The Roots of Madness

 

NB Provincial Asylum before demolition.

I have been reading a history of the New Brunswick Provincial Mental Asylum.

A mental patient committed in 1868 kept a diary. In it, he classified fellow inmates as falling into three groups:

“Those that had become crazy about religion…others that had gone crazy about loss of property…and many that had become insane through the immoderate and excessive indulgences of their sensual passions.”

I find it interesting to see a lay classification not influenced by the modern DSM. I think these classifications are much more helpful than “bipolar,” or “schizophrenic,” or “depressed,” which only describe symptoms. It is as if modern psychiatry is trying to avoid looking at causes. But without knowing causes, you are unlikely to find a cure.

I nevertheless think this classification is off the mark on one thing. I doubt anyone actually goes crazy about religion. I can’t imagine the mechanism that would involve. That is the reaction of someone who starts by assuming religion is false—so that an excessive interest in it is automatically harmful or insane. Yes, many insane people seem deeply religious; just as many sick people enter hospitals. That is not evidence that the hospital makes them sick. I’d posit that religion is something many crazy people gravitate towards as a cure. Unfortunately, mental hospitals and psychiatry, then and now, will do everything they an to steer them away from it.

Which leaves two categories: those driven mad by injustice, and those driven mad by guilt. I think that is right, from reading the accounts of various inmates. 

But this can then be reduced to one cause for all mental illness: injustice.

We all have an inner gyroscope, a conscience, which demands justice. Kant argued persuasively that justice is a self-evident truth, a “categorical imperative.” Monotheists assume justice because the universe is governed by a just God. Each of us faces judgement at death, and at the end of time all will be judged. But even non-theists believe the cosmos is necessarily just: this is the doctrine of karma. The ancient Greeks held that the gods themselves were bound by Dike, the moral law.

The matter is obscured by the current misuse of the term “social justice.” 

And the matter is obscured by modern psychiatry because it refuses to recognize morality, justice. Which makes it useless in treating “mental illness.”

For the obvious cause of mental illness is that someone’s internal gyroscope is thrown off by the prolonged experience of some injustice—either done to them, or done by them to someone else. Something within us rebels, says this cannot be, this cannot be allowed to continue. If they cannot take action to correct it, they will and do experience great emotional turmoil and disorientation.

It all seems to me to make perfect sense.

Religion is then indeed the cure, as it is the assurance of justice eventually being done.

The Stigma of Mental Illness

 

Friend Xerxes has written a recent column arguing that

1. There should be no stigma around mental illness.

2. People who are mentally ill should get professional help.

However, on the way he raises something else, which I think is more important. He argues that mental illness is really sin. Which explains the traditional stigma. But there should be no stigma around sin either. Sin is just a matter of “being different.”

“A medical issue,” he writes, “is probably better than lynching people for being different.”

This is a radical and a philosophically untenable position; ask Kant. Right and wrong are not arbitrary or random categories.

We should not condemn someone for rape or murder? They are just being different? 

How about, say, Hitler? 

And if there is no right or wrong, how then can you condemn anyone in turn for condemning anyone? They too are just being different. You have no basis to judge any action, to act or not act.

So is mental illness sin? Does this explain the stigma traditionally attached to it? 

The argument is plausible. 

A “mental illness” is self-evidently or definitionally spiritual—the mind is the spirit. This means, to begin with, that to refer them to medical science or a physician is obviously wrong. Spiritual illnesses are the preserve of the priest. And indeed, psychiatry and psychology say they cannot cure these things.

There are two forms of spiritual illness. Firstly, sin, a wilful turning away from truth and good, and secondly, being “dispirited,” a loss of meaning or understanding of what is true and good.

Most of what we call mental illness is the latter, a loss of meaning: a disorientation, a lack of confidence in what is and is not real or of value. 

There is nothing shameful about that. So why is shame attached to it?

The shame and guilt that is being concealed by pretending there is no sin and that it is a medical issue is in this case the guilt of the family, those around him or her, not the sufferer. It is pretty well established and understood that such “mental illness” is caused by childhood abuse and neglect. So sin is involved, but the “sufferer” from “mental illness” is the victim of the sin, not the perpetrator. It is in this sense that the Bible say that “the sins of the father are visited on the son, unto the third or fourth generation.” It is this that is implied by the concept of original sin.

This being so, the worst possible treatment for “mental illness” is the one currently always prescribed: to leave treatment to some family “caregiver.” This is to condemn the victim to a lifetime of torture. All to conceal the corporate guilt. They are, in effect, designated scapegoats.

This truth is complicated because other things we class as “mental illness” are indeed sins—or more properly, vices. These are the psychopaths, sociopaths, and narcissists, the “Type B personality disorders.” These are the guys who shoot up schools and drive cars into crowds. 

It’s all pretty straightforward, and solvable, “treatable,” once you accept the reality of sin. Lamentably, as Xerxes says, only “white American evangelicals” any more believe in sin. Properly speaking, Catholics do to, as does the Lord’s Prayer. But the torrent of the world has caused this to be suppressed even within Catholicism. I balked at the curriculum and pulled out of teaching Catechism class for the local diocese because the curriculum prohibited any mention of sin. “The message has to be only that God loves you.” Nor will you hear any mention of sin from the pulpit; for all that they still have the sacrament of confession, more recently renamed “reconciliation.” The core message at a recent “Life in the Spirit” seminar was “we are born to love, and learn fear.”

So the problem is not sin, but fear of punishment.

As a result, we have a growing epidemic of “mental illness,” suicide, addictions, and mass murder. 

Born with the Gift of Laughter, and a Conviction that the World Is Mad

 

Most of the world is mad. Most of the world is in denial of reality. 

I have lived in more than a few cultures now, around the world. As an outsider, it is easier to see collective delusions. Koreans think all evil comes from foreigners, especially Japanese. Arabs commonly believe the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Americans, whether conscious of it or not, tend to think the rest of the world does not really exist. Chinese think the current authority is always, necessarily, right. Don’t ask me about Canada. That would take too long. 

All the countries I have lived in are insane except for the Philippines. I suspect from visits that Ireland and Italy are also sane. Although, counter to this, Italy did go with fascism not that long ago.

I spent many years in higher education, naively thinking that there I would find truth, or at least the search for truth. But, as with most things in this fallen world, the reality was the reverse of the claim.

Example: in first year philosophy, the lecturer discounted this or that philosophy with the statement that, by this premise, one would have to believe that unicorns are real. “But of course, unicorns are not real,” Case closed.

Wait a minute, I thought even at the time. That’s begging the question.

How about that: a philosophy lecturer teaching a logical fallacy.

But then, the philosophy class never taught us to detect logical fallacies of any kind. No class I ever took did. Why not? 

Unicorns are, of course, real. They are not physical. That is not the same thing.

Example: when I formally studied the New Testament, all scholarship began with the premise that any miracles in the New Testament were lies and inventions; our goal was to get to the “real man,” Jesus of Nazareth, an ordinary carpenter. And when I studied the life of the Buddha, the premise was the same: the goal was to recover the “real” historical man behind the supposed legend.

But this is tautological. If Jesus is divine, miracles are to be expected. The miracles are recorded to prove his divinity. And the same for the Buddha.

