Author: Samuel Hooper

Therapets For Students, And The Downward Definition Of Mental Illness

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Therapets - Mental Health - University - Students

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The current focus on student mental wellbeing infantilises grown adults, pathologises everyday emotions and trivialises real mental health issues

Earlier this month, our “Tales from the Safe Space” series looked at the way in which mental health is being trivialised and used as a tool to infantilise students on our university campuses – specifically Cardiff University on that occasion.

Now, Spiked (one of the first outlets to sound the alarm about the defining downward of mental health issues) take up the case again, in light of goings on at the Edinburgh University Students’ Association:

For the past year, the Edinburgh University Students’ Association (EUSA) has been promoting a message of ‘wellbeing is everything’. EUSA has introduced a special mental-health fund, and our president even took a pay cut to boost the totals. Now, after a year of mental-health activism, some of the dangerous effects are being felt. Students are being infantilised and are pathologising normal experiences. Students at council meetings are complaining that they are being ‘intimidated’ by hand-raising or head-nodding. And, surprise surprise, there has been a 75 per cent increase in the demand for counselling.

EUSA has been advertising its new ‘de-stress therapets sessions’. This follows the rising trend of animal therapy on campuses in the US. For example, students at Oberlin College flocked to their Safe Space along with a ‘therapy dog’ after academic Christina Hoff Sommers (‘the factual feminist’) delivered a controversial speech.

Therapy dogs are used worldwide to help those suffering from PTSD. They are also used by carers to assist children with serious autism, and in hospices to help bring joy to those suffering in isolation. Now, therapy dogs are being used to ‘treat’ students suffering from exam stress. Students, no longer trusted to deal with the challenges of academic life, are being treated as if they are suffering from debilitating illness.

And it’s not just therapets. You can also see the wellbeing obsession in ‘self-care’ initiatives, offered at Oxford and elsewhere, where students are encouraged to do finger-painting or bake cupcakes. Or the Safe Space at Manchester, a plush, comfy room where students can retreat to when the ‘triggering’ is just too much. When students aren’t being told they’re mentally ill, they’re being treated like easily upset children.

Therapets. For students. Not for returning veterans who witnessed death, carnage and unbelievable stress close-up while serving our country in uniform. For students.

The mind boggles.

Charlie Peters, University of Edinburgh student and author of the piece, points out the damaging effect that this dumbed-down mass application of mental health treatments is already having in the real world:

The emotionalisation of politics, academia and debate has damaged the intellectual capacity of students. If you ask a student today what they think about a pressing social issue, they’ll tell you how they feel about it. Thinking is no longer important – emotions are. Rationality and reality go out the window when offence-fearing students are asked a difficult question. As for those who deviate from the prevailing groupthink, they tend to answer weakly, or insincerely, so as not to upset the campus thoughtpolice.

But campus hypersensitivity is not only damaging the academic sphere – it is stretching already limited resources and pulling them away from those who are truly suffering. Student therapists are being overworked, and the quality of care is bound to suffer. Queues of students complaining about exams, deadlines and stress are putting a strain on resources to the detriment of those who are genuinely in need.

It is also dangerous – and contrary to the very idea of university – to debate ideas primarily in emotional terms, as students are encouraged to do by the excessively broad focus on mental wellbeing and the cult of Identity Politics.

There is a real element of selfishness at work here. But then perhaps it is no surprise that a generation raised to believe that they are unique and precious snowflakes have difficulty considering the needs of others, or appreciating that by clogging up student mental health services complaining about exam stress or their”trauma” at hearing contradictory ideas in class might actually result in fewer services available for those with, say, depression or bipolar disorder.

As this blog recently remarked:

This is dangerous stuff, inflating good mental health with a regression to a sanitised version of childhood, with face painting and cookies and puppy dog videos. And whatever transitory benefit it may provide to students who are not really mentally ill but are simply stressed or homesick, it will do nothing for – and in fact diverts attention and resources away from – the far smaller number who are genuinely in need of help.

True mental health comes about by building a healthy resilience to the kind of everyday emotional bumps and scrapes which characterise adult life. In the real world, people sometimes have completely contradictory views about fundamental issues, but must nonetheless live, shop and work together.

Safe space policy makes that harder by sending the message that students should not have to so much as glimpse opposing ideas, while the entire cult of Identity Politics is built on the notion of a backbiting Hierarchy of Privilege, where everybody is an oppressor and nearly everyone (except for cis white men at the top of the pyramid) is also oppressed.

