Tag Archives: Anthony Daniels (Theodore Dalrymple)

Long Live the End of the World

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Tenured doomsayer Paul Ehrlich is at it again.

From Theodore Dalrymple:

Being in France again, I read Le Monde. On Saturday 9 February, my eye was caught by a little notice at the top of the front page of the Ideas & Culture section advertising an article on pages 4 and 5 in the same section. The notice read:

Paul Ehrlich preaches in the wilderness: the American biologist predicts the collapse of our civilisation. Studies that agree are multiplying. But no one does anything.

Could this be the same Paul Ehrlich who, in 1968, wrote ‘The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines, hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programme embarked on now’? Reader, it could be, and it is.

This set me thinking about the typology of pessimists. Naturally I prefer pessimism to optimism, largely because optimists have no sense of humour; and since I have a sense of humour, I must be a pessimist.

But of course it does not follow from the fact that people with a sense of humour are pessimists that pessimists have a sense of humour. This is because there are two main types of pessimist, the existential and the apocalyptic. The former is pessimistic because he knows that Man is an imperfect being, inclined to do wrong for its own sake, often blind where his own best interests are concerned, ridiculous, self-destructive and self-defeating, and endowed with contradictory and incompatible wishes and desires. He knows that life will never be right.

The apocalyptic pessimist is different. He is so earnest that he could almost be an optimist. He believes that the end of the world is nigh, and secretly is rather pleased about it. If he is of a scientific bent, he does the following: he takes an undesirable trend and projects it indefinitely into the future until whatever is the object of the trend destroys the world. For example, he might take the fact that Staphylococci reproduce exponentially on a Petri dish to mean that, within the week, the entire biosphere will consist of Staphylococci and nothing else. Man will be crushed under the weight of bacteria.

Paul Ehrlich is of that ilk. His belief in the end of the world precedes his belief in any particular cause of it. When the end fails to happen as previously announced, his faith is undented. The End of the World has not happened. Long live the End of the World!

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The Insolence of Office

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From Theodore Dalrymple:

A friend of mine recently gave a lecture at a university and sent his bill for his (modest) expenses. He received by return a form asking him, in order for him to be paid, for his race, religion and sexual ‘orientation’.

Not surprisingly, he was displeased by this. He demanded to know why the information was needed, and requested the race, religion and sexual orientation of the person who sent the form and also of the vice-chancellor of the university. In reply, he was told merely that ‘Human Resources’ needed the information before it could settle his bill. No other explanation of why or for what purpose this information was ‘needed’ was offered; presumably, it was deemed self-evident to the writer of the reply.

My friend persisted in his refusal and in his demand for the same information as that that demanded of him. Eventually he received a further reply informing him that Human Resources no longer required the information, and that he would be paid forthwith. There was no explanation, much less apology, in this reply for the change of what Human Resources would no doubt call ‘policy’; nor was there the faintest hint of shame or embarrassment.

What brought about the change in Human Resources’ attitude? Why was information thought essential one moment for the payment of a small bill deemed completely unnecessary shortly afterwards? Had legislation or society changed in the meantime? Had Human Resources had a crisis of conscience, realising that their questions were intellectually stupid, psychologically aggressive, and morally against the commonest of decency?

Of course not. With the instinctive cunning of dullard bureaucrats, they realised that if they persisted in their questions with this particular man, they might cause a lot of trouble for themselves. He would kick up a fuss and draw public attention to their activities, as welcome to them as kitchen light switched on to nocturnal cockroaches. Best, then, to retreat into the cracks. Most ‘difficult’ customers, that is to say those not automatically intimidated by a form into filling it, are satisfied by such a retreat, and make no public comment.

If any semblance of our freedom is to be preserved, the dictatorial idiocy (and, I fear, wickedness) of our bureaucracy should be constantly exposed to public mockery and reprehension, before it becomes too powerful for us to dare to do so.

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The Mind of Anders Breivik

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From Theodore Dalrymple:

How does a man in one of the most peaceful societies in the world come to the conclusion that shooting a large number of people unknown to him is to serve the cause of his country?

Several ingredients must be in the witch’s brew of Anders Breivik’s mind.

