Self-identifying is completely out of control

The age of pandering to individuals and their whims might, I suppose, be seen as some asymptote of the rising trajectory launched by the individualism of the 1960s, coupled with a kind of American liberalism-positivism that says “you can be anything you want! [sotto voce ... if you are willing and able to do what it takes]“.

Well, not really.  As well as the lunatic business of allowing young people (often in the hopefully-temporary grip of some pathological condition) to re-gender themselves upon a whim and no meaningful rationale, there are other worrying trends**.  A very good friend of mine, a qualified and highly experienced psychotherapist, tells me that people these days are prone to walking into consulting rooms and self-declaring themselves to be suffering from PTSD.  And of course ‘ADHD’ is bandied around equally loosely – frequently by parents excusing their badly-behaved offspring, & schools ditto.  Both conditions, if they are to be meaningful, require careful diagnosis: in the case of PTSD, requiring weeks if not months of observation.

Are these complaints the statements of practitioners trying to make a role for themselves?  Well, I think we can discount for that and still recognise that things have gone a long way down a ridiculous road.  We know what Gove means about ‘experts’; but technical expertise on serious matters is still not to be idly skipped past.  But the evidence-resistance of much of the population is growing as fast as the antibiotic-resistance of many a strain of nasty bug.

The consequences may be just as bad.  We are all doomed to be dominated by people who think they are Napoleon: and we aren’t allowed to disabuse them – still less deploy the Men with White Coats …

ND

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** There’s another complete discussion to be had about the self-identifying, self-appointed “voices of the community” who step in front of the camera / Police panel / parliamentary enquiry in order to ventriloquise said “community” for malign purposes of their own.