#3-35
omething Very Vital Is Still Missing.
—The logo of the ArcaEx Corporation, “NUMBERS THIS BIG ARE HARD TO IGNORE.”
—the heading of The Zoloft homepage
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”—H..L..Mencken
hether intellectual or anti-intellectual, one should be able to understand skepticism of anything with a rate of 20% of the population having mood disorders and 25%, anxiety disorders. Any cultural norms which claim to favor the individual, would naturally oppose anything that makes people blame themselves for problems that they aren’t primarily responsible for. Rampant depression, obviously too rampant to be just a part of the natural order, really is a very simple truth. Everyone has their limits, and even the most red-blooded American anti-intellectual would probably have a limit of how much depression and anxiety disorders, a society could have before he’d regard it as a bleak place. When you consider how much is at stake with the rampant depression, it isn’t safe to limit oneself to either intellectualism or anti-intellectualism.
Not only do we have the rampant depression, as described by John H. Greist, MD and Thomas H. Greist, MD, in Antidepressant Treatment—the Essentials, “According to National Institutes of Mental Health figures, 20,000,000 people or approximately 15% of the U.S. adult population suffers from a serious depressive disorder in any given year.”
We also have the rampant anxiety disorders, as described by Facts About Anxiety Disorders, a pamphlet from the National Institute of Mental Health, fits the usual pattern, “Anxiety disorders, however, are illnesses that fill people’s lives with overwhelming anxiety and fear that are chronic, unremitting, and can grow progressively worse. Tormented by panic attacks, obsessive thoughts, flashbacks, nightmares, or countless frightening physical symptoms, some people with anxiety disorders even become housebound. Fortunately, through research conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), there are effective treatments that can help.... Anxiety disorders, as a group, are the most common mental illness in America. More than 19 million American adults are affected by these debilitating illnesses each year.”
When you’ve seen ads and other guides that say things like this, you may have thought, “So how am I supposed to fit in with all this? Those red-blooded Populist anti-intellectuals, insist that I accept that they represent natural common sense. Yet those same people would insist that I accept social norms that would lead to a lot of helplessness, of a society that produces rampant depression and anxiety disorders. But how could natural common sense feel comfortable with anything that contributes to rampant depression?
“Sure, discussing these issues as social problems, would require a sociological analysis of social problems, which necessarily would seem intellectual. This could seem scary, since intellectual research and analysis are a lot more susceptible to conniving manipulation, than are exercises of power. Yet an awareness of something this big wouldn’t have the dangers of intellectualism, such as that the people whose arguments would win are those who have the best sophistry or most influence. This awareness would require only the most basic common sense (freed of cultural conditioning that would say that this awareness is bad, maladjusted), while this cultural conditioning is what poses the real danger! Also, this danger comes from the emotional appeal, and influence, of this cultural conditioning! Once we no longer feel so at-home with what causes our rampant depression and anxiety disorders, we’ll look back at the time that we did feel at-home with them, and think...”
One could really see this expectation of red-blooded self-reliance, in the expectation that many conservative Representatives had around the time that The Great Wall Street Bailout of 2008 at first didn’t pass in the House of Representatives on September 29. Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, head of the conservative group, said, “You were being asked to choose between financial meltdown on the one hand and taxpayer bankruptcy and the road to socialism on the other and you were told do it in 24 hours. It was just never going to happen,” and, “Once you lose your freedom to fail, you also lose your freedom to succeed and you cease to be a free society.” Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the banking committee, said, “I didn’t want to be in the negotiations because I object to the basic principles of this.” Representative Mike Pence of Indiana said, “Ask yourselves why you came here and vote with courage and integrity to those principles. If, like me, you came here because you believe in limited government and the freedom of the American marketplace, I urge you vote in accordance with your convictions. Stand up for limited government and economic freedom. Stand up for the American taxpayer. Reject this bailout and vote no on the emergency economic stabilization act.” When the bailout passed on October 3, Representative Zach Wamp said, “Nobody in East Tennessee hates the fact more than me that I am going to vote ‘yes’ today after voting ‘no’ on Monday. Monday I cast a blue-collar vote for the American people. Today I am going to cast a red, white and blue-collar vote with my hand over my heart for this country, because things are really bad and we don’t have any choice. We’re out of choices and our backs are up against the wall.” And, of course, if the bailout didn’t pass, then those who’d therefore be in situations of great helplessness couldn’t object, since it would seem that they should show more backbone and pay the price of freedom. All the attention would go to how well they’re taking care of themselves, since if they did focus their attention on correcting their own reactions to the economic meltdown, they’d be most likely to succeed.
