The whole concept of authority fascinates me. I've had a lot of troubles with this, although I'm not disobedient at all. In fact I'm kind of a goody-two-shoes, am eager to please, and often wish I were bolder and more concerned with my own agenda.
Yet I've been told multiple times in the past five years that I'm undermining authority. By both management and peers. (Sometimes admiringly, by colleagues who think I'm the only person who isn't subject to the leader's reality distortion field.) I've asked what I can do to not be as "disruptive" and nobody can quite produce anything concrete.
I think there's something about my attitude that people can detect -- I do believe that authority needs to be earned with results. And even though when I have defended the current authority, again this is not good enough, because I'll do it in terms of "we need to be unified", "we don't know everything X knows", "X has taken on this leadership role and it costs him a lot, no one should question X's dedication", etc.
The one thing I'm not saying is that we should all bow down to X just because "he's the man". There is something about this atavistic concept of authority which demands a posture of submission, often literally. You don't look the other person in the eye any more, you allow yourself to be swept up in his obsessions, his sense of humor leaks into yours, and you treat his ideas as automatically superior. You're supposed to be happy even if he snatches a slice of cake right off your plate. I just don't have it in me.
The ways in which an anti-authoritarian outlook manifest can vary widely. I mean, we stereotype it as a "smash the system, direct action now" thing, but creativity, intellectual curiosity, and a sincere desire to reorganize the system(even through completely legal, above-board means like electoral politics and entrepreneurship) can all get demonized as viewpoints that challenge the establishment. Once collective views are in place, the discussion in most people's minds is over; it takes a strong individual effort to work your way back to truth.
An great example of an authoritarian stereotype controlling the debate is in our discourse about anarchy. In any mainstream forum of the USA, the mere mention of the term is an impossibility - the assumption of anarchy equating to chaos dominates the discussion. Instead, many of the concepts from anarchic literature are now shared, in a modified form, via the less besmirched term of "libertarianism." We don't equate the Tea Party movement with anarchy, yet the connection is all over Wikipedia.
I've found that I'll do just about anything if asked to, particularly if the need and value is explained to me. On the other hand, I'll fight tooth and nail if you tell me to do something, or attempt to force me to do it.
Also, I have really enjoyed working for capable leaders, even if I knew they weren't terribly capable of my work (i.e. I don't care if my boss can program, so long as he or she has leadership, strategy, and understanding). At the same time, I've despised every moment that I've worked for those who I find to by sycophants, poor decision makers, or simply stupid.
I have no idea what this says about my personality. :-)
I like where this article is going a lot, but let's be clear on terms.
"Anti-authoritarians" are people who question and/or reject authority aggressively.
"Assholes" are people who have emotional and/or maturity issues that cause them to irritate others.
Neither of these are diseases, and you can be both, but don't confuse one with the other. I'm a fairly asocial person, but I've learned to be more diplomatic at times. On the other hand, the world is full of angry immature people who just want to "tear it all down!" without actually at heart being for or against anything. They're just a bundle of emotions looking for a place to vent.
But the underlying thesis here, that the professionals diagnosing people as mentally ill carry lot of bias with them that even themselves are unaware of? Spot on. Psychiatry has always been about introducing conformity (both in a good way and in a bad way) to society. Of course, that doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of really mentally ill people who need help, just that when you have a hammer, the world is your nail. :)
ADD: I would just be very careful about working this problem backwards, from effect to cause. That is, simply because somebody or another supports a cause you believe in doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't emotionally ill. My personal opinion is that there are a lot of emotionally-struggling people who choose politics as a socially acceptable way to vent on the world.
I propose that many of the "assholes" and "tear it all down" types are anti-authoritarians who fell through the cracks in the authoritarian system. They have all the anger, anxiety, and hate for the authority that surrounds them but they never found a way to obtain the higher knowledge about what is really going on. Maybe the "smart ones" just have a higher capacity to modify their world to fit them, maybe they had a better environment, or maybe they weren't as anti-authoritarian.
Here I think you are getting at a distinguishable difference between those who are pushing against authorities and those who are hacking the system and flying under the radar. I think that anti-authoritarianism is more a directed attitude of questioning, while avoiding them/it is something different entirely; less trying to change the system, more accepting or ignoring it altogether. That is not to say that one cant do both things; in fact it might be a necessary way to live outside of the norm of blind obedience.
I think that //avoiding// could be considered by the authority as a disruptive disorder.
Authority want you to follow instructions, to do the things in their way. "They are the guardias of the truth" but if you found a way to do your best where authority isn't an obstacle, it also show new ways to improve the world you live in.
I agree with you that the mental health profession has this authoritarian bent, and I'd also say that academia in general seems to have this bent, and like his Einstein example, the modern university isn't very conducive for disruptive people. The emphasis on grades, and yes, "compliance" seems to bias them all the same.
I took a class once regarding Irish-American, African-American, and Mexican-American history. For my final paper I wrote it about how race is a social construct and how ethnic groups become "white" in the eyes of society through socio-economic gains. My Mexican-American teacher, realizing that I had used his lectures the reading, and my own research on this, did not criticize my data, or my case. He simply attacked my conclusion, calling it the "Book of Mormon Thesis."
I am not a Mormon. But where others might have been upset, I took it as a great compliment. If you have to resort to denigrating the conclusion rather than attacking the case, that's a pretty good indication it has value!
Some people just want to watch the world burn, but worse yet, some
people want to watch the world burn while they merrily sing campfire
songs and gleefully roast marshmallows.
The toughest thing to admit is the seemingly insane desires of both
of these groups of people exist in everyone.
The reason why link-bait works -- even here on HN -- is simply the human
propensity for an emotional response involving pitchforks and torches,
either metaphorical or entirely real.
If you think back to the last time you were fired up about something,
can you admit to being one of those people in the first paragraph above?
Whether you can admit it or not, you were one those "Burn it," folks.
