Though this is a good analysis, I would NEVER validate modern psychology by using their DSM categories.
My approach would be to see the attacks on our society as resulting in a lowering of emotional tone level across the board, which triggers different behaviors depending on the exact line of experience of each person who succumbs to it.
Though this is a good analysis, I would NEVER validate modern psychology by using their DSM categories.
My approach would be to see the attacks on our society as resulting in a lowering of emotional tone level across the board, which triggers different behaviors depending on the exact line of experience of each person who succumbs to it.
The emotional tone that is most dangerous is Fear. One mechanism that can occur when a person is triggered is to attempt to adopt the behaviors of some prior "winning" entity. These behaviors, for the most part, mimic the personalities of dominant or winning personalities. Unfortunately the self-knowledge and emotional ability to actually win or dominate is not present in a person who is merely triggered by fear into this defensive reaction.
MacDonald can call this set of behaviors "feminized" because of the Mother archetype that is so common to our collective experience, not because all women actually act like this.
Though social media sites like TikTok are often targeted for spreading these behavior models, we should not overlook "TV" (which now means paid streaming services) which is widely used by children and is full of this stuff.
Rufo also fails to mention the psychopaths, which are the people who tend to be in the driver's seat when it comes to pushing others down into fear and then providing these aberrant behavior models for their victims to embrace.
I don't want this to turn into a New Age witch hunt. Women should not be the target. The proper target is the psychopath, a personality type that has been adequately described by several researchers. And the handling for psychopaths does not involve annihilation or destruction. It does involve proper identification and some degree of restraint - physical if necessary - to prevent such personalities from infecting the general population with their insanity.
"I don't want this to turn into a New Age witch hunt. Women should not be the target."
What is interesting to me is how much the right uses the same strategies that it decries in the left. The left (psycho)babbles on about 'toxic masculinity" so the right matches it with an increasingly loud and virulent "toxic femininity". Not to mention the fact that "feminine" and "masculine" are the same crazed gender stereotypes used by radical trans activists. Witch hunts, real historical ones where real women, lots and lots of them, were burned at the stake, tortured, drowned, etc. started with exactly the kind of finger pointing, blaming, "THEY are responsible for all our troubles" messaging. Oh but you think atrocities like that can't happen in this country. Salem????
Rufo does the lamentable mirroring of the left in focusing on individual psychopathologies. I am not saying these do not exist but suggest he read Christopher Lasch's "The Culture of Narcissism", written in 1979, to unders tand all the ways in which the economic, educational, political, etc institutions in this country have fostered and encouraged that narcissism.
Lastly, as a former lefty, I can say unequivocally, that Rufo mirrors all of the same self-satisfied, self-righteousness of the left.
I think human psychology is an extremely important factor in this whole mess, though. Even if we say that the entire culture has been pushed in certain non-optimum directions, someone was pushing it in those directions. And it is their psychological state driving them to do that, and the psychological state of people in general that results in those pushes gaining popularity (or acceptance).
We have a lot to learn about human psychology, and until we do, it is very hard to sit in the middle of a conflict and not be pulled to one side or the other. Both extremes seem to be motivated by irrational fears (even if there is some historical precedent for those fears) which I think indicates that the Left-Right paradigm is not useful. The more radical factions on "both sides" are operating from a similar place psychologically, but believe in different realities which may both be unrealistic. Even the "sane" people, for the most part, do not see life as it really is.
