I Never Woulda Thunk It...

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...here is an "intellectual" that is actually pretty darn smart.

Frontpage has an absolutely fascinating and very thought provoking interview with Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, a contributing editor to City Journal and the author of his new collection of essays "Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses."

It is a sweeping interview that briefly covers several subjects. Overall, you get the sense that this man does a lot of thinking... and most of it is right on the money. My favorite line was "...indecent silence."

On the subject of our overmedicated culture and depression:

[[ "I have noticed the disappearance of the word 'unhappy' from common usage, and its replacement by the word 'depressed.' While unhappiness is a state of mind that is clearly the result of the circumstances of one's life, whether self-inflicted or inflicted by circumstances beyond one's control, or a mixture of both, depression is an illness that is the doctor's responsibility to cure. This is so, however one happens to be leading one's life. And the doctor, enjoined to pass no judgement that could be interpreted as moral on his patients, has no option but to play along with this deception. The result is the gross over-prescription of medication, without any reduction in unhappiness." ]]

I would add that all of this takes away from the people who actually DO suffer from depression, etc. If everyone is "depressed", then it becomes far more a "regular" thing, and therefore is not taken as seriously as it should be. "What-- you're suffering from depression? Big deal... get in line with everyone else!"

This next one is very well said... on the topic of political correctness:

[[ "Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to." ]]

On liberal hypocrisy when it comes to embracing cultures like islamism, which is " the most fascistic women-hating, gay-hating, minority-hating and democracy hating force on the face of the earth..." It is noted that the liberals and the islamists have much in common, such as "they are miserable, hate life and see cheer and joy as a dangerous enemy." More on this topic:

[[ “Where two pieties – feminism and multi-culturalism – come into conflict, the only way of preserving both is an indecent silence.”

"I think the problem here is one of a desired self-image. Tolerance is the greatest moral virtue and broadmindedness the greatest intellectual one. Moreover, no decent person can be other than a feminist. People therefore want to be both multiculturalist and feminist. But multiculturalism and feminism obviously clash; therefore, you avoid the necessity to give up one or the other merely by disregarding the phenomena. How you feel about yourself is more important to you than the state of the world." ]]

This guy is on top of it. I need to read lots more of his stuff. Please read the whole interview- it covers a lot more than I've highlighted here.

(LINK to interview)

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