I can testify as someone who had many opportunities to watch closely how activists in many institutions/organizations operate (luckily from a safe distance, most of the time) that this is definitely true.
Many organizations purporting to be about justice and positive goals are in reality led by highly disordered individuals and stirred by mentality infected with disordered patterns of reasoning and emotion. These people gravitate toward positions of power and influence, and if there aren’t any, they’d generate ones and proceed to push unhinged agendas behind the scenes, without accountability.
The wider public needs to get wiser and understand this dynamic, as many of these people generate a huge amount of false advertising of what they’re actually doing – often they’re so delusional that they don’t see how disordered and damaging their behaviors are. Just because someone claims to be fighting for justice, human rights, or charitable causes doesn’t mean that this is what’s actually happening. There needs to be much more transparency and, hopefully, a way of reporting, monitoring, and holding people accountable for these activities, just as would be expected with elected representatives. No more carte blanche based on abstract declarations of positive goals.
I think perhaps the greatest degenerative element of our Western social psychology over the last 60 years has been the displacement of a mentality of "we are all sinners" (all of us mixtures of good and bad impulses) by a narcissistic mentality of maximal "self esteem". Once you are encouraged to view yourself as axiomatically personally blameless, the next step is to look for someone (or something) else to blame for each and every one of your discontents. Re-cast your wonderful self as a 'Victim'....ooow that feels nice....now where's my therapist....and who needs to be cancelled?.....https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
Society, government, institutions is now under the same equivalency as that of being raised by a single mother that is deranged, vindictive, and fully subsidised by the state.
It's what Lukianoff and Haidt were saying in "The Coddling of the American Mind". We're relying on Great Lies instead of Great Truths (like "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger" became "what doesn't kill me makes me traumatized/weaker for good.")
Simple diagnosis: idle hands are the devil’s playground. Our society is technologically advanced enough so that most citizens are idle, looking for amusement and attention. One can analyze incessantly but that won’t repair the underlying problem that most of our citizens are insouciant and lazy with no accountability. The minority of us must continue to insist on civilized standards for any hope of saving our country.
Chris, this is absolutely spot on! The sheer number of Cluster B members of society is horrifying. They feed off of each other and seek to control each other and normal citizens at any cost. Couple that with societal power, and we are on a sure path to self-destruction. Undoubtedly, this happened to Ancient Rome and more recently to modern Germany, Japan, and Russia. We need psychiatrists to step up and help us call out these mentally ill members of our political class for what they are, and to help inform voters that they must not choose them or enable their elevation to power. They are truly sick.
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.
Regaining some sanity in a world driven to madness will require much more than any of us are willing to realize. Let it be this generation that is willing to do what must be done so that our childrens children will have peace.
The internet effectively spawned the Cluster B Society.
Before the internet, psychotic humans were effectively shunned by real live human populations; they couldn't get any purchase on the culture, because the well-vetted norms of society held too strong a hold in a world controlled by direct human interactions.
Enter the world-wide-web and social media, and suddenly the unwell could "find" one another and develop cohorts--- this at the same time that old-fashioned journalism and media, faced with the competition of "free" news and entertainment on the web, entered their death spirals of chasing click-bait and lowest-common-denominator sensationalism. A PERFECT petri dish for psychotic behavior to thrive.
Meanwhile, grown-up humans were too busy working, studying, saving, paying the bills, raising the kids, to notice that the culture was utterly under siege. Too many still inhabit this space; until they are awakened to reality, they will continue focusing on their productive lives... until it is no longer possible to lead such lives, because the Cluster B's will have destroyed the world that these hardworking people built.
Chris is one in a million: He doesn't merely scream at the sky about this real-life Hieronymus Bosch painting, he DOES things about it. Cannot thank him enough!
The expression “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” is often thought to refer to having good intentions that are not fulfilled. Yes, but I think it’s more to do with these Cluster B people virtue signaling their “good intentions” while taking themselves, and us, to hell.
Very informative as always. Thanks Christopher Here is a link to the very articulate Dr. Theodore Dalrymple a doctor of more than 30 years, working in NHS, his summation of how we are, where we are. Although not a Christian he states that the more muscular, sturdy charity that Christianity offers is infinitely preferable to the wishy washy acts of “kindness” steeped in a blather of emotion. He emphasises the need for a more stoic view of life and his data on suicide rates was quite disturbing.
I can testify as someone who had many opportunities to watch closely how activists in many institutions/organizations operate (luckily from a safe distance, most of the time) that this is definitely true.
Many organizations purporting to be about justice and positive goals are in reality led by highly disordered individuals and stirred by mentality infected with disordered patterns of reasoning and emotion. These people gravitate toward positions of power and influence, and if there aren’t any, they’d generate ones and proceed to push unhinged agendas behind the scenes, without accountability.