Therapets for students. And bouncy castles, and finger-painting, and Play Doh and puppy videos.

Soon these people will have jobs.

 

Safe Space Notice - 2

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Top Image: Queen Margaret University Students’ Union

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Brexit Would Be Less Like Divorce, More Like Annulment On Grounds Of Fraud

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

Brexit - Messy Divorce - EU Referendum - European Union - Bias

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If Brexit is like divorce (and it isn’t), it is only because we were tricked into marriage in the first place

You hear it again and again, the hysterical comparison Remainers make between Brexit and getting divorced.

Throughout this EU referendum campaign we have constantly been told that not only will voting to become an independent country will see us physically severed from the continent of Europe and cut adrift to bob around aimlessly in the Mid-Atlantic, but also that this “acrimonious split” will be akin to walking out on our European allies and leaving them with the house, the car and custody of the kids.

Latest to peddle the divorce line is Philippe Legraine in CapX:

On top of the disruption of a messy divorce, Britain would suffer enduring damage by separating from the huge, wealthy market on its doorstep. Not only would trade with the EU be less free, Britain’s access to other export markets would be worse too.

The Economist has been at it too, with their scaremongering and false depiction of Article 50 negotiations:

Article 50 provides that the EU will negotiate a new agreement with the withdrawing country over two years. That can be extended, but only by unanimous agreement. The article also specifies that, when agreeing a new deal, the EU acts without the involvement of the country that is leaving. To get a feel for the negotiating dynamic, imagine a divorce demanded unilaterally by one partner, the terms of which are fixed unilaterally by the other. It is a process that is likely to be neither harmonious nor quick—nor to yield a result that is favourable to Britain.

(This is false narrative is nothing but hyperbolic, biased scaremongering, as brilliantly debunked by The Leave Alliance here).

And the Guardian gets in on the act too, with William Keegan opining:

The Labour party turned out on parade last Thursday, and Jeremy Corbyn pronounced that there was an “overwhelming” case for our remaining in the EU. This is statesmanlike behaviour and judgment. Whatever the deficiencies of the EU, we are not going to remedy them if we leave. And the Lawson/Johnson idea that we can renegotiate our way into the advantages of belonging to an organisation that we have just left is for the birds. Messy divorces do not work like that.

The broader point keeps on cropping up – Brexit means a messy and acrimonious divorce, we are told, and therefore we should avoid this at all costs.

But this is pure nonsense. Britain’s relationship with the European Union is not like a marriage. Our membership is not a flawed collaboration or partnership whose kinks and problems need to be patiently worked through in couple’s therapy.

In truth, Britain’s experience of EU membership has been like being in a platonic friendship with someone who is desperately trying to turn that friendship first into a romantic relationship and then into a marriage, and using every single trick and deceit at their disposal in order to do so.

Britain wants somebody to hang out with sometimes, a bit of companionship and a mate who will be there to help celebrate the triumphs of life and provide support and encouragement when things are difficult.

The EU, on the other hand, keeps agitating for us to get a joint bank account, a veto over what TV shows we should watch, a common “guests remove shoes upon entering” household rule and is insisting that we spend our precious vacation time visiting their parents in the south of France rather than driving Route 66 like we always wanted.

Worse still, the EU is making ominous sounds about going vegan “for the good of the Earth”, the clear implication being that we are expected to forswear steak night and take the plunge as well.

And despite our repeated attempts to push back and hint at our desire for a platonic relationship, at some point soon we know in our heart of hearts that the EU fully intends to do to us what every newlywed wants to do on their wedding night – consummate the marriage.

Poor Britain just wanted someone to go to the movies with once in awhile, and now the EU has moved in, spent three grand on new curtains and turned the home cinema into a mini fitness centre. Throw in the fact that suspicious looking packages from Ann Summers have been arriving all week – not to mention that leather whip and pair of handcuffs resting casually on the bed – and it looks like we are in for a rather excruciating evening.

Of course, this could all have been prevented at any point if only we had been willing to have one slightly awkward but brief conversation making it clear that our view of the relationship and the EU’s view of the relationship are fundamentally different – that we want to be friends, and that if it is to be “friends with benefits”, the only benefits we are interested in relate to pragmatic things like trade and friendly cooperation (where doing so on a regional European basis makes sense).