I did my graduate work in psychology and though they call economics "the dismal science" that nomenclature could be just as easily be applied to psychology...which is, in fact, mostly tarted up to be "science". What you are not taking into account is the power institutions can wield to get people to do as the powerful wish, the most obvious example being take the jab or lose your job. (Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism is important reading here as he does a credible job of explicating the interaction between individual psychology and institutional power.) Furthermore the 'discipline', such as it is, of psychology is increasingly, and quite eagerly, being used by governments and corporations to enforce whatever the dominant narrative happens to be, for example the Nudge Unit of the UK’s Behavioural Science Team or Obama’s White House Social and Behavioral Science Team. And, let us not forget, NIMH (i.e. the government) is the largest funder of research into psychological disorders. More opportunities to trust the “science” peddled by the government? Lastly, one has to ask “Cui bono? Who is served by the idea that all our collective troubles are the result of the disordered mental and emotional lives of huge numbers of individuals?” One obvious answer is the men behind the curtains who don’t want anyone to see who is pulling the levers of power and precisely how those levers are being pulled. In a certain sense I would say the use of the narrative of individual psychopathology is part of the psy-op. It is the reinforcement of the idea that we are weak, sickly, alone and powerless, tortured and held hostage to our inner demons. It is yet another attempt to infantilize the citizenry and to convince us of the impossibility, as well as the undesirability, of collective resistance. Luckily, there are more and more people who understand the game that is being played. The pushback is ever more visible on any number of fronts. Glenn Ellmers of the Claremont Institute believes that conservatives, to their detriment, have very little understanding of how institutional power works. Suggest you might want to read his book “The Narrow Passage: Plato, Foucault and the possibility of political philosophy.”
So, where does the governmental inclination to use physical and emotional duress on its populations come from? Is not this ultimately a choice that is tied to the emotional and spiritual condition of human beings or beings similar to humans?
Read my reply again. I am not saying that individual psychology is absent or that individual responsibility does not exist;, see reference to Lasch. What I am saying, and this appears very difficult for people steeped in binaries to grock, it is BOTH the psychology of the individual AND the power of institutions as those institutions are created and inhabited by individuals. Institutions take on a life of their own in that their existence becomes paramount no matter what individual may be a participant, the deep state being a prime example. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, to put it simply.
OK. I'm not going to read your references. I could tell you to read some of the thousands of references I have read and you wouldn't, either, right?
But in my concept of human psychology, the individual itself is only one aspect of human experience. And the most active and potent force in human psychology IS the group. For most people this is a love-hate relationship that is continuously challenged. For me the dynamics of human groups is part of the study of human psychology and gives the subject its meaning.
What do you think determines the "power of institutions" other than human psychology? You are making a distinction that doesn't make sense to me, that's all. The phenomena of human institutions is all a part of human psychology from my perspective.
Though this is a good analysis, I would NEVER validate modern psychology by using their DSM categories.
My approach would be to see the attacks on our society as resulting in a lowering of emotional tone level across the board, which triggers different behaviors depending on the exact line of experience of each person who succumbs to it.
The emotional tone that is most dangerous is Fear. One mechanism that can occur when a person is triggered is to attempt to adopt the behaviors of some prior "winning" entity. These behaviors, for the most part, mimic the personalities of dominant or winning personalities. Unfortunately the self-knowledge and emotional ability to actually win or dominate is not present in a person who is merely triggered by fear into this defensive reaction.
MacDonald can call this set of behaviors "feminized" because of the Mother archetype that is so common to our collective experience, not because all women actually act like this.
Though social media sites like TikTok are often targeted for spreading these behavior models, we should not overlook "TV" (which now means paid streaming services) which is widely used by children and is full of this stuff.
Rufo also fails to mention the psychopaths, which are the people who tend to be in the driver's seat when it comes to pushing others down into fear and then providing these aberrant behavior models for their victims to embrace.
I don't want this to turn into a New Age witch hunt. Women should not be the target. The proper target is the psychopath, a personality type that has been adequately described by several researchers. And the handling for psychopaths does not involve annihilation or destruction. It does involve proper identification and some degree of restraint - physical if necessary - to prevent such personalities from infecting the general population with their insanity.
Yep. The DSM is basically a Billing Category Key and little else.
"I don't want this to turn into a New Age witch hunt. Women should not be the target."
What is interesting to me is how much the right uses the same strategies that it decries in the left. The left (psycho)babbles on about 'toxic masculinity" so the right matches it with an increasingly loud and virulent "toxic femininity". Not to mention the fact that "feminine" and "masculine" are the same crazed gender stereotypes used by radical trans activists. Witch hunts, real historical ones where real women, lots and lots of them, were burned at the stake, tortured, drowned, etc. started with exactly the kind of finger pointing, blaming, "THEY are responsible for all our troubles" messaging. Oh but you think atrocities like that can't happen in this country. Salem????
Also suggest you read Brendan O'Neill's essay on the way witches were blamed for climate anomalies in the Middle Ages. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-modern-day-witch-hunts-led-by-the-climate-change-faithful.