The wider public needs to get wiser and understand this dynamic, as many of these people generate a huge amount of false advertising of what they’re actually doing – often they’re so delusional that they don’t see how disordered and damaging their behaviors are. Just because someone claims to be fighting for justice, human rights, or charitable causes doesn’t mean that this is what’s actually happening. There needs to be much more transparency and, hopefully, a way of reporting, monitoring, and holding people accountable for these activities, just as would be expected with elected representatives. No more carte blanche based on abstract declarations of positive goals.
I think perhaps the greatest degenerative element of our Western social psychology over the last 60 years has been the displacement of a mentality of "we are all sinners" (all of us mixtures of good and bad impulses) by a narcissistic mentality of maximal "self esteem". Once you are encouraged to view yourself as axiomatically personally blameless, the next step is to look for someone (or something) else to blame for each and every one of your discontents. Re-cast your wonderful self as a 'Victim'....ooow that feels nice....now where's my therapist....and who needs to be cancelled?.....https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
Society, government, institutions is now under the same equivalency as that of being raised by a single mother that is deranged, vindictive, and fully subsidised by the state.
That can’t end well.
It's what Lukianoff and Haidt were saying in "The Coddling of the American Mind". We're relying on Great Lies instead of Great Truths (like "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger" became "what doesn't kill me makes me traumatized/weaker for good.")
Woke ideology supports and sustains pathological behavior. https://psychskeptics.substack.com/p/when-life-becomes-a-toxic-reality
Chris you should talk to Josh Slocum.
That we're living in a "Cluster B world" is the thesis of Josh Slocum, whose podcast is focused on that fact: https://rumble.com/c/Disaffected His Substack is here: https://disaffectedpod.substack.com/
We are either going to make a stand here and accept the cost, or wait and pay an incalculable cost later.
Simple diagnosis: idle hands are the devil’s playground. Our society is technologically advanced enough so that most citizens are idle, looking for amusement and attention. One can analyze incessantly but that won’t repair the underlying problem that most of our citizens are insouciant and lazy with no accountability. The minority of us must continue to insist on civilized standards for any hope of saving our country.
Chris, this is absolutely spot on! The sheer number of Cluster B members of society is horrifying. They feed off of each other and seek to control each other and normal citizens at any cost. Couple that with societal power, and we are on a sure path to self-destruction. Undoubtedly, this happened to Ancient Rome and more recently to modern Germany, Japan, and Russia. We need psychiatrists to step up and help us call out these mentally ill members of our political class for what they are, and to help inform voters that they must not choose them or enable their elevation to power. They are truly sick.
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.
Regaining some sanity in a world driven to madness will require much more than any of us are willing to realize. Let it be this generation that is willing to do what must be done so that our childrens children will have peace.
Social media has made everyone afraid to dissent against the madness, for fear of online retribution.
The internet effectively spawned the Cluster B Society.
Before the internet, psychotic humans were effectively shunned by real live human populations; they couldn't get any purchase on the culture, because the well-vetted norms of society held too strong a hold in a world controlled by direct human interactions.
Enter the world-wide-web and social media, and suddenly the unwell could "find" one another and develop cohorts--- this at the same time that old-fashioned journalism and media, faced with the competition of "free" news and entertainment on the web, entered their death spirals of chasing click-bait and lowest-common-denominator sensationalism. A PERFECT petri dish for psychotic behavior to thrive.
Meanwhile, grown-up humans were too busy working, studying, saving, paying the bills, raising the kids, to notice that the culture was utterly under siege. Too many still inhabit this space; until they are awakened to reality, they will continue focusing on their productive lives... until it is no longer possible to lead such lives, because the Cluster B's will have destroyed the world that these hardworking people built.
Chris is one in a million: He doesn't merely scream at the sky about this real-life Hieronymus Bosch painting, he DOES things about it. Cannot thank him enough!
The expression “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” is often thought to refer to having good intentions that are not fulfilled. Yes, but I think it’s more to do with these Cluster B people virtue signaling their “good intentions” while taking themselves, and us, to hell.
Very informative as always. Thanks Christopher Here is a link to the very articulate Dr. Theodore Dalrymple a doctor of more than 30 years, working in NHS, his summation of how we are, where we are. Although not a Christian he states that the more muscular, sturdy charity that Christianity offers is infinitely preferable to the wishy washy acts of “kindness” steeped in a blather of emotion. He emphasises the need for a more stoic view of life and his data on suicide rates was quite disturbing.
https://youtu.be/7zbkMRI4Fxs?si=OZX0UerNsCkHY_Ya