Example: in the history of philosophy, there are dozens of proofs of the existence of God. Nothing could be more firmly established. Yet these proofs were never directly addressed in philosophy classes, nor in nine years of formally studying religion. Instead, they were literally ignored even when they were plainly present in the texts being studied, and the existence of God was presented as a highly dubious and arbitrary matter of “faith.” One was supposed to look down on anyone who so professed as an intellectual weakling. As someone who rejected “reason”—even though reason evidently required the opposite, the admission of God’s being.

Example: William Blake’s religious ideas are essential to understanding his poetry. They were his core interest and intent. Understanding his religious beliefs is essential to understanding Yeats’ poetry. These two are arguably the greatest poets in the English language. Studying literature for nine years, I noticed that Blake and Yeats seemed to be largely avoided, at least in comparison to their merits. And when they were discussed, their religious beliefs were ignored. What, I wondered from an early age, was going on?

The case was most obvious with Blake and Yeats; but it was also obvious with other poets. Gerard Manley Hopkins was given short shrift, and when his “terrible sonnets” came up, the conventional claim was that his suffering was no doubt due to his being a devout Catholic. Shakespeare’s religious views were generally ignored, even though it is impossible to make sense of Hamlet without them. Instead, that play was just declared a “problem.” Oscar Wilde’s Catholicism was ignored. And on and on.

Similarly, the curriculum always seemed to concentrate on poets’ early work. The Romantics conveniently tended to die young; but we also rarely looked at the later poems of Eliot, or Auden, or Blake, or Ginsberg. I assumed for a long time this was because poetry was a young man’s game, like mathematics; that the gift usually faded with age.

But this makes little sense. Poetry is mostly about insight, into the human psyche and the human condition, and in the natural course, insight into life and human nature expands with age. It’s a thing called wisdom.

Rather, I come to conclude that the later writings of the greatest minds have generally been avoided because in our later years we become more concerned with metaphysical insights and speculations. In youth, we are biologically driven to focus on sex and reproduction. In age, these distractions lessen. We start to speak truth; people do not want to hear it. Aged poets become awkwardly religious. We’d rather talk about sexual longing.

We deny the “supernatural” or metaphysical out of hand. This is illegitimate. You have not demonstrated that it does not exist: you have just closed your eyes and stuck your fingers in your ears and begun to sing loudly to yourself. You are in denial.

And denying the supernatural is not honestly possible. Man is supernatural in his essence: “nature” is, literally, what exists where man is not present.

All along, through my years of academic study, I knew perfectly well that there were metaphysical realities. That is why I wanted to study religion and literature in the first place: because these realities were denied everywhere else. Yet I was compelled by the pressures of social authority to hold my tongue. If I said unicorns were real, would I be declared mad? Was I, in fact, mad? This used to be a real fear, causing me immense anxiety. Chronic anxiety, for which I had to take tranquilizers and anti-depressants.

Why is everyone in denial of the self-evident? 

Guilt. We must control and deny reality, because reality is dangerous to our self-esteem.

Everyone is aware of their sinfulness, even if we are sinful to greater and lesser degrees. And there are two approaches to an awareness of guilt. Deny and be damned, or repent and be saved.

The majority choose denial.

Madness and Civilization

 

Why do we fear and shun the “mentally ill”?

Michel Foucault suggests mental illness is historically a replacement for leprosy as a social scapegoat. We need someone to despise, some untouchable caste. 

But still, why the mentally ill? Why not the bicycle riders?

The question came up in relation to a book I am reading with my students, A Separate Peace. A friend of the narrator becomes psychotic in the army, and deserts. He tries to confide in the narrator. The narrator tells him to shut up about his experiences and literally flees. 

This feels typical.

My students initially suggested it was because we fear violence from the “mentally ill.” This is of course a common idea; it is in all the papers. Whenever a violent crime is committed, the perpetrator is said to be mentally ill.

Yet, statistically, this is not true. Statistically, those classed as mentally ill are slightly less likely to be violent than the general population. Far less likely, if you exclude the narcissists and psychopaths. They are, on the other hand, far more likely to be the victims of violence. 

Someone who is genuinely depressed, after all, would not have the strength of purpose to do anyone harm. Someone who is truly psychotic would probably not be able to coordinate his actions well enough to be dangerous. Not sure what is real, he could not coordinate acquiring a lethal weapon, or formulating or executing an effective attack. The most he might do is swing wildly. If you count narcissism and psychopathy as mental illnesses, yes, they are violent, skewing the statistics—but these are the very people who will not appear to any casual observer to be mentally ill. 

Moreover, in the novel we were reading, there was no question of the friend suddenly becoming violent; rather, our narrator assaults him.

So the idea that the “mentally ill” are violent looks like an alibi, not an explanation.

When this explanation seemed not to make sense, and informed by the circumstances in the book, I think my students hit upon the real reason. It is because we fear that a crazy person might tell the truth. Not in full command of themselves, they have slipped the social constraints that generally prevent the rest of us from so doing. Being anywhere around them is therefore frightening to anyone invested in lies.

This works two ways. Anyone honest enough to always tell the truth will be soon declared mentally ill, as an excuse, if a delusional excuse, for refusing to listen to them or accept their claims. And anyone driven by conscience to tell the truth may accept the label, even believe it, as a survival strategy. It is easier to accept that they are insane and just imagining things than that everyone around them are, or that they are all lying.

A thought that often makes me hazy:

Is it them, or am I crazy? 

    -- Albert Einstein 

This seems a sufficient explanation for all mental illness, as much as for the general fear of it. It is the same reason that they crucified Christ. Those who dwell in darkness fear the light.

Solzhenitsyn maintained that, if at any moment one person had determined one morning to speak only the truth, the old Soviet Union would have collapsed in a day. He was unreasonably optimistic. Some of course tried.  They simply were declared insane.

This is the case in any community, from the global culture down to the level of the family or couple; to the extent that they are based on lies, anyone who speaks truth is declared mentally ill. True mental illness is never an individual phenomenon.

And this explains the growth in the incidence of mental illness in recent years. The madder the culture, the more must be martyred to the psychiatric prisons.

Pandemonium

 

Canute explains global warming to his courtiers.

It is exhausting dealing with other Canadians; because most Canadians are insane. They believe in delusions. We noted the “chemical imbalance” theory of mental illness last post. It is nonsensical at best, yet over 85% of Canadians buy it.

Other examples abound. The average Canadian accepts as true that there has been a huge conspiracy in all cultures throughout history to oppress women. But they scorn "conspiracy theories" out of hand.  They believe that homosexuality is inborn, although this violates the Theory of Evolution, which they also believe. Any gene for homosexuality would be bred out within two generations. They believe that American Indians lived in peace and comfort until the evil Europeans arrived with their agriculture, technology, and law enforcement: the “noble savage” myth. They believe that building schools for the Indians was oppressive, demanding apology and reparations. They believe that a man can decide to be a woman; or be a woman because they believe so. But even though it is all in the mind, and biology doesn’t matter, it is still essential to give hormone blockers and cut off their genitals to suit. They believe, as King Canute never did, that the government of Canada can order the tides not to rise, or the equivalent: "global warming." Canada can apparently fix global warming with a carbon tax, though industry can simply move to China. They believe that by raising the price of carbon, the tax will cause everyone to use less of it. But a minimum wage, by raising the price of labour, will not cause anyone to use less of it. 