Sure, maybe you were slightly more diplomatic in your choice of words,
such as saying "Stop it," or "Please stop," or even "Please consider the
alternatives," or "Please be reasonable," but mincing words is just
masking your opposition with pleasantries.
At one time or another, and to some degree absolutely everyone is one of
the "burn it" folks. The world is full of annoying "flaws" to wear down
your patience and tolerance until you oppose them in more actively.
Rather than derailing the conversation by picking an technical
flame-bait example of a well contested hotspot known to evoke nerd-rage
of the highest order, I'm going to play it safe, and reference the Dr.
Seuss story, "Horton Heads a Who." Absolutely everyone has been one of
the folks chanting "Boil That Dust Spec!"
Every programmer here can think of a "Spec" that they want to boil. ;)
Since everyone is guilty of being the opposition of something and
wanting to tear down, disrupt, or change the status quo or situation in
some way, you should be able to see how everyone is vying for the same
prize, control. To put it more succinctly, everyone wants to be the
authority in control.
In other words, many authorities are anti-authoritarians. Their refusals
to cede control is their method to gain and retain control. Similarly,
those who abide by existing authorities are merely employing a more
deceptive method to gain and retain control. The hoop-jumpers and
ladder-climbers are no different than their rebellious
"anti-authoritarian" counterparts, save for the fact that the two groups
are in constant competition due to the fact that the success of one
is always detrimental to the goals of the other.
The most interesting exercise is to think about what things would be
like if the situation was reversed; "Since you got a four year degree
from a university, you obviously need to be chemically lobotomized with
medications to treat your hoop-jumping disorder." Additionally, your
diagnosis and prescription were written by a self-educated rebel, and
ironically, being cured occurs when you refuse to take your meds.
Good reading to become a mature (ie not just childish) anti-authoritarian: "Prometheus Rising" by Robert Anton Wilson and "No more Mr Nice Guy" by Robert Glover. I would also throw in "King, Warrior, Magician, Lover" by Robert Moore, and maybe an occasional dose of LessWrong.com (helps to know of cognitive bias pitfalls if one wants to dance to one's own tune). Rand, Aurelius, Thoreau, Emerson and Nietzsche might be cool too, for the philosophically inclined (what they all have in common is the belief in defining your own values, not just following others blindly).
Of course, the way I see it, being anti-authoritarian is just a corollary effect of being a mature, competent, self-validated man who is following his own purpose in life. Of course such a man is going to have trouble with those who want to foist their value-systems on him through threats, psychological manipulation, or subterfuge.
I think as a corollary to your comment, the following is also true: Someone who defines his/her own values is extremely unlikely to list "holding power over others" as a primary goal.
Yet many seemingly self-actualized people do end up in positions of authority. Why? I'd argue that power over others is, like some drugs, highly addictive and often corrupting. Mature, self-actualized people rarely feel a void that makes holding this power desirable, since they vastly prefer to be respected than to simply be obeyed.
Yes there are some authority figures who are just and who inspire trust and motivation in others, but many others who appear this way at first and then disappoint -- I wonder how all the young Obama supporters feel now that he's expanded the drone program and continued all of Bush's most controversial and horrible policies.
As one of those younger Obama supporters, I feel betrayed. Look to the Occupy movement to see how many of us are moving on and looking elsewhere for hope.
That's pretty much what participation is OWS is... The realization that we don't have a political system that can deliver and that it's time to take back control.
Excellent recommendations. I stumbled upon LessWrong.com a couple of months ago and its been a great source of interesting and useful material on practicing rationality and integrating it into everyday life.
'Call of Yudkowsky: a group of Christian adventurers hear disturbing rumors of abominations being programmed in SIAI House! As they penetrate to the core and pass various obstacles of cognitive biases, can they maintain their FAITH points, frustrate the sinister computations, and escape mentally intact?'
I think the model is spot on for the lower 4 circuits (Bio-Survival, Territorial/Emotion, Linguistic/Dexterity, Sexual/Social/Tribal) and explains a lot about why people are the way they are.
It's just a map, not reality itself. RAW himself would say as much.
This is basically the premise of the book "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest". The major question of the book was: "Who was really crazy, the inmates or the System?"
It's kind of frightening that views haven't changed in the 40+ years since the book was written. I guess the difference is that they will simply overmedicate rather than lobotomize.
Firstly, things have changed massively since one flew over the cuccoos nest was written. It wasn't even representative at the time. As I understand, it's more an allegory for the wider society and about institutions. A modern psychiatric hospital is utterly unlike the place in that book in every respect. They still use electroshock therapy, because it has been proven to work. Now they do it under general anaesthetic and it's an altogether less messy affair. Watch this moving TED talk if you don't believe me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEZrAGdZ1i8
Secondly, closely related to this is the famous Rosenhan experiment.
For example, one nurse labeled the note-taking of one pseudopatient as "writing behavior" and considered it pathological. The patients' normal biographies were recast in hospital records along the lines of what was expected of schizophrenics by the then-dominant theories of its etiology.
I also remember that one participant had their habit of standing around outside the cafeteria waiting for it to open for lunch noted down by a nurse as "neurotic behaviour around eating and food" and again framed as part of their disorder and used as a reason to keep them there.
Remember though that this was in america in the 70s, and things have changed a lot since then. Partly as a direct result of that study, which made a huge impact on the profession and caused a lot of soul searching. Someone repeated it, I think in the 90s, and they were all just put on pills rather than being committed. The crucial difference being that one can choose not to take pills.
Someone repeated it, I think in the 90s, and they were all just put on pills rather than being committed.
And they were probably just given pills because that's what doctors to do make their customers happy. The "anti-authoritarian" diagnoses are also demand-driven. Parents want a mental health diagnosis to explain why their kids aren't the perfect overachievers they wanted them to be, and then they want pills to make it better. The elastic definitions of mental disorders make it possible for the customer to always be right.
Nothing brings out authoritarianism like parenthood.