First is resentment; second, self-importance; third, the desire for fame or notoriety; fourth, the search for a transcendent meaning to life, and fifth, a difficulty in forming ordinary human relationships, whether of love or friendship.

A final precondition is an above-average level of intelligence, for this is necessary in order to rationalise the commission of a deed that would otherwise be repugnant.

Resentment arises when you are not treated or rewarded as you think you deserve to be. Your merits, whether by virtue of birth or accomplishment, go unrecognised. You are therefore a victim of injustice. By definition you can do no wrong when you try to right them.

Self-importance prevents you from putting the wrongs you think you have suffered into any kind of perspective.

You do not see that, by the standards of most people, you have suffered little. You cannot see the difference between mere inconvenience or distaste and severe oppression.

In a world in which celebrity seems so important, obscurity is felt by many as a wound to their ego. Why should others be famous and not me?

If you cannot achieve celebrity by force of talent, then you can do so by means of murder – witness the Crossbow Cannibal.

A wider cause gives meaning and purpose to your life, and persuades you that your resentment, your anger, is not petty or personal, but something much grander. Breivik thought that by acting on his personal resentments he was a saviour of Europe; he might just as well have been an animal rights activist as a nationalist. His monomania relieved his inner emptiness.

A difficulty in forming normal human relationships is another cause for resentment of a man like Breivik, and of yet another wound to his ego. It has to be compensated for somehow, and producing an event of historic importance is one way to do it.

A man must be intelligent to act like Breivik – for he needs not only to plan and execute his “historic” deed, but to be able to weave a coherent, if paranoid and ultimately stupid, justification for it.

The pity for others of a mass killer like Breivik is nil; for himself, infinite.

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Seven Sick Strategies

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Another classic from Theodore Dalrymple:

Observations on NHS bureaucracy

Stapled to my hospital payslip each month is a glossy, expensively printed, eight-page propaganda leaflet from trust headquarters. In true Stalinist fashion, it portrays a happy and contented workforce, proud of being awarded stars by the government. There is always money enough for this kind of thing – though not for medical supplies, equipment, or staff salaries.

The leaflet’s main value, though not its purpose, naturally, is to illustrate how immense sums could now be poured into our public services without any tangible benefit whatsoever to the public. In it, the time-servers lay bare their corrupt souls.

The trust’s director of organisational and workforce development (if inflated titles come, can salaries be far behind?) wrote an article for it entitled “HR in the NHS Plan”.

HR? Hormone replacement, perhaps? No, human resources: you, me, we are all resources now, like iron ore in Liberia.

The director writes: “I have now completed a review of the organisational structure for the HR function and each operational directorate, as well as corporate areas and have a Lead HR Manager who will work with relevant management boards and staff . . . The Trust Board have also [sic] recently agreed our HR strategy which outlines the strategic direction we will follow in continuing to work towards key national and local objectives in order to meet the needs of our users, communities and staff.”

I hope all this is clear to you. If not, the director goes on to explain that “the strategy has been developed around four key areas”.

What are they, the four key areas? HR in the NHS Plan (National Strategy). The aims and values of our Trust. The Improving Working Lives Standard (IWL). Local Workforce Development priorities.

She then informs those who are not yet tearing their hair out or banging their heads on the wall to make this drivel go away that there are “seven key areas for delivery” – that is to say, the seven key areas of the four key areas of the strategy.

The seven key areas (will Walt Disney ever make a cartoon of them, I wonder) are: HR strategy and management; equality and diversity; staff involvement and communication; flexible working; health workplace; training and development; and flexible retirement, childcare and support for carers.

If I have understood correctly, the strategy is to draw up a strategy so that the strategy is delivered, give or take a strategic subordinate clause. “Delivery of the strategy will be based on a firm foundation of accepted behaviours and man- agement principles which I believe are key to building trust and confidence and set standards around communication, decision-making, dignity and respect and a framework for learning and education.”

No doubt it would be wise to call in a few external consultants (former employees of the trust) to ensure that the strategy is working strategically.

