Control & Mental Illness

In September 1984, a retired MD with a distinguished career including his role as an effective whistleblower at the FDA and a decorated WWII veteran made a strange public confession of a foul, disgusting personal habit in a letter to the editors of the Washington Post:

The Post later informed its readers that this letter generated a higher volume of written responses than any previous issue or story. "Nestoring" became a verb.

I will not bother discussing the traffic engineering concept of optimal speed, the certainty of increased congestion, increased probability of accordion-effect rear-end collisions from this practice. Nor the rightful rage it engenders.

What is of interest is the disordered need to regulate the behavior of others on display. Where does that come from? We saw that sick tendency erupt during the botched management of the COVID-19 crisis. Mask Nazis, linear 6-foot distance Blockleiters, and vaccine Stalinists who assumed supreme moral authority. No one who followed the data or read the available science on respiratory viruses believed any of that was effective, much less necessary. But the moral certainty and neediness of the enforcers overwhelmed many.

The science of the climate “crisis” strongly suggests that (a) the effect, degree of attribution, and presumed degree of certainty regarding the effect of anthropogenic emissions are greatly overstated and that (b) the proposed COP solutions such as the ones suggested in Kyoto/Paris/Dubai/etc would be hideously expensive yet provide little or no reduction of temperature. Nevertheless, the attraction of the moral imperative, to be able to take away travel freedoms, reduce and flatten the quality of everyone's lifestyle, and mandate global obedience to the sensibilities and aesthetics of prosperous white leftists has become the opium of the elite.

The science of psychology is characteristically useless with respect to the likely cause of rising obsessions with control. Like Captain Louis Renault, it simply rounds up all of the usual suspects: Paranoia, Schizotypal, Narcissistic, Antisocial, Borderline, etc. could be some/all trying to deal with fear. Thanks a pantload, psychology.

The control issues of our time are also increasingly weird. Nobody is mobilizing to tell disturbed men they can’t wear dresses, lipstick, and heels but there is instead an enormous effort to control what we think about them when they do.

A sizeable proportion of our young people call for “safe spaces” that do not require us to think or grapple with hard questions. Dissent, disagreement, and challenges to ideological holdings must be kept outside of some magic border if not destroyed altogether. This is pathological.

The Founding Fathers went to some lengths to create a national ethos in which the people would disabuse themselves of the right (and ideally also of the inclination) to regulate the beliefs and behavior of others to the greatest possible extent. Either offer cogent, respectful arguments to the contrary and remain open to reciprocal dialog or accept and move on.

As long as we are each confident in both our moral position and in our fellow Americans' willingness to protect our freedom to disagree, we can be the free people we are meant to be. We could all stand to learn from the exemplary, non-controlling, confident example of David Puddy.