Isn't this the "all politicians are untrustworthy" problem. Politicians are not any more untrustworthy or criminal than the general populace, they are just more closely watched.
And the same is obviously true of those 'under observation' - psychiatric disorders or not.
I am not sure just how many of my strange habits would be diagnosed under the DSM - but enough to worry me :-)
>I am not sure just how many of my strange habits would be diagnosed under the DSM - but enough to worry me
That is exactly why doctors don't diagnose just using the DSM checklists. Obviously if they did, we'd all be mad as hatters. There are a whole load of other criteria which must be met, for example, the behaviours have to be detrimental to your life or to the lives of others around you. They also must be abnormal within your culture, which is why religious people aren't all immediately locked up and sedated.
I really wish I could remember/find the name of this other set of assessments that doctors make but alas I cannot. Also my knowledge is based on the UK system, where incidentally they use the ICD-10, which is like the european version of the DSM. Things may very well be different in the states or elsewhere.
Our culture would benefit greatly if religious people were immediately locked up and sedated. They ARE crazy and harmful to those around them, and humoring them is bad for society.
yeah, it would be much better if instead of 'thou shalt not kill' we taught our children 'do unto others before they do unto you'. Don't conflate the failings of a minority with the actual religion.
I'm really curious about your politicians statement. Has it been studied and found that politicians match the population in this area, or is that just your supposition?
I can report firsthand (well, nearly) on the effectiveness of correctly administered electroshock therapy. My mother has been treated successfully with modern electroshock therapy for major depression. It is entirely painless and the only debilitating side-effect is memory loss. For many patients this approach is more valid than the lengthy trial-and-error approach of finding the right mix of andtidepressants. Disclaimer: my father is a biological psychiatrist, so she may have received better-than-average treatment.
What blew me away was the effectiveness: it was like rebooting a system. After the treatment an entirely different person came back.
Sorry if this is rude, but... was there at any point a discussion about the ethics involved in having one's wife rebooted and turned into an entirely different person?
Have you ever had to deal with someone suffering from clinical depression? It is not a condition likely to have the ethics of an effective therapy doubted by anyone, including the patient.
Ah, so if the ends justify the means then there's no one qualified to question the method? Why not diagnose demonic possession and write a prescription for drowning? Who's to doubt the ethics of the method if it's "effective"?
And "effective" by whose measure, anyway? A husband who wants his wife to "act normal"? The health establishment? You?
I think this goes to the point of the article. You bring up "clinical depression" and immediately say that the ethics of an "effective" therapy shouldn't or can't be brought into question. At what point are mere mortals no longer allowed to question the ethics of a form of therapy...right when depression is diagnosed by a clinician? Or does your experience with depressives you know make it okay to electroshock anybody if those are the shrink's orders? If that's your view then you certainly fall well within the authoritarian camp, and it's ironic how little you took away from the article.
I think your loaded rhetorics are entirely divorced from reality in this point; You're painting this picture of an evil conspiracy between an authoritarian establishment and intolerant relatives using draconian brainwashing measures to attack any minor deviation from a questionable norm.
In reality, clinical depression is a condition that causes great suffering to the patient and their loved ones, and massively changes their personality (to a state where they lose all will to live). It is not something easily misdiagnosed or confused with any state anyone would want to be in.
Any effective therapy will not be questioned by anyone because the patient is too happy about getting back their ability to enjoy life, and their relatives about seeing them turn back into the person they were before.
Well, that's kind of the point of Brave New World; most people are happy to occupy the place they're given, take the drugs they're given, and only misfits question the validity of drugging the whole population to produce an artificial state of euphoria.
Maybe depression is a natural state that shouldn't be interfered with. It certainly leads to great works of art and literature. For all we know, it may be necessary for the fitness and survival of the species. It may be a prerequisite to civilization. So now, because society grants a license to psychologists to play God with patients' emotions, and just because you, and they, and even the patients say they're only too happy to be "cured" of their depression, that's supposed to provide a valid mandate for a license to play God?
See if you can answer this question directly: By your logic, is there any reason people should not be lobotomized if it produces a happier or calmer patient?
It's easy to sprout bullshit (yes, bullshit, unmitigated) about "natural state that shouldn't be interfered with" and "playing God" when it's not yourself or your loved ones that suffer from a debiliating disease.
See if you can answer this question directy: by your logic, is there any reason to cure any disease at all because "for all we know" some may be necessary for the fitness and survival of the species, and some inspire great art?
It's a moot question, because by my logic, 90% of what's diagnosed as "clinical depression" is actually a correct reaction to living in an atomized, alienating society driven by pharmaceuticals marketers and authoritarians who demand that everyone wear a happy face (and who attack anyone who dares to claim that we're not all meant to wear a happy face).
See, this is why I'd never visit a shrink. But there's always some sanctimonious jackass who thinks he's so happy, everyone who isn't as happy as he is should be doped in the interest of the public good. It's hard to express the absolute loathing I have for your assumptions about my experiences with depression, or your drippingly patronizing tone, other than to compare it with my feeling for other kinds of teetotalers and those authoritarians who profess to know what's in everyone else's best interest. Luckily most of them are powerless and cowardly, and can't get their hands on me or my loved ones to lobotomize.
I love my loved ones the way they are, depressed or otherwise. Since you didn't answer my question, this is the end of our conversation. Thanks and goodnight.
"Firstly, things have changed massively since one flew over the cuccoos nest was written. [...] A modern psychiatric hospital is utterly unlike the place in that book in every respect."
Why do you say this? From everything I've read I don't think there have been many changes at all.
I've seen the inside of (admittedly only one of) them, although not as a patient. My father is a psychiatrist.
I admit that they probably bear some similarities in the patterns of procedure and behaviour that take place in them, but they are not the stark, inhumane, prisonlike environments portrayed in that book/film. You're right though, "utterly unlike in every respect" is probably too strong.
