up both Steve Murray’s and Gurwinder Bhogal’s conjectures.
Your errors here are not due to lack of intelligence but because you are viewing the world through a “Lens of Systemic Oppression.”
Try reading the article again assuming the author is citing statistics in good faith and then assess whether left-leaning politics promotes feelings of despair and hopelessness.
There have been a number of studies lately noting the high rate of depression in young women, particularly those who tend to lean liberal. Google it. My daughter, who I consider to be quite healthy has related to me on more than one occasion how stressful it is today even for her and others. She attributes it to social media and therefore has consciously tried to alter her behavior and perception of how it affects her personally. Depression among young women who tend to lean liberal, is actually ‘a thing’ .
Suicide rates are actually higher in solid democratic states like N. Hampshire, and Vermont than in the deep South. Deaths of despair are primarily the impact of the dissolution of the social ties and institutions (church, family, community) which conservatives prize so highly.
Sociological research by Bradford Wilcox has shown that suicide rates are in fact higher in communities and social groups that have been deprived of these institutions. This is also evident in the reports of the commission for children at risk, which show a clear correlation between harmful behavior and social anomie.
Thank you for providing solid evidence backing up both Steve Murray’s and Gurwinder Bhogal’s conjectures.
Your errors here are not due to lack of intelligence but because you are viewing the world through a “Lens of Systemic Oppression.”
Try reading the article again assuming the author is citing statistics in good faith and then assess whether left-leaning politics promotes feelings of despair and hopelessness.
There have been a number of studies lately noting the high rate of depression in young women, particularly those who tend to lean liberal. Google it. My daughter, who I consider to be quite healthy has related to me on more than one occasion how stressful it is today even for her and others. She attributes it to social media and therefore has consciously tried to alter her behavior and perception of how it affects her personally. Depression among young women who tend to lean liberal, is actually ‘a thing’ .
That’s more or less what I said!
The Miss Triggs problem……
The Miss Triggs problem……
I agree about the complexity. Since the advent of the digital age into everyday life around the mid 90s (for me, the year 2000), life has become increasingly and insanely complex in my experience. I was age 45 in 2000, so I well remember the pre complex age.
Try being over 80!!
Try being over 80!!
“Do.people in general really prefer to be told what to do? The evidence from the pandemic is that perhaps, yes, they do. It may have come as an unpleasant surprise to many.”
Certainly did. I told my wife ‘they’ll never accept that in Britain”. How wrong I was.
Exactly my thinking about the complexity of life and the capacity of most people. These things seem to have crossed each other on a chart, the one steadily increasing, the other decreasing. I have one son who has a below average IQ and I am very worried about his future. He is a competent tradesman with an excellent work ethic and will always be employed, but the complexity of everything else, managing money, subscriptions and electronic payments, passwords, etc. increases daily. It feels as if most people live on the very edge of fiscal disaster.
No one addresses this very real problem the idea seems to be that life, like cars, will be self-driving.
Is that why cults & religion dumb one down to take control ?
“No, life is too hard, just follow our simple beliefs, don’t listen to all that other stuff; it is too complicated for you. We know what you need they don’t.”
Hey wait is Amerika a Cult now ?
Sorry, I don’t agree with this. Life was infinitely more harrowing for poor families 150 years ago when multiple children within one family died in infancy. My great grandfather was a vicar, burying children every week in the East End. It was worse for our grandparents who were at war for six years with bombs raining down. Or how about the First World War and the millions who died in the trenches or the Spanish flu epidemic or the Great Depression. People didn’t just see this stuff on screen. It was their lives. We have suffered nothing remotely comparable. But we have lost important things that used to bind us together. We are adrift from our culture and our history, from appreciating the importance of family and community. But most important, we’ve abandoned our gods. Common beliefs are crucial to social cohesion and flourishing. No civilisation ever survived their loss.
Yes that’s a good counterpoint to an excellent article. Evolution hasn’t equipped us to cope with constant bombardment by terrible events in the news and the distractions of social media.
What happens to you if you do hold to an unapproved position on something? You know, one different than what they tell you? Will you hear unapproved positions on Ukraine for example?
Will you hear them even on Unherd, or will it always only be about smaller issues that give the illusion of freedom? We’re free to vigorously debate if chicken or beef is better on the menu of the Titanic and we call that democracy, but if we dare mention the rising water levels on the lower decks and speak an unauthorized truth (aka fake news), well, we now know there are all kinds of paid agencies, and the full power, authority, and threat of our angry-at-us democratic government behind it.
The passive submission of the masses is a desired effect, and also a managed effect. The information is all managed, and so is what can be safely concluded.
Just as God makes us only as free as our natures, and therefore we are not free to spread our wings and fly because we are not birds, so our Western governments only allow us to think as freely as the size and location of the overton window they manage over us. To do otherwise is not the path to safety or blessings.
They make that clear, and just like during Covid they encourage us and our neighbors to go after those who violate their wills.
The human animal is a gregarious species, so obviously for most people, individual freedom is an illusion. A dangerous mythology when set against biology. Self awareness, especially knowing your place, is key to good ‘mental health’.
You might like this lyric from the Fleet Foxes, a thoughtful hipstery American band, written in 2010:
I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I’d say I’d rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me.
A bit of Millennial maturity.
It would also be nice if a society promoted essays that dealt with facts. Or logic. If more men die of Covid then, by that very fact, more women will have long covid–because they will have survived it. Why more teenage girls? Because the young survive best.
I’d note you don’t get diagnosed with long covid if they don’t think you’ve had covid. Sure confirmation with doctor’s is a thing but it isn’t the entirety of the diagnosis. There are markers. Testable markers like inflammation. And here comes facts again, women tend to be more prone to auto-immune type disease than men. Something about our immune response can go haywire so it is entirely predictable that long covid would happen to women in greater numbers, even if more men weren’t too dead to get it.
But there are so many bald statements of sexism in this article that need to be addressed. The author seems to feel that self-reporting is the same as fact. It is not. Sure men say they are fine. And then they are 90% more violent both to others and themselves. Far from being happiest middle-aged white men, especially in conservative places, kill themselves at a far higher rate. You know who kills themselves least? Black women who are as a group about as liberal as they come.
Deaths of despair, dependence on social programs, poor education, poverty and broken families are all higher in those parts of the country which are conservative.
Meanwhile New York chugs along with purpose and drive, which tourists from other places will soon realize as they stand aimlessly in the middle of sidewalks while 8 million New Yorkers and a similar amount of commuters try get where they are going.
And that’s not even getting into the bizarre assertion that teen girls are more prone to social contagion. It is almost as if he hasn’t met a middle school, teen or college boy. Boys used to read, play outside, do drama, do anything. Now all they do is hang about on video games, swear at strangers and occasionally pick up an AK and kill classmates and strangers. Or join gangs. And kill neighbors and strangers. Which is so so much better.
Girls fret with their friends and go to college and other technical schools that will give them a future. It’s just such a passive, sick choice on the part of girls.
We should all be “healthy” like men.
I mean seriously dude? How can you say that with a straight face?
That’s more or less what I said!
I agree about the complexity. Since the advent of the digital age into everyday life around the mid 90s (for me, the year 2000), life has become increasingly and insanely complex in my experience. I was age 45 in 2000, so I well remember the pre complex age.
“Do.people in general really prefer to be told what to do? The evidence from the pandemic is that perhaps, yes, they do. It may have come as an unpleasant surprise to many.”
Certainly did. I told my wife ‘they’ll never accept that in Britain”. How wrong I was.
Exactly my thinking about the complexity of life and the capacity of most people. These things seem to have crossed each other on a chart, the one steadily increasing, the other decreasing. I have one son who has a below average IQ and I am very worried about his future. He is a competent tradesman with an excellent work ethic and will always be employed, but the complexity of everything else, managing money, subscriptions and electronic payments, passwords, etc. increases daily. It feels as if most people live on the very edge of fiscal disaster.
No one addresses this very real problem the idea seems to be that life, like cars, will be self-driving.
Is that why cults & religion dumb one down to take control ?
“No, life is too hard, just follow our simple beliefs, don’t listen to all that other stuff; it is too complicated for you. We know what you need they don’t.”
Hey wait is Amerika a Cult now ?
Sorry, I don’t agree with this. Life was infinitely more harrowing for poor families 150 years ago when multiple children within one family died in infancy. My great grandfather was a vicar, burying children every week in the East End. It was worse for our grandparents who were at war for six years with bombs raining down. Or how about the First World War and the millions who died in the trenches or the Spanish flu epidemic or the Great Depression. People didn’t just see this stuff on screen. It was their lives. We have suffered nothing remotely comparable. But we have lost important things that used to bind us together. We are adrift from our culture and our history, from appreciating the importance of family and community. But most important, we’ve abandoned our gods. Common beliefs are crucial to social cohesion and flourishing. No civilisation ever survived their loss.
The author articulates the mechanisms by which people approach their own agency, or capacity to control their own lives.
It’s my view that the complexity of life in developed societies has exceeded the cognitive capacity of a significant proportion of the population to be able to cope with
Do.people in general really prefer to be told what to do? The evidence from the pandemic is that perhaps, yes, they do. It may have come as an unpleasant surprise to many.
.
Conservatives tend to be more resilient because they tend to have a more coherent worldview. Liberals believe that the entire human experience (gender, social relationship etc) is socialy constructed, an artifice that is contingent to permanent change. Such worldview is a recipe for mental illness as it leads them to misconstrue and misunderstand the world around them and creates a permanent sense of grievance. Being a young Liberal means that you are waging constant war on reality.
The Left’s striving for utopia and for the ever perfect world, instead of living in the present is exhausting them. They need to take a break from themselves. One side effect of all this striving is tendency towards narcissism which permeates our culture today.
The Left’s striving for utopia and for the ever perfect world, instead of living in the present is exhausting them. They need to take a break from themselves. One side effect of all this striving is tendency towards narcissism which permeates our culture today.
Conservatives tend to be more resilient because they tend to have a more coherent worldview. Liberals believe that the entire human experience (gender, social relationship etc) is socialy constructed, an artifice that is contingent to permanent change. Such worldview is a recipe for mental illness as it leads them to misconstrue and misunderstand the world around them and creates a permanent sense of grievance. Being a young Liberal means that you are waging constant war on reality.
I’ve noticed amongst my own acquaintances that the more sedentary their lifestyle the more prone they are to pessimism and constant complaining. So I will always be grateful that I was forced to learn a sport at school – much as I may have resented it at the time. Those endorphins are the best anti-depressant there is.
Hard to argue. I would also add isolation and loneliness to this too both within our own lives (an increasing lack of friends and acquaintances) but also within our communities too. How many of us talk to our neighbours regularly, have simple chats with each other about local things etc? Probably a lot less than we used to do.
It would be very interesting to see a study that would analyse mental illness by factoring in ethnicity, religion, etc. I suspect that some minority communities might be doing better precisely because of their closely knit structures and religious/spiritual based understanding of the cosmos. I have a feeling that the decline of Christianity has something to do with the rise of mental illness. Christianity offered both an avenue for socialization through services, rituals and organisations (Sunday schools, study groups), and a coherent worldview.
Talking to and engaging with one’s neighbor does not come naturally to us, instead ideas of politeness, kindness, gentility and social solidarity are firmly based on a Christian worldview.
The decline of Christianity undermined the structures (family, community) that validate and sustain the individual and I very much doubt that the remedies (neo-stoicism, new age spirituality) offered in this article can fill this gap.
I think this is very true although I would add that social cohesion, family and community have also been violently disrupted by the move from an agrarian to an industrial society.
My family and I are, however, not starving which is an eternal blessing
This is true however Christianity did not lost its resonance due to industrialization. Indeed, in many cases it revived it and gave it a new sense of purpose, the Evangelical revival of the 1830’s-1840’s was often centered around urban working class communities.
The decline of Christianity in fact was ushered in and coincided with rapid de-industrialization and the advent of neoliberal economics and post-modernist philosophy. Real productive work was thus replaced by the ‘service’ sector and Christianity by a vague spirituality that allowed you to pick and choose the flavor of the week.
This shift has seriously harmed working people by removing a much necessary locus, which helped them to create and sustain a more grounded existence and way of life.
Darwin and World War 1 didn’t exactly help I either. I was thinking more of John Clare the poet. He was uprooted from the village he grew up in and ‘moved’ elsewhere as a consequence of the enclosure acts I think. It drove him mad. Although to be fair there was perhaps also already a predilection within him.
He found being denied access to fields and woods he could once roam in freely intensely disturbing.
I expect a lot of people felt that to some degree.
Exactly. I miss my childhood where I could roam freely over the English countryside. There was no such thing as private property as there is here in the US, where one can get shot for trespassing.
Exactly. I miss my childhood where I could roam freely over the English countryside. There was no such thing as private property as there is here in the US, where one can get shot for trespassing.
He found being denied access to fields and woods he could once roam in freely intensely disturbing.
I expect a lot of people felt that to some degree.
The choice hasn’t really been removed. It is the state that has continually played down christianity but it isn’t really a political thing. It’s thriving in those who practice it even though they find themselves in a monority.
But it’s been neutralized as a political force. A force for social justice. Which it very much was used as in the 19th.C.
But it’s been neutralized as a political force. A force for social justice. Which it very much was used as in the 19th.C.
