Self-control and self-respect have become undervalued
Interview with Theodore Dalrymple - Part I
After a year of lockdowns, social isolation, financial uncertainty and extreme political polarization, a lot of people are finding it very difficult to remain optimistic and to see a way back to some kind of normalcy. While the economic, social and political impact of the covid crisis can be easily identified and frequently discussed, the unseen, psychological pressures that millions of people are struggling with often go undiscussed. Even when such issues are being reported, the media coverage often misrepresents the actual underlying problems or rushes to naive but popular conclusions.
For many years, even before the pandemic, we’ve witnessed a shift in the way we look human psychology. A lot of behaviors, personality traits and emotional reactions that were seen as perfectly normal a few decades ago, are today classified as “syndromes” or “disorders” and have their own acronyms. To a large extent, instead of recognizing and accepting the fact that people sometimes get sad, sometimes get angry and sometimes they make mistakes that are entirely their own fault, we have medicalized many of the unpleasant aspects of our human experience. That way, we remove any sense of agency or responsibility in creating our own problems, but also in resolving them. The state, employers, schools and even fellow citizens must provide support and special accommodations on demand. We’ve become fragile and childlike. We “need help”, we must have safe spaces, trigger warnings, mental health vacations and life coaches.
The problem with this tendency to recast normal behaviors and reactions as serious conditions that need special attention is that there comes a point where all the new maladies start to crowd out and displace real and severe conditions. What’s even more dangerous, especially in the context of the present recession, is that once we’re used to live-streaming our own mental breakdown over the lack of vegan options in a restaurant menu and the world predictably applauds us for it, we really cannot be expected to handle a real crisis exceptionally well.
To explore these ideas further and to discuss many other important trends and shifts that we’re seeing, especially over the last year, I turned to Anthony Daniels, whose books, articles and lectures I’ve always found deeply illuminating. Known by many by the pen name Theodore Dalrymple, he is an English writer and retired doctor, who has worked in Africa, London’s East End and Birmingham. He has worked for many years as a prison physician and psychiatrist and he has written for many publications round the world, including the Spectator, the Wall Street Journal and the National Review.
Claudio Grass (CG): A lot has been said and written about the economic and financial impact of the covid crisis and all the lockdowns and restrictions that came with it. However, the mental health implications haven’t really received the attention they arguably merit, at least not by mainstream media or government officials. Over the last year, we saw self-reported depression rates creep up in many Western nations, while excessive alcohol consumption and the abuse of prescription drugs also jumped. Do such trends raise concerns over longer-term problems or will we all simply snap back to normal once the crisis is over?
Theodore Dalrymple (TD): The first thing to say is that I do not like the term ‘mental health.’ Was Isaac Newton mentally healthy, or Michelangelo? I think part of the problem is very concept of mental health. It implies that there is some state or condition of mind deviation from which is analogous to illness. Once this idea takes hold, it is clearly up to an expert to cure the person, or better still prevent him from getting ill in the first place. This expectation cannot be met, but the idea that it can be makes people more fragile.
Second, people clearly very much in their response to confinements, lockdowns, closures of resorts of entertainment, etc. For myself, I have reached the age of misanthropy or self-sufficiency when these things make comparatively little difference to my life. I have plenty of space and plenty of things to do, in essence reading and writing. But that does not make me mentally healthier than a young man who is frustrated because he cannot play football with his friends and becomes ratty – moreover living in a very confined space.
Depression is so loosely defined a term that it has become almost valueless as a diagnosis. How often have you heard someone say ‘I’m unhappy’ rather than ‘I’m depressed?’ The semantic shift is very important. The proper response to someone who says that he is depressed is to give him antidepressants, even though these don’t work in the majority of cases, except as a placebo, and have potential side-effects. It is always tempting for people who are unhappy to drink alcohol – to drown their sorrows, as we say. Of course, if you drink too much, you might become really and truly depressed. A person who did not respond to the current situation with a little gloom would be odd.
CG: Another trend that emerged amid the pandemic was the remarkable surge in protests, riots and overall public discontent. Of course, a lot of this anger was there before the virus ever emerged and a lot of these protests were fulled by grievances that appear to have nothing to do with it. But could it be that the social isolation, the “cabin fever”, and the disruption of people’s normal routines contributed to the escalation and the violence that we saw in the US and in many European capitals over the past months?
TD: I think you could put it the other way round: it depends on which end you look down the telescope. For myself, I have been more impressed by the meekness with which people have accepted all kinds of prohibitions, especially those who probably have less to fear from the virus than from road traffic accidents. They have put up with cabin fever remarkably well, no doubt in part because of the self-isolation and pseudo-communication of the social media to which they are accustomed anyway. Without them, I think things could have been a lot worse from the point of view of unrest. Of course, young people felt that they had been betrayed anyway, sold a bill of goods, and I tend to agree with them. But throwing a brick through a window, though it relieves feelings for a few minutes or seconds, is hardly the answer.
CG: Since the start of the pandemic, we also saw a lot of new “experts” pop up. Hordes of newly minted “epidemiologists” can be found in the comments section of any online publication, endorsing or disputing the findings of the latest studies and sharing their own scientific analyses. As an actual doctor, do you see this as merely the “pandemic edition” of the old “patients googling their symptoms” cliché, or does it say something about the public’s view of science and the ways that it has been used by governments throughout this crisis?
TD: It seems that we are all virologists and epidemiologists now, as we were once economists. The public is surely ambivalent about expertise and experts. On the one hand, they don’t like to be bossed about on the say-so of experts, but on the other they like to be given explanations and to know what to expect next, and what the solution is.
Many have a view of science that it is a body of facts and it comes as a surprise to them to discover that scientists can disagree fundamentally on the basis of the same, or alternative, facts. Governments, already not trusted very much, hide behind the skirts of experts, but when experts disagree, governments have to choose between them, and not surprisingly vacillate: they are thinking about elections as well as public health. As a retired doctor, I have no special insight into the situation and in fact very few people have insight into more than one or two aspects of the situation. Unhappily for those in government, they have to take an overall, super- or suprahuman view.
Claudio Grass, Hünenberg See, Switzerland
In the upcoming second part, we’ll discuss the impact of the crisis on the poor and the marginalized, while we’ll also turn to the growing social and political divide in our Western societies and the role of social media.
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