They believe, and will say in so many words, that there is no objective reality. 

This is the definition of insanity. It means no rational conversation is possible. How does one respond when talking to a madman? Just nod your head and back away? The main concern is that they may become violent.

Not a pleasant intellectual climate.

I think Jung had it right that the human mind is easily drawn by “archetypes” away from reality.

I may be too optimistic, but I feel not everyone is as crazy as Canadians are. I lived in the Philippines for years, and with a Filipina longer, and I do not think Filipinos are nearly as crazy.

I think the clue is in Chesterton’s observation that “those who stop believing in God will believe in anything.” We need meaning, and if we reject God, we will deify almost anything: science, nature, sex, Adolf Hitler, you name it. Call them archetypes, idols, pagan gods; it is the same thing. The Filipinos avoid this because they still, most of them, believe in God. Those who don’t are still kept relatively sane by those who do.

Most of the rest of us are spinning out of control. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Send Out the Clowns

 

Graffito, Paris, 1968

Although she claimed on the stand that all she wanted was to put it all behind her, and she wished Johnny could do the same, Amber Heard refuses to put it all behind her. She continues to dog Johnny Depp on social media, claiming her defeat in court was a grave injustice to herself and for all women. Important elements of the legacy media, including the New York Times, seem to be taking the same stand. Ignoring the judgement of nine jurors who heard the evidence, and indeed of the vast majority of those who watched the trial online, they still insist that Heard was abused by Depp.

The problem is that, to the narcissist, the only definition of good and evil is that “good” is whatever is good for me, and “evil” is whatever is not. Accordingly, it is good to maintain that something untrue is true, if the lie is good for me. If it is best for women that we should believe all women, any evidence to the contrary must be declared evil and shouted down. And it does not matter what happens to any male as a result.

The issue is obvious to me because I grew up with narcissistic parents. I recall as late as my late twenties still trying to reconstruct, in light of my childhood, what “good” really meant, and what “real” meant. Any child of a narcissistic parent is bound to be confused on this, because what they have been taught is both wrong and, to anyone other than the narcissist, incoherent. What is good is whatever is good for my parent? What is real is whatever my parent says is real? Despite my senses, despite reason?

Living in the latter half of the 20th century, or the 21st, does not help. There is a narcissistic philosophy permeating society and its institutions, postmodernism or critical theory, sometimes called cultural Marxism. I can trace it back at least as far as the Frankfurt School. I think the Frankfurt School was a continuation in turn of a philosophy found in Nazism. A bit of graffiti seen during the Paris uprisings in 1968 read “Beware! Even the ears have walls!” The rebellion was against any concept of reality itself. Freedom meant freedom to invent and have “your own truth.”

Graffito, Paris, 1968

“Reality is a function of belief.” I remember that as a watchword back then; I thought it came from Kierkegaard, but perhaps not. Or Blake: “a firm persuasion that a thing is so, makes it so.”

It was seductive, and I was myself at least half seduced in grad school.

But thinking this is insanity, straight up; and sanity is being aware of the good and the true. 

We live today in a world gone mad.

In Search of a Man on a White Horse

 

Dave Rubin says, “at this point, you only have to be sane to find yourself on the right.”

That seems obviously true. To be on the left, you have to believe that men can decide to be women, and women men. You have to believe that there is nothing morally troubling about abortion. You have to believe that there was an attempted coup by a crowd of people pushing into the Capitol Building. You have to believe that human equality is a racist concept. And so on and on, with a new impossibility seemingly added every day.

A lot of people are surprised to find themselves on the right. Including Dave Rubin. Or me.

Surely this means the left must implode. It falls under the category of “extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds.” Such movements generally end with a crash, as everyone suddenly sobers up. 

Indeed, those on the left seem to be deliberately pushing into more and more ridiculous contradictions, as though desperate to be called out.

I fear they are implicitly calling for a dictator, some strong parent-like voice that will take over the responsibility and discipline they are having trouble with and tell them what to believe. A daddy who will set some boundaries.  A Charlie Manson or a Hitler, possibly. Or a Mark Zuckerberg, a Tony Fauci, or a Jordan Peterson.

It bears remembering that Hitler and Mussolini arose on the left, not the right.

Who Is Mad?

 

To be insane is to be out of touch with reality. But what is reality?

It is not just the majority opinion. That is the ad populum fallacy. The majority of men once thought the sun moved around the earth. A plurality of Germans voted for Hitler. 

Plato’s cave analogy suggests reality is experienced by only a few; most of us may live a delusion. Buddhism asserts the same. As, arguably, does Christianity. “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.” (1 Corinthians, 3:19) A more familiar concept to many may be that of the Matrix films.

And postmodernists, of course, assert that there is no reality. Everyone just makes things up.

So what is real is not self-evident. We therefore cannot use it as a standard for sanity, or else one man’s sanity becomes another’s madness. The person who experienced the world as it is might be declared insane by the deluded majority. “Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending.” (The Republic, Book 7, Jowett trans.)

Rather, then, than saying that sanity is knowing what is real and what is not, we might say that Sanity is the quest for what is true. Insanity is no longer caring or trying to find out. We all understand the concept of a lie, a denial of the facts or of the evidence. Insanity is believing a lie, while being at least partly aware that it is a lie.

This means that sanity is always at least in part a moral issue. 

Madness and Civilization

 

The 16th Century Dancing Mania

Nietzsche wisely sad that madness, while rare in individuals, is common in groups. Madness is hard to sustain as an individual alone; but if everyone around you is saying the same insane thing, it gets easier.

Having lived in several countries, it seems to me that most nations are collectively mad. South Korea is quite mad. The US may be as mad or madder. The UK, despite seeing themselves as the home of common sense, is barking mad. Germany has a history of going mad, as does the Netherlands, and Japan. China is insane. It is hard to judge, because it is my own country, but I think Canada is maddest of all. 

That is, in each of these countries, a majority of people believe or claim to believe things that are pretty obviously not true. And get agitated if the delusion is challenged. And look for scapegoats.

What country is the sanest? In my experience, the Philippines and Italy. You might object that Italy went mad under Mussolini, but did it? The government went mad, especially later, under the influence of Hitler; it is not clear to me that the average Italian took that government seriously. The Irish in Canada or the US seems saner than the rest of the population; I do not know if the same holds for the Irish in Ireland. The Poles seem sane. I may be missing some entirely sane nations just through lack of experience.

The Arab countries are saner than the US or Canada, at least, but not sane.

It looks as though being Catholic might have something to do with it. On the other hand, this does not seem to have preserved the French, who are batty.

Perhaps one needs to be more than nominally Catholic. France has other influences, and historically flirted with Calvinism. Italy and the Philippines are more thoroughly culturally Catholic, and the Irish or Poles have Catholicism deeply embedded in their national self-image.

It fits with something Chesterton said: once you stop believing in God, you’re liable to believe in anything. The surest protection against madness is a solid and comprehensive religious faith. If solid, Catholicism is comprehensive. More comprehensive than Protestantism or Islam or Buddhism.