Comedian Stephen Colbert coined the word truthiness, which means, “truth that comes from the gut, not books.” American Populism prides, and markets, itself on this. Yet skepticism of what causes such rates of depression and anxiety disorders, has far more truthiness than would reasons for accepting that as if it’s just the normal vicissitudes of life. Yet the usual Populism would insist that that serene and courageous acceptance is what has the truthiness. The stalwart and stolid approach to one’s own problems seems gutsy and emotionally appealing, while an awareness of social problems seems intellectualist and elitist. If you live in a society with rampant depression and anxiety disorders, and, on a gut level, you’re aware of the truthiness of an anti-elitist skepticism of the norms that cause them, that would seem to be the epitome of both maladjustment and emotional reasoning. Dr. David Burns, in the self-help book Feeling Good, defines emotional reasoning as, “You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: ‘I feel it, therefore it must be true.’” Even worse, if it’s the victims of the ordeals that contribute to the rampant depression and and anxiety disorders, who have a gut-level awareness of the truthiness of skepticism of these norms, this could seem to reflect those weaklings’ ignominious , their desires to believe that they’ve been wronged so (gasp!) they’re entitled to something better.
During the 1960s, it was necessary to tell self-righteous hippies that their postmodernism, attitude of “It’s all a state of mind,” etc., aren’t really any different from conservatives’ attitudes such as emotionalistic populism. In the 60s it was Big Brother AND the Holding Company, but now it’s Big Brother OR the Holding Company, since it seems that either we accept Wall Street excesses or we’ll have Big Brother.
As the epilogue of Marvin Harris’ anthropological book Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches, The Riddles of Culture copyright 1974, says,
The moral collapse of Vietnam was scarcely caused by an overdose of objective consciousness about what we were doing. It consisted of the failure to expand consciousness beyond mere instrumental tasks to the practical and banal significance of our national goals and policies. We kept the war going in Vietnam because our consciousness was mystified by symbols of patriotism, dreams of glory, unyielding pride, and visions of empire. In mood we were exactly what the counter-culture people want us to become. We imagined we were menaced by slant-eyed devils and worthless little yellow men; we enthralled ourselves with visions of our own ineffable majesty. In short, we were stoned.
Now that the hippies’ attitude of “It’s all a state of mind,” has become cognitive therapy’s expectations that people serenely accept whatever they’re helpless to change,
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(After all, people couldn’t afford to have victims’ attitudes when they’re having big problems since, as pioneering cognitive therapist Martin Seligman put it, “Such talk has its gravest impact on just those people facing the biggest difficulties in their day-to-day lives.”) Hippies’ postmodernism has become the exciting populist emotionalism that makes up most of the current support for the Iraq war, all of what makes “Savage Nation” style radio programs attractive, etc. Therefore, it’s about time that someone tell the conservative anti-intellectuals that their self-righteous, folksy and emotionalistic, anti-intellectualism really isn’t any different from the self-righteous anti-intellectualism of the hippies. The logic behind the Iraq invasion is the most obviously “stoned,” though a lot of faith in the virtues of gutsy strength is also pretty “stoned.”
