Stephen Roney's Blog, page 79

Why There Is an Indelible Stigma around Mental Illness

 

Peek-a-boo!

There is a reason for the stigma around “mental illness.” There is a reason why the stigma cannot be gotten rid of, despite official efforts. Insist that depression and the other forms of PTSD are an illness, no more a matter of moral weakness than, say, breaking a leg, and “you’re sick” simply becomes an insult.

There is a reason we commonly insist that the mentally ill are violent and dangerous, when the statistics show they plainly are not.

The way we treat the “mentally ill” is actually strikingly like the way we once treated lepers, as Michel Foucault has documented.

It is because we fear the mentally ill. It is because mental illness is contagious; and we fear becoming mentally ill.

The problem is that those suffering “mental illness,” or CPTSD, chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, as it is now often called, have some intimate experience of evil, and are utterly sincere. That is their trauma. The rest of us are delusional about evil, generally pretending it does not exist. We whistle past the graveyard. Because otherwise, we ourselves would experience the trauma. We shield ourselves in denial. 

As Winston Churchill, himself depressive, perhaps “bipolar,” observed: “Men occasionally stumble over truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” Churchill credited his depression for his ability to see the genuine danger of Adolph Hitler, when all the wise heads of his time were for appeasement: Germany had been treated shabbily at Versailles, Hitler was not as extreme as his rhetoric, his demands were not so unreasonable. Churchill was for years condemned as a warmonger.

George Orwell similarly credited his chronic depression for his critical ability, as he saw it, to confront unpleasant truths that other people could not.

General Sherman went mad for a spell at the beginning of the American Civil War. He could see the horrors ahead, when the general public were streaming to the hillsides at Bull Run to enjoy the battle. He, and General Grant, were both depressive—as are most great generals. A military leader cannot afford delusions.

So the mentally ill alone confront the truth, and the mentally ill, being utterly sincere, cannot be relied on to shut up about it. So calling them insane—literally, “dirty”—and discounting anything they say is the necessary attitude among the general run of us in order to preserve our common delusions.

In earlier times, this tendency of the “mentally ill” to speak truth was put to use in the institution of the court jester—some artistic type declared to be insane, who then had special warrant to speak the truth to the king without punishment. After all, the poor fool could not control himself.

And this is the one way the king could ever know the truth about the state of his reign. Courtiers would always have motive to flatter instead.

This is also the point of the cultural institution of “the artist” generally. Artists are broadly loopy in the eyes of the world, and so, if obliquely, if they re true artists, can get away with speaking the truth. Emily Dickinson summarized the artistic task: “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant/Success in circuit lies.” As with Jesus’s parables, those who have ears to hear can take away what they are ready to accept. The rest can just imagine it is some idle entertainment, or that Leonard Cohen is singing about sex.

But for the general run of the “mentally ill,” those with no or little talent to entertain, shunning, contempt, and torture are the usual lot.

This is to be expected in this world. It is exactly what Jesus warned about—and showed in his own person.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Confessions of a Warmonger

 

There is these days a strong isolationist sentiment in the US, on both the left and the right. Many have been questioning why NATO still exists—after all, the Cold War is over. The Russian invasion of Ukraine gave it a new lease on life, but as that war has dragged on, the questions are being raised again.

I think such talk is both foolish and immoral.

The point of NATO, and of supporting Ukraine, is collective security. If a large enough group of countries pledges to defend one another in case of any external attack, war becomes far less likely. It is the same principle on which, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, governments are instituted among men: to mutually defend our rights.

Just as it is immoral to stand by and do nothing if you see a woman being raped, or a child tortured, it is immoral to stand by and do nothing when you see one country invaded by another. You cannot honourably say it is not your business, that “most Americans don’t even know where Ukraine is.” We are our brothers’ keeper.

What about Afghanistan, you might ask. What about Vietnam? Doesn’t the US keep getting into trouble by sticking its nose in?

In Afghanistan, the US was naïve in thinking it could impose democracy. The proper approach would have been good old gunboat diplomacy: go in, overthrow the government pull out, let the cowchips fall where they may. In Vietnam, the US was not engaged in collective security, and arguably the aggressor, since the Viet Cong were not a foreign invader. The moral case was unclear.

The naïve might suggest that keeping world peace is what the UN is for. But the UN is almost invariably ineffective in stopping aggression, or attacks on human rights; all it can generally do is send in peacekeepers to avoid incidents once a treaty is signed. The UN includes everyone, and most governments do not share any real commitment to human rights or the good of mankind. On top of that, a couple of the most likely aggressors have vetoes. Let the UN set up a panel on human rights, and Saudi Arabia, say, Iran, China, or North Korea will likely be on it.