But that great early 19th C evangelical movement was a response by working people to their terrible,dreadful,awful conditions,it was an intelligent form of self-help and created a structure through which to operate,and to.become a cohesive force to demand and get better wages, conditions and respect
That’s why THEY (whoever they are) sought to bring down and destroy faith because it gives it’s adherents a communal power.
Darwin and World War 1 didn’t exactly help I either. I was thinking more of John Clare the poet. He was uprooted from the village he grew up in and ‘moved’ elsewhere as a consequence of the enclosure acts I think. It drove him mad. Although to be fair there was perhaps also already a predilection within him.
The choice hasn’t really been removed. It is the state that has continually played down christianity but it isn’t really a political thing. It’s thriving in those who practice it even though they find themselves in a monority.
But that great early 19th C evangelical movement was a response by working people to their terrible,dreadful,awful conditions,it was an intelligent form of self-help and created a structure through which to operate,and to.become a cohesive force to demand and get better wages, conditions and respect
That’s why THEY (whoever they are) sought to bring down and destroy faith because it gives it’s adherents a communal power.
“Talking to and engaging with our neighbors does not come naturally to us”. Who is the “Us?”. Speaking for myself it comes very naturally to me. Perhaps you’re one of the neighbors who wouldn’t respond!!
This is true however Christianity did not lost its resonance due to industrialization. Indeed, in many cases it revived it and gave it a new sense of purpose, the Evangelical revival of the 1830’s-1840’s was often centered around urban working class communities.
The decline of Christianity in fact was ushered in and coincided with rapid de-industrialization and the advent of neoliberal economics and post-modernist philosophy. Real productive work was thus replaced by the ‘service’ sector and Christianity by a vague spirituality that allowed you to pick and choose the flavor of the week.
This shift has seriously harmed working people by removing a much necessary locus, which helped them to create and sustain a more grounded existence and way of life.
“Talking to and engaging with our neighbors does not come naturally to us”. Who is the “Us?”. Speaking for myself it comes very naturally to me. Perhaps you’re one of the neighbors who wouldn’t respond!!
I think this is very true although I would add that social cohesion, family and community have also been violently disrupted by the move from an agrarian to an industrial society.
My family and I are, however, not starving which is an eternal blessing
Bit difficult to have a simple conversation if that neighbour reacts to you with an offended stare then resolutely looks away with pursed lips. That’s my neighbours. All my life. So I think the problem lies with me.
It’s not you- it’s them.
Well you don’t really know for a fact who’s fault it is. I think with the right amount of social skills most people will respond in a posititve way, unless they’re paranoid, in which case one wouldn’t want to have them in one’s life anyway.
I wish that was true!
Well you don’t really know for a fact who’s fault it is. I think with the right amount of social skills most people will respond in a posititve way, unless they’re paranoid, in which case one wouldn’t want to have them in one’s life anyway.
I wish that was true!
It’s not you- it’s them.
Yes, community is a wonderful thing. That was half the attraction for church gorers.
It would be very interesting to see a study that would analyse mental illness by factoring in ethnicity, religion, etc. I suspect that some minority communities might be doing better precisely because of their closely knit structures and religious/spiritual based understanding of the cosmos. I have a feeling that the decline of Christianity has something to do with the rise of mental illness. Christianity offered both an avenue for socialization through services, rituals and organisations (Sunday schools, study groups), and a coherent worldview.
Talking to and engaging with one’s neighbor does not come naturally to us, instead ideas of politeness, kindness, gentility and social solidarity are firmly based on a Christian worldview.
The decline of Christianity undermined the structures (family, community) that validate and sustain the individual and I very much doubt that the remedies (neo-stoicism, new age spirituality) offered in this article can fill this gap.
Bit difficult to have a simple conversation if that neighbour reacts to you with an offended stare then resolutely looks away with pursed lips. That’s my neighbours. All my life. So I think the problem lies with me.
Yes, community is a wonderful thing. That was half the attraction for church gorers.
Not just sport but any hobby. Too much time spent navel gazing or scrolling through social media or channel surfing. No sense of achievement or accomplishment leads to low self esteem and feelings of worthlessness.
That’s nonsense. Ive never achieved or accomplished anything in my life but I have a quite unjustified high self esteem. I try to be humble but when you are naturally arrogant and conceited that old ego bounces right back. The monster within. Seriously this is a very USA and very damaging notion. The American Dream. Every one is unique. Every one is a star. You just have to work hard and your dreams will come true. But you can’t just be ordinary,that’s not good enough. Until you’re a movie or a rock.star you haven’t really made it. That idea destroys a lot of American people. For an honest and truthful picture of the harmful side of The American Dream.i recommend this book – Sea of the Unknown by Jay.Swanson.
I never said any of that. However I stand by having a hobby. I enjoy knitting and macrame. It’s hardly Rock star or fame worthy but each piece I complete reminds me that I can do what I put my mind to and I keep my mind busy. I don’t share it on social media for adulation because I don’t need that. Yet I know many people who do nothing and find the notion of trying to be frightening for fear of failure paralyses them. They tend to suffer from boredom and bitterness in equal measure.
So we’re all different. One can’t generalize. There are so many different factors to be taken into consideration.
Dear Lindsay,I really took your last words as a starting point and went off in a different direction. I’m sorry if I upset you. I was a bit tactless. I make patchwork tote bags and yes,as I complete them and they are beautiful -and sturdy,I do have a sense of achievement. I’ve made hundreds by now but it was only in the last 3 years that I started phtographing each batch so I have a photo book record. I took,don’t post them on social media. But I feel my point still holds. In media terms I’m not “validated” as no one knows about my artistic activity. The media version of “my story” would be that one of my creations “goes viral” and within days I’ve made a fortune and am wealthy and “successful”. Except I’ve learned as have many others including Mr Swanson whose book is worth reading, thats SEA OF THE UNKNOWN by JAY SWANSON available on Amazon,that just producing something good on its own..no,all those creators who “just happened” to get discovered. Nah. It doesn’t happen. Your creation has to be placed,promoted,given a narrative,the RIGHT celebrity has to endorse it,it’s very interesting to get an insight into how it works. Next time I read about a 5 year girl who stated baking cup cakes for her 95 year old neighbour and only six weeks later is CEO of a healthy thriving business….
So we’re all different. One can’t generalize. There are so many different factors to be taken into consideration.
Dear Lindsay,I really took your last words as a starting point and went off in a different direction. I’m sorry if I upset you. I was a bit tactless. I make patchwork tote bags and yes,as I complete them and they are beautiful -and sturdy,I do have a sense of achievement. I’ve made hundreds by now but it was only in the last 3 years that I started phtographing each batch so I have a photo book record. I took,don’t post them on social media. But I feel my point still holds. In media terms I’m not “validated” as no one knows about my artistic activity. The media version of “my story” would be that one of my creations “goes viral” and within days I’ve made a fortune and am wealthy and “successful”. Except I’ve learned as have many others including Mr Swanson whose book is worth reading, thats SEA OF THE UNKNOWN by JAY SWANSON available on Amazon,that just producing something good on its own..no,all those creators who “just happened” to get discovered. Nah. It doesn’t happen. Your creation has to be placed,promoted,given a narrative,the RIGHT celebrity has to endorse it,it’s very interesting to get an insight into how it works. Next time I read about a 5 year girl who stated baking cup cakes for her 95 year old neighbour and only six weeks later is CEO of a healthy thriving business….
I get what you’re saying about America, Jane. However I do think that tends to be a coastal thing that doesn’t hold true for middle America.
Thank you. As a Brit I really only see America through the (lying ) media. I know most USA people are lovely but something is gone very wrong with their political set up.
Thank you. As a Brit I really only see America through the (lying ) media. I know most USA people are lovely but something is gone very wrong with their political set up.
I never said any of that. However I stand by having a hobby. I enjoy knitting and macrame. It’s hardly Rock star or fame worthy but each piece I complete reminds me that I can do what I put my mind to and I keep my mind busy. I don’t share it on social media for adulation because I don’t need that. Yet I know many people who do nothing and find the notion of trying to be frightening for fear of failure paralyses them. They tend to suffer from boredom and bitterness in equal measure.
I get what you’re saying about America, Jane. However I do think that tends to be a coastal thing that doesn’t hold true for middle America.
That’s nonsense. Ive never achieved or accomplished anything in my life but I have a quite unjustified high self esteem. I try to be humble but when you are naturally arrogant and conceited that old ego bounces right back. The monster within. Seriously this is a very USA and very damaging notion. The American Dream. Every one is unique. Every one is a star. You just have to work hard and your dreams will come true. But you can’t just be ordinary,that’s not good enough. Until you’re a movie or a rock.star you haven’t really made it. That idea destroys a lot of American people. For an honest and truthful picture of the harmful side of The American Dream.i recommend this book – Sea of the Unknown by Jay.Swanson.
Not everyone is able bodied. To say that exercise is the remedy for what ails society is very simplistic.
Hard to argue. I would also add isolation and loneliness to this too both within our own lives (an increasing lack of friends and acquaintances) but also within our communities too. How many of us talk to our neighbours regularly, have simple chats with each other about local things etc? Probably a lot less than we used to do.
Not just sport but any hobby. Too much time spent navel gazing or scrolling through social media or channel surfing. No sense of achievement or accomplishment leads to low self esteem and feelings of worthlessness.
Not everyone is able bodied. To say that exercise is the remedy for what ails society is very simplistic.
I’ve noticed amongst my own acquaintances that the more sedentary their lifestyle the more prone they are to pessimism and constant complaining. So I will always be grateful that I was forced to learn a sport at school – much as I may have resented it at the time. Those endorphins are the best anti-depressant there is.
Great article: thanks! In addition to all those mentioned in the article, the UK has yet another factor that amplifies the prevalence of these disorders: a dysfunctional welfare system.
Great article: thanks! In addition to all those mentioned in the article, the UK has yet another factor that amplifies the prevalence of these disorders: a dysfunctional welfare system.
One of the best articles ever published by unherd. Some fundamental truths backed by evidence.
One of the best articles ever published by unherd. Some fundamental truths backed by evidence.
Nice article, well-written. It reminds me of an episode which occurred when I was working in Further Education colleges in the 1990s. We ran an “Access to H.E.” course, for people (mainly women) who were given a “second bite at the cherry” if they had missed out on university at 18.
From the early 1990s, there was a lot of money spent on computers, and lots of articles and courses on how education could be a lot more productive with an online component, and how all learners now needed to use I.T.. But a couple of students couldn’t get on with computers; it took them ages to learn basics like file management, etc., and they said that they couldn’t read text on the screen. Words “jumped around” as is sometimes reported by people with dyslexia, and some said that scrolling up and down made them feel physically ill.
More students (all women, as it happened) complained of this, and there were complaints and panic attacks. The term “computer blindness” or “screen blindness” was heard, and Ed. Psych. assessments started mentioning the phenomenon, along with recommendations that some sufferers needed an amanuensis to read and input text, special screens, and more time for exams and assessments.
In the mid 1990s, mobile phones became popular, and I remember 1997 as the year when every last student seemed to have one. If you didn’t have one, you missed out on a lot of novelty fun, and indeed became something of an outcaste. We then realised that “screen blindness” had quietly but entirely disappeared.
Nice article, well-written. It reminds me of an episode which occurred when I was working in Further Education colleges in the 1990s. We ran an “Access to H.E.” course, for people (mainly women) who were given a “second bite at the cherry” if they had missed out on university at 18.
From the early 1990s, there was a lot of money spent on computers, and lots of articles and courses on how education could be a lot more productive with an online component, and how all learners now needed to use I.T.. But a couple of students couldn’t get on with computers; it took them ages to learn basics like file management, etc., and they said that they couldn’t read text on the screen. Words “jumped around” as is sometimes reported by people with dyslexia, and some said that scrolling up and down made them feel physically ill.
More students (all women, as it happened) complained of this, and there were complaints and panic attacks. The term “computer blindness” or “screen blindness” was heard, and Ed. Psych. assessments started mentioning the phenomenon, along with recommendations that some sufferers needed an amanuensis to read and input text, special screens, and more time for exams and assessments.
In the mid 1990s, mobile phones became popular, and I remember 1997 as the year when every last student seemed to have one. If you didn’t have one, you missed out on a lot of novelty fun, and indeed became something of an outcaste. We then realised that “screen blindness” had quietly but entirely disappeared.
Excellent article.
I’m not sufficiently up on the data to critique it properly but this is thoughtful, credible, intelligent and well-researched writing on an important issue. It should be a spur to further debate and investigation.
I’ve followed Gurwinder on his sub stack and twitter for a while and am really pleased Unherd has offered him a piece. More please.
He is exactly the sort of intelligent writer operating outside the tramlines of familiar narratives we need to hear more of, and is centrally what Unherd should be about.
Thanks, R MS. I checked out his substack, and you are right. Not only bright and clear, but seems like a decent moral person. Bookmarked!
And so what what was the solution?
Thanks, R MS. I checked out his substack, and you are right. Not only bright and clear, but seems like a decent moral person. Bookmarked!
And so what what was the solution?
Excellent article.
I’m not sufficiently up on the data to critique it properly but this is thoughtful, credible, intelligent and well-researched writing on an important issue. It should be a spur to further debate and investigation.
I’ve followed Gurwinder on his sub stack and twitter for a while and am really pleased Unherd has offered him a piece. More please.
