Spring Break
Hazing Is A Serious Problem
George Maynard
Issue date: 10/13/06 Section: Commentary
Many would agree with me that our culture is sick. But few really go further with their diagnosis and tell you what specific illness plagues American culture. That's what I'm going to do!
Our culture is schizophrenic. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, symptoms that indicate schizophrenia include dysfunctions in "perception, inferential thinking, language and communication, behavioral monitoring, affect, fluency and productivity of thought and speech, hedonic capacity, volition and drive, and attention." Schizophrenia can be divided into three dimensions: psychomotor poverty, disorganization of thought and reality distortion (including delusions and hallucinations), according to an article that appeared in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Our culture displays its psychomotor dysfunction in our culture's loss of ability to react to events with the right emotions. For example, as Jon Stewart recently pointed out, much of the television coverage of Hurricane Katrina focused on the "looters." When everything perishable is going to rot anyway, is it really looting? And who cares what people do to feed their families when everything is underwater and aid doesn't arrive quickly enough? "Flat affect," also known as "being really jaded" is a form of psychomotor dysfunction. People are pretty apathetic about a lot of things. Our government is lying to us and spying on us. People are dying for stupid reasons. And there's some really good art and music out there.
Examples of our disorganization of thought abound. Everywhere you look, there are examples of our culture turning things upside-down and embracing opposites. When being punk meant something, putting safety pins through expensive clothing was a statement. It meant something like, "I'm sticking it to you, The Man," or "That's what I think of your big ugly capitalist machine." Now the sticking is done by overworked Asian children, and the buying by Hot Topic customers. What exactly are modern punks against? More importantly, what does it even mean to be feminist now? There's a lot of disagreement over whether it's feminist or anti-feminist to act and appear classically feminine.
Our culture is schizophrenic. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, symptoms that indicate schizophrenia include dysfunctions in "perception, inferential thinking, language and communication, behavioral monitoring, affect, fluency and productivity of thought and speech, hedonic capacity, volition and drive, and attention." Schizophrenia can be divided into three dimensions: psychomotor poverty, disorganization of thought and reality distortion (including delusions and hallucinations), according to an article that appeared in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
Our culture displays its psychomotor dysfunction in our culture's loss of ability to react to events with the right emotions. For example, as Jon Stewart recently pointed out, much of the television coverage of Hurricane Katrina focused on the "looters." When everything perishable is going to rot anyway, is it really looting? And who cares what people do to feed their families when everything is underwater and aid doesn't arrive quickly enough? "Flat affect," also known as "being really jaded" is a form of psychomotor dysfunction. People are pretty apathetic about a lot of things. Our government is lying to us and spying on us. People are dying for stupid reasons. And there's some really good art and music out there.
Examples of our disorganization of thought abound. Everywhere you look, there are examples of our culture turning things upside-down and embracing opposites. When being punk meant something, putting safety pins through expensive clothing was a statement. It meant something like, "I'm sticking it to you, The Man," or "That's what I think of your big ugly capitalist machine." Now the sticking is done by overworked Asian children, and the buying by Hot Topic customers. What exactly are modern punks against? More importantly, what does it even mean to be feminist now? There's a lot of disagreement over whether it's feminist or anti-feminist to act and appear classically feminine.
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