There is still time to have that conversation – just. There is still time before the removal van comes to bring the EU’s clothes and furniture, and before the wedding invitations go out announcing our forthcoming nuptials to the rest of the world. The conversation will become trickier and more fraught the later we leave it, but if we Vote Leave in this referendum we can still salvage an important friendship while preserving our own national bachelorhood.

Brexit now would not be a divorce – it would be correcting a decades-long misunderstanding about the nature of our relationship with the EU, and what we wanted to get out of it.

Wait much longer, though, and the relentless process of political integration (which David Cameron has utterly failed to win an exemption for Britain) will soon be such that we find ourselves trapped in a common law marriage, and a relationship which is much harder – or even impossible – to escape.

 

European Union - United Kingdom - Britain - Flags

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White Privilege Conference: Social Justice Warriors Can Never Be Placated

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WPC2016 twitter anger

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Social Justice Warriors do not want to end oppression. They merely want to become the oppressors themselves

If any further proof were needed that Social Justice Warriors can never be appeased or placated – and that they will keep on moving the goalposts indefinitely so that people with “privilege” can only ever fail the moral tests set for them – then one needs to look no further than the seventeenth annual White Privilege Conference which just concluded in Philadelphia.

One might have thought that an annual confab of contrite white people and their Allies in Privilege to self-flagellate and ruminate on the many ways in which they structurally oppress minorities would have been met with some approval by the SJW brigade. If anything could possibly please the Social Justice Warriors, it should be this event.

And so naturally, the SJWs crawl all over the conference and pick through every speech and interpersonal interaction to find fault with it, to wail and clutch their pearls in shock at the terrible oppression and insensitivity taking place, and to generally flaunt their More Moral Than Thou credentials in public.

The Daily Caller reports:

Disaffected participants in the 2016 White Privilege Conference (WPC) have taken to Twitter to complain that the conference was, ironically, too white and was actually filled to the brim with white supremacy.

Adopting the hashtag #WPCSoWhite, inspired by the recent #OscarsSoWhite campaign, Twitter users claimed the conference that was supposed to battle white privilege instead served to entrench it.

The tag appears to have been started and pushed with particular vigor by Aeriel Ashlee, an education consultant who attended WPC and objected to several parts of a keynote address delivered by (white) historian James Loewen.

She said Loewen’s rhetoric, which was solidly progressive throughout, actually entrenched white supremacy, partly because his speech allegedly lasted too long. When Loewen attempted to defend himself, Ashlee said that any defense was invalid and only further showed his white supremacy.

Every act by non-SJWs, even those desperately designed to appease them and lessen their anger (like university administrators resigning for upsetting their crybaby student populations or whole conferences being set up to discuss the problem with white people) is only more evidence of their guilt. Non-SJWs literally can do no right in the eyes of these totalitarian complainers.

This Twitter exchange between one of the keynote speakers and an antagonist shows the futility of debate, or even of complete capitulation to their demands:

James Loewen - Aeriel Ashlee - Twitter exchange

What exactly was Loewen supposed to do after being accused of overrunning his speaking time when in reality he did no such thing? According to SJW logic, the only appropriate response would have been for Loewen to fall on his knees and beg for forgiveness, even though he had done nothing wrong. And when Loewen failed to do so, the mere act of correcting Ashlee’s false accusation was interpreted as “a white man’s defensiveness intead of accepting responsibility”.

This is madness. In this universe, factual errors and misunderstandings can no longer be corrected if it involves a white male attempting to defend himself or contradicting a POC (person of colour) or other identity group, whose judgement is always final when it comes to determining whether any word or act constitutes “oppression”.

As Rod Dreher commented when social justice warriors criticised a classical music scholar for having the temerity to spend his free time teaching a class about “opera and ideas” to prison inmates:

SJWs ruin everything. They kill everything they touch. Why would anyone want to work in a field where these nuts run rampant?

There is literally no good deed or benign intention which modern Identity Politics cultists will not pick through, determined to find fault. But more tragically for these SJWs, this mindset dooms them to be prisoners of their own (real or perceived) circumstances, passing up endless opportunities for personal growth and even material advancement because they are so self-obsessed and captivated by the injustices meted out on past generations decades and even centuries ago.

More to the point, in the shorter term they will quickly become friendless. Except within their hermetically sealed circle of fellow Identity Politics cultists, nobody will want to socialise or work with these people. Because who wants to be in the company of highly-strung perpetual victims who consider themselves so morally superior that they police the words and behaviour of everyone around them?