He is exactly the sort of intelligent writer operating outside the tramlines of familiar narratives we need to hear more of, and is centrally what Unherd should be about.
I don’t dispute that women and girls are more prone to anxiety disorders and social contagion than men. However, I’m wary of replacing one totalizing and obscuring explanation (long COVID) with another (modern society needs CBT to combat its delusions). I think something like long COVID is a good example of how something that existed before, like post viral syndrome, has been reinterpreted and repackaged as a new phenomenon. Ironically, women’s greater propensity to long COVID might be explained by their propensity to auto immune conditions, which has been linked by some to their sexed biology. No need to put them in the same camp as transgender, here! Just an alternative suggestion; for me, this article came off increasingly as articulating a “theory of all things”
A lot of our statements come how we choose define things. We define girls as having anxiety but not boys–and yet young men are exponentially more likely to murder someone or get in a fight. Often over nothing. Stupid stuff. How is that not just a function of anxiety but given permission to release itself in violence?
The social contagion thing, I don’t even know where anyone gets that. Compare sororities and fraternities. Fraternities will commit crimes. Sororities will maybe be mean to a girl or two. Conservatives among others are constantly worrying about boys without fathers–because they will find fathers in bad places, like gangs. Girls without fathers seem to cope. Even girls without mothers, cope. Because girls friendship groups offer more.
So how is this NOT defined as social contagion. How is this not defined as social contagion?
It is far more dangerous to society. It interferes the boys becoming useful members of society later–as these anxieties don’t with girls. Of all my daughter’s friends with various anxieties, not one isn’t going on to college or technical school. Only money adjusts their expectations. I can’t say the same for the boys my son knew growing up. Most were college bound but they have more issues.
Girls without fathers, on average, mature sooner, are more promiscuous, hook up with the wrong young men, and have a higher chance on becoming young unwed mothers.
That sounds like a huge generalization!
That sounds like a huge generalization!
“ Girls without fathers seem to cope.”
Narcissa, with the utmost respect to your experiences as a woman, you have got to be f***ing joking. Seeing a young woman happily in the company of her father is a beautiful thing and utterly precious to civilisation. Men who are raised without fathers are a danger to society but girls without fathers are an utter menace.
Every young man listens to young women bemoaning the horrors of female society, the cruelty and sadism of womankind.
Women enjoy higher education because it has been taken over by women and shaped to their interests and inclinations.
Oh good grief, another generalization. One can have a father but not a very good one, so that may be worse than not having one at all.
Oh good grief, another generalization. One can have a father but not a very good one, so that may be worse than not having one at all.
Girls without fathers, on average, mature sooner, are more promiscuous, hook up with the wrong young men, and have a higher chance on becoming young unwed mothers.
“ Girls without fathers seem to cope.”
Narcissa, with the utmost respect to your experiences as a woman, you have got to be f***ing joking. Seeing a young woman happily in the company of her father is a beautiful thing and utterly precious to civilisation. Men who are raised without fathers are a danger to society but girls without fathers are an utter menace.
Every young man listens to young women bemoaning the horrors of female society, the cruelty and sadism of womankind.
Women enjoy higher education because it has been taken over by women and shaped to their interests and inclinations.
They wanna stay home. Thats not bad. It’s natural. End of story.
I have to agree. I have a minor autoimmune condition that flares and remits at intervals. During a flare, I’m not actually in too much pain, but I feel very tired and, yes, depressed and anxious. When my condition remits, I get bright and energetic. So my point is that young women are prone to autoimmune conditions that may not be properly diagnosed for decades and some of the disproportionate mental illness we seem to suffer could have a physical cause. Autoimmune inflammation can affect the brain.
A lot of our statements come how we choose define things. We define girls as having anxiety but not boys–and yet young men are exponentially more likely to murder someone or get in a fight. Often over nothing. Stupid stuff. How is that not just a function of anxiety but given permission to release itself in violence?
The social contagion thing, I don’t even know where anyone gets that. Compare sororities and fraternities. Fraternities will commit crimes. Sororities will maybe be mean to a girl or two. Conservatives among others are constantly worrying about boys without fathers–because they will find fathers in bad places, like gangs. Girls without fathers seem to cope. Even girls without mothers, cope. Because girls friendship groups offer more.
So how is this NOT defined as social contagion. How is this not defined as social contagion?
It is far more dangerous to society. It interferes the boys becoming useful members of society later–as these anxieties don’t with girls. Of all my daughter’s friends with various anxieties, not one isn’t going on to college or technical school. Only money adjusts their expectations. I can’t say the same for the boys my son knew growing up. Most were college bound but they have more issues.
They wanna stay home. Thats not bad. It’s natural. End of story.
I have to agree. I have a minor autoimmune condition that flares and remits at intervals. During a flare, I’m not actually in too much pain, but I feel very tired and, yes, depressed and anxious. When my condition remits, I get bright and energetic. So my point is that young women are prone to autoimmune conditions that may not be properly diagnosed for decades and some of the disproportionate mental illness we seem to suffer could have a physical cause. Autoimmune inflammation can affect the brain.
I don’t dispute that women and girls are more prone to anxiety disorders and social contagion than men. However, I’m wary of replacing one totalizing and obscuring explanation (long COVID) with another (modern society needs CBT to combat its delusions). I think something like long COVID is a good example of how something that existed before, like post viral syndrome, has been reinterpreted and repackaged as a new phenomenon. Ironically, women’s greater propensity to long COVID might be explained by their propensity to auto immune conditions, which has been linked by some to their sexed biology. No need to put them in the same camp as transgender, here! Just an alternative suggestion; for me, this article came off increasingly as articulating a “theory of all things”
My mother would be considered a terrible parent by today’s standards. Whenever I whined about an illness or a condition that couldn’t be physically detected, she would just tell me to ‘shut the f**k up and pull yourself together’.
By contrast, I do not understand today’s parents, many of whom seem to obsess about affirming their children’s feelings. I’m not entirely sure this is good for children as they eventually become accustomed to authority figures meeting all their needs. Maybe this is the reason why young people are so pro-government. Perhaps the state is seen as some some kind of parent-figure to these adult children.
Not all parents, my stock phrase to my teen, who is now robustly positive and cheerful, has always been: “you’ll live” and he was then sent off to school. Of course there was the odd occasion I got it wrong and he was sent back home from school, but his days off sick are so few that they can be counted on one hand. Interestingly, he and many of his teen cohorts hold no truck with the whole fashion for ‘victimhood’. Long may that continue.
There’s “victimhood” and then there are actual victims.
There’s “victimhood” and then there are actual victims.
I think that would have been considered pretty rough then too. Not the underlying lack of sentiment though, which makes sense in most cases of whining. Was this when you were a teenager or also as an eight-year-old? Was the response the same when you were in grief (someone died) or distress? (Not that I expect answers but there’s a lot of context missing).
My dad used to tell, (not force) me to tough it out and get myself to school when I was physically ill, on the theory that pushing though a moderate cold or flu was good for you and made it pass faster. Often, he was right, but sometimes rest was really called for–and I’m sure some of the other parents didn’t celebrate his policy. My mom, by contrast, was a soft touch (parents split when I was 7) and I could take an extra day or even fake it pretty easily when I didn’t wanna face the schoolyard for whatever reason. I think a middle approach would have made more sense.
She said things to this effect for as long as I can remember. I remember crying in front of her when I was three. She mimicked me and called me Mr. Blubberface. It was an invaluable lesson back then in that it taught me that tears and self-pity don’t work. Unfortunately, I now feel that the reverse is true. The more stoic and hard-working you are the more you are lumped in with right-wing extremists.
I have to say that with a three-year-old that sounds mean, a “lesson” of unnecessary harshness. Of course I don’t know if those mocking and dismissive responses were typical of her as a parent. Your retroactive agreement with her methods suggests that she also gave a few nurturing lessons. Breaking down to then build up is one thing, demoralization quite another, obviously.
I agree we’ve gone to the other extreme now, generally speaking. UnHerd’s gloves-off forum is a kind of bizarro-world “safe-space” for me right now.
Yours is the statement about left wing and right wing people that makes the most sense in these comments! Most are just generalisations!
Parenting style comes from the personality type and mental health of the parents. So many parents, then and now, didn’t get their needs met and so don’t have love and nurturing to give.
You were an abused child, Julian. It’s painful to hear what you were subjected to – shaming and emotional abandonment. It sounds like you have used rationalizing to cope with the damage. It may have served you then in order to survive,but in the long run there are always unhealed wounds that get passed on from one generation to another.
I have to say that with a three-year-old that sounds mean, a “lesson” of unnecessary harshness. Of course I don’t know if those mocking and dismissive responses were typical of her as a parent. Your retroactive agreement with her methods suggests that she also gave a few nurturing lessons. Breaking down to then build up is one thing, demoralization quite another, obviously.
I agree we’ve gone to the other extreme now, generally speaking. UnHerd’s gloves-off forum is a kind of bizarro-world “safe-space” for me right now.
Yours is the statement about left wing and right wing people that makes the most sense in these comments! Most are just generalisations!
Parenting style comes from the personality type and mental health of the parents. So many parents, then and now, didn’t get their needs met and so don’t have love and nurturing to give.
You were an abused child, Julian. It’s painful to hear what you were subjected to – shaming and emotional abandonment. It sounds like you have used rationalizing to cope with the damage. It may have served you then in order to survive,but in the long run there are always unhealed wounds that get passed on from one generation to another.
She said things to this effect for as long as I can remember. I remember crying in front of her when I was three. She mimicked me and called me Mr. Blubberface. It was an invaluable lesson back then in that it taught me that tears and self-pity don’t work. Unfortunately, I now feel that the reverse is true. The more stoic and hard-working you are the more you are lumped in with right-wing extremists.
Love it! My mother was similar. Unless we were on our deathbed, she made us get up and get dressed even if we were staying home from school because we were ‘sick’. Similarly, she had no use for drugs unless it was absolutely necessary like an antibiotic. She didn’t drink liquor. She did allow us to cave into what she would consider ‘nonsense’. She’s still alive today at 95 and although she suffers from a touch of dementia, she’s still hanging in there, and is as tough as nails. From what I have observed in the elderly, longevity is as much about mental strength and orientation as what ails one physically.
Some people have physical illnesses that all the mental strength in the world cannot cure!
Exactly, Judy.
Exactly, Judy.
“Love it”!! Really? It’s abusive. Your mother may be a tough old bird but she certainly doesn’t sound like a sensitive one.
Some people have physical illnesses that all the mental strength in the world cannot cure!
“Love it”!! Really? It’s abusive. Your mother may be a tough old bird but she certainly doesn’t sound like a sensitive one.
Jeez yes, it sounds like you had an unkind mother, Julian, like so many of us. What about your father? Any other adults in your life to make up for the loss of a nurturing mother?
Not all parents, my stock phrase to my teen, who is now robustly positive and cheerful, has always been: “you’ll live” and he was then sent off to school. Of course there was the odd occasion I got it wrong and he was sent back home from school, but his days off sick are so few that they can be counted on one hand. Interestingly, he and many of his teen cohorts hold no truck with the whole fashion for ‘victimhood’. Long may that continue.
I think that would have been considered pretty rough then too. Not the underlying lack of sentiment though, which makes sense in most cases of whining. Was this when you were a teenager or also as an eight-year-old? Was the response the same when you were in grief (someone died) or distress? (Not that I expect answers but there’s a lot of context missing).
My dad used to tell, (not force) me to tough it out and get myself to school when I was physically ill, on the theory that pushing though a moderate cold or flu was good for you and made it pass faster. Often, he was right, but sometimes rest was really called for–and I’m sure some of the other parents didn’t celebrate his policy. My mom, by contrast, was a soft touch (parents split when I was 7) and I could take an extra day or even fake it pretty easily when I didn’t wanna face the schoolyard for whatever reason. I think a middle approach would have made more sense.
Love it! My mother was similar. Unless we were on our deathbed, she made us get up and get dressed even if we were staying home from school because we were ‘sick’. Similarly, she had no use for drugs unless it was absolutely necessary like an antibiotic. She didn’t drink liquor. She did allow us to cave into what she would consider ‘nonsense’. She’s still alive today at 95 and although she suffers from a touch of dementia, she’s still hanging in there, and is as tough as nails. From what I have observed in the elderly, longevity is as much about mental strength and orientation as what ails one physically.
Jeez yes, it sounds like you had an unkind mother, Julian, like so many of us. What about your father? Any other adults in your life to make up for the loss of a nurturing mother?
My mother would be considered a terrible parent by today’s standards. Whenever I whined about an illness or a condition that couldn’t be physically detected, she would just tell me to ‘shut the f**k up and pull yourself together’.
By contrast, I do not understand today’s parents, many of whom seem to obsess about affirming their children’s feelings. I’m not entirely sure this is good for children as they eventually become accustomed to authority figures meeting all their needs. Maybe this is the reason why young people are so pro-government. Perhaps the state is seen as some some kind of parent-figure to these adult children.
Wow. Very thoughtful thesis. Thanks so much for this.
We know victimhood now confers status on people. And we know society is shifting to the left. (I would have been a Democrat less than 15 years ago. Now I’m a radical right wing nut job. Yet my beliefs haven’t changed.)
So what comes first? Is victimhood driving us to the left, or is the drive to the left creating more victims?
