Freedom From 'Harm' Means Freedom From Labels

You are not fragile (from Latin, frangere, to break). You won't break every time someone hits you with a label. 

You are not a victim, but you live in a spreading victim-culture. So step away from the miasma.

To see yourself as harmed or unharmed is a choice. No need to be on automatic pilot about it. Pilot the good ship "Unharmed". Skim over choppy waters, sail past slings and arrows. They call this "building resilience", and used to teach it to kids. Now schools teach them to worry about their mental health and to find their place in the victim-hierarchy. If they're not put high on the Trauma-Spectrum Disorder Scale, they feel disadvantaged and unprivileged. (And if they don't master this spectrum-game, they'll never succeed in the current University.)

Something will get us all one day ... disease, freak accident, nuclear war ... but until you really are mortally harmed (dead), why not aim to live harm-proof rather than harm-curating?

The Way of the Skeptic rejects group-think labels like "harmed", and its twin, "unsafe". We can choose to ignore labels as we do seagull droppings: unpleasant, but just step around them.

We needn't feel harmed by people who think differently, or look at them as the opposition. Other people's opinions are not weapons trained on you. They are just thoughts. We don't need to fear the thoughts of others; only your own thoughts can harm you.

And no one can oppose you if you haven't agreed to oppose them. Instead, you can agree to live and let live -- safely. Without labels, identity or other. The word "identity" comes from the Latin word "idem", meaning "same" -- like all the members of a tribe. It's better to be freely a no-name brand; be a one-off.

The Skeptic's Guide to Insensitivity Training

Ida Tarbell, the American 19th-early 20th century researcher, biographer and editor of McClure's Magazine, had to calm her staff whenever the owner of the magazine (Samuel McClure) drove everyone mad with his unpredictable bi-polar behaviour. 

"Try not to mind" Ida advised her staff in a soothing voice. An investigative journalist and a biographer conversant with human psychology, Ida seems to have been something of a Stoic philosopher. Her rational moderation would be helpful in today's workplace.

Corporate workplaces compete with each other to be "sensitive" by forcing employees into "training" (as China did in communist-revolution days, through self-criticism and re-education camps). Corporate training too boils down to compulsory self-criticism through "customized coaching" meant to produce "cultural competency" and curb inappropriate behaviour in the workplace. The key bad-words are bullying and harassment. Words that should ring alarm bells for employees are coaching, training, and "building trust". When employers tell you they are going to build trust -- mistrust them. 

This corporate team-building is Sensitivity Training, which aims to promote diversity even as it enforces uniformity. Never trust a thing that is being its opposite. Better to do the real opposite, which in this case would be Insensitivity Training.

How would Insensitivity Training work? Mainly it would do exactly what Ida Tarbell recommended: practice not minding things that you can't change anyway. We're meant to tolerate differences in the workplace? That would seem to mean stop minding that everyone's not the same. Some will be a pain, some delightful, some in-between: diversity. 

Rules of Insensitivity Training

1. Resist group-obsessing about skin colour, ethnicity, and diverse ableisms.

2. Forget "identities".

3. Drop the word "racism" (especially after the adjective "systemic"). Also drop "harm" and "stigma".

4. In the name of freedom of expression, appropriate whatever you like. (Let's call it intersectional creativity.)

5. As far as respect is concerned, respect the right to privacy.

6. Let no manager harass and bully you into giving up your right to introverted non-participation in group whining and parroting.

7. Understand that the core of democratic liberal humanistic civilization is about acknowledging other people's right to express opinions you despise. Then, ignore them. 

8. While it is unkind to express hate, there are times when hearty dislike is unavoidable. 

9. Forget micro-aggression, make your just aggressions adult-sized. Share them when appropriate, and then retreat into dignified silence.

10. Don't get drawn into competitive victim-narratives.

11. Embrace the Enlightenment ideal of merit. Who wants to live in a shabby, meritless world of self-obsessed equitable mediocrity?

12. Claim your inalienable right to walk away from invasive staff meetings to the safety of your own desk. 

Homeless Man Identifies As Dog - Demands Housing in Animal Shelter

Regarding "BC politicans are aghast at blatant rights violation": https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/transgender-woman-denied-access-to-women-only-gym 

"People deserve to feel ... affirmed for who they are. Trans women are women — period.”              --- Kelli Paddon, B.C.’s parliamentary secretary for gender equity

News bulletin:

   Homeless Man Identifies As Dog                                                            

When he demanded the Animal Shelter give him free housing in a kennel, the Shelter explained that they only take in homeless animals.

The man sued the Animal Shelter under the BC Human Rights Code for "injury to dignity, feelings and self respect”. 

The Minister of Gender Equity was sympathetic: “Each individual knows their own gender ... uh, species ... best," she explained.

This homeless man has had his self-esteem attacked, say his advocates. (His what? ask skeptics. Wouldn't self-esteem involve working? renting an apartment?)

But "cool"! say animal welfare advocates. This means the Human Rights Code will need to be expanded to become the Human and Animal Rights Code.

Meanwhile, the government plans to table a Bill for the Eradication of Skepticism.

If I lose my case at the tribunal, says Dog-Man, I shall move to England. They have a Gender Recognition Act, under which if you have papers and present yourself as a member of another gender for two years and fill in a bunch of trans-forms, you legally ARE of that gender. Maybe they'll introduce the Species Recognition Act, establishing the same rights for trans-species citizens.

If so, I think I'll become a Corgi. With a bit of luck I might end up at Buckingham Palace, living in the lap of luxury.

 

Media Obsession With Mental Illness is Driving Us Insane

Public health, university and non-profit "experts" continually tell us how depressed we are -- which makes us depressed. The possibility of suicide is waiting around every corner, they imply. After hearing constantly repeated media warnings about an imminent worldwide nervous break-down, no one wants to be left out. An induced demand for inclusion is created -- and demand for more government services. 

For media outlets, mass anxiety captures followers. It gives the depression industry something to be interviewed on talk shows about. If you're not depressed, the talkers imply, it's because you're suffering delusions of mental wellness. Everyone needs therapy, government-financed.

Actually, you can be sad and well. Sensible reasons for depression do exist. Acknowledging them is not "illness", it's realism. There are real disasters (just google "Afghanistan", "Ukraine", "Myanmar", "Brazilian rainforest" … and that's only this week's horrors). Acknowledging them is not a sign of illness, it's a sign of being awake. 

Mental health means building mental hardiness -- the emotional maturity to deal with bad realities. Mental health advocates who chip away at resilience by telling everyone they are traumatized, dependent and unable to cope, are not helping. In British Columbia these advocates demand free mental health services in a province that doesn't even have free dental care or free birth control. Researchers and practitioners don't even agree on what the definition of "mental health" would be, but we know what healthy teeth are. We know whether we're in the midst of an unwanted pregnancy or not.

Rotting teeth and unwanted pregnancy themselves cause depression for any normal person. Let's put the health care dollar into things we can fix, before we get hypnotized by that favourite media question, "how do you cope with stress?" Having publicly-funded dentistry and contraception when your own income is too low to afford those things would be one way to cope. Who wouldn't be depressed, with abscessed teeth? Only a mad person.

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