But maybe that is where this will end up – with Identity Politics cultists sequestering themselves away in a closed, parallel society, unwilling to engage with the real world lest it corrupt or “harm” them. Perhaps SJWs will be the monks of the twenty-first century, worshipping their narcissistic god of self-identity and living unbearably tense lives as they seek to purge any oppressive behaviour from their systems and excommunicate those who make the smallest transgressions.

Far better than the rest of us having to submit to their tyranny.

 

The White Privilege Conference

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What Conservative Government? – Part 5, Conservatives Who Fail To Conserve

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Tisbury Roman Villa

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This supposedly conservative government is no longer in the business of conserving things – even ancient Roman ruins of great historical and national significance

What kind of a country is modern Britain? And what kind of a people are we?

Sadly, if the behaviour of our own government is any guide we are now such a has-been, good for nothing failure of a once proud country that when we stumble upon one of the largest and most significant domestic archaeological discoveries in a century, we simply shrug our shoulders and cover it back up with dirt because the cost and inconvenience of fully excavating and restoring it would be too great.

And “too great” doesn’t mean Olympic Gamess or Crossrail type money. It means a few hundred thousand pounds, less than pocket change in terms of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport annual budget.

Apparently, discovering the immaculately preserved remains of a great Roman villa – with all of the potential it offers to better understand our past – simply isn’t possible when every last penny of government money has to be diverted to ensure that we continue blindly throwing 0.7% of our GDP into the furnace so that we can be “world leaders” in international aid.

The Telegraph reports:

While laying an electricity cable beneath the grounds of his home, near the village of Tisbury, in Wiltshire, Luke Irwin found the remains of what appeared to be an ornate Roman Mosaic.

But what emerged when archaeologists from Historic England and Salisbury Museum began excavating the site was even more of a surprise.

They found the mosaic was part of the floor of a much larger Roman property, similar in size and structure to the great Roman villa at Chedworth.

But in a move that will surprise many, the remains – some of the most important to be found in decades – have now been re-buried, as Historic England cannot afford to fully excavate and preserve such an extensive site.

Dr David Roberts, archaeologist for Historic England, said:  “This site has not been touched since its collapse 1400 years ago and, as such, is of enormous importance. Without question, this is a hugely valuable site in terms of research, with incredible potential.

“The discovery of such an elaborate and extraordinarily well-preserved villa, undamaged by agriculture for over 1500 years, is unparalleled in recent years. Overall, the excellent preservation, large scale and complexity of this site present a unique opportunity to understand Roman and post-Roman Britain.”

He added: “Unfortunately, it would cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to fully excavate and the preserve the site, which cannot be done with the current pressures.

“We would very much like to go back and carry out more digs to further our understanding of the site. But it’s a question of raising the money and taking our time, because as with all archaeological work there is the risk of destroying the very thing you seek to uncover.”

I genuinely don’t know what is worse here – the fact that the government (for Historic England is a subsidiary of DCMS) has become so distracted by trying to trick and scaremonger its way to victory the EU referendum and so untuned from the daily life of this country that nobody within DCMS thought to intervene when they found out that we just weren’t going to bother with this particular ruin, or the fact that one of the archaeologists (Dr. Roberts) himself seems serenely resigned to the fact that he will probably be an ancient relic himself by the time the UK government scrounges the spare change to properly excavate, understand and display this piece our history for the education of all.

This is the country which coughed up over £3 million (mostly voluntary donations) in order to exhume the long-lost body of King Richard III from beneath a car park in the city of Leicester only to rebury him with pomp, swagger and a televised pseudo-state funeral months later. Do we really think that a similar effort could not have been made for the excavation of the Tisbury Villa? Are we not even going to try? And is the government willing to let the ages reclaim this historic site without so much as lifting a finger to help out?

This blog constantly drones on about the virtues of small government and a leaner, more agile state. There are many ways in which the state spends time and resources doing badly things which could and should be done in the non-profit, charitable and private sectors, and this blog will continue to advocate for these libertarian and conservatarian ideals. But surely if we are to have a national government at all, one of the things it absolutely should do is to take some measure of stewardship over our natural and historical built environment.

