Sponsored Content




Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!



Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups

NoVaMoMe 2024: 06/08/2024
Arlington, VA
Details to follow


Texas MoMe 2024: 10/18/2024-10/19/2024 Corsicana,TX
Contact Ben Had for info





















« The Establishment Strikes Back: Rove Group To Put Money Into Protecting And Promoting Party Favorites From Tea Party Kooks | Main | Assault Baboons Begin Making Coordinated Attacks on Village in Saudi Arabia »
February 04, 2013

Bumped: A Military Psychistrist's Diagnosis of the Left

"I used to the think the brain was the most important organ, but then I thought 'look who's telling me that."

-- Emo Phillips, quoted by movieqique/bitmaelstrom.


This is some stuff I've been trying to figure for a while (but wasn't able to, because I never fell upon a key insight he offers).

The psychiatrist discusses the psychology of those in "wordsmith professions." Now, I'm in one of those professions (kinda), as is he, but yet I don't like the psychology of the profession. My problem is not that it's an unworthy field of endeavor, of course. (If I thought it were unworthy, I'd be DepressiveBlogger100 instead of DepressiveBlogger69.)

No, the problem I have is the easy arrogance of the wordsmiths in assuming their skills are the ultimate skills and all other skilsets are at best inferior and at worst not skills at all but instead demonstrations of crudity and stupidity.

Thus we saw in 2001 and on -- when soldiers and firefighters, men with the virtue of physical courage, were finally getting their due -- that the wordsmith class, after initially going with the flow and letting the Deltas have a few moments of the spotlight, began attacking and demeaning them again, attempting to reassert the supremacy of themselves.

The whole piece is worth reading -- he begins by noting his history diagnosing left-leaning draft evaders who feigned psychological problems or homosexuality to avoid combat duty -- but here's the truly key insight.

Over many years of clinical observation, I repeatedly confirmed the truth of Wordsworth's observation that "the child is father of the man". So who were these wordsmith cowards as children? In his great essay Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?, Robert Nozick pointed out that wordsmith intellectuals-writers, journalists, liberal arts professors, film makers, television pundits-had frequently been children who achieved success in school, based on their verbal skills. They were rewarded with elite status within the school system. As adults, however, they were not similarly rewarded. Capitalism rarely gives its greatest rewards to the verbally skilled. Nozick tried to sort out the puzzle, and concluded that it is our educational system, where, as he put it:

"...to the intellectually meritorious went the praise, the teacher's smiles, and the highest grades. In the currency the schools had to offer, the smartest constituted the upper class. Though not part of the official curricula, in the schools the intellectuals learned the lessons of their own greater value in comparison with the others, and of how this greater value entitled them to greater rewards. The wider market society, however, teaches a different lesson. The greatest rewards do not automatically go to the verbally brightest. Verbal skills are not most highly valued... Schooled in the lesson that they were most valuable, the most deserving of reward, the most entitled to reward, how could the intellectuals, by and large, fail to resent the capitalist society which deprived them of the just deserts to which their superiority "entitled" them? Is it surprising that what the schooled intellectuals felt for capitalist society was a deep and sullen animus that, although clothed with various publicly appropriate reasons, continued even when those particular reasons were shown to be inadequate?...The intellectual wants the whole society to be a school writ large, to be like the environment where he did so well and was so well appreciated. "

As Eric Hoffer succinctly put it:

"Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words."

Nozick also observed that there is a childhood forerunner to capitalism -- the world of the playground. There, verbal intellect is far less important than action. On the playground aggression is as important as intellect. Being able to utilize aggression in the service of solving problems produces leaders not designated by authority figures, but by one's peers. Physical courage is valued highly. Cowards are mocked and shunned as "scaredy cats". Willingness to fight for oneself, without appealing to authority becomes a measure of status. It also provides real world lessons in human nature.

...

In that freewheeling world of the schoolyard, the good little girls and physically timid boys who craved teacher's praise were at a disadvantage. The schoolroom was their utopia, where physical aggression was banned and all problems had a verbal solution. Girls are usually more verbally adept in the early childhood years and gain surplus praise from teachers. In addition, such children, including boys who crave teacher's approval, receive moral approbation for being "good" while aggression is, "bad". Hence the future wordsmith intellectual grows up feeling smarter, morally superior, a caring idealist.

These self-flattering views carry over to adulthood, and shape the future wordsmith intellectuals' political views. If words can resolve all conflicts, then wordsmiths are exceedingly important. If conflicts within and between human beings can be "resolved" with words, then who better to play the role of savior than the wordsmith intellectual?

...