One does not know whether to laugh or cry. Who are the people who write this stuff? The whole of the British public administration is so riddled with thousands of unscrupulous, cunning, careerist dimwits, who will do anything they are told as long as it preserves their jobs and careers, and who routinely mistake their own activity for work, that recovery or amelioration is impossible.

Our corruption is now far worse than the money-under-the-table or brown-paper-envelope sort. It is a deep moral and intellectual corruption, and therefore far harder to eradicate or control. It has turned the whole of the public service into a legalised pork barrel for low-grade bureaucrats. And the government connives at it, because it extends its power.

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Goodbye, lady with the lamp

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A classic from Theodore Dalrymple:

Observations on gobbledegook

If anyone wants to know why British public services do not work properly, I should suggest that they look at the document containing the self-assessment rating scale of the 17 “learning outcomes” required for specialist practitioner registration by the UK Nursing and Midwifery Council. A nurse in training kindly drew my attention to this document, which she said she could not understand. Her incomprehension does her credit.

The linear “competency scale” goes from left to right, through the following points: (expert), absent, low (awareness), moderate (conceptual understanding) and high. The person in training is asked to circle which point on the scale best corresponds with his “current level and skill” for each of the 17 learning outcomes, among which are the following:

2. Set, implement and evaluate standards and criteria nursing interventions by planning, providing and evaluating specialist clinical nursing care across a range of care provisions to meet the health needs of individuals and groups requiring specialist nursing.

14. Identify specialist learning activities in a clinical setting that contribute to clinical teaching and assessment of learning in a multidisciplinary environment within scope of expertise and knowledge basis.

No doubt, when you clutch your chest as you suffer your next heart attack, it will be a great consolation to know that the nurse looking after you believes that she has a moderate (conceptual understanding) of the fifth compulsory learning outcome – that is to say: facilitate learning in relation to identified health for patients, clients and carers. What a relief to have done away with all that terrible lady with the lamp stuff!

Actually, a moderate conceptual understanding of these 17 learning outcomes is pretty good going: without undue modesty, I should put myself in the highest quartile of intellectual ability in this country, but should estimate my understanding of the said outcomes as being approximately absent.

The document is symptomatic of the deep moral and intellectual corruption that pervades the entire public service of this country, and now renders improvement of it virtually impossible. After all, the Nursing and Midwifery Council sets the tone of the nursing profession, and any person or group of people who could write a document such as the one I have quoted is beyond redemption. To entrust the nursing profession to the Nursing and Midwifery Council is thus rather like entrusting an aviary to bird-eating spiders.

We have trained vast numbers of people to write and presumably to think this rubbish. Indeed, the inexorable spread of this meaningless language is the sign of a quiet social revolution: we no longer live in a meritocracy, but in a mediocracy, for only people without talent, originality or integrity can master this language. But mastery of it is now the key to advancement, at least in the public services. The troubling thing is that the corruption has gone so far that it has become unconscious: those who produced the document from which I quote are so corrupt that they do not know they’re corrupt.

Interestingly, a consultant colleague recently tried to look up the website of the Plain English Campaign on a hospital computer. As quick as a flash, a message appeared on his screen: ACCESS DENIED: ADVOCACY GROUP. Our mediocrats may be lacking in talent and originality, but they have a sure instinct for survival: they know that plain English, and the use of words that have meaning, would be a grave threat to their position.

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The Apotheosis of the Welfare State

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From Theodore Dalrymple:

The ferocious criminality exhibited by an uncomfortably large section of the English population during the current riots has not surprised me in the least. I have been writing about it, in its slightly less acute manifestations, for the past 20 years. To have spotted it required no great perspicacity on my part; rather, it took a peculiar cowardly blindness, one regularly displayed by the British intelligentsia and political class, not to see it and not to realize its significance. There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy.

[...]

The riots are the apotheosis of the welfare state and popular culture in their British form. A population thinks (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class) that it is entitled to a high standard of consumption, irrespective of its personal efforts; and therefore it regards the fact that it does not receive that high standard, by comparison with the rest of society, as a sign of injustice. It believes itself deprived (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class), even though each member of it has received an education costing $80,000, toward which neither he nor—quite likely—any member of his family has made much of a contribution; indeed, he may well have lived his entire life at others’ expense, such that every mouthful of food he has ever eaten, every shirt he has ever worn, every television he has ever watched, has been provided by others. Even if he were to recognize this, he would not be grateful, for dependency does not promote gratitude. On the contrary, he would simply feel that the subventions were not sufficient to allow him to live as he would have liked.