This blog would be the first to admit that in many areas, excessive government involvement in the arts (as well as a lack of personal tax incentives) crowds out the private sponsorship and philanthropy which so distinguishes the fine arts and cultural in America. But while a plausible case can be made that the state should not be operating its own massive media organisation in the form of the BBC, the historical nature of archaeological discoveries (as well as thorny issues of property rights springing from  such discoveries) mean that this is an area where the state can and should get involved.

It seems self-evident to me that the UK government, through Historic England, should step up and help to preserve this site for the benefit of the nation. But what do we hear from John Whittingdale and David Cameron’s coke zero conservative government? Nothing. Tumbleweeds. This is a government more interested in burying embarrassing stories about the Culture Secretary’s personal life than digging up an archaeological discovery of real importance.

So here we are, a country so lacking in motivation and curiosity that we are willing to re-bury one of the most exciting domestic archaeological discoveries in recent history because it would simply cost too much money and take too much effort to properly excavate the site, study and catalogue it, and maybe throw up a visitors centre at some point so that the thing can begin to pay for itself.

A country where we have much to say about our public services and everything we believe we are owed by the state, but far less to say about what we might do for our country, our society, our community and those who will live here after we are gone.

A country where the ruling Conservative Party has forgotten even how to conserve.

Welcome to David Cameron’s dreary, unaspirational Britain.

 

Tisbury Roman Villa - artist reconstruction

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Top and Bottom Image: Telegraph

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An Anti-Trump Protest In Portland, An Unbridgeable Divide On Immigration

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

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Congratulations, American leftists. By deliberately and persistently conflating legal and illegal immigration in the public discourse, it is no longer possible to have any kind of rational dialogue on the subject

I’m not normally in the habit of sharing Infowars videos other than the few occasions when I have had a chuckle at Alex Jones, but I encourage you to watch this video.

This is footage of a calm and eminently reasonable man debating with two left-wing women on the subject of immigration at an anti-Donald Trump protest in Portland, Oregon.

Background: The man’s own parents were legal immigrants, and he is attempting to get the two protesters to acknowledge that there is a difference between legal and illegal immigration, and that the former should be welcomed but the latter not tolerated.

They totally refuse to give any ground, refusing to acknowledge any difference between legal and illegal immigration and becoming ever more nonsensical as the video progresses. It’s not so much that they are deliberately conflating the two types of immigration in the way that so many cynical politicians have done. In the case of these protesters – having no doubt percolated in an ideological echo chamber where everyone thinks and says the same liberal thoughts – they are genuinely unable to discern the difference.

Key moment in the dialogue:

Man: My parents came here from Cuba, they came through Ellis Island through the proper channels and they became citizens.

Woman: Sir, it’s not about it being legal, it’s about that America — is open to help people. You’re just being closed minded.

Man: I’m not against immigration or immigrants, never was. My parents were immigrants.

Woman: But saying you’re against illegal immigrants is the same thing.

Man: It is not! Legal and illegal immigration is not the same thing.

Woman: Why does it matter if someone’s not “legally”…

Man: Of course it matters.

Woman: Why?

The two women in this film genuinely cannot see why joining the queue, waiting, paying money and taking a citizenship test is more virtuous and honourable than sneaking across the border or overstaying a visa, and they become increasingly agitated the more the man persists in trying to explain the difference. While the man is able to debate and discuss, all that the protesters can do is shout accusations and repeat talking points, so when he quickly discredits their stock responses (illegal immigration is great, just like rainbows and puppies) they have no intellectual fallback position. This is why they become so evidently distressed a few minutes into the video.

It’s worth watching this to remind ourselves of what the Left has been trying to accomplish in the immigration debate. Conflating legal and illegal immigration has long been a core goal, because not only does it then become much easier to tar opponents of the latter with the stain of racism, it also produces brainwashed young activists and voters who mindlessly parrot the phrases they are given and accept these positions without question.

And when anything – like, say, a Donald Trump Rally – penetrates their hermetically sealed ideological echo chamber? Since they cannot debate, they have only one response:

Shut it down! Shut it down! Shut it down!

And since even taking a moderate position on illegal immigration (such as granting permanent residence but not citizenship to those who have already come) prompts exactly the same vicious reaction, is it any wonder that many American conservatives are now spurning compromise themselves and gravitating toward the presidential candidate who says “screw it, just build the wall”?

Congratulations, American liberals. This is what you have wrought on the American political discourse, all in the name of tolerance.

 

Donald Trump protest

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Bottom Image: Press Herald

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