None of this is new really, but the author brings some real clarity to the issue. In some ways, this thesis basically expands on ancient wisdom:
Hard times create strong men
Strong men create good times
Good times create weak men
Weak men create hard times
I know I’m rambling here, but this essay got me thinking about the Great Reset. I don’t believe there is a global conspiracy to change the world, but we have certainly adopted belief structures like net zero that will inflict untold suffering on the world.
Maybe the Great Reset is some primeval human urge to move us along the human cycle of misery and pain, back toward strength and flourishing. Maybe mankind is driven to blow it all up when we become weak and fragile.
Leftism, or specifically Marxism is all about reimagining Hierarchies. It moves dialectically by tearing down productivity through social revolt. It is pure resentment ideology. By creating mass resentment, it brings down productivity which conceivably “levels out the playing field” but only amongst normies.
It actually creates a more rigid hierarchy of “Enlightened Experts” into a sort of monopolistic control of social, cultural and economic production. You defeat it by learning to recognize grievance politics and then cutting off its revenue stream. IE tax dollars.
Leftism, or specifically Marxism is all about reimagining Hierarchies. It moves dialectically by tearing down productivity through social revolt. It is pure resentment ideology. By creating mass resentment, it brings down productivity which conceivably “levels out the playing field” but only amongst normies.
It actually creates a more rigid hierarchy of “Enlightened Experts” into a sort of monopolistic control of social, cultural and economic production. You defeat it by learning to recognize grievance politics and then cutting off its revenue stream. IE tax dollars.
Wow. Very thoughtful thesis. Thanks so much for this.
We know victimhood now confers status on people. And we know society is shifting to the left. (I would have been a Democrat less than 15 years ago. Now I’m a radical right wing nut job. Yet my beliefs haven’t changed.)
So what comes first? Is victimhood driving us to the left, or is the drive to the left creating more victims?
None of this is new really, but the author brings some real clarity to the issue. In some ways, this thesis basically expands on ancient wisdom:
Hard times create strong men
Strong men create good times
Good times create weak men
Weak men create hard times
I know I’m rambling here, but this essay got me thinking about the Great Reset. I don’t believe there is a global conspiracy to change the world, but we have certainly adopted belief structures like net zero that will inflict untold suffering on the world.
Maybe the Great Reset is some primeval human urge to move us along the human cycle of misery and pain, back toward strength and flourishing. Maybe mankind is driven to blow it all up when we become weak and fragile.
The primacy of victimhood plays a part here. In an environment, such as on the modern progressive left, where the extent of one’s victimhood confers status and legitimacy, people are keen to have something, anything, that marks them out as victimised or oppressed. For those who can’t point to any obvious racial, ethnic or sexuality-based victimhood, an invisible, intangible condition, such as anxiety, is perfect. It can make one appear heroic, deep, and generally more interesting than the average person. It also provides a vehicle to play the role of activist, breaking down stigmas and fighting for rights etc. Witness the bizarre phenomenon of twitter bios which are basically lists of ailments, commonly found alongside pronouns, EU flags, pride imagery and so on. In such a world, its hardly surprising that more and more people are seeking out these diagnoses.
What a load of rubbish. There is genuine anxiety that can be genetic and made worse by abusive parenting and other trauma.
Nobody said there isn’t. The question was why there has been an increase in diagnoses, not whether or not anxiety exists. I know it exists, because I suffer from it.
Nobody said there isn’t. The question was why there has been an increase in diagnoses, not whether or not anxiety exists. I know it exists, because I suffer from it.
What a load of rubbish. There is genuine anxiety that can be genetic and made worse by abusive parenting and other trauma.
The primacy of victimhood plays a part here. In an environment, such as on the modern progressive left, where the extent of one’s victimhood confers status and legitimacy, people are keen to have something, anything, that marks them out as victimised or oppressed. For those who can’t point to any obvious racial, ethnic or sexuality-based victimhood, an invisible, intangible condition, such as anxiety, is perfect. It can make one appear heroic, deep, and generally more interesting than the average person. It also provides a vehicle to play the role of activist, breaking down stigmas and fighting for rights etc. Witness the bizarre phenomenon of twitter bios which are basically lists of ailments, commonly found alongside pronouns, EU flags, pride imagery and so on. In such a world, its hardly surprising that more and more people are seeking out these diagnoses.
Some of the article seems valid. “When you believe you have no control, you don’t”–bit of a bumper sticker, but pithy and true enough: One’s available agency or ship-steering power is indeed pretty meager when it’s self-surrendered. But this complimentary claim goes far too far: “And you have as much control over your life as you believe you do”. Sometimes, to a degree, but even the most confident and stoic humans are creatures of bounded agency, not architects of willful manifestation without borders. Such an unqualified pronouncement suggests that even life-threatening disease is a mere choice, or results from a shortage of positive thinking.
“Research shows conservatives tend to have an internal locus of control, which means they believe that their decisions, as opposed to external forces, control their destiny”. There should be a more specific citation than “research”. And “evidence suggests” that many conservatives of a certain stripe believe in a Providence that exerts great, external control, or even in a kind of determinism, or predestination. Or was John Calvin a Liberal? (A reformist crusader, or violent reactionary perhaps).
In Mr. Bhogal’s account, present-day corrupting forces are variously associated with Liberals, Leftists, and even Modernity, forming one misshapen ball of mutated wrongness. While most medieval folks were probably a tough and stoic lot, were pre-Modern times a Golden Age of individual agency? Did the peasants of 5 or 25 centuries ago tend to see themselves as masters of their own fate, or is that is a rather more Modern (post 1500 AD) thing? I do think people of every previous century were less delicate or inclined toward self-pity, on the whole.
I agree that our challenges and fears have become pathologized and neuroticized to the gills, and that the bar for trauma has been lowered to the point of absurdity. But I think Bhogal’s unevenly valid case against almost everything but stoicism, maverick self-reliance, and ancient tradition would be better made as a purely moral or opinionated argument. Or with the help of a few of his “research shows” and “it would seems”, but elaborated or analyzed or supported, not just: announce, treat as fact, then on to the next general claim.
Even so, yes to some of this article: more resilience, non-fragility, self-reliance, and stoicism please. While these qualities (or stated priorities) are more typical of “Rightists”, they need not, are not, and shouldn’t be monopolized by one side of a political, ideological, or cultural divide. Or so it would seem.
Well, most religious people don’t believe they have control. So how can you be a true conservative and claim you believe you do? In an essay that bugs me that is number 371. I’m constantly told by conservatives to put it in god’s hands and now supposedly I’m master of my on destiny? Pick a bleeping argument folks.
But as someone who has had epilepsy since she was 8, which is a condition in which control is taken from you as literally as it can be. And then again by the drugs that are supposed to give it back, I’m going to say this is a just BS on his part. I really hate the term Ableist and yet I find myself having to use it for a lot of people. Because that is what this is.
I don’t get more control in my life by denying my epilepsy (or much later in my life my Rheumatoid arthritis). I get it by figuring out what is the widest possible boundary I can live in and accepting it. If I don’t accept it, the condition will force me to and control my life. And of course if I pay too much attention, my life is ruined by it.
This is how I deal with sexism too. I understand this is how Black people deal with racism etc. And it is the way people deal with mental illness. If you know certain things give you anxiety, you don’t set up your life to put yourself full on in those situations unless it is necessary. Don’t be a journalist if deadlines cause you trouble etc. But if you deny it, and pursue a life in which you’ll constantly be barraged, well, you’ll fail at life.
I respect your comment and admire your practical courage in facing a condition you cannot change. I’m actually bugged by this essay too, though I estimate my stateable objections would only number about 212. I gave Bhogal’s “argument(s)” here as much credit as I felt I could in an effort to be fair-minded or offer “constructive criticism”.
Let’s not risk comparing neurotic fragility to clinical depression, hypochondria to multiple sclerosis. I think we can be kind(er) to ourselves and others without becoming soft, tough without being too cold.
Narcissa Smith-Harris, fellow seizure experiencer, of the TLE variety which I was diagnosed with in 2014, and have been exploring ever since. Some of my takes: you’re correct to point to the determinism of brain structure and chemistry; they both provide you with the ‘tableau’ you start with. But ‘start with’ is the key bit there: how you respond to your condition is in your hands, as you imply with that: “I get it by figuring out what is the widest possible boundary I can live in and accepting it.” I’d add not just accepting it, though, but then using it as an agency that can find and propagate blessings beyond yourself, out into the world. People who would be put under the ‘abelist’ umbrella see things others don’t (I describe it as having our antenna bent in not normal ways; our physiology MAKES us more perceptive to certain things) and because these, ‘ways,’ exist from/with a humiliating condition (it IS humiliating), we can be more inclined to use the humility from that condition to be agents of The Good. We’ve got ways to give that others might not be as likely to do.
And by the by, I’d counter that the overwhelming number of religious don’t believe they have no agency. Yes, there’s the pointing to grace as the seed that makes people move, but it’s a partnership. God wants us to love and in order to love one has to practice agency, loving agency.
A couple of books I’ve found particularly helpful in getting out of the, ‘what the heck am I supposed to do with this lousy life I’ve been given,’ hole are, Eve Laplante’s, “Seized: Temporal Lobe Epilepsy as a Medical, Historical, and Artistic Phenomenon,” and, Kurt Eichenwald’s, “A Mind Unraveled: A Memoir” Check ’em out.
Don’t get me wrong: epilepsy is, as you know, miserable. But within the misery there are, CAN BE, some real gems. Under the guise of exploring the notion of epilepsy as, “The Sacred Disease,” I canvassed fellow sufferers a while back and, after listing 5 pages of the lousy parts of epilepsy, we came up with several upsides of the condition, no. 1 being that we tend to be much more charitable towards others. We get it that there is stuff in other people’s lives that they might not be in control of, at least not at the moment. Another word for charity is love. Find ways to care.
Hang in there.
Respectfully
“I understand this is how Black people deal with racism etc.”
*I understand this is how black people deal with racism etc.
I am interested that you associate conservatives with belief in god. That is very American. Here in the UK many Christians are on the left politically but not progressive. Our Liberal Democrat political party had an evangelical leader.
I respect your comment and admire your practical courage in facing a condition you cannot change. I’m actually bugged by this essay too, though I estimate my stateable objections would only number about 212. I gave Bhogal’s “argument(s)” here as much credit as I felt I could in an effort to be fair-minded or offer “constructive criticism”.
Let’s not risk comparing neurotic fragility to clinical depression, hypochondria to multiple sclerosis. I think we can be kind(er) to ourselves and others without becoming soft, tough without being too cold.
Narcissa Smith-Harris, fellow seizure experiencer, of the TLE variety which I was diagnosed with in 2014, and have been exploring ever since. Some of my takes: you’re correct to point to the determinism of brain structure and chemistry; they both provide you with the ‘tableau’ you start with. But ‘start with’ is the key bit there: how you respond to your condition is in your hands, as you imply with that: “I get it by figuring out what is the widest possible boundary I can live in and accepting it.” I’d add not just accepting it, though, but then using it as an agency that can find and propagate blessings beyond yourself, out into the world. People who would be put under the ‘abelist’ umbrella see things others don’t (I describe it as having our antenna bent in not normal ways; our physiology MAKES us more perceptive to certain things) and because these, ‘ways,’ exist from/with a humiliating condition (it IS humiliating), we can be more inclined to use the humility from that condition to be agents of The Good. We’ve got ways to give that others might not be as likely to do.
And by the by, I’d counter that the overwhelming number of religious don’t believe they have no agency. Yes, there’s the pointing to grace as the seed that makes people move, but it’s a partnership. God wants us to love and in order to love one has to practice agency, loving agency.
A couple of books I’ve found particularly helpful in getting out of the, ‘what the heck am I supposed to do with this lousy life I’ve been given,’ hole are, Eve Laplante’s, “Seized: Temporal Lobe Epilepsy as a Medical, Historical, and Artistic Phenomenon,” and, Kurt Eichenwald’s, “A Mind Unraveled: A Memoir” Check ’em out.
Don’t get me wrong: epilepsy is, as you know, miserable. But within the misery there are, CAN BE, some real gems. Under the guise of exploring the notion of epilepsy as, “The Sacred Disease,” I canvassed fellow sufferers a while back and, after listing 5 pages of the lousy parts of epilepsy, we came up with several upsides of the condition, no. 1 being that we tend to be much more charitable towards others. We get it that there is stuff in other people’s lives that they might not be in control of, at least not at the moment. Another word for charity is love. Find ways to care.
Hang in there.
Respectfully
“I understand this is how Black people deal with racism etc.”
*I understand this is how black people deal with racism etc.
I am interested that you associate conservatives with belief in god. That is very American. Here in the UK many Christians are on the left politically but not progressive. Our Liberal Democrat political party had an evangelical leader.
https://youtu.be/ylYdWiDFzRM
Have a look at this….re peasants….
That was great! Talk therapy for the medieval peasantry. I’ll have to look at more from Eleanor Morton; seems like kind of non-dumb-acting counterpart to Philomena Cunk.
That was great! Talk therapy for the medieval peasantry. I’ll have to look at more from Eleanor Morton; seems like kind of non-dumb-acting counterpart to Philomena Cunk.
The “you have as much control over your life as you think you do”. Tell that to people in third world countries. It’s the view of conservatives, that’s for sure – “just pull yourself up by your bootstraps”. It’s reminiscent of the Werner Ehrhart training programs -“you create your own reality” that scorned homelessness and took away any guilt the rich and priviliged may have.
