Great article. Helen Joyce is wonderful. I love how you illuminated the difference between social contagions based on folklore and are current contagion based on ideology. It's very potent.
Thanks very much. Glad you got something from it. Do share where and when you can! There are a lot of people out there who just don't understand what's involved in this thing, so I feel that articles like this need some exposure. And yes, HJ rocks!
When kids are miserable, they’d rather be someone else. When all of the kids are miserable at the same time, they copy each other’s poor coping mechanisms, wallow in shared misery, and melt into a gigantic blob of despair. Then they’re koro-ing all over the place.
Many of today’s kids (I can’t remember who’s X, Y or Z, so I’ll call them “the kids”) see no future for themselves or for anyone else. They don’t want to get married or have children and they see no point in working. If the old Chinese dudes’ penises were really shrinking then they’d hit the end of the line. You can’t father a child with no penis. If the world is going to end and you can’t do anything to stop it, you have no need for future generations so let the thing shrink. Tomato-tomahto.
If there’s doubt in anyone’s mind that mass hysteria is contagious no matter how stupid the premise, November, 2023 has entered the chat.
Despite living at a time when more options are available to them than ever before, the kids insist on being miserable. What do they do for fun? What makes them laugh? The XYZ kids are joyless. I hope we can fix it.
Excellent essay, thanks so much. As well as mass psychogenic illness I also like the terminology 'idioms of distress' and 'culture-bound syndrome'.
Having thought about this a bit myself, I agree it's about the times we are in, particularly the internet and social media. As McLuhan noted, media changes how we inhabit identity.
One argument I've considered is that we are at a point of change, and as McLuhan also proposed, we shouldn't look back in the rear view mirror but forward into the present.
What if trans is a new human mode of expression, an inevitable step towards transhumanism?
I personally still hold to a normative concept of medical ethics, that people should not need to change their bodies to alleviate psychological distress. I also believe there's evidence as you've pointed out that this is a reactive social contagion that stems from cultural changes and a lack of meaning in modern life. I also think trans is an existentially ambivalent choice for anyone to make and a genuine medical scandal where children are concerned.
But maybe I'm just being nostalgic - it appears most people are behind it or indifferent in such a way they will never do anything about it. I mean cultures change through mimesis/contagion, are we pissing in the wind so to speak?
Great article. Helen Joyce is wonderful. I love how you illuminated the difference between social contagions based on folklore and are current contagion based on ideology. It's very potent.
Thanks very much. Glad you got something from it. Do share where and when you can! There are a lot of people out there who just don't understand what's involved in this thing, so I feel that articles like this need some exposure. And yes, HJ rocks!
When kids are miserable, they’d rather be someone else. When all of the kids are miserable at the same time, they copy each other’s poor coping mechanisms, wallow in shared misery, and melt into a gigantic blob of despair. Then they’re koro-ing all over the place.
Many of today’s kids (I can’t remember who’s X, Y or Z, so I’ll call them “the kids”) see no future for themselves or for anyone else. They don’t want to get married or have children and they see no point in working. If the old Chinese dudes’ penises were really shrinking then they’d hit the end of the line. You can’t father a child with no penis. If the world is going to end and you can’t do anything to stop it, you have no need for future generations so let the thing shrink. Tomato-tomahto.
If there’s doubt in anyone’s mind that mass hysteria is contagious no matter how stupid the premise, November, 2023 has entered the chat.
Did you see this one too…
https://thetransatlantic.substack.com/p/death-cult-transhumanism-or-postmodern-cycnicsm
Despite living at a time when more options are available to them than ever before, the kids insist on being miserable. What do they do for fun? What makes them laugh? The XYZ kids are joyless. I hope we can fix it.
LGTBQXYZPDQ Is just the new and oh, so much more enlightened version of The White Man's Burden.
Two more letters and couple more years and it'll be an All Man's Burden :/
Excellent essay, thanks so much. As well as mass psychogenic illness I also like the terminology 'idioms of distress' and 'culture-bound syndrome'.
Having thought about this a bit myself, I agree it's about the times we are in, particularly the internet and social media. As McLuhan noted, media changes how we inhabit identity.
One argument I've considered is that we are at a point of change, and as McLuhan also proposed, we shouldn't look back in the rear view mirror but forward into the present.
What if trans is a new human mode of expression, an inevitable step towards transhumanism?
I personally still hold to a normative concept of medical ethics, that people should not need to change their bodies to alleviate psychological distress. I also believe there's evidence as you've pointed out that this is a reactive social contagion that stems from cultural changes and a lack of meaning in modern life. I also think trans is an existentially ambivalent choice for anyone to make and a genuine medical scandal where children are concerned.
But maybe I'm just being nostalgic - it appears most people are behind it or indifferent in such a way they will never do anything about it. I mean cultures change through mimesis/contagion, are we pissing in the wind so to speak?