It also seems obvious that there is no relationship between sanity and economic development. This stands to reason. The most materialistic nations are likely to be most materially prosperous. But materialism is not a sane view of the world.

I do think there is a relationship between sanity and happiness. Or rather, “happiness” may be too ambiguous here. The link is more between sanity and serenity.

How to Hold a Postmodern Discussion Group

 Friend Xerxes has proposed some formal rules for any discussion:

1.     Speak from your own experience. 

2.     Everyone’s experience is valid.

3.     No one’s experience is ever wrong. That’s how they experienced it; that’s the way it is for them.

He objects, by contrast, to Christians relying on quoting the Bible. He objects to referring to dictionary definitions. This, he believes, prevents discussion. 

Among the other things he thinks prevent discussion is discussion. Another proposed rule is:

4.     Accept that anyone may tell you, at any time, that you have said enough.

Xerxes is half right about appeals to authority. A simple appeal to authority is a recognized logical fallacy. It is not enough to say “Einstein said X,” or “Aquinas said Y”; you need to offer reasons and evidence. You may have gotten them from such a figure; but the reasons or evidence stand on their own. They cannot be accepted simply because Einstein or Aquinas said it. This is a version of the ad hominem fallacy.

But the alternative is not individual “experience.”

Consider science. Science rejects all appeals to authority. Its standard of proof is controlled and repeated experiment: the scientific method. Which itself has accepted rules and standards. Only if everyone agrees on and follows these rules—an authority—can any legitimate scientific assertion be made. The scientific discussion is invariably over whether these rules were indeed properly followed.  To rely on personal experience instead is to rely on mere anecdote and superstition. It throws everything back to the Cro-Magnon: the sun rotates around the flat earth, and the moon is made of moldy cheese.

For a discussion among Christians, the text of the Bible is the proper authority. Only if everyone accepts this authority, along with certain rules of textual criticism, and perhaps a common creed, can any meaningful discussion occur. Without this, the conversation easily veers off in any direction; there are no grounds for agreement or disagreement on anything. Satan might be the messiah.

In politics, or in court, the standard is the constitution and the doctrine of human rights. If all parties do not agree on this much, civil discourse breaks down and revolution, war or civil war ensues. Everyone asserts what they want, and, if others do not agree, come to blows or guns or guillotines.

Sadly, that is about where we are in political discourse in North America right now. The left has aggressively rejected the constitution, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and the doctrine of human rights as “white supremacy.”

For any discussion at all, you need to rely on a shared definition of the words you use. Otherwise you are only making animal sounds. This is what dictionaries are for. Lacking that, the meaning of each new word must be agreed upon or asserted before being used. Which cannot be done unless the meaning of all the words used to define this word are themselves previously agreed upon. Otherwise, the speaker is only wasting everyone’s time. But to require this is almost equally wasting everyone’s time.

Also in any conversation at all, if you rely on “everyone’s experience,” and “no one’s experience is ever wrong,” if no one’s experience can ever be challenged, there is no basis for any discussion. 

Bethlehem Asylum, London.

The person beside you declares that, in his experience, he is Napoleon Bonaparte, but is currently being pursued relentlessly by the CIA in collusion with lizard-formed aliens. 

All you can properly do in response is nod and smile. If you say your experience is different, that is a challenge. That is denying his lived experience. If you say your experience is the same—that too is a challenge, since you can’t both be Napoleon, can you?

The person across from you then complains angrily that in their experience every Jew is cunning and malicious, and something ought to be done about them. Germans, however, and other Northern Europeans, are clearly a superior race.

You nod and smile.

The woman on your right insists that it is only proper to kill babies and eat them; and she plans to do so this Saturday. 

You nod and smile. Perhaps you hope it is not your baby she is thinking of.

At all of this you must simply nod and smile; there is no possibility of discussion.

But then someone over to the left pipes up impudently that in their experience, there is a right and a wrong which applies to all mankind, that murder is always wrong, people are equal in moral worth, and some things are real, and others not.

This person you must silence or drive out of the discussion. 

Or perhaps eat.

The Progress of America's Social Disease

 

What is happening now in the USA tracks closely the dynamics of a dysfunctional family.

1. Someone gives in to temptation and sins. In this case, we are talking about the “sexual revolution.”

2. Rather than repent, they allow this to develop into a settled vice. The legalization of abortion probably marks that social threshold. Instead of realizing the original idea was wrong, once confronted with its consequences, Americans moved on from lust to murder.

3. As guilt feelings grow, the guilty party begins to construct a “narrative” instead of facing the truth; a pleasant fiction, in which they are guilty of nothing. They become insane in the proper sense of the term: their thinking and their claims are no longer in accord with what is real. We see this in postmodernism: there is no truth. We can simply “construct” any truth we want.

4. In the next phase, the pretense that truth is random and arbitrary is replaced with the conviction that truth is the enemy. Rather than having the right to choose one’s own truth, one must deny objective truth. Here is where Trump Derangement Syndrome begins: he was too prone to bluntly say what he thought.

5. Now comes the scapegoating phase: anyone not in step with the general denial of reality will be accused of the sin of which the guilty party feels guilty. Trump’s supposed sin, for example, is that he is a “liar.” Within a family, this becomes the habitual scapegoating of one or more children.

6. Over time, as the situation grows more extreme and the truth risks becoming obvious to all, the insane party will then accuse the scapegoated party of themselves being insane. We are seeing this now with the drive to have Trump removed from power with eleven days to go, by declaring him mentally incompetent. The demand is in itself obviously insane.

Within a dysfunctional family, this is generally where it ends. By general consent, the one member of the dysfunctional family who is not, or is least, insane, will be declared insane, and sent off for psychiatric treatment. So the family can go on as always. The child themselves will accept the diagnosis as necessary for survival. 

But where does it end when it happens to a whole society?

Nazi Germany perhaps gives us our most obvious model.

The Moral Method

Kingston's Rockwood Asylum, 1920.

The Upper Canada Herald of July 18, 1831 reports on a visit to a mental asylum in Connecticut that claimed a high rate of cure: 

During our late visit to the United States, we had the satisfaction of examining ‘The CONNECTICUT RETREAT FOR THE INSANE,’ at Hartford. Having been politely favoured by a friend in New York with a letter of introduction to DOCTOR TODD, Physician to the institution, we were very kindly received by that philanthropic and intelligent gentleman, to whose skillful and humane treatment the inmates of the retreat owe a debt of lasting gratitude. The building, which is a neat specimen of modern architecture, is situated on a commanding eminence, overlooking the Town of Hartford, the beautiful Connecticut River, and the surrounding country to a great extent.

The ‘moral and intellectual treatment’ observed in the Retreat is thus explained in the annual report of the visiting committee: ‘The first business of the Physician, on the admission of a patient, is, to gain his entire confidence. With this view he is treated with the greatest kindness, however violent his conduct may be,—is allowed all the liberty which his cue admits of, and is made to understand, if he is still capable of reflection, that, so far from having arrived at a madhouse where he is to be confined, he has come to a peaceful residence, where all kindness and attention will be shown him, and where every means will be employed for the recovery of his health. In case coercion and confinement become necessary, it is impressed upon his mind, that this is not done for the purpose of punishment, but for his own safety, and that of his keepers. In no case is deception on the patient employed, or allowed,—on the contrary the greatest frankness, as well as kindness forms a part of the moral treatment. His case is explained to him, and he is made to understand, as far as possible, the reasons why the treatment to which he is subjected has become necessary. By this course of intellectual management, it has been found, as a matter of experience at our Institution, that patients who had always been raving when confined without being told the reason, and refractory, when commanded instead of being entreated, soon became peaceable and docile.’ The success of this treatment will appear from the fact, that of twenty-three cases admitted in one year, twenty-two recovered, affording the extraordinary proportion of 91 per cent.