Well, most religious people don’t believe they have control. So how can you be a true conservative and claim you believe you do? In an essay that bugs me that is number 371. I’m constantly told by conservatives to put it in god’s hands and now supposedly I’m master of my on destiny? Pick a bleeping argument folks.
But as someone who has had epilepsy since she was 8, which is a condition in which control is taken from you as literally as it can be. And then again by the drugs that are supposed to give it back, I’m going to say this is a just BS on his part. I really hate the term Ableist and yet I find myself having to use it for a lot of people. Because that is what this is.
I don’t get more control in my life by denying my epilepsy (or much later in my life my Rheumatoid arthritis). I get it by figuring out what is the widest possible boundary I can live in and accepting it. If I don’t accept it, the condition will force me to and control my life. And of course if I pay too much attention, my life is ruined by it.
This is how I deal with sexism too. I understand this is how Black people deal with racism etc. And it is the way people deal with mental illness. If you know certain things give you anxiety, you don’t set up your life to put yourself full on in those situations unless it is necessary. Don’t be a journalist if deadlines cause you trouble etc. But if you deny it, and pursue a life in which you’ll constantly be barraged, well, you’ll fail at life.
https://youtu.be/ylYdWiDFzRM
Have a look at this….re peasants….
The “you have as much control over your life as you think you do”. Tell that to people in third world countries. It’s the view of conservatives, that’s for sure – “just pull yourself up by your bootstraps”. It’s reminiscent of the Werner Ehrhart training programs -“you create your own reality” that scorned homelessness and took away any guilt the rich and priviliged may have.
Some of the article seems valid. “When you believe you have no control, you don’t”–bit of a bumper sticker, but pithy and true enough: One’s available agency or ship-steering power is indeed pretty meager when it’s self-surrendered. But this complimentary claim goes far too far: “And you have as much control over your life as you believe you do”. Sometimes, to a degree, but even the most confident and stoic humans are creatures of bounded agency, not architects of willful manifestation without borders. Such an unqualified pronouncement suggests that even life-threatening disease is a mere choice, or results from a shortage of positive thinking.
“Research shows conservatives tend to have an internal locus of control, which means they believe that their decisions, as opposed to external forces, control their destiny”. There should be a more specific citation than “research”. And “evidence suggests” that many conservatives of a certain stripe believe in a Providence that exerts great, external control, or even in a kind of determinism, or predestination. Or was John Calvin a Liberal? (A reformist crusader, or violent reactionary perhaps).
In Mr. Bhogal’s account, present-day corrupting forces are variously associated with Liberals, Leftists, and even Modernity, forming one misshapen ball of mutated wrongness. While most medieval folks were probably a tough and stoic lot, were pre-Modern times a Golden Age of individual agency? Did the peasants of 5 or 25 centuries ago tend to see themselves as masters of their own fate, or is that is a rather more Modern (post 1500 AD) thing? I do think people of every previous century were less delicate or inclined toward self-pity, on the whole.
I agree that our challenges and fears have become pathologized and neuroticized to the gills, and that the bar for trauma has been lowered to the point of absurdity. But I think Bhogal’s unevenly valid case against almost everything but stoicism, maverick self-reliance, and ancient tradition would be better made as a purely moral or opinionated argument. Or with the help of a few of his “research shows” and “it would seems”, but elaborated or analyzed or supported, not just: announce, treat as fact, then on to the next general claim.
Even so, yes to some of this article: more resilience, non-fragility, self-reliance, and stoicism please. While these qualities (or stated priorities) are more typical of “Rightists”, they need not, are not, and shouldn’t be monopolized by one side of a political, ideological, or cultural divide. Or so it would seem.
An interesting article thanks. What the author says about long COVID is very interesting. One of the members of my cycle club (which generally dresses very much to the left) has a member who has long COVID and she is exactly who I would expect to get it – always ‘campaigning’ on social media, very very left leaning, member of extinction rebellion, NHS therapist versed in the language of ‘trauma’ etc etc. Interestingly as well her son also has it….
Interestingly as well she posts videos of herself swimming on holiday so I guess her COVID isn’t that long
Haha! ‘ve never seen the expression “dresses to the left” used that way. Did you coin that or does it have an English precedent?
Haha! ‘ve never seen the expression “dresses to the left” used that way. Did you coin that or does it have an English precedent?
Interestingly as well she posts videos of herself swimming on holiday so I guess her COVID isn’t that long
An interesting article thanks. What the author says about long COVID is very interesting. One of the members of my cycle club (which generally dresses very much to the left) has a member who has long COVID and she is exactly who I would expect to get it – always ‘campaigning’ on social media, very very left leaning, member of extinction rebellion, NHS therapist versed in the language of ‘trauma’ etc etc. Interestingly as well her son also has it….
Brilliant essay.
“Central to Leftism is equality, backed by the idea that people’s fortunes and misfortunes are not their own doing, and therefore undeserved. As such, Leftism de-emphasises the role of human agency in social outcomes, while overemphasising the role of environmental circumstances.”
Also remember illness is an industry; big pharma would prefer you with a Monday-Sunday plastic dispensary tray and a never-ending vaccine schedule…
Brilliant essay.
“Central to Leftism is equality, backed by the idea that people’s fortunes and misfortunes are not their own doing, and therefore undeserved. As such, Leftism de-emphasises the role of human agency in social outcomes, while overemphasising the role of environmental circumstances.”
Also remember illness is an industry; big pharma would prefer you with a Monday-Sunday plastic dispensary tray and a never-ending vaccine schedule…
One of the best and most thoughtful articles I’ve read on UnHerd. Crystallised many of my thoughts about our modern way of life. More from this author please. Incidentally one of the most valuable things about UnHerd is the quality of the comments section. I am often very humbled by the insightful critiques that other readers post. Worth the subscription.
One of the best and most thoughtful articles I’ve read on UnHerd. Crystallised many of my thoughts about our modern way of life. More from this author please. Incidentally one of the most valuable things about UnHerd is the quality of the comments section. I am often very humbled by the insightful critiques that other readers post. Worth the subscription.
This is brilliant and true, especially this fundamental point: “…overeager attempts to destigmatise mental illness can end up glamorising it.” It has for some time been fashionable to be sensitive, troubled, artistic and unhappy. Surprise, more and more young people put themselves into these categories and end up making them come true.
Perhaps some do but you haven’t met all the sensitive, artistic people in the world, have you.
Perhaps some do but you haven’t met all the sensitive, artistic people in the world, have you.
This is brilliant and true, especially this fundamental point: “…overeager attempts to destigmatise mental illness can end up glamorising it.” It has for some time been fashionable to be sensitive, troubled, artistic and unhappy. Surprise, more and more young people put themselves into these categories and end up making them come true.
“You can be anything you want” syndrome. No you can’t. We seem to have lost the ability to be philosophical. I haven’t got a 6 bedroom house with a swimming pool or a Ferrari in the garage. Those that do have such things don’t seem any happier, just more smug. My neighbour tells me she has stress. I tell her I can see no Sabretooth tigers nearby so what’s the worse that can happen? She’s a snob so I can only imagine she dreads working on a supermarket till.
A medical friend told me when I commented on the NHS burden that if we are anxious, stressed, we are in adrenaline mode, fight or flight, under which conditions we don’t sleep properly or rest and don’t repair ourselves. We seem to lack moral fibre.
What a strange conclusion you come to.
What a strange conclusion you come to.
“You can be anything you want” syndrome. No you can’t. We seem to have lost the ability to be philosophical. I haven’t got a 6 bedroom house with a swimming pool or a Ferrari in the garage. Those that do have such things don’t seem any happier, just more smug. My neighbour tells me she has stress. I tell her I can see no Sabretooth tigers nearby so what’s the worse that can happen? She’s a snob so I can only imagine she dreads working on a supermarket till.
A medical friend told me when I commented on the NHS burden that if we are anxious, stressed, we are in adrenaline mode, fight or flight, under which conditions we don’t sleep properly or rest and don’t repair ourselves. We seem to lack moral fibre.
He lost me when he started eulogising CBT. It’s the bosses therapy, designed to get you back to work, nothing else. It denies the importance both of the unconscious and of a person’s past, viewing us only as goal directed beings rather than historical ones. Also the link with classical Stoicism is tenuous.
Rest of the article is very interesting. Perhaps doctors should start prescribing a Rightward Drift to some of these sadfishing liberals?
I think you make a good point about CBT, and it’s central to the question that looms larger than ever: what makes a human being?
“this is mostly because CBT, like everything else in the social sciences, has been corrupted by amateurisation and the desire to be “inclusive” and inoffensive”
This is the correct take. CBT was not designed to be a get-back-to-work therapy; it was designed to be more effective, more efficient, and more empirically grounded than psychoanalysis. The ‘unconscious’ in the psychoanalytic sense is an unproven, highly questionable concept that is no longer, if ever, used in mainstream psychology. The more valid and reliable concept is ‘non-conscious’ processes – and to the extent that these can be discerned by a psychologist, they are very much used in CBT – to be confirmed, explored with the patient – as opposed to increasingly moribund psychoanalysis where the analyst is the judge of all things, and disagreement is ‘resistance’. The idea that CBT does not take into account a person’s past is a canard – completely false; oft repeated by people who have a superficial understanding of CBT, and for whatever reasons, want to take it down. CBT’s connections with stoicism are not tenuous, but profound, and directly philosophically consistent. Beck and Ellis, the founders of CBT both claim that their approach was inspired by and rooted in stoicism and the works of Epictetus in particular.
If you read the stoics you also get a great sense that for them philosophy was something akin to a religion – it was a daily practice that was incorporated into one’s life rather than a course that you went on that was designed to ‘fix’ you
I’ve found CBT very helpful. The focus on working out what I wanted to change in my life and planning how to do it was a welcome change from going over my past which didn’t seem to help me in the present.
If you read the stoics you also get a great sense that for them philosophy was something akin to a religion – it was a daily practice that was incorporated into one’s life rather than a course that you went on that was designed to ‘fix’ you
I’ve found CBT very helpful. The focus on working out what I wanted to change in my life and planning how to do it was a welcome change from going over my past which didn’t seem to help me in the present.
too much generalisation about left vs right (but, although the articles reflect a wide range of views, the comments sections on Unherd, are generally way out to the right!
So true, Judy.
So true, Judy.
I think you make a good point about CBT, and it’s central to the question that looms larger than ever: what makes a human being?
“this is mostly because CBT, like everything else in the social sciences, has been corrupted by amateurisation and the desire to be “inclusive” and inoffensive”
This is the correct take. CBT was not designed to be a get-back-to-work therapy; it was designed to be more effective, more efficient, and more empirically grounded than psychoanalysis. The ‘unconscious’ in the psychoanalytic sense is an unproven, highly questionable concept that is no longer, if ever, used in mainstream psychology. The more valid and reliable concept is ‘non-conscious’ processes – and to the extent that these can be discerned by a psychologist, they are very much used in CBT – to be confirmed, explored with the patient – as opposed to increasingly moribund psychoanalysis where the analyst is the judge of all things, and disagreement is ‘resistance’. The idea that CBT does not take into account a person’s past is a canard – completely false; oft repeated by people who have a superficial understanding of CBT, and for whatever reasons, want to take it down. CBT’s connections with stoicism are not tenuous, but profound, and directly philosophically consistent. Beck and Ellis, the founders of CBT both claim that their approach was inspired by and rooted in stoicism and the works of Epictetus in particular.
too much generalisation about left vs right (but, although the articles reflect a wide range of views, the comments sections on Unherd, are generally way out to the right!
He lost me when he started eulogising CBT. It’s the bosses therapy, designed to get you back to work, nothing else. It denies the importance both of the unconscious and of a person’s past, viewing us only as goal directed beings rather than historical ones. Also the link with classical Stoicism is tenuous.
Rest of the article is very interesting. Perhaps doctors should start prescribing a Rightward Drift to some of these sadfishing liberals?
A thoughtful and provocative piece. It may well be true that contemporary understandings of what it means to be ‘liberal’ involves a sociologised learned helplessness. But being liberal has not always meant this – indeed, ‘liberal individualism’ has often been derided on the left (and sometimes the right) precisely for its emphasis on personal choice and responsibility.
A thoughtful and provocative piece. It may well be true that contemporary understandings of what it means to be ‘liberal’ involves a sociologised learned helplessness. But being liberal has not always meant this – indeed, ‘liberal individualism’ has often been derided on the left (and sometimes the right) precisely for its emphasis on personal choice and responsibility.
“I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch – hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into – some fearful, devastating scourge, I know – and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever – read the symptoms – discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it – wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance – found, as I expected, that I had that too, – began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically – read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.”
Three Men in a Boat – Jerome K. Jerome
Love that book!
Did you look up hypochondria?
Love that book!
Did you look up hypochondria?
“I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch – hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into – some fearful, devastating scourge, I know – and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever – read the symptoms – discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it – wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance – found, as I expected, that I had that too, – began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically – read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.”