I think it's even more frightening than that. As a sociopolitical program, mass-diagnosing and mass-medicating nonconformists to tone down their nonconformity is one of the basic premises of Brave New World.
The ability to delegitimize an individual's arguments by labeling his point of view a "disease" is a power accorded only to mental health professionals, and the closest historical analogs are the labels of "anti-American", "counter-revolutionary" and "heretic" (and now, maybe, "terrorist"). What these labels have in common is that they not only confer on the authorities the public's blessing to treat or re-educate the non-conformist, they also carry a freight of social stigma and fear of open association that's sufficient to scare other people away from openly sympathizing with the now-isolated individual - making it impossible to determine from that point forward whether the charges were accurate, or if the individual was targeted solely for being anti-authoritarian. In fact, making an example of one non-conformist pays dividends for the authorities running the inquisition, by cowing the rest of the population further into submission, while forcing the most vehement of the other non-conformists to expose themselves in defense of whatever is said to be "indefensible". As counter-revolutionary thought was considered contagious under Mao and Stalin, and as people were terrified to even ask where their relatives had disappeared under Pinochet, so defending a non-compliant individual becomes socially unacceptable once the labels and drugs have been applied. There's no reason to think this principle doesn't operate at the level of psychiatrist and patient, since that relationship (other than the individual's relationship to mass culture through television) is exactly where most people with the financial means to effectively contest authority are actually presented with ideas of what constitutes "healthy" conformist and consumerist behavior.
That was a really good analysis on why people are diagnosed, but I would like to take a guess at why people want to diagnose their fellow man as such.
First, I'm no psychologist or historian, so feel free to disregard everything that follows...this is just a hypothesis.
I've noticed (but I'm probably far from the first) that every seemingly "modern" human behavior can be traced back to a handful of primitive instincts or tribal behaviors (fear, greed, prejudice, etc.). So my guess would be that diagnosing someone as mentally ill because they act anti-authoritarian comes from the tribal instinct that allowed, or even required, all humans to work together without questioning their orders. It was necessary to hunting, protecting the tribe, etc. that everyone act as one. Not acting as one would cause the hunt to fail or the tribe to lose a battle, either way they would die. It's the same way that packs of animals like wolves behave. Shun the outlier because he could put all our lives at stake.
So expanding on this theory, maybe the reason we as humans act this way is because our cousin species died out because they didn't act as one. Perhaps those other semi-human species that died out were more independently-minded, but for the first few hundred thousand years that was a negative thing that led to natural selection filtering them out?
I guess I get this idea from Seth Godin's talk about "Quieting the lizard brain." Pretty interesting, if anyone is interested: http://vimeo.com/5895898
I know you put heavy caveats on this, but really, it's not worth your time to speculate about how neolithic people were organized and then draw conclusions. Unless your goal is to reveal your own prejudices (which invariably happens when people imagine primordial worlds).
In any case, where do the orders come from? Even in your wolf pack example, the alpha wolf is occasionally challenged by others, and sometimes loses.
In my experience, it's pretty common for great leaders to have questioned authority in their youth. Leaders are self-directed, look out for their own interests, gather their own information, and trust in their own judgments. How could they not come into conflict with authority?
Perhaps I am falling into the same naturalistic fallacy here, but as far as I can tell, it's normal and good for people to test authority on a regular basis.
"In my experience, it's pretty common for great leaders to have questioned authority in their youth. Leaders are self-directed, look out for their own interests, gather their own information, and trust in their own judgments. How could they not come into conflict with authority?"
Yeah, I completely agree with that. I think you and I are on the same side of the argument here. Yeah, it's normal and definitely good, but I was just taking a stab at why people resist the anti-authoritarians. I'm not saying their resistance is good; quite the opposite. It just slows the advancement of society.
I guess the only data I have to back my random hypothesis is the video I linked to. But wouldn't you agree that pretty much all of our behaviors can be seen in other species? We as humans just like to pretend we're above instincts, but our instincts just hide themselves behind emotions and such.
Not so clearly after all. The harm caused by the orders may well be less than the harm caused to the social structures in the group by one or two people disobeying - or by everyone disobeying, and the group needing to somehow select a new authoritarian figure (which usually gets nasty).
Also known as war. Which one could argue is not good for the species statically speaking.
Nicholas Wade also addressed part of this issue in The Faith Instinct. He postulated that religion as a whole was the translation of our hereditary pack instinct following consciousnesses evolution and that conformity was rewarded over time with a bigger stronger more aligned pack and more babies or more DNA in the pool.
It could be argued that the non-conformist is rewarded in the opposite, through persecution by the pack and a smaller group of mates.
But, of course great change requires great sacrifice and cost.
Thanks for the info on The Faith Instinct. I knew I couldn't have been the first to suggest this idea.
Another idea I might add to my original thought would be people's fear of change. I would guess that goes back to before the days of agriculture, where you had to move with your food source. Any change could be dire to you tribe's survival. Change in food source means learning new land, hunting techniques, poisonous plants, etc.
So I think that anyone challenging authority is also challenging the status quo and is seen as one that wants to bring about change. The primitive (lizard) brain cares about two things: survival and reproduction. Change threatened survival in the past, and that fear is still with us, causing us to condemn the changers. People who are in a position to prevent social change (like, say, a psychologist) will do anything in their power to feed that fear of change because they like the way things are. "Things right now are the way they are supposed to be," their lizard brain tells them. And so they close the minds of individuals who might have otherwise had a great impact on society.
What gets me is how people never learn. Socrates was condemned and executed for questioning religious and governmental authority. Soon after the Greeks regretted it and erected statues in his honor, yet that same mistake of casting out the independent minds is made every generation. Sad, really.
It's not clear cut at all. It’s acknowledged that in business, a quick, fairly good decision usually beats a slow but perfect evaluation of the evidence. In a war situation it's even worse - if the group is under attack, any plan is a better defence than an internal argument.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
This is true, but it does not mean that all unreasonable men contribute to progress. Most are wrong, and many are crazy. A few are right. Unfortunately, it's hard for us (and impossible for them) to tell the difference.