NATO is, by contrast, a coalition of liberal democracies. They do share essential values, and so can act together if needed. Moreover, their interests are unlikely to seriously conflict: there is rarely any point in one democracy going to war with another. Should they conquer any of a neighbour’s territory, after all, those people too must be given a vote, and so the change is relatively trivial to either people or government. Unlikely to be worth a war.

Accordingly, NATO can have a vital role as a de facto world government. It indeed ought to be expanded, not just to include Ukraine, but to include Japan, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Singapore. 

This collective security system would protect democracy. It would also give currently autocratic nations a strong incentive to go democratic: it would allow them protection by this security umbrella.

Conversely, on the other hand, if any member country slipped away from the democratic fold, it ought, by vote of the other members, to be expelled. This loss o the security guarantee should make this less likely to happen. Currently, the one problem member is Turkiye—for this reason. Under Erdogan, it has become more autocratic.

So go ahead—call me a neocon. Call me a shill for the military-industrial complex. I’m into world peace. Sorry.

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Sinead O'Connor

 

Sinead O’Connor has died, almost certainly by her own hand. She suffered throughout her life from the psychic consequences of childhood abuse, which we call “mental illness.” Psychology seems now to have come to a consensus that most or all mental illness is the result of such abuse in childhood, of chronic PTSD.

But what is PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder—and what causes it? What is the trauma?

The common assumption is that it is fear of being physically harmed. That is what “trauma” means in medicine—a physical injury. Soldiers in WWI who suffered from “shell shock” were accused of cowardice.

But that’s not right. 

A perceptive student of mine, asked to write on the subject of PTSD, noted that nobody experiences PTSD when they watch someone die in their bed. Yet they do when they see someone murdered, or killed in war. Why?

Fear of being killed themselves? But surely either represents physical harm; when you’re dead, you’re dead. If it is death we are afraid of, why aren’t we equally traumatized by either?

The difference is the perception, in the latter case, of injustice, of evil. 

It is coming in contact with evil, the awareness that something evil is taking place, that causes spiritual trauma.

The real trauma in war is therefore not fear of being killed, but fear of killing. To anyone with a healthy conscience, war is a moral dilemma. That is the spiritual trauma.

And part of the trauma is not knowing what morality requires of you; the sense of having no moral option available. In war, is it more moral to shoot at strangers, or to desert your comrades in the field? Having witnessed a murder, was there something you could and should have done?

Most ordinary people protect themselves from this trauma by denying that evil exists. Hitler, say, was just a madman. Murderers and the like are prisoners of their upbringing. Any conficts are based on some “misunderstanding.” 

Those raised by a parent who openly practices or advocates immorality are inevitably going to be wounded spiritually by this. They will either embrace the parent’s immorality as righteous, and as their own creed, and perpetuate this evil on the next generation; or else be deeply morally conflicted, anxious, depressed.

This being so, experiencing “mental illness,” PTSD, is a warrant that you are a good person, and sincere. You are not in denial.

You could always see the sincerity in Sinead O’Connor’s eyes, and hear it in her voice.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Wokeness Defined

 

The essence of CRT/CT, postmodernism, “wokeness,” can be expressed in one simple statement: “Reality is a function of belief.” I think that is Kierkegaard’s formulation. Or here is William Blake’s: “A firm persuasion that a thing is so, makes it so.”

There, I defined it; and the left claims nobody can. 

So, say the woke, there is no truth; there is only “your truth.” There are no rules, no right and wrong; only a need to impose your own preferred reality on others. As in, demanding they use your pronouns.

Men declaring themselves women is the currently fashionable test case. If it looks relatively harmless, just wait for what comes next.

I have been hearing versions of this dogma—dogma is the word—since undergraduate days back in the 1970s. It took decades for me to fully shake this off, if I even have. One must not, in any circumstances, be “judgemental.” One must not get “hung up” on “meaning,” as one prize postgrad essay in religion asserted. Marcuse was hot back then: “Beware: even the ears have walls,” as one graffito said during the Paris uprisings. This idea has been drilled into our young people now for perhaps 3.5 generations.

The idea is attractive to the young. Sensitive or intelligent young people must realize that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy”—that philosophy being the dominant materialism. Postmodernism seems to offer the response, segueing nicely from LSD: we are not limited to the material, but can live entirely in our imaginations.

Heck, it even seems to be endorsed by the Christian tradition: Blake and Kierkegaard were, or considered themselves, Christians. Jesus said  “if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20). Martin Luther emphasized faith as both necessary and sufficient for salvation: the whole ball game.

But there is something critical missing in the postmodern formulation: God. The faith spoken of by Jesus, or Blake, or Kierkegaard, is not faith in self or in the will. That’s Hitler.  It is faith in God.

Consider the traditional solipsist conundrum: “If a tree falls I the forest, and no one is there to hear, did it make a sound?”