This claimed cure rate is striking in comparison to what we see from the means we employ today: a cure rate of zero. Modern psychiatry holds that all mental illness is incurable, generally only gets worse over time, and can only be controlled with drugs.

Yet the claimed cure rate in Connecticut is confirmed by other sources.

“By 1837, Eli Todd at the Hartford Retreat had cured 91.3 percent of his recent cases, and Woodward at Worcester had discharged more than 82 percent as recovered.” (McGovern, C.M., The Masters of Madness: Social Origins of the American Psychiatric Profession. 1985, Hanover Press: University Press of New England).

These statistics have been challenged on the grounds that they do not account for readmissions—cures may only have been temporary. But the same accusation can be, and is, levelled against the claims for the current chemical treatments doing any good. Does the improvement in symptoms persist? This is a matter of some debate—long-term studies have rarely been done.

Why did we abandon this method for something manifestly worse?

The simple answer is that we did not abandon the method, consciously. The system required a high standard of behavior from staff, and power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the warden of a madhouse has absolute power over his charges. The system worked miracles within the first generation, so long as the founders were still in charge. Over time, it naturally degenerated into all the horrors of the “asylum” system we so recently have been trying to eliminate.

Kingston’s own Rockwood Asylum for the Criminally Insane, the very memory of which is now largely suppressed, was probably built in imitation of the Connecticut model. Set in leafy, semi-rural grounds on the shores of Lake Ontario to produce the same pleasant, calming vistas as the Connecticut retreat.

But the essential element by then was lost. The “moral treatment,” as it was called, was based on religion; it was ultimately based on the model of Gheel, Belgium, and the shrine of St. Dymphna. The most successful early examples, in Britain and the US, were founded and run or at least inspired by the Quakers.

This is a model that could not be secularized. A first generation of administrators might still have been guided by some personal moral vision; but this was not institutionalized. Subsequent staff would have no particular moral motivations or religious training. They were in it for a living; or else for the opportunity to exercise power. The moral element of the moral treatment was gone, and all that was left was coercion and confinement. And warehouses full of growing numbers of patients without hope.

The fact that the approach has been called “the moral treatment” has led to an unfortunate misconception that patients were coerced and thought to be “immoral.” This is a kind of “black legend” that advocates of the medical model of mental illness have been able to use against it; from the beginning, the medical lobby opposed this “moral model."

The “moral treatment” means treating the patient as a moral being, competent to make their own choices—the very opposite of coercion. The core precept of the treatment, often repeated, was “Patients are normal, rational beings.” If they are suffering or acting strangely, they are reacting to some real problem they are facing. Removing them from their current environment, and putting them in a calm one, essentially solves the problem. “Patients are given structured, ordered, regular work and socialization in an attractive, family-like environment.”

It may take some time to calm down; and if they then return to the poisonous life situation they had been facing, problems may return. That was dealt with in the original Gheel model: recovered patients could choose to stay on and take up their life in the town.

It is the true madness that we do not return, as expeditiously as possible, to this moral model, the model of Gheel.

Do not suppose that this would be expensive. It would be vastly cheaper than our current approach. Psychiatric drugs for life are not free. And a recovered, fully-functioning citizen is a net financial gain to government and the taxpayer. Not to mention, the actual treatment involves productive work.

The method, to work long-term, must be religious in nature. Missing this was the mistake last time. Nevertheless, any supposed problem with the separation of church and state is easily overcome with goodwill: government funds need only be available without discrimination regardless of the particular denomination wanting to set up such a colony, as “faith-based charities” are now funded by government in the United States.

That Way Madness Lies

Christ Pantocrator, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem

Crosby, Stills, and Nash cannot remember when they first met. Two recall it as Cass Elliot’s house in Laurel Canyon. One is certain it happened at Joni Mitchell’s house.

“That’s my truth,” says Stephen Stills.

Scott Adams speaks of “filters.” Reality may be random, but you “filter” for what you want to be true.

The idea that reality can differ person to person, or that you can choose your own, is nonsensical and immoral.

To suppose that truth can differ person to person is to say that two contradictory things can both be true, in the same sense, at the same time. This is a violation of the Law of Non-Contradiction. Dispense with it, and reason is not possible. Anything you say after that is as desperately random as a stray dog howling at the moon.

To suppose that you can choose what is or is not true, is to assume to yourself ultimate power, including power over all other people. It is also the definition of insanity.

Where does this postmodern madness come from? It occurs to me that it has to do with atheism.

Chesterton observed that those who no longer believe in God will believe in anything. We are seeing this concept tested and proven: as people in America and Europe turn away from religion, they turn with utter fervor to psychology, psychiatry, scientism, Marxism, space aliens, multiverses, conspiracy theories, cosmic simulations, and so forth.

We are watching our entire civilization dissolve into pandemonium.

It is time to ask an ancient question:

If a tree falls in the forest, and there is nobody there to hear, does it make a sound?

God hears it, and so it does.

More broadly, the concept of God, or heaven, is necessary to the idea of truth; whether or not we know the truth, God knows. It is not purely subjective.

Descartes demonstrated too that the only way we can have confidence in the reality of any of our perceptions, including our sense perceptions, let alone our memories, was on the premise that God was in command, and God would not deceive.

Pull out that lynchpin, and the cosmic tent collapses.

Without God, there is no truth. For God is Truth, and Truth is God.

The Madness of Crowds

It has often been observed by interested parties other than myself that the modern right sees and appeals to people as individuals, while the modern left sees people as groups.

Add to this Nietzsche’s observation: “Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.”

And we have a syllogism. Conclusion: the modern left is mad. Its natural constituency is the insane. 

Suddenly, we have an explanation for Joe Biden's candidacy. They are now actually running a man transparently not in his right mind. This is who they feel comfortable with.

I suppose this sounds like a joke. I suppose a question is knocking at the monastery door, begging bowl in hand. Why are people in groups mad?

Little selfhoods are always in danger of getting out of control. They are like cats; like wilful children. Everyone has an innate desire to be better than others. For the average person, this is necessarily improbable. For everyone, it requires some serious effort. There is a natural temptation, therefore, to delusion—to believe you are better than others on any spurious grounds. Eat an apple, say, and become as gods.

For individuals, this does not work well. Others will be inclined to scorn and scoff; leading to the contrary impression that you are actually worse than others. Epic fail.

But for groups—they can all support one another in the shared delusion, as Adam could support Eve; and it begins to work. They can all reassure one another that they are as a group better than others outside the group. It becomes possible, in principle, to live most of one’s life without hearing anyone challenge your chosen delusion.