It is either a feature or a bug of civilization that it needs ballasts.
My speculation regarding this phenomena is that it is an emergent (learned) response -- the collective adaptation has been to ignore outliers until proven correct.
The absolute worst case (likely rare) is that a timely alternative viewpoint is ignored - i.e. Cassandras.
On the balance, it appears the future collective wins as the validity of the outlier view (which were not that urgent) becomes apparent and the collective majority has developed the ability to adopt it and then the "tortured/rejected/misunderstood genuius" is celebrated after death.
Civilizational win, with many individual loses (some entirely undeserved).
That cuts both ways though. Every human being is effectively part of someone else's environment. Is forcing another man to adapt to one's purported "authority" also progress?
I'm just gonna think outloud here, stream of consciousness style, cuz I think this is an interesting debate, and I've reached the end of my usefulness for the day. Here goes:
I believe there are several degrees to which "adapting the world to oneself" could apply. You're clearly state an example where one goes too far, but at that point, is the person changed from anti-authoritarian, to THE authoritarian?
In general, I see what you are getting at, but I think you are taking parts too literally. Or, at least the way I see it, "kites rise against the wind" is the kind of mentality.
Another possible answer to your question: Who is defining progress? Did Hitler "make progress"? Not in our eyes, not it today's society, but would a German from the 30's tell you that? He certainly changed the world, I think we can hold that to fact.
I'm just going to spew another quote, cuz my brain just leaks inspirational bumper stickers... "Those crazy enough to think they can change the world, are often those who do."
Conformity != reasonableness. There are some worlds people should not adapt to, but too many do. Many used this line of thinking on abolitionists in the ante-bellum period to maintain the institution of slavery.
I enjoy thought provoking arguments as much as the next guy, but too many people seem like they just want something to be unreasonable about. And they act like children, in that they only scrutinize the process when their not getting their way. They just want to be a malcontent, and it appears pathetic to me. I'll be first in line when there's a revolution that isn't full of drum circles and free-loaders.
Exactly. In Transactional Analysis, they would say that those types view themselves as ill-behaved Children and identify society as the Parent. The mature dissident (the Adult) looks very different from this, and is a lot more effective too.
Imagine that you find an ATM machine that's spitting out free money. It's certainly not causing you a problem, but that doesn't mean that it's not broken.
It's easy to see that the system is broken when you're getting less than you deserve. It takes a degree of maturity to admit that the system is broken when you receive more than you deserve.
Uh, it's also not my job to go over to the ATM and find out why it's broken. On the contrary, trying to do so would probably get me arrested.
I have no reason to fix or even analyze a process until it is somehow relevant to me. Calling me immature because I decline to go hunting for problems I otherwise wouldn't even know about is bizarre at best.
That is a reasonable position. But only if you wouldn't stuff your pockets full of money should you pass one by while at the same time complaining about all the free-loaders on welfare. I know some people who would do both things without having any cognitive dissonance induced discomfort at all.
But that has nothing at all to do with anti-authoritarianism, and doesn't seem to resemble what Mansyn was talking about in any way.
I can't stop thinking, while reading his and rprospero's comments, of the stereotypical parent screaming at a fussy eater, "Don't you know there are starving children in Africa?!".
Please try and remember that while there may be many problematic practices and practitioners in the world of psychiatry, the majority are just trying to heal the sick like all other doctors. There is a big difference between putting someone on pills to stop them from presenting a problem in school or at work, and putting someone on pills to stop them cutting out their own eyes, or to help them regain their desire to breathe in and out.
A large number of mental disorders are extremely debilitating and often fatal to the patient. When successfully healed, sufferers are usually extremely grateful to their psychiatrist, feeling that they owe them their life.
You only hear in the media and online about the times when it all goes wrong, because it makes a good story. Who wants to hear blog posts about how someone was sick, and then they got well? Especially when talking about your experience with mental illness is seen as an admission of weakness or personal failure by society, which it is.
This is not to discount the fact that there is a huge amount of malpractice, abuse, and just plain poor quality thinking out there in the world of psychiatry. Most of it is connected to big pharma and their big dollars, as you might expect.
You also can't absolve the patient of all responsibility. Go to any psychiatrist, particularly here in the UK with our NHS where doctors don't sit around hoping for more ill people, and they will tell you that they are sick and tired of the parade of perfectly healthy middle class idiots shuffling before them with non-problems, or worse, dragging children with non-problems.
You can't really just turn these people away, it's unethical (illegal?) to just deny someone treatment. Unless you can invoke something like Münchausen syndrome, you have to treat these people or their charges in some way if they are in distress. Doctors are reduced to giving them some pills and complaining to each other behind closed doors about the endless stream of "worried well" affecting their ability to help those with the actual problems discussed at the start of this now overly-long comment. Actually, increasingly they send them off to a homeopathy clinic or something like that. That in my eyes is the one good use for alternative medicine, it keeps little jemima off the hard stuff when her dangerously irrational mother decides she needs to be fixed.
The DSM and it's ilk make this worse by giving the public cosmo-style checklists they can run against themselves, without all the other contextual understanding that a diagnostician has. It is then made worse again with the DSM published on the internet.
Your comment seems to have nothing to do with the OP. It starts with "In my career as a psychologist..." so it's not like he's trying to tar all psychological treatment with the one brush. He's specifically talking about a tendency to use psychological diagnosis as a tool to dominate and marginalize resistance to established norms. You can still see value in psychological treatment even if you stipulate that it's sometimes used as a tool for domination. E.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madness_and_Civilization#Impact
Exactly, why is a wall of text that addresses no ones concern the top comment? Who here was attacking psychology as a whole? The article made some great points that should have opened the conversation to what constitutes authority and why we're drugging those who don't fit in.