At the end of 2006, Lake Superior State University included “truthiness” in its list of words and phrases that were big in 2006, that the school considers to be irritatingly tasteless. Of course, that would make anti-intellectuals like that word even more! In the Romantic Era of Central European culture, when anti-intellectualism became popular and Populist, a big theme was that language is so intellectual that it can’t really capture and convey some very important things, that can only be understood on the gut level. The whole concept of “truthiness” is exactly what, if put into words, probably would sound very awkward to those who prize polished grammar. Yet on a gut level, you could certainly sense how much of a meaningfully truthful quality a skepticism of norms that cause that much depression and anxiety disorders, would have. Yet due to our norms that honor the übermenschen/redbloods and regard the untermenschen/mollycoddles as ignominious and cunning, this skepticism would require a good deal of words (as in my many webpages on victim correction as a panacea, indexed here and here), in order to be proven adequately enough that this wouldn’t look like manipulative and restrictive “victimology.”
Sure, the American Dialect Society defined truthiness as, “what one wishes to be the truth regardless of the facts.” Since the emotionality of anti-intellectualism is very susceptible to emotional reasoning, it is very possible for a sense of truth that comes from the gut, to lead to a belief in what one wishes to be the truth regardless of the facts. Yet it seems far more acceptable to see untermensch opinions as beliefs in what one wants to believe, than to see übermensch opinions as beliefs in what one wants to believe.
The all-or-nothing, black-and-white victim-self-blaming of the cognitive distortions of modern Western depression, really is very similar to our culture’s tendency to minimize how seriously we take the übermensch choices and actions that directly cause the problems that lead to so much depression and anxiety, and magnify how seriously we take the untermensch choices and actions that the problems that lead to so much depression and anxiety, could possibly be attributed to since if only those victims weren’t so weak and passive, they would have taken care of themselves better. Form follows function. Sure, as On Speculation and Manipulation in Therapy says, “When it works, justice is always very particular. It proceeds on a case-by-case basis with a careful weighing of the facts and an equally careful examination of the underlying logic of key arguments.”
Yet if we resolved disputes about the problems behind the rampant depression and anxiety, on a case-by-case basis, it would seem that manipulative untermenschen could get what they want simply by cooking up enough sophistry to make it seem that someone else owes them (gasp!). The main role model of Nietzsche, Wagner and Hitler, Arthur Schopenhauer wrote, in The World as Will and Representation: “Wrong through violence is not so ignominious for the perpetrator as wrong through cunning, because the former is evidence of physical strength, which in all circumstances powerfully impresses the human race. The latter, on the other hand, by using the crooked way, betrays weakness, and at the same time degrades the perpetrator as a physical and moral being.” As William James wrote about a century ago Americans tend to classify people as either redbloods, who seem to have the same appeal and worthiness as übermenschen do, and mollycoddles, who seem as manipulatively weak as untermenschen do.
“Nature has produced [the intellect] for the service of an individual will; therefore it is destined to know things only in so far as they serve as the motives of such a will, not to fathom them or comprehend their true inner essence.”
“The concept of good is divided into two subspecies, that of the directly present satisfaction of the will in each case, and that of its merely indirect satisfaction concerning the future, in other words, the agreeable and the useful. The concept of the opposite, so long as we are speaking of beings without knowledge, is expressed by the word bad, more rarely and abstractly by the word evil, which therefore denotes everything that is not agreeable to the striving of the will in each case.”
Or, in traditionally American terms, this would seem to reflect the strivings of mollycoddles’ manipulative , even if every last thing they say is sincere and assertive, since naturally everyone wants to believe that they’re entitled to more than what they’d won. Or, in modern American terms, if someone truly feels the truthiness in his own opinion that what was done to him was wrong, then that’s what he wishes to be the truth regardless of the facts, rather than truth that comes from the gut not books. On the other hand, if gutsy übermensch pundits insist that his own opinion is true no matter what the intellectualists may prove, then that would seem to be truth that comes from the beloved gut not the dreaded intellectualist books. After all, redbloods, but not mollycoddles, have guts. Since (preferably non-violent) gutsiness is what in all circumstances powerfully impresses the human race, you need that in order for what you feel to be the truth, to be respected.