Sustaining the insanity becomes trickier, of course, as the delusions grow more extreme; and as communication improves, and you come in regular contact with more others. Jews, foreigners, Republicans, and the like.

At this point, there will be a natural urge to devalue all those outside the group. The idea of their inferiority must be emphasized. They will gradually be dehumanized, even demonized. For it is essential that they must not be listened to. They are all "racists," say, or "Fascists," or vermin of some other kind.

If they cannot be ignored, they must be silenced. If they cannot be silenced, they must be destroyed.

No doubt not all groups are mad. Some groups, if they work as intended, work to reduce ego: one thinks of religions and religious orders. 

But all groups should be approached with caution. And a butterfly net.

Born with the Gift of Laughter, and a Conviction that the World Was Mad

Plato's wine cave.

Perhaps the most important insight religion has, one of the most important bits of wisdom life can offer, is that most people are insane.

Insane in the proper sense: they do not see reality.

Plato makes this argument in his analogy of the cave. But it is also asserted in Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism. Most people live lives of illusion. Few become enlightened. Few are saved.

It is not because people are stupid. And it is not because the universe is designed by some evil genius to be deceptive.

Because dogs are obviously sane, yet we do not think of dogs as terribly smart.

Insanity is a moral issue. Modern psychiatry and psychology will do everything it can to insist otherwise; but psychiatry and psychology are insane. All insanity is what they call denial. We really see the truth, but do not want to see it. We make believe otherwise. And so our heart, our soul, our consciousness, becomes split, warring against itself. And we begin on a downward spiral.

Dogs, on the other hand, are whole-hearted. There are no filters, no internal monologues.

And this is no doubt why Jesus said not just “love God,” but “love God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” To see truth, we must be whole-hearted, as dogs are whole-hearted, as children are whole-hearted.

Dogs, luckily for them, are not moral beings. They are incapable of sin, and so incapable of this schizophrenia.

When the Buddha, sitting under the Bo tree, was on the verge of enlightenment, he was attacked by all the legions of Mara, of illusion. They tempted him; they threatened him. And he stretched down his hand to touch the Earth, and called the Earth as witness to his true merit.

His enlightenment was not a matter of figuring things out; not an intellectual feat. It was an act of moral courage.

Where does that leave those people we currently call “insane”? The bipolars, the schizophrenics?

Perhaps not sane, yet, but less insane than the rest of us. They are at least conscious of the disconnect, and struggling with it. They are dealing with the legions of Mara.

I find it difficult to watch the daily pandemic briefings by Prime Minister Trudeau. Because no answer he gives is ever honest. You see he is not saying what he thinks. Truth is to be avoided at all costs, even when there seems to be no reason to avoid it. Everything must be said to be perfectly okay, no matter what the real situation.

Trump, in the US, I find more reassuring. Or Johnson, in the UK. They might lie now and then, but often you know they are saying what they think. They are at once more honest and more sane.

For it is the same thing.

The Madness of Crowds

Isaiah

Given that people in groups are prone to madness, how can we prevent this and stay sane? It becomes an urgent issue. Perhaps the most important issue for any culture or civilization.

Freedom of speech. If someone sees the delusion, he or she must be free to announce it to others.

Ancient Israel had the tradition of prophecy. The system was not perfect, but the office of prophet was recognized: the individual could speak truth in against the social authority. And a Hebrew prophet was not without honour.

It is troubling therefore that we no longer recognize prophets.

Ancient Greece had a more accidental system. It had professional philosophers. Broken into city states, it was easy for a thoughtful individual who alienated the consensus in one city to escape to the next for asylum. Socrates was famously put to death for dissent—but in Plato’s account, he did have the option of instead slipping off to Thebes.

I suspect it was these two systems allowing perceptive and sane individuals to openly call out the mass delusions and popular sins that gave Judea and Greece, tiny nations, their overwhelming cultural and intellectual dominance over the ancient world; a dominance that persists into the present.

More recently, the British and American legal traditions of freedom of speech, imperfect as they are, are surely what has led to the modern global cultural and intellectual dominance of the Anglosphere.

Perhaps, it is true, a chicken is here in hot pursuit of a hypothetical egg. An honest group will naturally be more open to freedom of speech. A polity that is aware it has something to hide will naturally suppress it.

Either way, it is obviously ominous that free speech is now under attack. To believe in free speech is now automatically “racist.” It is not just the formal legal assault of “hate laws,” but “political correctness” and the social shunning of those whose opinions differ. Amplified and abetted by the cult of psychiatry, which essentially holds, in Orwell’s words, that “lunacy is a minority of one”—whatever the majority believes is necessarily true, and anyone who thinks otherwise necessarily mad. If some bearded, hair-shirted senior declares today in the street that we all risk divine retribution for our wrongs and errors, we do not respect him as prophet. We silence him as insane. Psychiatry is a tremendously effective tool for the matrix.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Most people are insane.

As we await the results of the British EU election, I am enjoying, sometimes in a perverse way, watching Carl Benjamin/Sargon of Akkad’s YouTube videos of himself campaigning. He engages interested passersby in an exchange of views.

Sargon has been branded by both the left and the Mainstream Media—if there is a distinction here—as “far right.” Yet his views seem, down the line, classically liberal. By any traditional measure, up until perhaps the last dozen years or less, he is on the moderate left. He is also a master of the admirable English tradition of polite political discourse with those with whom you disagree. I would never have his patience.

So why is he frequently attacked with milkshakes? More frequently, in fact, than the less moderate-mannered Tommy Robinson or Nigel Farage?

One guy he interviewed, initially intensely hostile, turned out to have views very similar to Sargon’s on every issue he heatedly raised. Right up until Sargon brought up the matter of Pakistani Muslim “grooming gangs” in the north of Britain. At which point the interviewee started ranting incoherently, would not let Sargon state his position, and stormed off. Another bystander, apparently a member of the town council, then came up and told Sargon he was not welcome in their town.

I'd like to link to the video, but, oddly, it seems to have been removed from YouTube. That may itself be telling.

Sargon’s point was that these particular Pakistani Muslims and their brand of Islam were intolerant and racist. The interviewees were apparently adamant that to call anyone who was not “white” racist was racist. An obvious logical contradiction, and an obviously racist attitude.

Sargon’s interlocutors abruptly ceased being rational. It was a plainly hysterical reaction. It was not simply that the two people could not follow Sargon’s argument, either; it was not stupidity. That could not account for refusing to hear it, or for the sudden rage. It was “denial,” in psycho lingo: knowing their own view was wrong, and refusing to accept this.

One of the great benefits of religion is that it teaches that most people are insane. That insight is most helpful in such cases.

This may sound odd. But it is fairly obviously so. Lots of people are now acting just like this guy in the video. It may well be a majority of the public, in the UK or in Canada. Many or most people are denying obvious realities on a variety of topics: not just on immigration, but on feminism, where Sargon is also attacked and not listened to, or on the half-dozen other subjects everyone knows will cause someone to become agitated or even violent if brought up in public: abortion, transsexualism, Donald Trump, and so forth.

Whenever this happens, this fairly obviously happens because one side knows they are wrong, and is consciously in denial. Inevitably, and self-evidently, this is the side that wants to shut talk down and resort to force.