It seems to me that this is the kind of 'shoring up' the system that authoritarians use. As the first respondent to you noted, this is a psychologist's essay and nowhere does he claim the majority _aren't_ trying to heal the sick.
Your arguments are often emotional, anecdotal, and structured to pass a 'common sense' filter without necessarily being relevant. Who said anything about absolving patient responsibility? Who said anything about turning people away? In fact your second-to-last paragraph is almost _wholly irrelevant._
Finally, the DSM is _the gold standard._ Just like medical doctors have standardized the symptom checklist for a diagnosis, the DSM is The Rules.
Medical doctors manage to survive having their diagnostics well known. You seem to be mired in apologia about psychiatry even as you deride its primary practical tool.
Please try and remember that while there may be many problematic practices and practitioners in the world of psychiatry, the majority are just trying to heal the sick like all other doctors.
Well, it's best not to think it about what the "majority of practitioners" sets to do, but with what is established as the standard theory and practice of their profession, that is, what they are conditioned to do.
As you move away from hard science like physics and math, all sorts of power plays, prejudices and societal norms come into play. You know, like homosexuality was considered a mental disease back in the day. Psychiatry not only advances the societal and power norms on those matters --it also obeys and enforces them.
A society that is messed up in many ways, will also tend to consider those that are against this mess as 'mentally ill'. It's not that different with what happened to dissidents in the USSR, just more subtle.
The "all other doctors" part really bugs me. It's mostly true for most specialties, but certainly there are examples of plastic surgeons performing questionable procedures, and obstetricians who perform more conveniently scheduled C-sections than are medically justified.
I had to log in just to upvote this. Yes, diagnosing mental illness is less clear-cut than the problems we typically enjoy as programmers. Yes, mistakes are made. But for every mistake there are 9, or 99, or 999 successes (EDIT: I have no statistical reference for this assertion, please take with large grain of salt) who, as you say, feel that they owe their life to the professional(s) who helped them. I know, because I am one, and regardless of society's opinion that is no less an admission of weakness than admitting that I had chicken pox one time, and occasionally come down with the flu.
"But for every mistake there are 9, or 99, or 999 successes who, as you say, feel that they owe their life to the professional(s) who helped them."
The problem is that isn't true. The amount of people helped is generally lower than the amount of people harmed, at least with longterm use of many of the major psychopharmaceutical drugs. The book the blog is promoting explains this quite well.
Just this morning there were a flurry of articles on a new study showing that the most commonly prescribed sleeping pills raise your all cause mortality 3x - 5x, and that's over only 2.5 years. One can only imagine what the all-cause mortality over 10+ years is.
You're right, I have no source to back that up and was making a flimsy emotional assertion. (I've edited my comment to reflect that.) I stand by the (desired) sentiment of my comment, though: psychiatry and the related sciences are important and there should be no related stigma.
I don't know that you have any way of measuring mistakes vs successes in any objective way. Sometimes mistakes are helpful even (as they were with me--- a misdiagnosis for depression helped me out and lead to a very real ADD diagnosis, but I refuse to give up on my anti-authoritarian tendencies--- and indeed I do not take prescription medication for ADD and haven't regularly since I was 17).
The problem I see is that there are a lot of people who genuinely think that they are treating sick patients who will get better and have fewer problems in life if they just get in line and stop resisting authority. I see it in schools and among mental health professionals. But those people have a very narrow and misguided IMNSHO opinion of success in life.
As (early psychotherapist) Roberto Assagioli put it, clinically normal means mediocre, and to excel, you have to step outside of that. He claimed that there were criteria you could use to tell whether a disturbance was pathological or morbid, or whether it was a first step towards growth and breaking free.
This brings me to ODD. The concern is that some people who are habitually defiant get worse and can become sociopathic later. But if that's the concern, it's grotesquely overdiagnosed.
I couldn't agree more. It seems that there are some who think mental illness is a crock of shit and psychiatry is witchcraft (admittedly hyperbolic but not enormously so) while there are others who believe every facet of human behaviour is diagnosable and "correctable". The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between.
I believe "Anti-Authoritarian" is a misnomer. People labeled as "Anti-Authoritarian", myself included, are more likely "Auto-Authoritarian"; they trust their own authority first, rather than blindly believe the asserted authority of others.
I think your point is quite a good one. Taking control of the language used to describe the situation/subject under discussion is important to avoid the negative implications.
Hence the propensity of authoritarian governments to declare opponents mentally ill.
Beware political positions quick to write off differing views as clinical insanity. When they start committing people, that's a sign the line has been crossed.
> After he did enter college, one professor told Einstein, “You have one fault; one can’t tell you anything.” The very characteristics of Einstein that upset authorities so much were exactly the ones that allowed him to excel.
I find it an amusing corollary that later in life, no one was able to convince Einstein of the truth--or at least the usefulness--of quantum mechanics. A failing of the anti-authoritarian mindset is that if you have an opposed opinion to an authority on an issue--and that authority happens to be right--you'll never figure this out until you work it out for yourself.
I find it an amusing corollary that later in life, no one was able to convince Einstein of the truth--or at least the usefulness--of quantum mechanics.
Einstein never disputed the usefulness of QM. He merely disputed the idea that theories based on configuration space were fundamentally correct.
He even attempted to disprove them by showing that QM predicts the EPR paradox, which most people agree is pretty weird. He then spent the rest of his life trying to come up with theories that didn't predict nonlocal effects.
It turns out that the EPR paradox and other nonlocal effects are observed in real life (so any such theory he might have concocted would have been wrong), but the experiments were only done after Einstein died.
I find it an amusing corollary that later in life, no one was able to convince Einstein of the truth--or at least the usefulness--of quantum mechanics. A failing of the anti-authoritarian mindset is that if you have an opposed opinion to an authority on an issue--and that authority happens to be right--you'll never figure this out until you work it out for yourself.
Ummm... Einstein's nobel prize was regarding quantum physics?