Three Men in a Boat – Jerome K. Jerome
The psychological influence on illness and symptoms has been shown in many cases,eg. placebo effect in trials. I wonder how things would change if we were able to remove social media, mobile devices and maybe the whole internet from our societies, i.e. back to the 80s/90’s. Those have had an extreme effect on the whole of society, the entire western world with the universal spread of information, attitudes, views, especially by minority groups and lobby groups influencing the masses, education systems, organisations, governments, etc. through automatic feeds. There was a news item last week in Sweden where healthcare centres had seen a development of being swamped by “patients” trying to get an appointment for trivial or non-sickness complaints; headache, runny nose, sore foot, worry, etc. Those in question were the younger generations below 35, expecting immediate attention, video consultations or long chat sessions. The healthcare centres had little time left for older patients who were in definite need of treatment. This is just one aspect among countless others of how society is apparently degrading compared to the lives and experiences of we who lived through the second half of the 20th C. Don’t get me wrong, Internet is amazing, I’ve worked in IT for 50 years, but I just wish we could rid ourselves of the damaging zombie elements which Big-Tech and its adopters are ramming down our throats and in particular of those under 40.
Another thought re. long Covid – could there be a correlation with diet? vegetarian/vegan?
The psychological influence on illness and symptoms has been shown in many cases,eg. placebo effect in trials. I wonder how things would change if we were able to remove social media, mobile devices and maybe the whole internet from our societies, i.e. back to the 80s/90’s. Those have had an extreme effect on the whole of society, the entire western world with the universal spread of information, attitudes, views, especially by minority groups and lobby groups influencing the masses, education systems, organisations, governments, etc. through automatic feeds. There was a news item last week in Sweden where healthcare centres had seen a development of being swamped by “patients” trying to get an appointment for trivial or non-sickness complaints; headache, runny nose, sore foot, worry, etc. Those in question were the younger generations below 35, expecting immediate attention, video consultations or long chat sessions. The healthcare centres had little time left for older patients who were in definite need of treatment. This is just one aspect among countless others of how society is apparently degrading compared to the lives and experiences of we who lived through the second half of the 20th C. Don’t get me wrong, Internet is amazing, I’ve worked in IT for 50 years, but I just wish we could rid ourselves of the damaging zombie elements which Big-Tech and its adopters are ramming down our throats and in particular of those under 40.
Another thought re. long Covid – could there be a correlation with diet? vegetarian/vegan?
Stoicism also involves a deference to fate and an acceptance that some things really are beyond your control
Good point well made Ben. I’ve seen it written that Stoicism was very popular in the chaotic final centuries of the Roman Empire and it has been posited that it is making a big come back because we similarly feel we are in a time of ending.
Don’t be a stoic
While your association between chaos and the initial rise of stoicism seems valid, I dispute the implication (perhaps mistakenly-inferred on my part) that stoicism has an essentially apocalyptic character, “a time of ending”. My bumper sticker slogan would be: Don’t be a doomsayer.
Concerning your link to a repudiation of stoicism: well-argued, some good points. But while stoics do tend toward “resignationism”, it is possible to practice a more engaged form of that worldview, as with Marcus Aurelius or in the comparable example of the Engaged Buddhists led by Thich Nhat Hahn during the Vietnam War: instead of merely resting in the contemplative peace of mind of the renunciate, they spoke up and rendered material and spiritual aid to those who were suffering–before and after Nhat Hahn was exiled in 1966.
In my view, no ism or set of isms is sufficiently wise or humane, stoicism for sure included. Altruism seem to come close, but it’s not unassailable.
Except we obviously are coming to an end.
That’s been obvious to many, and false, for centuries. For about 2,000 years even, and before that too.
I only accept your fatalistic claim in the sense that we will all die and the Earth cannot endure for eternity.
That’s been obvious to many, and false, for centuries. For about 2,000 years even, and before that too.
I only accept your fatalistic claim in the sense that we will all die and the Earth cannot endure for eternity.
Concerning your link to a repudiation of stoicism: well-argued, some good points. But while stoics do tend toward “resignationism”, it is possible to practice a more engaged form of that worldview, as with Marcus Aurelius or in the comparable example of the Engaged Buddhists led by Thich Nhat Hahn during the Vietnam War: instead of merely resting in the contemplative peace of mind of the renunciate, they spoke up and rendered material and spiritual aid to those who were suffering–before and after Nhat Hahn was exiled in 1966.
In my view, no ism or set of isms is sufficiently wise or humane, stoicism for sure included. Altruism seem to come close, but it’s not unassailable.
Except we obviously are coming to an end.
While your association between chaos and the initial rise of stoicism seems valid, I dispute the implication (perhaps mistakenly-inferred on my part) that stoicism has an essentially apocalyptic character, “a time of ending”. My bumper sticker slogan would be: Don’t be a doomsayer.
Exactly. Which is realistic.
Good point well made Ben. I’ve seen it written that Stoicism was very popular in the chaotic final centuries of the Roman Empire and it has been posited that it is making a big come back because we similarly feel we are in a time of ending.
Don’t be a stoic
Exactly. Which is realistic.
Stoicism also involves a deference to fate and an acceptance that some things really are beyond your control
One simple point the author misses about the difference between political views is how they view the world. The Left focus on the negatives of their society and where it needs improving whereas conservatives see the good worth preserving. It’s the gratitude thing. Nothing is worse for mental health than self pity.
Good article though apart from the peculiar turn towards putting CBT on a pedestal.
Alternately, the left tends to see the good or possibility in human nature, whereas the right tends to see the evil or limits. Fair? And can we still call burn-it-all-down right-wingers conservatives?
I disagree with the conflation of “liberal” with progressive or Leftist. I don’t say you’ve quite done this, but you contrast the Left with conservatives instead of the Right (or liberals/conservatives; progressives/traditionalists). And we don’t hear the label “regressive” or “Rightist”, though such factions surely exist. We should come to better agreement on category and definitions (that’s easy–to type!) and have better ongoing conversations that are less dominated by hard-liners and fringe dwellers.
The problem arises from the tendency of the left not simply to ‘see the good in human nature’, but rather start from a (dogmatic) world view that all humans actually are innately entirely good. Then ‘society’ comes along and messes them up.
Conservatives, on the other hand, are more likely to observe human nature as a mixture of good and bad, and therefore do not see ‘society’ as the problem. Rather, society is a means by which millions of people, (using not dogma, but experience) use the accumulated wisdom of the ages to order their institutions so as to maximise the good and minimise the bad.
Maybe so. But while I see that as a problem, it’s not the only one. There are utopians on both sides of the divide, though traditionalists or conservatives are likelier to locate their pie-in-the-sky visions in the Sky or afterlife. And though more realistic about human nature, some conservatives grossly idealize the recent past or even distant past.
A liberal is not the same thing as a progressive or neo-Marxist, anymore than a real conservative necessarily agrees with the rowdiest Capitol stormers on Jan. 6. 2021. Or with seccessionist “minutemen” in present-day California.
Left and Right, conservative and liberal, traditional and innovative forces exist in dynamic tension. This is or at least should be healthy for society, I think, and it is certainly inevitable. Perhaps you would agree. The center, or temporary resting point, is found through engagement and conflict, but hopefully through cooperation and consensus too.
My contrarian tendencies often lead me to overstate the Other Side (as I see it) to both left-wingers and right-wingers. I’m a centrist, or “extreme moderate” with certain traditionalist leanings, who also supports careful, incremental attempts at progress. I’d say I lean a bit left according to our rather obtuse political-spectrum language, but I also have sympathy with much classical liberalism and libertarianism. And I believe in God, sometimes calling myself an “unaffiliated monotheist”.
Most people don’t like to be labelled, and certainly not labelled and dismissed, because it is usually far more complex or nuanced than that. No one likes to be told that all the virtue is held by the camp they don’t belong to, and I don’t think Rightist or Leftists should let themselves imagine they belong to the camp that holds all the marbles.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
(Postscript: I strongly endorse your concluding words as written: “use the accumulated wisdom of the ages to order their institutions so as to maximise the good and minimise the bad “. However, that is not the same as freezing things things in place or, in the memorable zinger of William F. Buckley (whom I respected): “to stand athwart history, yelling Stop”. Nor is what counts as good and bad incontrovertible in anywhere near all cases).
William F Buckley looked and sounded as though he was on the autism spectrum.
And that constitutes a successful repudiation of all his views? If so: Do you feel the same way about Greta Thunberg?
By the way, you might be right. But the “spectrum” has been expanded to include behavior and personality traits that are very much in the normal range.
And that constitutes a successful repudiation of all his views? If so: Do you feel the same way about Greta Thunberg?
By the way, you might be right. But the “spectrum” has been expanded to include behavior and personality traits that are very much in the normal range.
William F Buckley looked and sounded as though he was on the autism spectrum.
I think AJ makes an interesting point. There are certainly techno-utopian libertarians – many of whom are very powerful economic and social actors – and neo-liberal economists who believe the models more than empirical reality.
Are not the homo economicus, the Randian egoist incredible figures of human perfection, from particular viewpoints?
Right = competition prioritised
Left = cooperation and collectivity prioritised
I’m think claiming one is more ‘realistic’ is ignore that both right and left ideologies often contain abstractions and fantastic elements.
Full disclosure I am a left communitarian
Intriguing self-identification: communitarian. Do you support community-mindedness on both a local and national/global level, purely a voluntary or also a legally-binding basis?
(I know it’s probably not only one or the other, just trying to get a sense of your definition).
Intriguing self-identification: communitarian. Do you support community-mindedness on both a local and national/global level, purely a voluntary or also a legally-binding basis?
(I know it’s probably not only one or the other, just trying to get a sense of your definition).
Christians on the left do not start from a position where they see everyone as inherently good!
How many do you know?
How many do you know?
Maybe so. But while I see that as a problem, it’s not the only one. There are utopians on both sides of the divide, though traditionalists or conservatives are likelier to locate their pie-in-the-sky visions in the Sky or afterlife. And though more realistic about human nature, some conservatives grossly idealize the recent past or even distant past.
A liberal is not the same thing as a progressive or neo-Marxist, anymore than a real conservative necessarily agrees with the rowdiest Capitol stormers on Jan. 6. 2021. Or with seccessionist “minutemen” in present-day California.
Left and Right, conservative and liberal, traditional and innovative forces exist in dynamic tension. This is or at least should be healthy for society, I think, and it is certainly inevitable. Perhaps you would agree. The center, or temporary resting point, is found through engagement and conflict, but hopefully through cooperation and consensus too.
My contrarian tendencies often lead me to overstate the Other Side (as I see it) to both left-wingers and right-wingers. I’m a centrist, or “extreme moderate” with certain traditionalist leanings, who also supports careful, incremental attempts at progress. I’d say I lean a bit left according to our rather obtuse political-spectrum language, but I also have sympathy with much classical liberalism and libertarianism. And I believe in God, sometimes calling myself an “unaffiliated monotheist”.
Most people don’t like to be labelled, and certainly not labelled and dismissed, because it is usually far more complex or nuanced than that. No one likes to be told that all the virtue is held by the camp they don’t belong to, and I don’t think Rightist or Leftists should let themselves imagine they belong to the camp that holds all the marbles.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
(Postscript: I strongly endorse your concluding words as written: “use the accumulated wisdom of the ages to order their institutions so as to maximise the good and minimise the bad “. However, that is not the same as freezing things things in place or, in the memorable zinger of William F. Buckley (whom I respected): “to stand athwart history, yelling Stop”. Nor is what counts as good and bad incontrovertible in anywhere near all cases).
I think AJ makes an interesting point. There are certainly techno-utopian libertarians – many of whom are very powerful economic and social actors – and neo-liberal economists who believe the models more than empirical reality.
Are not the homo economicus, the Randian egoist incredible figures of human perfection, from particular viewpoints?
Right = competition prioritised
Left = cooperation and collectivity prioritised
I’m think claiming one is more ‘realistic’ is ignore that both right and left ideologies often contain abstractions and fantastic elements.
Full disclosure I am a left communitarian
Christians on the left do not start from a position where they see everyone as inherently good!
An excellent comment re conflation of liberal and progressive.
Thanks. I suppose many traditional or moderate conservatives also dislike being lumped in with the alt-right or “revolutionary populist” crowd.
Thanks. I suppose many traditional or moderate conservatives also dislike being lumped in with the alt-right or “revolutionary populist” crowd.
Another sweeping generalization.
The problem arises from the tendency of the left not simply to ‘see the good in human nature’, but rather start from a (dogmatic) world view that all humans actually are innately entirely good. Then ‘society’ comes along and messes them up.
Conservatives, on the other hand, are more likely to observe human nature as a mixture of good and bad, and therefore do not see ‘society’ as the problem. Rather, society is a means by which millions of people, (using not dogma, but experience) use the accumulated wisdom of the ages to order their institutions so as to maximise the good and minimise the bad.
An excellent comment re conflation of liberal and progressive.
Another sweeping generalization.
Alternately, the left tends to see the good or possibility in human nature, whereas the right tends to see the evil or limits. Fair? And can we still call burn-it-all-down right-wingers conservatives?
I disagree with the conflation of “liberal” with progressive or Leftist. I don’t say you’ve quite done this, but you contrast the Left with conservatives instead of the Right (or liberals/conservatives; progressives/traditionalists). And we don’t hear the label “regressive” or “Rightist”, though such factions surely exist. We should come to better agreement on category and definitions (that’s easy–to type!) and have better ongoing conversations that are less dominated by hard-liners and fringe dwellers.