A critical problem with modern psychology and psychology is that, not having any valid philosophical foundation, it denies this basic truth. It defines “sanity” as “thinking the same way most people think.” This is obviously wrong: it is the ad populum fallacy. Einstein thought very differently from his peers about relativity. By this logic, then, he was simply insane.

Religion in general, and Christianity and Buddhism in particular, teaches instead that most people are likely to be fundamentally wrong in their perceptions or assertions. And they explain why: guilty conscience; Buddhism would say “desire.”

Raising a second critical problem with modern psychiatry and psychology: that it ignores morals. A dehumanizing omission. As here, the denial and the hysteria seems always based on some implicit moral issue. Many if not most people are irrational on subjects where their conscience is troubled. Abortion is the obvious example. But it is people who are themselves clearly racist who seem most eager to accuse others of racism: it is a form of instinctive scapegoating. Feminism, too, is arguably best explained as a mask over a tacit awareness of female privilege, and guilt as a result; women have traditionally been placed on a pedestal, at least in the West. They did not have to go out and get killed in the World Wars, Korea, or Vietnam. They were exempt from the draft.

The New Testament has the straight goods:

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.

Jesus further suggests that this will commonly be the majority.

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Buddhism’s claims on this are even more extreme.

If it is indeed the majority, the influence of modern psychiatry and psychology actually appears as pernicious. The appeal ad populum is an easy way to justify immorality, and so to sustain one’s personal madness.

This seems, in turn, the fatal error of modern mainstream Christianity: it has come to simply hold that whatever the majority of the congregation wants to assert as true and moral, is true and moral. This assumption is actually incompatible with religion; man does not create God. So that anyone who is religious will fall away.

Whom the Gods Would Destroy

Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad)

YouTubers Andrew Klavan and Tim Pool are both saying, as I have recently, that the contemporary left looks as though it is going mad. It actually no longer seems possible to have a rational conversation. The latest evidence is the bizarre way the BBC and others are going after Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad), as candidate for UKIP in the upcoming Euro elections. All they will talk about is how he is endorsing rape by having joked that he would not rape someone. His YouTube channel has just been “demonetized,” taking away his livelihood. On the same day, the NDP is making a public outcry because Jordan Peterson, internationally bestselling author and public intellectual, has been invited to appear before a Canadian Commons committee to express his views. In the US, YouTuber Gavin MacInnis reports that he must now stay up nights with a gun in his home, because of death threats. 

Yet these people are only making entirely reasonable—often humorous—comments on current politics. If it matters, if it justifies refusing to allow them to speak, there is not a whiff of racism or hate towards any identifiable group in anything they have said publicly. Unlike many other commentators on YouTube. But of course, refusing to allow them to speak ensures that nobody learns that what they are saying is reasonable. The approach, if it is not deeply dishonest, is insane.

The BBC seems to be getting aggressively more partisan. This almost looks suicidal in a public broadcaster committed to being non-partisan, and entirely reliant on tax dollars. See the recent shenanigans with Nigel Farage. Imagine a state broadcaster publicly dismissing a political candidate as an extremist just as he seems poised to win a nation-wide election. They are in open rebellion, it seems, against their viewership. They seem to be actually forcing their own demise.

CNN in the USA seems to have been behaving similarly. Facing stiffer competition every ratings period from Fox News and now MSNBC, in addition to the new media, they are getting less reliable on the news. They are doing this just as consumers can quickly double-check for themselves and see when they are lying. Chris Cuomo, for example, supposedly the neutral reporter, recently tried to shout down his guest Rick Santorum with the charge that he lied about something easily proved by anyone with access to YouTube. Again, this seems suicidal.

The same might be said of the mainstream press, the NY Times or Wapost. They are becoming less reliable on the news, more reckless about traditional journalistic ethics, and more overtly partisan, just as their audiences are shrinking through online competition, as they are losing ad revenue to online agents, and as their accuracy can be double-checked online with increasing ease. It looks like a death wish.

As for the left more generally, their recent priorities, supporting Islam and transgenderism, seem to be similarly self-destructive. It is not just that transgenderism literally requires the denial of external reality—the physical and biological differences between male and female. They also seem to demand that leftists take the reverse of stands they were expected to embrace only recently. It was the left, scant years ago, that was anti-Muslim, against the hijab, against supposed patriarchy, and against female genital mutilation. It was the left that, scant years ago, defended homosexuality with the slogan “born this way.” Transgenderism denies the validity of that premise directly, almost as though it were calculated to do so. It is as though being sane disqualifies you from the club.

Cognitive dissonance, illustrated.

At the same time, these two new causes, Islam and transgenderism, look like a direct assault on the left’s prior largest constituencies. Most obviously, and largest, women. Not to mention Jews—the left is now often openly anti-Semitic—and Catholics, who used to be loyally leftist, now openly treated with contempt. It is as though the left is daring their supporters to abandon them.

Why are they acting so irrationally? With transgenderism, for example, we are at the point at which the left is in full denial of obvious reality. That’s insanity by definition. It looks a lot like what used to be called hysteria.

We see it again on the abortion  issue. Just as soon as Trump successfully appointed Kavanaugh, giving the Supreme Court a possible majority to overturn Roe v. Wade, the pro-abortionist lobby doubled down by pushing legislation in New York and Virginia declaring a right to unrestricted abortion up to the moment of birth. It is as though they were daring someone to call them on it.

The image that comes to mind is that of a spoiled child. Called out, caught doing something naughty, as the MSM and the left are increasingly now by new media and newly heard conservative voices, instead of accepting their fault and striving to do better, they throw a tantrum. They start breaking anything in reach. Often their own toys.

But why does a spoiled child act like this?

It is, I think, the voice of conscience. A healthy conscience would accept fault, amend, and be better for the experience. Because a spoiled child has developed such a huge sense of privilege, they cannot find it in themselves to do this. They are perfect. To admit the slightest fault is unthinkable. It is reality that is being unfair. As a result, their conscience drives them to self-destruction. Their thought is no doubt to destroy the world, for not doing as they wish, but the practical effect is going to be self-destruction. And at some level they seem aware of this. It is like the serial killer who left the message in lipstick at the scene of one rape-murder, “For God’s sake, stop me before I kill again!”

We are watching an irresponsible, privileged elite in emotional meltdown. They are thrashing about madly, and the collateral damage may be awful.

Images of supposed hysterics

By watching for the signs of such hysteria, we can perhaps predict which current institution will be next to circle down the drain. They will start to act loony as they see the first signs of trouble appear. And then they will insist on dying.

We are now seeing such obvious insanity in the academy. They know they are doomed. With new technology, the traditional model of the academy is unsustainable. So they are all partying like there is no tomorrow on their arbitrary power, because there is no tomorrow. The Dean of the Harvard Law School was just fired by his university for doing his professional duty as a lawyer and defending the unpopular Harvey Weinstein. Lindsay Shepherd was censured by her department for showing her class a clip from public TV--without comment.

It ten or twenty years, it will all be gone. Now we know. Prepare accordingly.

We are seeing it too in the public schools. The now-abandoned new Ontario sex ed curriculum was an example. They know the el-hi model is also no longer justifiable. It can all be done better online by Khan Academy and the like. So it is time to pull out all the stops, riot, and smash windows on the way out.