That might sound like Nazi moral bankruptcy. That might sound like it has exactly as much concern about what’s morally and ethically wrong, as well as for whether the victims seem too demanding, as does, “God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it; Trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will; So that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next—Amen.” Yet the fact still remains that if our culture didn’t assess who is personally responsible for what, along the lines of the cognitive distortions of modern Western depression, all outrage about what causes our rampant depression and anxiety would reflect the of both those who suffer the depression and anxiety, and anyone outraged about them. Also, these people would also have what the redbloods/übermenschen are likely to call “victim-power,” the power to manipulate, to make those who disagree with them seem , etc. Though at present American anti-intellectuals tend to have this sort of fear of “victim-power,” if they really did have earthy common sense, they could see the dangers in not looking at the specifics of what causes our rampant depression and anxiety, on a case-by-case basis.
The above is a genuine Nazi cartoon, “The Nit-Picker,” portraying intellectuals as overly-critical of the Nazi’s jackboots. Sure, we now associate jackboots with guv’mint violence. Yet a non-governmental and non-violent version of the übermensch appeal that the Nazis went for, is exactly what’s currently supposed to be the great gutsy antidote to intellectualist negativism and “analysis paralysis.”
And when you consider that the following satirical cartoon appeared in Munich’s humor magazine Simplicissimus in 1932,
showing three possible monuments to Hitler including one in which he’s a mechanical drummer wearing cowboy boots, clearly the sort of excitement that he was known for at the beginning, was very much along the lines of what Americans consider to be gutsy and exciting. All you’ve got to do is take “The Nit-Picker,” change the jackboots to cowboy boots, and you’d have something that American redbloods could relate to, including when this pragmatically stolid spirit is as mechanical as, “Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is not as I would have it”!
American good ol’ boys probably would agree that some of what causes our rampant depression should be opposed. That is, whatever their religion happens to prohibit. For example, divorce causes a good deal of depression, and is also prohibited by Christianity. Whenever men abandon their own marriages where they wouldn’t have old-fashioned grounds for divorce, chances are very good that the justifications that they’d give for this would be stereotypically cowboy, that expectations that they not get divorced would attempt to “trap” or restrict them, deny them the right to do what their red-blooded spirits need to do, etc. Their ex-wives, even if they suddenly join “the feminization of poverty,” wouldn’t seem to be really helpless, since no law is prohibiting them from succeeding. In practical terms, cowboy excuses for behavior that the Bible prohibits, and that’s very likely to cause depression, really aren’t much different from cowboy excuses for behavior that the Bible doesn’t prohibit and that’s very likely to cause depression.
Yet in both cases, it would seem that we mustn’t expect the übermenschen, whose human nature seems unchangeable, to change. Of course, this also means that serious Christians would probably insist that if women want to get divorced because of their husbands’ “Boys will be boys,” behavior, the women should instead just stay there and put up with it. This is even if serious Christianity would consider the husbands’ behavior as “sinful.” Permanently living with this sinful behavior would very likely cause many of these women to suffer depression, anxiety disorders, etc. It seems so much more natural to expect the untermenschen, whose human nature seems very improvable, to become more well-adjusted. Yet the price of that sort of personal responsibility or lack thereof, is rampant depression and anxiety.
Serious Christians should be able to see that there is an alternative that would prevent a lot of depression, that the husbands stop the devastating sinfulness. In practical terms, the same would go for impending divorces that would be on grounds of depression-inducing “Boys will be boys,” behavior that the Bible doesn’t prohibit. It would be pretty hard for one whose religion is based on anything but blind faith, to believe that even if one is so devastated by what happened to him that it sent him into major depression, God simply wants her to live with it. Just add a little reasoning along the lines of Catholic philosophy on “the natural law,” and it would seem ridiculous to hold that something’s wrong with you if you don’t accept what leads to the rampant depression, reject much of what would counter it.