One simple point the author misses about the difference between political views is how they view the world. The Left focus on the negatives of their society and where it needs improving whereas conservatives see the good worth preserving. It’s the gratitude thing. Nothing is worse for mental health than self pity.
Good article though apart from the peculiar turn towards putting CBT on a pedestal.
It’s worthwhile to consider how the effect of the lockdowns themselves may be what “long COVID” largely is. I have always been a well-adjusted, resilient person, but I now find myself struggling with issues I’m very unfamiliar with such as lack of focus / racing mind, procrastination, less energy, and more. I’m working hard to overcome them.
It’s worthwhile to consider how the effect of the lockdowns themselves may be what “long COVID” largely is. I have always been a well-adjusted, resilient person, but I now find myself struggling with issues I’m very unfamiliar with such as lack of focus / racing mind, procrastination, less energy, and more. I’m working hard to overcome them.
Add the very real government subsidized part played by the pharmaceutical industry to the mix: the “cure” is life long drug use, and you have cradle to grave dependency. Personal agency is being disappeared. Gee, what a surprise. This is a must read, for everyone.
Add the very real government subsidized part played by the pharmaceutical industry to the mix: the “cure” is life long drug use, and you have cradle to grave dependency. Personal agency is being disappeared. Gee, what a surprise. This is a must read, for everyone.
Right. I’ll tell you what it’s about. It’s not natural for women,female persons to spend their whole lives in places of employment just like men. Women have tried it since the 1960s and found out it’s horrible. The place for women,for females is in the home,running an efficient and calm home so their man can maximize his earning potential. And a lot of women have realized that and all those teen girls are cottoning on that maybe that much vaunted career ahead of them might not be so fabulous as the old feminists promised. So they’re all going sick,including.trans whatever’s as they too prefer the old idea of being a woman. Yes,women worked down coal mines,on cotton looms,as nailers,as fish gutters(fishwives) but from poverty not.stupid equality ideas.
I haven’t got a man. I’ve never had one.
I’m not a Stepford Wife and I’m not advocating that but the “workplace” is not the fun intellectually stimulating place our MPs try to.sell.it to us as..
Especially if you have mental issues and don’t fit in.anyway. That’s my conclusion from this analysis. Women,most women,can’t say I want to stay home,love my baby and arrange flowers but they can say “I’ve got long covid’.
Right. I’ll tell you what it’s about. It’s not natural for women,female persons to spend their whole lives in places of employment just like men. Women have tried it since the 1960s and found out it’s horrible. The place for women,for females is in the home,running an efficient and calm home so their man can maximize his earning potential. And a lot of women have realized that and all those teen girls are cottoning on that maybe that much vaunted career ahead of them might not be so fabulous as the old feminists promised. So they’re all going sick,including.trans whatever’s as they too prefer the old idea of being a woman. Yes,women worked down coal mines,on cotton looms,as nailers,as fish gutters(fishwives) but from poverty not.stupid equality ideas.
I haven’t got a man. I’ve never had one.
I’m not a Stepford Wife and I’m not advocating that but the “workplace” is not the fun intellectually stimulating place our MPs try to.sell.it to us as..
Especially if you have mental issues and don’t fit in.anyway. That’s my conclusion from this analysis. Women,most women,can’t say I want to stay home,love my baby and arrange flowers but they can say “I’ve got long covid’.
This was an interesting read. Two things stand out. Many people are mistaking sadness for sickness. People have increasingly been blaming their problems on “systems” whether sociological — late capitalism, systemic racism, the patriarchy — or (increasingly), the they medicalise their problems, often conflating personal failings or political issues with biological destiny. Perhaps in a brave new world where the favoured (and profitable) solutions are genetic engineering and pharmaceuticals, there is an impetus to “re-fit” the problems to the preferred solutions?
It’s not as simple as people medicalising their problems, this is being actively encouraged by society. In my doctor’s waiting room, there are many notices for a huge variety of interventions and support for what I would call non medical issues. For example, if you are feeling sad and anxious , there’s a free counselling service. There’s a special one for people who are unsure if there are male or female. It’s assumed that you need experts to sort out everything in your life.
Or perhaps just someone to listen and be compassionate.
Or perhaps just someone to listen and be compassionate.
It’s not as simple as people medicalising their problems, this is being actively encouraged by society. In my doctor’s waiting room, there are many notices for a huge variety of interventions and support for what I would call non medical issues. For example, if you are feeling sad and anxious , there’s a free counselling service. There’s a special one for people who are unsure if there are male or female. It’s assumed that you need experts to sort out everything in your life.
This was an interesting read. Two things stand out. Many people are mistaking sadness for sickness. People have increasingly been blaming their problems on “systems” whether sociological — late capitalism, systemic racism, the patriarchy — or (increasingly), the they medicalise their problems, often conflating personal failings or political issues with biological destiny. Perhaps in a brave new world where the favoured (and profitable) solutions are genetic engineering and pharmaceuticals, there is an impetus to “re-fit” the problems to the preferred solutions?
In the NYC subway last week, observed a t-shirt on a young black male that read: “You are more than what is making you anxious”.
In the NYC subway last week, observed a t-shirt on a young black male that read: “You are more than what is making you anxious”.
I can testify to the truth of this in my life. A flailing, feckless, malingering, addicted, hopeless lefty mess until early middle age; a far from perfect but self-starting, well funded, contented, sober, healthy, and independent moderate thereafter. Speaking only personally though. I know many well adjusted ‘lefties’ who don’t use their worldview as an excuse for personal failings or a refusal to grow up. And of course there are plenty of feckless right-wingers.
So what’s your point?
So what’s your point?
I can testify to the truth of this in my life. A flailing, feckless, malingering, addicted, hopeless lefty mess until early middle age; a far from perfect but self-starting, well funded, contented, sober, healthy, and independent moderate thereafter. Speaking only personally though. I know many well adjusted ‘lefties’ who don’t use their worldview as an excuse for personal failings or a refusal to grow up. And of course there are plenty of feckless right-wingers.
Interesting article indeed as so many have mentioned in the posts. I just see how the author struggles using the narrative of diagnosis, cause, illness and treatment paradigm (created by the industry of illness) to try and explain what is wrong with this paradigm.
If we were to change the paradigm in medicine to one of fostering health and base the angle of medicine on the Huber diagnosis of medicine (the ability to adapt and to self-manage’, which includes the ability of people to adapt to their situation as key to health.) then it would suddenly become easier to bring the message in this article and direct medical research form finding medicine that will make money to ways of helping people live as well as possible in ‘reality’.
We have to consider that putting patients in diagnostic boxes only helps the industry and makes life easier for the medics….
if you want a short list of articles pointing to how our current medicine is not patient motivated:
1) Howick J, Koletsi D, Ioannidis JPA, Madigan C, Pandis N, Loef M, et al. Most healthcare interventions tested in Cochrane Reviews are not effective according to high quality evidence: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. 2022;148:160-69.
2) Sackett DL, Rosenberg WM, Gray JA, Haynes RB, Richardson WS. Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn’t. BMJ. 1996 Jan 13;312(7023):71-2.
3) Raad Volksgezondheid & Samenleving. No evidence without context. About the illusion of evidence-based practice in healthcare. 2017 https://www.raadrvs.nl/documenten/publications/2017/6/19/no-evidence-without-context.-about-the-illusion-of-evidence%E2%80%90based-practice-in-healthcare accessed on: 05.07.2022.
4) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7772644/
5) Cairney P, Oliver K. Evidence-based policymaking is not like evidence-based medicine, so how far should you go to bridge the divide between evidence and policy? Health Res Policy Syst. 2017 Apr 26;15(1):35.
6) Philosophy of Medicine. 2016 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/medicine/ accessed on: 05.07.2022.
7) https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/many-nhs-partnerships-with-drug-companies-are-out-of-public-sight/
8) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1126057/
9) https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhealth/42/42.pdf
10) https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020138
11) https://bpspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bcp.14835
12) https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/pharmaceutical-industrys-role-defining-illness/2011-12
13) https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h3688
14) https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/investigation-are-drug-regulators-sufficiently-independent-from-the-companies-they-are-meant-to-regulate/
15) https://www.bmj.com/too-much-medicine
16) https://www.bmj.com/content/329/7473/998.1
17) https://www.bmj.com/content/336/7641/416
18) https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/2/e010035
19) https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/news/22201-peer-review–bad-pharma-by-ben-goldacre
20) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2277113/
Interesting article indeed as so many have mentioned in the posts. I just see how the author struggles using the narrative of diagnosis, cause, illness and treatment paradigm (created by the industry of illness) to try and explain what is wrong with this paradigm.
If we were to change the paradigm in medicine to one of fostering health and base the angle of medicine on the Huber diagnosis of medicine (the ability to adapt and to self-manage’, which includes the ability of people to adapt to their situation as key to health.) then it would suddenly become easier to bring the message in this article and direct medical research form finding medicine that will make money to ways of helping people live as well as possible in ‘reality’.
We have to consider that putting patients in diagnostic boxes only helps the industry and makes life easier for the medics….
if you want a short list of articles pointing to how our current medicine is not patient motivated:
1) Howick J, Koletsi D, Ioannidis JPA, Madigan C, Pandis N, Loef M, et al. Most healthcare interventions tested in Cochrane Reviews are not effective according to high quality evidence: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. 2022;148:160-69.
2) Sackett DL, Rosenberg WM, Gray JA, Haynes RB, Richardson WS. Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn’t. BMJ. 1996 Jan 13;312(7023):71-2.
3) Raad Volksgezondheid & Samenleving. No evidence without context. About the illusion of evidence-based practice in healthcare. 2017 https://www.raadrvs.nl/documenten/publications/2017/6/19/no-evidence-without-context.-about-the-illusion-of-evidence%E2%80%90based-practice-in-healthcare accessed on: 05.07.2022.
4) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7772644/
5) Cairney P, Oliver K. Evidence-based policymaking is not like evidence-based medicine, so how far should you go to bridge the divide between evidence and policy? Health Res Policy Syst. 2017 Apr 26;15(1):35.
6) Philosophy of Medicine. 2016 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/medicine/ accessed on: 05.07.2022.
7) https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/many-nhs-partnerships-with-drug-companies-are-out-of-public-sight/
8) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1126057/
9) https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhealth/42/42.pdf
10) https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020138
11) https://bpspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bcp.14835
12) https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/pharmaceutical-industrys-role-defining-illness/2011-12
13) https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h3688
14) https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/investigation-are-drug-regulators-sufficiently-independent-from-the-companies-they-are-meant-to-regulate/
15) https://www.bmj.com/too-much-medicine
16) https://www.bmj.com/content/329/7473/998.1
17) https://www.bmj.com/content/336/7641/416
18) https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/2/e010035
19) https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/news/22201-peer-review–bad-pharma-by-ben-goldacre
20) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2277113/
An interesting article, bringing together a lot of themes.
As a teacher I can see lots of these currents with the adolescents I teach and also some of the maladaptive approaches to helping those who struggle – e.g. inclusion rooms and centres which are full of collapsed teen girls, basically rotting away their mid-teens.
I’m not sure if the Liberal-Conservative lense adds much to the approach; for starters it is very binary and politics and culture doesn’t fit that, even in the US. Although the author is british, he is appears to be writing for a transatlantic audience.
I would suspect that ‘Conservative people’ might suffer from different disorders, or perceived disorders, for example people from religious communities might internalise strong feelings of guilt, might also see themselves as being subordinate to their community, family, or deity.
I am not a Liberal, I’m more left-wing than that. I’ve always found Oxford-Yale left-liberalism to be a very nihilistic ideology, which doesn’t articulate an account of the good life. So in that sense there is a basis to the thesis, although I am uncertain whether the ‘absence’ in academic Liberal philosophy on how to live is really what is cutting through.
I would counter argue that affluenza, consumerism and increasing social problems [high rates of family breakdown, precarious employment] might be more accurate causal factors, on the ground, so to speak.
An interesting article. I enjoyed it.
Well said! Thank you for this comment!
Well said! Thank you for this comment!
An interesting article, bringing together a lot of themes.
As a teacher I can see lots of these currents with the adolescents I teach and also some of the maladaptive approaches to helping those who struggle – e.g. inclusion rooms and centres which are full of collapsed teen girls, basically rotting away their mid-teens.
I’m not sure if the Liberal-Conservative lense adds much to the approach; for starters it is very binary and politics and culture doesn’t fit that, even in the US. Although the author is british, he is appears to be writing for a transatlantic audience.
I would suspect that ‘Conservative people’ might suffer from different disorders, or perceived disorders, for example people from religious communities might internalise strong feelings of guilt, might also see themselves as being subordinate to their community, family, or deity.
I am not a Liberal, I’m more left-wing than that. I’ve always found Oxford-Yale left-liberalism to be a very nihilistic ideology, which doesn’t articulate an account of the good life. So in that sense there is a basis to the thesis, although I am uncertain whether the ‘absence’ in academic Liberal philosophy on how to live is really what is cutting through.
I would counter argue that affluenza, consumerism and increasing social problems [high rates of family breakdown, precarious employment] might be more accurate causal factors, on the ground, so to speak.
An interesting article. I enjoyed it.