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Progress!

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From Theodore Dalrymple:

In these dark times, any sign of social progress is welcome. By social progress we mean, of course, equality between the races and sexes, or—as we must now call them—the genders.

The good news comes from Lyon, the second or third city of France, where last month a group of youths, generously outraged by the prospect that their elders and betters will not now be able to retire at 60, but will have to work until they’re 62, decided to throw stones through storefront windows and overturn parked cars as a gesture of intergenerational solidarity. Who says that youth are inconstant? They did it three nights running.

According to reports, mobile telephones and social-networking sites enabled them to coordinate their efforts. But what was really heartening was that, for the first time in the recent history of French rioting, la racaille (the scum), to use the president of the Republic’s judicious term, was racially very mixed, at least if the photographs published in the newspapers were anything to go by (which, of course, they might not be). Furthermore, again for the first time, members of the female gender participated fully and—according to reports—just as violently as the males.

There’s progress for you, and on two fronts—race and gender—simultaneously! What is more, to judge again from appearances, social justice is fun. The strugglers for justice were enjoying themselves immensely. Now all that’s needed is that the transsexuals should join in.

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Behaving badly to better the world

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From Theodore Dalrymple:

It is just possible, I suppose, that Charlie Gilmour did not see the words THE GLORIOUS DEAD on the side of the Cenotaph, for youth is often not very observant, being so totally self‑absorbed.

But if he did see them, it would be interesting to know to what he thought they referred. He is a history student and, even in this age of declining standards, he must surely have heard of the First World War. His apology is therefore not altogether credible. It is much more likely that he climbed the Cenotaph because it was the Cenotaph.

There is a certain kind of person, especially in youth, who is so intoxicated by his own sense of moral outrage that he believes himself entitled to ride roughshod over the sensibility of others.

That kind of person’s moral outrage, which he believes to be essentially good-hearted and generous, gives him a much‑desired holiday from the usual tiresome requirement to control himself. He can behave badly while persuading himself that he is doing good. He can deceive himself into thinking that the destruction of a plate glass window or dancing on the roof of a car will lead to the betterment of the world, especially if he can get away without paying for it.

Moral outrage that leads to offences against public order is at least as dangerous among the privileged as among the truly desperate, because the privileged see in their own outrage a proof of their own generosity of spirit.

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Bad behavior is gradually becoming a disease

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From Theodore Dalrymple:

It is always tempting to ascribe bad behaviour, whether our own or someone else’s, to an external factor, which reassures us that no one is really to blame: the fault, dear Brutus, lies in our genes, not in ourselves.

We are now being asked to believe, thanks to a study in The Lancet, that children who are disobedient and defiant, who rush around and scream and break things, are primarily the victims of their genetic inheritance. This holds out the hope that a technical solution will be found to such problems as recalcitrance in the classroom, much as hi-tech weapons hold out the mirage of war without death.

That some children suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, probably of organic and neurological origin, seems certain. But the problem with conditions that are diagnosed purely by observation and reports of behaviour, without any clear biological marker such as an abnormality in a blood test, is that they tend to seep through the population like ink through blotting paper.

We have seen this clearly with the diagnosis of depression, which was once an uncommon but very serious condition. Now it is a diagnosis that has effectively banished the word “unhappiness” from the English language, at least as it is used in doctors’ surgeries and in hospitals. Depression – that is to say, all forms of human unhappiness – has become a technical problem, to be solved by medication or by some other technique.

The problem with this approach is that it encourages the hope of a quick and easy solution, to be supplied by others, and averts our gaze from unpleasant realities. This is something that we are naturally inclined towards in any case. Neither death nor the sun can be stared at for long, said La Rochefoucauld; nor can the behaviour of many British children, nor can the causes of that behaviour or the society in which they operate. It is much less troubling to blame it all on the DNA, and hope that one day genetic engineering will take care of everything for us, either by pre-natal testing, or gene therapy, or pharmacotherapy.