Niebuhr, in The Nature and Destiny of Man, wrote, “The requirements of ‘natural law’ in the medieval period were obviously conceived in a feudal society; just as the supposed absolute and ‘self-evident’ demands of eighteenth-century natural law were bourgeois in origin.” If we had a version of the natural law that said, for example, “We hold this truth to be self-evident, that for 20,000,000 Americans or approximately 15% of the adult population to suffer from a serious depressive disorder in any given year, and more than 19 million American adults to be affected by debilitating anxiety disorders each year, aren’t just parts of the natural order, and that these problems aren’t simply inside the victims,” this would give us plenty of answers.
Salt of the earth people, if they weren’t influenced by cultural conditioning that prioritized strength and self-reliance, would see that we’ve got some pretty extreme social problems here. These social problems aren’t simply a lack of a theoretical “cosmic justice,” and have very real consequences. The more powerless that that one is, the more likely it is that he’d by affected by these social problems. And one really can’t expect self-reliance, unless he also specifies exactly what one is expected to do self-reliantly. If what he’s expected to do self-reliantly, is to deal with whatever happens to him in a society with that level of depression and anxiety disorders, then that could mean expecting him to do some pretty extreme things. If common sense would tell you that it isn’t only natural that such a large percentage of American schoolchildren must take Ritalin and are incomplete without it, then common sense would tell you even more strongly that it isn’t only natural that a much larger percentage of American adults must take anti-depressant and/or anti-anxiety medication and are incomplete without it. Though we keep hearing that grassroots anti-intellectualism would accept the sort of adversarialism that leads to our rampant depression, your natural common sense should tell you that a genuinely gutsy and earthy worldview would react very negatively to the causes of rampant depression.
The USSR must have had rates of depression and anxiety that were similar to ours. After all, Marxism requires a sociologist’s version of the cynical “realism” that perpetuates our own helplessness. It seems that to be realistic, one must accept that in certain situations, certain individuals must be helpless, and that for a society to maintain its stability, its social norms must insist that people accept this. Sure, in the USSR, these norms were more centralized and contrived, but they had to be roughly equivalent to our norms that say such things as, “In any given year 20,000,000 American adults suffer from a serious depressive disorder, and that’s simply among those biological illnesses that are parts of the natural order,” “In any given year 20,000,000 American adults suffer from a serious depressive disorder, so in any given year 20,000,000 American adults should take antidepressants or learn to have optimistic outlooks,” “In any given year 20,000,000 American adults suffer from a serious depressive disorder, and the question that we should ask about this is whether it consists of 20,000,000 rather severe medical conditions, or 20,000,000 rather severe weaknesses of character,” “Sure, in any given year 20,000,000 American adults suffer from a serious depressive disorder, but everyone knows that we must accept the helplessness that this culture regards as normal, since all must deal with the normal vicissitudes of life,” and, “If you care a lot that in any given year 20,000,000 American adults suffer from a serious depressive disorder, something must be wrong with you.” Therefore, American Populists could have come up with plenty of folk-wisdom regarding the ridiculousness of the Soviet versions of these. For example, “Those who don’t simply accept that such rates of depression are normal imperfections of life, are therefore labeled as ‘bad,’ contrarian? That’s ridiculous! How could people just keep swallowing that?”
No matter what any “-ism” may say, if people can endure only so much, then they can endure only that much. If a culture produces certain rates of depression, anxiety, etc., then that’s what it produces. If the only way to get people to endure more is for them to discipline themselves into having inner peace despite what happens outside of themselves, then that’s the self-discipline that’s necessary. When a society has rates of depression and anxiety like that, both common sense and intellectual exploration could see their significance. On the other hand, the Populism that’s now popular in the USA, is the sort that would blankly assume that whenever anyone is faced with the sort of problem that leads to our rampant depression and anxiety disorders, he’s response-able for bucking up and dealing with it, by courageously changing what he can and serenely accepting whatever he can’t. To paraphrase an AA slogan, there’s no one too dumb for that Serenity-Prayer-style stolid Populism, but it’s possible to be too smart for it.