And the necessary answer is, it makes a sound because God knows. God is the touchstone of all existence, the ground of being. Without faith in God, as Descartes, for one, explained. one has no warrant that anything else is real. It is then possible, as Chesterton pointed out, to randomly believe in anything.  Madness is inevitable, the only alternative to such faith. 

Accordingly, if God says a mountain will move, it must move. If he says it will move at your command, it will move at your command. Because God. Nothing else is or is anything here or there except because God.  But this magic works if and only if you are following God’s will, not your own.

And, of course, it is generally God’s will that a mountain be where he put it.

In denying God, we are collectively pulling the plug on everything. It is mass madness, and it is the madness of the proverbial lemmings.

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Yikes

 

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Wild in the Streets

 

Justin Trudeau is increasingly facing hostile crowds wherever he goes, crowds shouting things like “traitor” and “criminal.” Trudeau seems to lean into this, lingering, smiling and waving—almost as if he is taunting them. 

Brian Lilley warns this is because the crowds make him look good, and make his opposition look immoderate and scary. They play into his hands. They are winning him sympathy and support.

I think Lilley is wrong. He has fallen for the moderate fallacy, which all professional politicos seem to believe, even though it is a formal logical fallacy, and has been disproven repeatedly in political practice. If it were true, after all, that the moderate ticket wins, that most of the votes are in the centre, the Liberal Democrats would be in perpetual power in Britain.

Has the left, effectively in power in Canada and in the US, almost in perpetual power, been conspicuously moderate in recent years? Has Black Lives Matter? Has Extinction Rebellion and the environmentalist movement? Have the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and the trans movement? Has Antifa? Has Idle No More and the aboriginal movement, with their church burnings?

This is how it really works: the average person mostly wants peace and quiet and to get along with their lives. They don’t care about right or wrong. If a small group kicks up a fuss, they will want them suppressed. January 6 was suppressed precisely because it looked insignificant, not a real threat to anyone. Or the Freedom Convoy. Unlike, say, Antifa or Black Lives Matter. If this does not work, if the group seems persistent, those in charge, and the general public, will give them whatever they demand to settle them down. This is what the left has been exploiting for many years: the appeasement instinct. 

It would work just as well for the right. Indeed, the right must do it, or lose ground indefinitely. It is necessary to make it more trouble for those in power, or for the big corporations, to appease the left than it is to appease the right. Only then will the right make progress.

We are seeing this now. Disney, for example is trapped between irate leftists demanding no dwarfs appear in Snow White, and rightists no longer watching, no longer going to Disneyland, declaring this a travesty. Bud Light or the LA Dodgers are caught between irate trans people demanding public tribute, and irate Christians and “frat boys” protesting and no longer buying. All these corporations probably wanted was to keep everyone happy and keep peacefully making profits. 

Because until now the right was determined to stay polite and reasonable, the left kept always getting what they want. The squeaking wheel gets the grease.

Now the right is employing the same tactics. It may be distasteful; public protests are anti-democratic by their nature. But there is no alternative, so long as the other side is employing the tactic. And it is working. Contrary to Lilley’s prediction, Poilievre and the Conservatives are rising, not falling, in the polls.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Faux Oppression

 

Moving to a new home has brought me to the growing revelation, after just a few days, of how sordid and constrained my previous situation had been. How did I stand it?

Leading to the broader insight: people can get used to anything. Like the proverbial frog put in water and the heat gradually turned up.

For this reason, you simply will not hear complaints from the currently oppressed. If you hear complaints, it means one of two things: either you are hearing from the previously oppressed, but not oppressed now, about what used to be their situation; or else you are hearing from the habitually relatively privileged, not getting what they have come to expect.

The former seems to be the case of blacks in America; they are far more vocally irate and discontented now than they were, say, in the 1940s, or the 1960s, when they had good reason to be irate and discontented. Now they are systemically favoured, with “affirmative action.”

The latter is the case of feminists. Girls are generally raised as princesses, spoiled and indulged. Boys are treated more severely. Any attractive woman continues to be indulged in adulthood; ugly women are more likely to become feminists. And then, in the 1960s, something changed. Technological improvements in the home made it possible, for the first time, for men to live comfortably as bachelors. Suddenly women could not count so automatically on the deference to which they were accustomed, and which they expected from observing their mothers and fathers. Therefore the big trouble began.

Onde will note, however, that when women, now relatively obsolete in their traditional role, move into the male workforce, they always still demand special deference. They must be accommodated.

Indians, Canada’s “First Nations,” contrary to the constant claim, have always objectively been treated with deference and special consideration by the rest of society. This has not been good for their long term interests—just as it is not in their interest to spoil a child. Worse, Indian children are often raised without a father in the home, which usually means, without discipline. Therefore, like a pet that is taught to beg, they are always at the table looking woeful. They deserve whatever is on your plate, and are not yet getting it.