Of course, there are a restricted number of cases in which any or all of these things might offer some hope. But it ought always to be remembered that human behaviour is very rarely the result of genes alone, given that they ought to have the same effect whatever the environment. When a teacher draws the attention of a parent to the misbehaviour of his child in class, it is not his or her genes that increasingly make the parent take the child’s side against the teacher. It has far more to do with the prevailing culture – and a very unpleasant culture it often is.

What seems to have happened is that parents have lost the awareness that they had for decades – if not for centuries – that concentration and self-discipline do not come naturally to children, and have to be taught (as well, sometimes, as enforced).

Left to themselves, children (with a few exceptions) do not learn or develop these things. But increasingly, children are being left to themselves, de facto if not de jure. Even without the constant stream of electronic stimulation to which they are subjected – far more British children have a television in their bedroom than a biological father living at home throughout their childhood – the default setting for children, as it were, is attention deficit.

The tragedy of yesterday’s report is that the rumour of a genetic causation of inattention will spread through the population, and let it off the hook as far as its own responsibility is concerned. It wasn’t Johnny who didn’t do his homework; it was his genes.

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Bureaucratese

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Dr. Daniels writes, and observes, like no other:

No crisis should ever be allowed to slip by without calls for greater public expenditure of doubtful worth, and the Gulf oil spill crisis is no exception to this golden rule of bureaucratic opportunism.

In an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine for 11 August, titled “Moving Mental Health into the Disaster-Preparedness Spotlight [1],” Drs Yun, Lurie and Hughes (the latter a lawyer, it seems) write:

Surveillance systems for mental health and substance abuse must be strengthened through broader intellectual investment in a conceptual framework and technical requirements.

Long experience of bureaucracies has taught me to mistrust language such as this. There is a lot of connotation in it without much denotation: intellectual investments, conceptual frameworks and technical requirements escape from verbiage generators like oil from defective wells, and end up being even more expensive. Personally I am not sure that technical investments, intellectual frameworks and conceptual requirements would not be at least as good, if not better.

Fortunately for modern bureaucracies, connotation — compassion, caring and the like — is a more powerful generator of funds than (say) likelihood of success. The authors say:

Early action to help with the disaster’s emotional impact may decrease long-term behavioral health problems.

On the other hand, it may not, especially as the long-term behavioral health problems (assuming that behavioral health is itself a defensible concept) are themselves only tentatively known: they may be this, according to the writers of the editorial, or that may be that.

They insinuate ideas like any good advertising copywriter. They talk of “psychological first aid,” for example. What is psychological first aid? Bandages for damaged thoughts, for example? A list leaves us little the wiser. It:

… addresses emotional distress, builds coping skills, connects people with support services, and promotes a return to normal routines.

What is it exactly, to address emotional distress? Emotional distress, I conjure thee to depart this body? It sounds to me either like witchcraft or a kind of wallowing in other people’s dismay.

The authors are keen on building. They want to build coping skills, as I built model cranes with engineering sets when I was a little boy. Another thing they want to build is community resilience. One might have supposed that resilience isn’t the kind of thing that is built. I think it is time a sense of humor, or at least of the ridiculous, was built.

Then there is our old friend cultural sensitivity. It seems that the Vietnamese refugees on the Gulf Coast do not have any counselors. They didn’t have many in Vietnam either, where they suffered things a thousand times worse than the oil disaster, but nevertheless seem to have thrived wherever they have been allowed to build a new life for themselves (to use for a moment the authors’ intellectual framework — or is it their technical requirement?).

Here I could not help but be reminded of a patient of mine who said he suffered terrible whiplash and a severe loss of confidence after a car went into his rear at about five miles an hour. He was too frightened now, and in too great pain, ever to leave the house.

As it happens he was Syrian by origin. “What did you do there in Syria?” I asked. “I was in the army,” he replied. “Any particular branch?” I asked.

In short he was a torturer. Unfortunately he fell foul of his senior officers and ended up at the receiving end of his former activities. But it was the impact of the car behind him at five miles an hour that really ruined his life and turned him into a living wreck.

Oh compensation, what crimes are committed in thy name!

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