Yet according to the current norms that talk about our rampant depression and anxiety as things that the sufferers are simply response-able for taking care of, both an intellectual and a common-sense awareness of these social problems would be painted pretty much as a Wagnerian populism would. This populism would naturally see intellectual observations as spineless, elitist, philosophical, subjective, manipulable, etc. Yet a common sense awareness of these social problems could very easily be treated as untermensch willfulness, as resentful, maladjusted, manipulative, controlling, whiny, etc. Sure, it’s only natural to see the causes of the rampant depression and anxiety, as dangerous, but it also seems that of course if we act out these fears, that would be the picture of maladjustment. In a society with rampant depression and anxiety, those who are maladjusted treat the norms that cause these huge problems as if they cause huge problems, and those who are well-adjusted, adjust well to these realities. This could be labeled as manipulable, too, since even in a society with rampant depression and anxiety, even when people object to such norms very assertively and sincerely, this would have to reflect their own , in one way or another. Only ignoring the rampant depression and anxiety could seem non-manipulable, since this would objectively look at only whether each individual succeeds or fails in life.
The Romantic era of Central European culture, which did shape Wagnerianism and probably shaped Nazism, was also in the name of a stolid anti-intellectualism. This was a backlash toward the intellectualism of The Enlightenment, the era in the 18th Century, which held that rational inquiry and independent thinking could give us the best society. Schopenhauer was of the Romantic era. While anti-intellectualism is supposed to mean relying on people’s common sense, according to this sort of anti-intellectualism, if you rely on your own common sense as to what are your moral rights, it would seem that of course you believe that you’re entitled to a lot, but for your own good you should choose to act stolid instead of pathetic.
The American version of this looks like, as William James wrote, Americans tend to classify people as either redbloods or mollycoddles, so the strong seem powerfully impressive, and the weak seem ignominiously cunning. Also, it seems that intellectualism can be distorted by what people want to believe. While it should be obvious that anti-intellectualism is even more susceptible to people believing what they want, gutsy anti-intellectualist beliefs would seem both powerfully impressive, and like the sorts of inevitable imperfections that of course mature people would serenely accept. A balanced anti-intellectualism, on the other hand, would realize that in some situations common sense would conclude that the strong person is powerfully impressive and the weak one is ignominiously cunning, and in some situations, common sense wouldn’t. Common sense would probably see cunning in very few situations, since probably most Americans realize that it won’t work, and don’t have manipulative characters anyway.
And one must be weak in order for his cunning to seem ignominious. Michael Faber, in his contribution to the book from the British Stop the War Coalition, Not One More Death, writes that once when he saw Bush on TV making a press conference, “Bush replied, ‘You don’t understand. There are bad people out there, and they want to hurt us.’... Is this the first time we’ve had a seven-year-old boy as President of the Free World? Or, as my friend Brian Eno suggests, is it more a case of a president assuming a seven-year-old boy’s intelligence on the part of his electorate? I don’t know how cunning George Bush really is...” Yet it could seem that if you object to this sort of cunning, then you’re probably elitist, intellectualist. Why else would you object to his sounding so Populist?
This is pretty much the only anti-intellectualism that really would be dangerous. Looking at any social problem, including those of and behind our rampant depression and anxiety disorders, would require thinking that would seem to be “intellectualism,” “analysis paralysis,” etc. Therefore, for 20,000,000 Americans or approximately 15% of the U.S. adult population to suffer from a serious depressive disorder in any given year, and more than 19 million American adults to be affected by debilitating anxiety disorders each year, would seem to be among the diseases that are just parts of the natural order. This would all seem to result from some sort of debilitating inadequacies inside of each of the victims, whether this be millions of rather severe character defects or millions of rather severe medical conditions. And the solution would therefore seem to be mega-medication, and/or mega-thought-reform. This mega-thought-reform would of course consist of the untermenschen being coached into having more positive outlooks, never the übermenschen being coached into not wanting or needing to cause such an unusually high amount of devastation.