Einstein never disputed quantum mechanics. What he disputed was the (non-falsifiable, and hence not-a-scientific-theory) Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics. He sided with those with a different interpretation.
Any 'anti-authoritarian' diagnosis is bunk. This is one aspect of the DSM (of many actually) that seriously bothers me. Since there is no objective scale for delineating behaviors that are acceptable to "authorities", how can one claim this is a valid diagnosis ? THIS is why we can't have nice things.
During reading I always thought about Sheldon, from The Big Bang Theory, in one of the first series when he was sacked from his job. And when he comes to apologize with his mother, he says "I've called you an idiot during our first meeting. I'm sorry... for pointing that out.".
I suppose it's the same with many doctors who stamp "mentally ill" diagnoses on people. "If you disagree with me, then you should be treated."
Many powerful social positions in our society are occupied by not qualified enough people, who only have it through connections or inheritance or just conforming to overcomplicated modern social rules. Basically unquestioning conforming to any relevant authority until a person grows higher in power than it.
In Sheldon case it was his new boss, who fired him for a reason than Sheldon did not bow to him (meaning that he should not ever question qualification of a more powerful person).
In the essay, this behavior was shown on the example of a psychologist or psychiatrist, who also can develop a tendency to negatively evaluate anti-authoritarian people because they themselves have an opposite character type and are in a more powerful position.
This especially concerns me because there are evidence of such abuse of power in cases of children, who can be put on medication just to be kept in the boarding school indefinitely (not sure if this a right name in English).
There was a seemingly related hacker news page on the top page along side with this one http://qaa.ath.cx/LoseThos.html , about the 64 bit OS LoseThos and the mental insanity of its author. It was a very interesting read and I wanted to see the comments, but now it appears gone. Was this flagged and if so why?
I think there were concerns the LoseThos guy might be worse off by seeing it, and the OP removed it. Really interesting to read about him though, and see his extraordinary work. I hope he is around people who can help and that he'll be ok.
I've grown up diagnosed as ADD (and ADHD), ODD, and Bipolar. The bipolar was because I was not mature yet, and had trouble communicating effectively. I get angered when I hear people talk as if these aren't real. My ADD makes it to where I have a tough time evaluating priorities to the point where my impulsiveness can cause me to 'not' do thing. I just can't. Like I recently tried doing a bit of homework on paper (first time to write on paper this semester) and my mind raced faster than I could write (I just saw the answer), but most importantly I had trouble just writing. I just couldn't force myself to do it. The hyperactive portion of ADHD is just because I'm either 150% going all out, or I'm asleep. (This makes 60 hour work weeks a breeze because I just keep going and going and going, as long as I have someone around that can help keep my focus, or if my attention isn't needed (like large compiles for programs, somehow I can focus better in the spurts between compiles). The ODD part comes in because I love to challenge people, especially authority, but only when I feel like they are incorrect or misguided. Interestingly though, I find that, for example, I can't bring myself to do the dishes when at my Parents house, but at anyone else's house I'm the first to clean the table up after dinner.
Maybe the problem isn't with you, but with the things you're being required to do. Maybe ideally it would be better for you to focus on doing the things you're especially good at and enjoy doing, rather than following arbitrary and impersonal directives on what you should do.
That's up to you to decide, but currently you're required to meet expectations in your life that maybe you're just not personally suited for, not out of any disability, but because your strengths are elsewhere, or maybe you're just not interested and would rather learn or focus on something else at that time.
The problem comes in thinking something is wrong with somebody just because they don't conform to expectations or are caused angst and turmoil through their nonconformity. It doesn't matter if it's the sufferer or the society that seeks it out. It is still misguided.
I can't help but notice we are all discussing the opinions of one guy, who is not a psychiatrist, regarding what he has seen in his practice. And this one guy, if you look at his "about the author stuff" is basically an activist left wing hates-the-system damn-the-capitalists kind of guy.
This is not science, it's opinion untethered from the constraints of evidence. If we want to have a long conversation about this, it would behoove us to start from science so that actual facts might be involved.
I don't see why a mental health worker's critique on the culture and practices of other professionals in the field wouldn't be valid cause for discussion. If someone observes corruption in the field they are working in, is it not valid to raise the issue for discussion before performing a formal survey on how widespread that corruption might be?
What type of evidence exactly would satisfy your requirement?
I did not intend to suggest he should not raise his voice. Rather I suggest that a Hacker News discussion is not well-served by starting from his post due to the lack of factual (in the scientific sense) content.
Raising an issue that needs study is just plain Good Science. But it's a starter for science, not us.
An ad hominem attack is an attack on the messenger when the messenger is carrying fact or reasoning that can be evaluated independent of the messenger.
In this case, my criticism is of the person who is providing an opinion and is not reporting any information which can be independently evaluated by us here. The character of this observer therefore does matter.
I did not make those characterizations with the intent of portraying him as a crazy man who should be categorically ignored. All of those characteristics I mentioned are fine things to have in a healthy and diverse body politic. Rather, I mentioned them to point out that we are attempting to divine the truth in an opinion about a portion of society made by someone with demonstrably eccentric opinions about society.
Lastly, thank you for being sensitive about what you saw as name-calling. We could use a lot less name-calling around here.
Authority (and people in power) are currently seen as "once accepted, never question", and that has served humanity well for thousands (even millions) of years because it's effective - you have a leader, you acknowledged he's at least good enough and you start working on common goals under their supervision.
But that doesn't work as well anymore because there's so many of us, so much stuff to do and so much information. That's why we've been moving towards increasingly democratic societies and organizations for the past several hundred years, and the trend will only accelerate.
Questioning authority usually stopped the whole organization, and people couldn't move forward unless they found a consensus. Today it's easier to question/review/change authority without having to stop everything - it's like it's a separate module instead of a core piece, but obviously, that doesn't sit well for those whose authority is questioned, hence the struggle against anti-authoritarians...
