February 3, 2005

New Age -- rhymes with sewerage

From Reuters comes this excellent screed on the current politically correct / feel-good lifestyle and where it has lead us (some of us...): bq. Guide to 'Neurotica' Charts New Age of Anxiety Remember the time when people made stupid mistakes instead of "bad choices," when anal-retentive personalities were simply tidy and no one needed a "life coach?" bq. Gone are the days when "closure" was a term used for zippers and when "denial" was only a river in Egypt. bq. Welcome to the new Age of Anxiety where Western culture is beset by so much dread that "bad habits have been turned into diseases, foibles are afflictions and sins are syndromes," says writer Jon Winokur. bq. Direct from California -- the state that in 1986 created a task-force to promote self esteem -- comes Winokur's "Encyclopedia Neurotica," an irreverent guide to the world of neuroses, phobias and a slew of other conditions just waiting to be chronicled in the next best-selling "addiction memoir." bq. By some estimates one in five Americans suffers from at least one phobia and new ones, like heterophobia or "the fear of straight people," are being identified all the time. bq. U.S. therapists have reported a significant increase in patients, especially men, since the 1999 debut of "The Sopranos" -- the TV show about a Mafia boss with angst. bq. Winokur makes a clear distinction in the book between neurosis in the colloquial sense and psychosis that leads to criminal behavior or demands hospitalization and is no laughing matter. bq. His "issues" are mostly with the "psychobabble" that has turned juvenile delinquents into kids suffering from "conduct disorder" and gluttons into "compulsive over-eaters." So true -- used to know a lot of people like that in Seattle. These people are willfully disabling themselves in the cause of self examination and fail to get the big picture. Solipsism writ large... Posted by DaveH at February 3, 2005 11:14 PM
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