Capitalism embraces competition and competition requires utilization of aggression. Profound fear of aggression, and the concomitant dislike of action to solve problems, constitutes the underlying reason for the loathing of capitalism. The schoolroom is a model for intellectual utopia. Utopia is, above all, a conflict-free zone wherein no one is aggrieved. Whatever social problems exist can be talked out. Intellectuals and their verbal skills can show the way to harmony and peace. Having avoided aggression at an early age, these wordsmiths never learned Patton's lessons in courage. Cowardice is therefore the reaction that comes most readily in situations of danger.

As a psychoanalyst I belong to a wordsmith profession, of course, and I have a close-up view of its practitioners. They are overwhelmingly left in their politics and tend to think words are the answer to all serious problems. Their faith in the power of words to resolve conflict is almost absolute...

We are drowning in a therapeutic culture, saturated by a fantasy version of human nature in stark contradiction to the original psychoanalytic view, a view much closer to the stoics and St. Augustine than to Deepak Chopra. Unfortunately for the adherents of the therapeutic culture, conflict can never be ‘resolved', and they are doomed to disappointment. Never mind, there will be another self help guru next week.

The human mind, however, is in conflict as long as it is alive.

I don't think that the "wordsmith" class is inherently evil or unworthy. What I believe is that they have, due to their position, the power to comment upon everything, and in every dispute they will have the last word. It's their job to have the last word.

This means that the wordsmith professions are barely every critiqued by those outside the professions. Capitalists, of course, suffer the critiques of the wordsmiths every day, but rare is the day that the capitalists lodge their own critique of the wordsmiths. (Capitalism can punish the wordsmiths, of course, as it's doing now; but it's rare that there's an outsider critique. Most people who critique are, in fact, part of the wordsmith class to one extent or the other. Wordsmiths tend to understand only words, not numbers; and so while they continue to shed workers, lose subscribers, and lose money, it doesn't quite register with them unless the rebuke is expressed in words. Their minds are quite cramped and limited in that sad way.)

So, basically, we have an entire series of psychologically-related industries that never has bullshit called on them.

And when you never have bullshit called on you, you can believe all sorts of self-flattering things. The key ego-building premises favored by the class are relentlessly re-propagated by members of the class -- so of course it will turn out, ultimately, that Howard Fineman thinks himself superior to a decorated soldier.

No one whose council he respects has ever told him otherwise. Only those grubby hand-workers say things like this, and we can dismiss their words immediately, as they are not elevated members of the wordsmith class.

Every person in the world with a healthy (by which I mean "not self-loathing") ego naturally over-values his own talents and virtues and naturally under-values -- and even denigrates -- talents and virtues he doesn't possess. The first things smart kids teach themselves in fifth grade is that athelticism is overrated, and the first thing the non-academically-inclined kids teach themselves is that "people smarts" are more important than "book smarts."

This is just standard human behavior -- no point in knocking it, as there's no point in telling pigeons not to shit on cars.

But when entire industries full of people are never told they're overly pleased with themselves, the situation can become pathological. Any strong tendency which does not have a countervailing factor to check it can become pathological. And these classes have become, broadly, pathological in their thoughtless egotism and casual denigration of all other talents besides stringing some words together in a pleasing way.

Well, I'm going to chew on this for a while. I think this will join Julian Fellows' insights in the commentery for Gosford Park in my Grand Unified Theory of Human & Political Behavior.

Thanks to spongeworthy.



digg this
posted by Ace at 02:34 PM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
[/i][/b]andycanuck (2yu8s)[/s][/u]: "750-pound alligator seized from home near Buffalo, ..."

Ben Had: "Only 30 more years of these moronic statements ft ..."

2008 is calling: "Mahalia Jackson>>>>>>>>>>>Affimative Action Jackso ..."

BillyD: "[i]158 Mind you, a Moron claimed the car would sti ..."

Diogenes: "DEI in action, and that's a good thing! Posted by ..."

Piper: "Have we discussed KBJ and her gripe the 1sr amendm ..."

Commissar Hrothgar (hOUT3) ~ This year in Corsicana - [b]again[/b]! ~ [/i][/b][/u][/s]: "[i]257 Watching another Boeing United Airlines iss ..."

Loose Emergency Door Plug: "Return to Newark? I'd rather ditch. Posted by: D ..."

J. Random UA Flight: "[i]Return to Newark? I'd rather ditch. Posted by ..."

Diogenes: "Watching another Boeing United Airlines issue in r ..."

Truthbomb : "Watching another Boeing United Airlines issue in r ..."

Ciampino - on time: "About 43 minutes [b]SpaceX - Falcon 9 - Starlin ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64