A good reason to be skeptical of scientism, intellectualism, etc., is that it can’t measure many things that really do matter. When you consider the magnitude of our depression and anxiety, you could see that anti-intellectualism certainly can’t recognize some things that really do matter. If it seems bad to recognize and study such things as the sociology of social problems and blaming the victim, then some horrendous problems must be ignored.
Even though one appeal of anti-intellectualism is that it simply refuses to accept the condescending elitist intellectuals acting as if they know better, all-American anti-intellectualism is very likely to tell you how you should think. The all-American zeitgeist says that all should think in a red-blooded manner, so if you don’t, anti-intellectualism would have the same contempt for you that any other traditionalists would have for those whose thinking deviates from the norm.
The psychology of AA has played a big part in shaping the self-help psychology. This thinking, of course, was also carried over to the ladies’ auxiliaries of Twelve-Step groups, those for addicts’ friends and family members, set up to use the same transcendent spirituality for these people to deal with their problems. Some AA slogans tell of its anti-intellectualism, “The only requirement for serenity is a desire to stop thinking,” and, “There’s no one too dumb for this program, but it’s possible to be too smart.” And, of course, these groups, including the ladies’ auxiliaries, tell its members what they may not think, as in the slogans, “We are all victims of victims,” “There are no victims, just volunteers,” “The longer that we think about the bad stuff, the greater is its power to harm us,” “The best remedy for anger is delay,” “The people we hate teach us the most,” “I don’t have a problem unless I think I do,” “Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amid the storm,” “Embracing your disappointments will help you to heal faster,” “Optimism is an intellectual choice,” “Change what you can, and change your mind about what you can’t,” “Your beliefs create your reality,” and, “A miracle is a change in perception.” While this isn’t condescending or explicitly elitist, it is as aggressive and intolerant as you’d expect of those who hate weakness so much. Here we have the appeal of anti-intellectualism, along with the insistence that people don’t look at the problems that lead to our rampant depression and anxiety, in ways that could be called “intellectualist”: theoretical, philosophical, sociological, etc.
And while most anti-intellectuals have nothing to do with groups set up for the purpose of coaching addicts’ family members to accept the addicts’ sinfulness, the anti-intellectualists would still hold that even in a society in which 20% of the population have mood disorders and 25% anxiety disorders, we are all victims of whiny manipulative victims, so the solution would be for them all to become more stolid and stouthearted. Whenever ads or similar information about anti-depressants say something like, “Myth #1: Depression is a sign of moral weakness or personal failure. ‘Depression is a disease that results from biochemical disturbances in the brain,’ said Dr. Stokes. ‘It is not a character flaw...,” you could bet that the moral weaknesses personal failures and character flaws to which convention attributes depression, would be the victims’ literal weakness, rather than the genuine moral responsibility that others may have had for triggering the depressions. Depressions due to moral weaknesses personal failures and character flaws, would mean that the victims do all those mollycoddle things that the AA slogans accuse them of doing. If everyone had an attitude of la belle indifference, that would solve everything, and if they didn’t, then those who really are weak due to moral weaknesses personal failures and character flaws, would have an opportunity, and there would be no way to recognize and stop them. Probably few Americans would consider the zeitgeists of the ladies’ auxiliaries of Twelve-Step groups, as extremist.
There really is no difference between treating addicts’ spouses as if they simply have to learn how to get their own resentments under control, and anti-depressant ads which talk about millions of Americans suffering a serious depressive disorder in any given year, as if the solution to this is mega-medication, millions of Americans getting their depression under control with medication.
Common sense would say that massive helplessness is the opposite of freedom, not the price of it.
More of this on Victim Correction Webpage 18
Victim Correction as a Panacea, the Summary (Page 1)
