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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29602 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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The strangest thing to me in that thread is how they talk about "misinformation" like it it's a virus that can be prevented, treated, or even eradicated instead people just disagreeing with them.

Though one may disagree with antipsychiatry as a movement, Szasz's conception of the therapeutic state perfectly describes the operation and justification of modern managerial institutions fighting misinformation, COVID, climate change and any and all other manifestations of the devil.

the therapeutic state swallows up everything human on the seemingly rational ground that nothing falls outside the province of health and medicine, just as the theological state had swallowed up everything human on the perfectly rational ground that nothing falls outside the province of God and religion. Faced with the problem of "madness", Western individualism proved to be ill-prepared to defend the rights of the individual: modern man has no more right to be a madman than medieval man had a right to be a heretic because if once people agree that they have identified the one true God, or Good, it brings about that they have to guard members and nonmembers of the group from the temptation to worship false gods or goods. A secularization of God and the medicalization of good resulted in the post-Enlightenment version of this view: once people agree that they have identified the one true reason, it brings about that they have to guard against the temptation to worship unreason – that is, madness.

Ty for the link! I've been grasping towards a similar theory myself, exciting to see it laid out so clearly over 60 years ago. Medicalism and Safetyism, to me, are the hidden levers by which the progressive movement has gained so much power. Especially when it comes to pushing rhetoric in one on one, informal conversations. It's extremely difficult to argue with someone who is convinced that you are mentally ill for your stated positions.

Kind of like those shows where a healthy person is put in a mental institution. No matter what you say, it doesn't matter. You're stuck in the category with no way out.

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