Rufo does the lamentable mirroring of the left in focusing on individual psychopathologies. I am not saying these do not exist but suggest he read Christopher Lasch's "The Culture of Narcissism", written in 1979, to unders tand all the ways in which the economic, educational, political, etc institutions in this country have fostered and encouraged that narcissism.
Lastly, as a former lefty, I can say unequivocally, that Rufo mirrors all of the same self-satisfied, self-righteousness of the left.
Interesting take on the situation.
I think human psychology is an extremely important factor in this whole mess, though. Even if we say that the entire culture has been pushed in certain non-optimum directions, someone was pushing it in those directions. And it is their psychological state driving them to do that, and the psychological state of people in general that results in those pushes gaining popularity (or acceptance).
We have a lot to learn about human psychology, and until we do, it is very hard to sit in the middle of a conflict and not be pulled to one side or the other. Both extremes seem to be motivated by irrational fears (even if there is some historical precedent for those fears) which I think indicates that the Left-Right paradigm is not useful. The more radical factions on "both sides" are operating from a similar place psychologically, but believe in different realities which may both be unrealistic. Even the "sane" people, for the most part, do not see life as it really is.
I did my graduate work in psychology and though they call economics "the dismal science" that nomenclature could be just as easily be applied to psychology...which is, in fact, mostly tarted up to be "science". What you are not taking into account is the power institutions can wield to get people to do as the powerful wish, the most obvious example being take the jab or lose your job. (Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism is important reading here as he does a credible job of explicating the interaction between individual psychology and institutional power.) Furthermore the 'discipline', such as it is, of psychology is increasingly, and quite eagerly, being used by governments and corporations to enforce whatever the dominant narrative happens to be, for example the Nudge Unit of the UK’s Behavioural Science Team or Obama’s White House Social and Behavioral Science Team. And, let us not forget, NIMH (i.e. the government) is the largest funder of research into psychological disorders. More opportunities to trust the “science” peddled by the government? Lastly, one has to ask “Cui bono? Who is served by the idea that all our collective troubles are the result of the disordered mental and emotional lives of huge numbers of individuals?” One obvious answer is the men behind the curtains who don’t want anyone to see who is pulling the levers of power and precisely how those levers are being pulled. In a certain sense I would say the use of the narrative of individual psychopathology is part of the psy-op. It is the reinforcement of the idea that we are weak, sickly, alone and powerless, tortured and held hostage to our inner demons. It is yet another attempt to infantilize the citizenry and to convince us of the impossibility, as well as the undesirability, of collective resistance. Luckily, there are more and more people who understand the game that is being played. The pushback is ever more visible on any number of fronts. Glenn Ellmers of the Claremont Institute believes that conservatives, to their detriment, have very little understanding of how institutional power works. Suggest you might want to read his book “The Narrow Passage: Plato, Foucault and the possibility of political philosophy.”
So, where does the governmental inclination to use physical and emotional duress on its populations come from? Is not this ultimately a choice that is tied to the emotional and spiritual condition of human beings or beings similar to humans?
Read my reply again. I am not saying that individual psychology is absent or that individual responsibility does not exist;, see reference to Lasch. What I am saying, and this appears very difficult for people steeped in binaries to grock, it is BOTH the psychology of the individual AND the power of institutions as those institutions are created and inhabited by individuals. Institutions take on a life of their own in that their existence becomes paramount no matter what individual may be a participant, the deep state being a prime example. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, to put it simply.
OK. I'm not going to read your references. I could tell you to read some of the thousands of references I have read and you wouldn't, either, right?
But in my concept of human psychology, the individual itself is only one aspect of human experience. And the most active and potent force in human psychology IS the group. For most people this is a love-hate relationship that is continuously challenged. For me the dynamics of human groups is part of the study of human psychology and gives the subject its meaning.
What do you think determines the "power of institutions" other than human psychology? You are making a distinction that doesn't make sense to me, that's all. The phenomena of human institutions is all a part of human psychology from my perspective.
Interesting that you make the assumption that I wouldn't read your references.
Gone fishin' ......
Get back to me when you're willing to read someone who has a different view than you do, like Ellers and Lasch.
Goodbye!