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Stupid and Hysterical

Entry 2209, on 2022-03-18 at 09:17:43 (Rating 4, Comments)

I remember back in the day when I was a lot younger, how I took a lot of what I heard at face value without questioning it too much, and how I rejected a lot of ideas which didn't fit the narrative I had been most exposed to. For example, I was very anti-capitalist and went along with various ideologies which I would reject today, such as state control of essential industries and interventions to control corporations.

Many of these concerns were driven by quite alarming ideas of what might happen if nothing was done, so the need for action seemed obvious, and this did cause a certain amount of consternation amongst many, although I was a bit too apathetic and cynical to worry too much. So I wasn't affected to any great extent by panic or anxiety over "big picture" issues, but I wonder whether that is more common today.

I recently read an article about how young people today are not coping well with the struggles inherent in modern life. In the first 9 months of last year, children and young people were taken to hospital more than 5600 times as a result of self harm (here in New Zealand; population about 5 million).

This has been steadily increasing over the last few years in particular, but why?

I have discussed in past blog posts how the stats seem to indicate that the world is getting better in almost every way. Obviously I am talking about the grand perspective here, because over shorter time frames bad things are still happening, COVID and the Russian invasion of Ukraine being the most obvious current examples.

But if the world is getting better why are young people so anxious about life in general, and big societal issues in particular? Well, as I have said in previous posts: because they're stupid.

I'm using that word in a very informal sense. Evidence from studies of IQ seems to indicate that the average intelligence of people is steadily increasing, so I'm not really suggesting they are stupid in that sense. The sense I mean is more about naivety and ignorance than lack of intelligence.

And this makes perfect sense, because it takes time to build a resilient character and to establish thought processes which can filter the BS that might otherwise get through.

We have rules about what young people can and can't do. You have to be a certain age to vote, to drive, to go to a pub, etc. Why? Because we know it takes a certain level of maturity to engage on those activities safely and reasonably. Of course, I'm not denying that some younger people might be a lot more capable in these situations than many older people are, but on average age helps.

So it seems to me that a lot of the political rhetoric that is popular today might be very harmful to the more naive elements in society. Here are some examples: there is a climate crisis, we are going through a mass extinction, racism is out of hand and minority groups are being consistently persecuted and murdered, and COVID is very dangerous and we all need to be extra cautious.

While all of these ideas have some basis in reality, they really aren't true, but there are three institutions most enthusiastically distributing this material: schools, universities, and the mainstream media. Again, this doesn't apply in every case, but it does in many.

Schools and universities have obvious connections with younger people, and some forms of the MSM are also used by them, apparently. How do I know? Well, I debate people about these subjects on-line, often at a media location with an alarming story. And I do find younger people are often the ones I debate with, and they almost inevitably have a very naive and non-skeptical view on these topics.

So I think the hysterical nonsense about a "climate emergency" is an important factor causing distress, sometimes even leading to suicide, amongst the young. By the way, by
"young" here, I mean people younger than about 30. Maybe that reflects the perspective of someone of more advanced years, but I'm sticking with it!

And equally, concerns over racism, equity, and COVID are also harmful. In some ways these stories are a form of child abuse. The people creating these deliberately misleading and exaggerated stories need to take some of the blame for the harm they cause.

So why do they do it? Well, targeting young people is a very clever tactic for two reasons: first, as I have already said, young people are naive and easily mislead; and second, they represent the future, so giving them a particular perspective means they will carry it though to the next generation. As Aristotle said: "Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man." Most modern thought control happens after that age, but the principle is the same.

Here are some interesting items from the article which I mentioned above, and my commments about them...

Item: One sufferer claimed that "we've literally been to hell and back."

Comment: Really? Literally? That does seem unlikely, but it does show how seriously people take these issues, even though in many cases there is very little to be genuinely concerned about.

Item: Mental health practitioners told the Weekend Herald that rates of psychological
difficulties among children and teenagers were rising before the emergence of Covid-19 and have got "significantly worse" since the pandemic started.

Comment: This fits my theory quite well. There were already issues before COVID (climate change, etc) and the epidemic just made things even worse.

Item: The latest figures, released in mid-December, indicate that the number of self-harm hospitalisations for 10 to 24-year-olds nationally rose from 5186 in the year to September 2020 to 5652 in the year ending September 2021, an increase of 9 per cent in a year.

Comment: These are quite significant numbers for a small country. I really have to wonder whether the cure (constant bad news from the media and politicians) is worse than the disease (climate change, COVID, etc).

Item: Females accounted for 78 per cent of the self-harm hospitalisations.

Comment: OK, I'm about to make a potentially controversial comment here, but are you surprised? Hysteria has always been a traditionally female affliction (hence the origin of the word) so I do have to wonder (just wonder, not state as a fact) whether they are more naive, and therefore more affected by this phenomenon.

Item: In the latest survey, conducted before the Covid pandemic, the proportion of students reporting symptoms of depression was 23 per cent, up from 13 per cent seven years earlier. Six per cent of the students surveyed said they had attempted suicide in the past year.

Comment: This is quite a substantial increase, and there must be good reasons why.

Item: For some people, an episode of mental illness may be triggered by direct experience of trauma or adverse life events. Social factors such as poverty, racism, and inequality have an impact - as do social media, alcohol and drugs, bullying, academic expectations, parental stress, and existential concerns about climate change.

Comment: Notice that some of those phenomena are probably not affecting these people directly. For example, climate change is unlikely itself to be a cause; it is more likely it is all the (high exaggerated or untrue) news about it which is more depressing. Also notice that many of these phenomena were almost certainly worse in the past (bullying and racism, for example) but they negatively affect people more today. Clearly today many in society are less resilient than they were in the past.

I recently commented on a high profile sports star being reduced to tears because someone in the audience said "she sucks". Because I said that people, and especially high profile individuals, need to develop some defences against trivial attacks like this it was suggested that I'm a sociopath. But that's not true at all; I want people to have better lives by learning to deal with trivial insults like that.

Being a victim has been elevated to such a high achievement nowadays that some people seem to seek out opportunities to be victimised. It's actually pretty pathetic (there's my sociopath tendencies again), and yes, I am blaming the victim!

Obviously there are genuine cases of victimisation, and there are genuine issues to worry about. But we should be careful how we choose them, because at the moment everything is a crisis, even when it isn't.

Comment 1 (7152) by Anonymous on 2022-05-06 at 14:53:29:

OK, you're victim blaming. Thanks for admitting that. What other stuff have you got wrong?

Comment 2 (7153) by OJB on 2022-05-06 at 17:01:00:

Sometimes people are a victim of their own behaviour, attitudes, and culture. In that case I do indulge in victim blaming because it is true!

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