In the meantime, by appeasing these inappropriate and unreasonable demands, we are all able to comfortably continue to ignore the oppressed, indeed to comfortably oppress and scapegoat them: children, the young, the “mentally ill.” Working class white men: “rednecks,” “hillbillies.”

And so spins the world.

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Speech after Long Silence

 My apologies for not posting. I was moving, from Toronto to New Brunswick, and on top of the attention this required, had no Internet. I hope to return to a normal schedule soon. Fortunately, it is summer, proverbially a slow news period when many of you may be off on the golf course or at the cottage.

In the meantime, read this harrowing tale of contemporary Canada.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Conspiracies

 

The flagpole at my local school.

A friend who originally emigrated from Pakistan laments that, over the past few years, his eyes have been opened: at the higher levels, Canada is no better than Pakistan. Our leadership is corrupt. His Canadian dream was only an illusion. 

His companion, Canadian-born, says the sudden appearance of “gay-pride/transgender” flags on public buildings everywhere looks to him like the swastikas appearing in Germany with the rise of the Nazis. They announce the power of an authoritarian political ideology. You will obey.

Did I mention that these two guys are gay?

They think we are doomed; that there is no way back. The best we can do is try to survive.

Who would have thought, a few years ago, that the following conspiracy theories would look plausible:

That the 2020 US election was rigged.

That the past two Canadian elections were rigged.

That the Canadian prime minister and the US president are in the pay of China.

That the Canadian government would try to control the media.

That “Canadian health care” would become a euphemism for murder.

That “Eyes Wide Shut” was a documentary? That there are pedophile rings involving the participation of the rich and famous? When a film came out about the fight against pedophile rings, there would be an effort to suppress it?

That “drag queen story hours” for children would not just be permitted, but made mandatory?

That the CIA shot JFK. Maybe RFK? Maybe MLK? How about John Lennon? One former CIA operative has confessed to killing Bob Marley. Has the US effectively been run by a dark cabal since the 1960s?

That we were all forced to inject ourselves with an experimental vaccine that had not been properly tested.

That the pharmaceutical companies are prepared to suppress effective medicines for the sake of profit.

That some conspiracy can have enemies suicided at will, even within a high-level prison, and then can prevent an investigation.

That UFOs have been real all along; but the government has been suppressing this fact. 

That the FBI is engaged in such activities as suppressing news for partisan political purposes.

That there is a conspiracy between government, the media, and big tech to impose censorship and control the news.

And on it goes.

Given that last one, that news is being suppressed, all conspiracy theories now become plausible. We  know there are conspiracies. We know we are not being told the truth. Which conspiracies are real is anyone’s guess. There can no longer be any public trust in our institutions.

My own thoughts are still optimistic. I think we are seeing the thrashing about of a beast in its death throes. Social media makes conspiracies harder now to conceal, and we are beginning to see behind the curtain. At the same time, a depraved ideology that traces roots back to the 19th century, variously known as postmodernism, relativism, critical theory, existentialism, fascism, or the New Left, is reaching the point of reductio ad absurdum, slipperly slopes being real and really slippery, and the common people are beginning to see how mad it is. 

And the convoys are coming.

I still believe there is a way back, and the future will be better than the past.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Flying Monkeys

 

G. K. Chesterton is supposed to have said “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing. They then become capable of believing in anything.”

Jesus says something similar in the New Testament: 

“When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, seeking rest but finding none. Then it says, ‘I will return to the person I came from.’ So it returns and finds its former home empty, swept, and in order. Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there.”

It is not enough to exorcise a demon, a “mental illness.” It will come back. The only way to expel a demon permanently is religious faith.

And then there’s Bob Dylan: “It may be the Devil, or it may be the Lord, but you gonna havta serve somebody.”

We are created with a God-shaped hole in our soul. Without this absolute, our thoughts and our emotions cannot cohere. If God and Good and Truth is not allowed to fill that hole, something will. Fenatyl, alcohol, Marxism, sex, power, status. Something.

For the narcissist, it is the ephemeral concept of self that fills that hole; or the self’s arbitrary desires.

Good, God, and Truth then becomes the ultimate enemy. The narcissist will deliberately deny Truth and morality. Truth is whatever they will it to be, and do what you will is the full extent of the law.

If a person is committed to God or Truth or Good, they will perceive this person as evil. This recognition is terrifying: it means to stare in the face of the Devil. Hence, PTSD. 

But if a person is not committed to God or Truth or Good, such a person will fill their God-shaped hole. They are liable to idolize them. They act, after all, as though they are God. They seem sure of themselves.

This is what produces the familiar phenomenon of “flying monkeys,” people who do the bidding of the narcissist in tormenting their victims.

These are the True Believers.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.