Who’s next?

Does the most recent madness emerging from Silicon Valley, the fit of arbitrary deplatforming, mean they know something we don't know? Are corporate critters like Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, PayPal, and Google also seeking dazzling lights in the tunnel heading towards them? It may well be--they are in the best position to know first what new technologies are imminent, and the life cycle of a high-tech company can be especially short as new technology appears. I'd sell.

Donald Trump Is Dangerously Insane

A cadre of psychiatrists has declared that Donald Trump has a “dangerous mental illness” and is unfit to lead.

This illustrates the problem with “psychiatry” generally. By admitting the authority of such a specialty, we are giving a group of individuals absolute and arbitrary power to deny anyone else their right to think for themselves. Which is to say, given that human beings exist to exercise free will, their essential humanity.

In this current case, they claim the right to do so even if many or most of the rest of us have decided the person has uncommon decision-making abilities.

And here’s their crucial evidence:

“Worse than just being a liar or a narcissist, in addition he is paranoid, delusional and grandiose thinking and he proved that to the country the first day he was President. If Donald Trump really believes he had the largest crowd size in history, that’s delusional.”

Problem: Trump almost certainly did have the largest inaugural crowd in history. As Sean Spicer clarified later—and as seemed clear to me when he first said it—he was referring to the audience, not the crowd, and that included people watching on TV, YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter. Given the advance of technology, what he said was almost certainly true.

Psychiatry is by its nature both dictatorial and totalitarian. Given these characteristics, it is also perfectly designed to attract to its ranks bullies, psychopaths, sadists, and people with little actual sensitivity to or concern for others.

Objectively, psychiatrists have no track record of being able to determine who is “mentally ill,” let alone “dangerously mentally ill.” In one famous test, a group of “sane” experimenters faked the textbook symptoms of schizophrenia to get admitted to a psychiatric hospital, then dropped the ruse immediately upon commitment and began to act their normal selves. Once given the label, everything they did was simply interpreted as another sign of “mental illness.”

It is all too subjective.

That on top of the vital question of whether there is actually any such thing as “mental illness,” and whether any other human being is competent to judge the matter.

Saint Christina the Astonishing

Consider the many Catholic saints who reported seeing visions. By definition, according to current psychiatry, they would be “delusional,” they would be “hallucinating,” they would be psychotic. Ever heard of Saint Christina the Astonishing? And those saints who did not see visions would still, by their rejection of the things of the material and social world, be proven to be at the very least “depressive.”

Being completely materialist, psychiatry cannot allow the possibility that the spiritual world is real. Aside from other considerations, any public support for psychiatry is therefore a violation of freedom of religion.

Almost as notably as sainthood, anyone who is capable of great leadership is almost necessarily going to be eccentric. To lead one does not follow the herd; and not following the herd is, by psychiatric definition, “abnormal.” Accordingly, anyone who does not show signs of what psychiatrists would call “mental illness” is probably disqualified from command.

Here are a few historical examples:

George Patton—America’s best general in World War II.

Patton claimed he had seen combat many times before in previous lives, including as a Roman legionnaire and as part of the 14th-century army of John the Blind of Bohemia. Before the 1943 invasion of Sicily, British General Harold Alexander told Patton, “You know, George, you would have made a great marshal for Napoleon if you had lived in the 19th century.” Patton replied, “But I did.” The general believed that after he died he would return to once again lead armies into battle.

Abraham Lincoln

Letters left by the president’s friends referred to him as “the most depressed person they've ever seen.” On at least one occasion, he was so overcome with “melancholy” that he collapsed. A “nervous breakdown.” He was regularly so depressed that he refused to carry a pocketknife because "he couldn't trust himself with it." 

Stonewall Jackson

Stonewall Jackson—considered the second-best general for the South in the US Civil War.

He was convinced that one arm was longer than the other, and that he had to hold one up regularly for the sake of his circulation. He commonly went into battle with one arm waving in the air.

Sherman

William Tecumseh Sherman—considered the second-best general for the North in the US Civil War.

He was removed from command early in the war on grounds of insanity. He chain-smoked while nervously pacing his headquarters, he was frequently crippled with despair and he often babbled nonstop about a vast unbeatable legion of crack Rebel troops that was poised to invade the relatively quiet border region. Even hometown newspapers from his state of Ohio reported that the general had lost his mind. U.S. Grant intervened and insisted on putting him back in command.

He also had, throughout his life, episodes of severe depression, along with occasional suicidal thoughts.

Winston Churchill

Referred to his depression as “the black dog.” When in his manic phases he was personable; but his moods could change quickly. During periods of high mania he would stay up all night writing, and got by on almost no sleep.

Martin Luther King

Attempted suicide twice as a teenager.

Mahatma Gandhi

Attempted suicide as a teenager.

Gebhard Blücher

Hero of Waterloo, whose Prussians showed up to save the day for the Duke of Wellington.

Blücher claimed that he had been impregnated by a French grenadier and was carrying the fetus of an unborn elephant in his stomach. He was convinced that enemy agents were somehow heating the floors of his palace as part of a plan to scorch his feet. Blücher would often try to kill houseflies with his sabre.

Oliver Hazard Perry

American Commander at Battle of Lake Erie

Irrationally terrified of cows.

Does Napoleon count? He thought he was Napoleon.

St. Dympna's Solution to Mass Murder

St. Dymphna of Ireland. patron of the "mentally ill."

The recent US Navy Yard shooting seems to be giving people the idea that there is something wrong, not with the gun control laws, but with the mental health system. That, after all, is the common thread among seemingly all recent shooting rampages: that the perps were psychotic.

But it is not simply a matter of putting more money into the system; since we don't really know of any cure for “mental illness” anyway. Is it, then, a matter of reversing “deinstitutionalization,” the closing down of mental health beds? Seems logical on the face of it: as Anne Coulter has pointed out, the spike in mass murder corresponds closely to the releasing of more psychotics onto the streets.

But the problem with this is that a mental hospital looks and operates very much like a prison; and the people forcibly interred there have done nothing to deserve this. To lock them up on the presumption that they might commit a crime is Minority Report territory. And wide open to political abuse. Since we do not know what “mental illness” is, dissent from the majority opinion too easily becomes “mental illness.”

The essential need is simple, though: quarantine the psychotic. Keep them apart from any potential shooting victims. And this in itself is not repressive, since in general this is what the psychotic most want: a chance to get away from it all and grapple with their voices. Indeed, this is very likely to also be the shortest route to a cure.

But why make this a prison? Why not instead a remote townsite, a no-frills resort? Heaven knows, we have a lot of space for such a thing, at least in Canada. Good use for one of those abandoned mining towns, perhaps.

There is, as it happens, a model for this. The town of Gheel, in Belgium, has for centuries taken in the insane and placed them with local families, under the patronage of St. Dymphna. The system seems to be successful, and popular in the town, since it brings economic benefits.

No doubt there are risks to the townspeople; just as there are risks to the doctors and nurses in a psychiatric hospital. But in this non-coercive atmosphere, I suspect that confrontations are far less likely. And, in the atmosphere of a small town, it is easier to unobtrusively detect incipient trouble.

And as overseers and providers, rural families are a lot cheaper than doctors and nurses.