I began by agreeing with this guy when he talked about the effects of culture and social contagion but as he went on I felt he was spinning the threads of his argument thinner and thinner, and switched from being evidence led to being ideology led. He’s quite simplistic in his arguments and ironically, seems to fall for a level of black and white thinking he accuses leftists [whoever they are] of doing. I smiled when he got on to CBT because I qualified as a CBT practitioner [a rite of passage thing in my profession] but hardly ever used it because it really isn’t the universal panacea he appears to think it is and we need to be very careful about simply rolling it out as such. There is no evidence that its more effective than other treatments. He’s right about a reported decrease in efficacy of CBT though, I think more because CBT discovered its limitations rather than because it’s become adulterated in some way. Trans affirmative CBT is bullshit though, he got that right.
I began by agreeing with this guy when he talked about the effects of culture and social contagion but as he went on I felt he was spinning the threads of his argument thinner and thinner, and switched from being evidence led to being ideology led. He’s quite simplistic in his arguments and ironically, seems to fall for a level of black and white thinking he accuses leftists [whoever they are] of doing. I smiled when he got on to CBT because I qualified as a CBT practitioner [a rite of passage thing in my profession] but hardly ever used it because it really isn’t the universal panacea he appears to think it is and we need to be very careful about simply rolling it out as such. There is no evidence that its more effective than other treatments. He’s right about a reported decrease in efficacy of CBT though, I think more because CBT discovered its limitations rather than because it’s become adulterated in some way. Trans affirmative CBT is bullshit though, he got that right.
It is amazing how the author completely ignores the big question here. A perfect example of missing the forest for the trees. It really is unsurprising that mood disorders would morph into diagnoses of physical disease in a society with a giant for-profit medical industrial complex, especially in America. The big question is why is there so much sadness, anxiety and depression in the world today? Why are suicides and drug overdoses on the rise?
This is the question everyone in our intellectual industrial complex, the media, can’t seem to answer. They see the symptoms and point out culprits like social media or progressive activists or Trump supporters depending on their political biases. They spend a lot of time blaming the messenger, themselves. Conservatives blame the liberal media and liberals blame FOX news. The essay here becomes just another boring attack on progressives with the same tired arguments I have read before.
In the immortal words of Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men they can’t handle the truth.
The truth is that neo-liberal capitalism has created an immoral, barren society where the only value is the accumulation of wealth, and this has led to people feeling a profound sense of emptiness and helplessness. But worst of all it feels locked in. Real change, the end of neo-liberalism and corporate hegemony, seems impossible in a political system where the politicians work for their rich donors and ignore the people. The allure of demagogues like Trump and now RFK is that they will smash a system so many are sick of and can’t prosper in. It is this feeling of being trapped that is ruining peoples’ health.
Some persuasive and well-stated points. But I don’t understand your concluding sentence as written. How would a profiteering, big-business loving dirty-dealer like Trump “smash” the system he both games and belongs to? Perhaps you mean “promise to smash”. Or maybe his chaotic menace could indeed smash it up, well beyond the spidering cracks we’re seeing now.
Demagogues indeed, both Trump and RFK, and to some extent DeSantis. A plutocracy–not only so, but too much so–whose meager rules are weighted and underenforced, with runaway corporate tides that are often cheered by self-declared maverick individualists or libertarians.
Yes, most of the above essay is a one-sided blame game: “Down with modernity!”; “What the liberals or progressives or leftists miss is…”. And of course it’s about the same on the other side of the polar divide, but with the terms reversed.
Even so, these loud voices don’t reflect a majority of the populace, whether of the overeducated, undereducated, or “Goldilocks level”. We have to maintain (or restore) hope and keep (or regain) our composure, if only for our own inner well being and ability to function. And when was life easy for anyone, especially the general lot?
I said the allure of people like Trump. I was talking about how his supporters perceive him.
Ok. That’s what I hoped you meant.
Ok. That’s what I hoped you meant.
I said the allure of people like Trump. I was talking about how his supporters perceive him.
Some persuasive and well-stated points. But I don’t understand your concluding sentence as written. How would a profiteering, big-business loving dirty-dealer like Trump “smash” the system he both games and belongs to? Perhaps you mean “promise to smash”. Or maybe his chaotic menace could indeed smash it up, well beyond the spidering cracks we’re seeing now.
Demagogues indeed, both Trump and RFK, and to some extent DeSantis. A plutocracy–not only so, but too much so–whose meager rules are weighted and underenforced, with runaway corporate tides that are often cheered by self-declared maverick individualists or libertarians.
Yes, most of the above essay is a one-sided blame game: “Down with modernity!”; “What the liberals or progressives or leftists miss is…”. And of course it’s about the same on the other side of the polar divide, but with the terms reversed.
Even so, these loud voices don’t reflect a majority of the populace, whether of the overeducated, undereducated, or “Goldilocks level”. We have to maintain (or restore) hope and keep (or regain) our composure, if only for our own inner well being and ability to function. And when was life easy for anyone, especially the general lot?
It is amazing how the author completely ignores the big question here. A perfect example of missing the forest for the trees. It really is unsurprising that mood disorders would morph into diagnoses of physical disease in a society with a giant for-profit medical industrial complex, especially in America. The big question is why is there so much sadness, anxiety and depression in the world today? Why are suicides and drug overdoses on the rise?
This is the question everyone in our intellectual industrial complex, the media, can’t seem to answer. They see the symptoms and point out culprits like social media or progressive activists or Trump supporters depending on their political biases. They spend a lot of time blaming the messenger, themselves. Conservatives blame the liberal media and liberals blame FOX news. The essay here becomes just another boring attack on progressives with the same tired arguments I have read before.
In the immortal words of Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men they can’t handle the truth.
The truth is that neo-liberal capitalism has created an immoral, barren society where the only value is the accumulation of wealth, and this has led to people feeling a profound sense of emptiness and helplessness. But worst of all it feels locked in. Real change, the end of neo-liberalism and corporate hegemony, seems impossible in a political system where the politicians work for their rich donors and ignore the people. The allure of demagogues like Trump and now RFK is that they will smash a system so many are sick of and can’t prosper in. It is this feeling of being trapped that is ruining peoples’ health.
When I was studying Educational Psychology in Australia in the late 1980s, we were able to study Erik Erikson and his postulated seven stages of development. He splits each stage into opposites and interestingly the adolescent -ish stage, (Erikson argues that some people get stuck all their lives in earlier stages,) is labelled ‘identity versus confusion’. And we all go through it one way or another. It’s one way of looking at and, more importantly, doing something about what today’s young people are going through.
Could someone find better terms than ‘conservative’ or liberal’ to describe the two groups in this excellent article? Too many other connotations in these words that are both confusing and unhelpful.
Well said about the conservative/liberal thing.
Well said about the conservative/liberal thing.
When I was studying Educational Psychology in Australia in the late 1980s, we were able to study Erik Erikson and his postulated seven stages of development. He splits each stage into opposites and interestingly the adolescent -ish stage, (Erikson argues that some people get stuck all their lives in earlier stages,) is labelled ‘identity versus confusion’. And we all go through it one way or another. It’s one way of looking at and, more importantly, doing something about what today’s young people are going through.
Could someone find better terms than ‘conservative’ or liberal’ to describe the two groups in this excellent article? Too many other connotations in these words that are both confusing and unhelpful.
To answer the question posed in the title…
It depends on who “us” is/are.
If you’re weak minded, compliant and impressionable, then the answer is almost certainly yes.
If you have any strength of character whatsoever, then the answer is probably no.
To answer the question posed in the title…
It depends on who “us” is/are.
If you’re weak minded, compliant and impressionable, then the answer is almost certainly yes.
If you have any strength of character whatsoever, then the answer is probably no.
Outstanding article.
Outstanding article.
I’m reminded of a late 90’s episode of the Simpsons where Bart is put on Focasyn, an obvious stand in for Ritalin. Marge asks the pharmaceutical scientist if it really works and she responds “the only thing more effective is regular exercise”.
I wonder how quickly “long COVID” would disappear with the application of daily, moderate exercise plus some good old fresh air. Better yet, put aside the urge to document said moderate exercise and leave the smartphone at home. Problem solved.
Rather simplistic!
Very simplistic. If only life were that easy.
Very simplistic. If only life were that easy.
Oh please!
Rather simplistic!
Oh please!
I’m reminded of a late 90’s episode of the Simpsons where Bart is put on Focasyn, an obvious stand in for Ritalin. Marge asks the pharmaceutical scientist if it really works and she responds “the only thing more effective is regular exercise”.
I wonder how quickly “long COVID” would disappear with the application of daily, moderate exercise plus some good old fresh air. Better yet, put aside the urge to document said moderate exercise and leave the smartphone at home. Problem solved.
Could it be that in this article the cause and effect have been somewhat misinterpreted?
Perhaps innate tendencies towards neuroticism ( often associated with anxiety, hypochondria etc) cause people more often to become Leftists…
Could it be that in this article the cause and effect have been somewhat misinterpreted?
Perhaps innate tendencies towards neuroticism ( often associated with anxiety, hypochondria etc) cause people more often to become Leftists…
Simply wow! This is such a greqt discussion and summary of what is happening in our liberal culture! Thank you.
Simply wow! This is such a greqt discussion and summary of what is happening in our liberal culture! Thank you.
Our National Socialist government has used pure old DDR methods to inject fear, and ” promise” protection to an already obsessively selfish, risk averse certainty addicted society.
Which society is that?
Which society is that?
Our National Socialist government has used pure old DDR methods to inject fear, and ” promise” protection to an already obsessively selfish, risk averse certainty addicted society.
I find that when people drone on about LBGT, racism and global warming, I projectile vomit….
and find a pain developing in my rectum, and my knuckles itch with an uncontrollable desire to punch their lights out….
and find a pain developing in my rectum, and my knuckles itch with an uncontrollable desire to punch their lights out….
I find that when people drone on about LBGT, racism and global warming, I projectile vomit….
A splendid analysis! Thank you. I don’t think the current epidemic of “gender dysphoria” nor many other modern ills can be properly understood without the perspective you take. After a lifetime of being an American Democrat and liberal, I’m now politically homeless, in large part because of the “progressive” tendency toward victimhood and away from personal agency.
To the authors point
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/04/25/opinion/progressive-young-women-focus-group.html
It certainly makes me want to vomit!
It certainly makes me want to vomit!
I think the contagion aspect has bled from the left into the right – there are numerous clear examples of right-wing pols abrogating responsibility for their losses and failures to anything and everything but themselves. Just as the left was the chief instigator of ‘Newspeak’ style tactics, which are now abundantly utilised on the right.
Boo! Moo!
Having received 15 downticks I now realise that it simply cannot be true that the right has also been subject to contagion by bad ideas. I humbly apologise to all the right-wing commenters who were offended by my baseless insinuation. I see now that the right are a bastion of decency, free speech, truth, fair and balanced; whilst the left are hell bent on the corruption of minors, and the denegration of all that is decent.
Having received 15 downticks I now realise that it simply cannot be true that the right has also been subject to contagion by bad ideas. I humbly apologise to all the right-wing commenters who were offended by my baseless insinuation. I see now that the right are a bastion of decency, free speech, truth, fair and balanced; whilst the left are hell bent on the corruption of minors, and the denegration of all that is decent.
Boo! Moo!
I think the contagion aspect has bled from the left into the right – there are numerous clear examples of right-wing pols abrogating responsibility for their losses and failures to anything and everything but themselves. Just as the left was the chief instigator of ‘Newspeak’ style tactics, which are now abundantly utilised on the right.
This juvenile article is a farrago of partisan speculation.
Says our resident juvenile.
“Youth culture is always a rejection of old ways, but despite flattening history and shortening attention spans, the generational gap Wark perceives in contemporary queer rave culture reads more like an appeal to senescent authority than a legitimate complaint. Frank Ocean’s brief PrEP+ party series comes to mind: newer generations are acutely aware of the possibilities that have been lost between public policy and private bigotry. Ignore for a moment the bookish minority of collegiate JSTOR warriors and intellectually inclined teens familiar with Adorno and Berlant thanks to self-directed inquiry and institutional channels. Scroll Twitter long enough and you’ll see Sartre excerpted on fascism, or a crash course on the context behind a Haring painting, the type of pop scholarship that could expand a young person’s “sense of ongoingness” beyond themselves, beyond the present. The modern era of PDF piracy and Tumblrized text fragments has constellated at least surface-level theory and queer literature across the night sky of social media. Mark Fisher isn’t exactly niche. Vivian Medithi
Funny!
“Youth culture is always a rejection of old ways, but despite flattening history and shortening attention spans, the generational gap Wark perceives in contemporary queer rave culture reads more like an appeal to senescent authority than a legitimate complaint. Frank Ocean’s brief PrEP+ party series comes to mind: newer generations are acutely aware of the possibilities that have been lost between public policy and private bigotry. Ignore for a moment the bookish minority of collegiate JSTOR warriors and intellectually inclined teens familiar with Adorno and Berlant thanks to self-directed inquiry and institutional channels. Scroll Twitter long enough and you’ll see Sartre excerpted on fascism, or a crash course on the context behind a Haring painting, the type of pop scholarship that could expand a young person’s “sense of ongoingness” beyond themselves, beyond the present. The modern era of PDF piracy and Tumblrized text fragments has constellated at least surface-level theory and queer literature across the night sky of social media. Mark Fisher isn’t exactly niche. Vivian Medithi
Funny!
Says our resident juvenile.
This juvenile article is a farrago of partisan speculation.