This is mostly inaccurate. He starts by cherry picking his definition of ODD describing it as “a pattern of negativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior without the more serious violations of the basic rights of others that are seen in conduct disorder" and "often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rule". This is ridiculous, and leaves out a half a dozen or so other symptoms including
"Have temper tantrums
Be argumentative with adults
Refuse to comply with adult requests or rules
Annoy other people deliberately
Blames others for mistakes or misbehavior
Acts touchy and is easily annoyed
Feel anger and resentment
Be spiteful or vindictive
Act aggressively toward peers
Have difficulty maintaining friendships
Have academic problems
Feel a lack of self-esteem"
Those aren't authority problems, those are major social issues that must persist for greater than 6 months and make the home or school environment hostile. Also, he acts like all psychologists and psychiatrists do is prescribe medicine. This is silly, most psychiatrists and all psychologists would advocate combined therapy or behavioral therapy to help them with parent child interaction and problem solving skills. These authoritarian behavioral treatments include things like "Recognize and praise your child's positive behaviors, offer acceptable choices to your child, giving him or her a certain amount of control." ODD should NEVER get a drug prescription except in the case of comorbitity. Read more here: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/oppositional-defiant-disord...
ADD and ADHD are over-diagnosed and ODD might also be, but there are people who legitimately suffer from major crushing behavioral deficits which can make properly learning difficult. Sloppy historical analogy with 'famous people would totally be ADD' is a terrible marginalization of this disorder and it's sufferers.
Also, lots of people are mentioning the Rosenhan experiment and claiming that psychology hasn't changed at all since then. This is largely inaccurate. I would direct them to this askscience thread http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/orf88/how_has_ps... about changes that have occurred including the rise of counseling and patient bill of rights.
I'm no psychologist but I hope to see those in that profession read this article. I've noticed that many are quick to label a patient mentally ill and prescribe medication. The brain is one of the most misunderstood organs in the human body. While the drugs help some, the profession is far from ready to alter brain chemistry.
Non-conformance, and non-compliance against authority runs the risk of being separated out from the pack, and being treated differently... Does this have any relevance to the debate over ADHD - i.e. there are some that believe a 'good old-fashioned spanking' would set things right.
I'm not sure if too many people nowadays take Psychiatry and Psychology seriously. Most problems they label as illnesses are legitimate issues people have that need resolution not pills.
I had severe allergic reaction to shrimp. Ended up at the ER where I was treated with Epinephrine, Prednisone and Diphenhydramine (Benadryl administered directly to bloodstream though).
Guess what, I had serious panick attacks for another2 days. When the following day I showed up at the ER, I was told by a Doctor who originally treated me day before that I clearly have mental issues because this reaction shouldn't last so long. Psychiatrist didn't even ask questions and prescribed me anti-depressants. Obciously, anxiety diminished on its own next day. FDA.GOV confirms that all 3 medications I was given may cause anxiety (severe) and panick attacks. Including benadryl that does cause anxiety in me. This was widely studied and is believed to be caused by liver enzymes. So, all in all I had never had mentall issues before, never had issues after. But had 3 days of panick attacks and severe anxeity causeb clearly by medication. Hey, but I'm considered depressive, anxious now. It is in my medical records. Just amazing how fast they are to label you and how difficult it is to clear the record. All result of ignorance, but what can I do? Recently I went through cholestycomy procedure outside my insurance, just because I didn't want to be treated by medical stuff with suspicion.
I don't believe psychiatrists now at all. I mean this is some type of witchcraft, not science for sure.
Please note that Psychiatry and Psychology are very different fields, despite the common associations between them. In most countries, psychologists may not prescribe drugs, while psychiatrists, as medical doctors are allowed to do so.
Incidentally, I highly recommend reading the DSM (diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders) and figuring out which disorder you show the most signs of. Myself, I meet all the criteria for ADHD, and if I had been born some years later or in a different place, could easily have been diagnosed with it.
I'm not really suggesting that people self diagnose, I just thought it might be interesting for non-professionals to read the diagnostic criteria to get a sense of how easy it is to be diagnosed on these bases. Unfortunately, due to the way the american insurance system works, I can't see DSM ever being rolled back to a semblance of sanity (with pun intended)
Just in case someone doesn't, there are two diagnostic assertions in choro12's statement: low self-esteem, and sociopathy. This just goes to show that we as a society are dependent on psychiatric labels, even if we profess to hate them. We need them because they help us understand human behaviour. I'm not saying that this is good, and we should not try and develop an understanding of ourselves which goes beyond simple taxonomy, but that we should not be so hasty to disparage those who formalise and act on these categories, because we all do it, and we have always done so.
Anti-psychiatry (wiki explains their position in good detail) says that basically the very moment we stopped believing in magic, witches and wizards, psychology/psychatry surfaced as 'sciences' with exactly the same role - to root out people who are too non-compliant with the system from the society.
USSR and communistic states (I used to live in one of them) are great example. All dissidents were automatically labeled 'insane' because anybody doubting communism had to be crazy in communist view of the world.
Some people process drugs very slowly. I am one btw (I usually cut down medications to 25% of less of the recommended dosages, except for antibiotics where that's a really bad idea). I haven't tried protodrugs like vicodin but I would assume they probably wouldn't have much effect on me.
But hey, they call that a "Cytochrome P-450 defect." All because my body doesn't work the way the pharma companies would like.....
Psychs (both types) who are funded by medical insurance are the issue. They're being effectively paid commission from the insurer to find anything that could be wrong with you so they can eat. The moment you get sick in the US, you are a landgrab for cash. It's just wrong.
Here in the UK, the free ones on the NHS are pretty good! If you don't want treatment, noone is going to lose any money (in fact they're saving cash) so you're fine.
EDIT: Missed the bit about the psychiatrist not asking questions, sounds like an encounter with a bad psychiatrist.
You were prescribed anti-depressants by a medical doctor (most likely without even the most rudimentary training in mental health), and you blame psychiatrists? How does that make any sense?
You may as well blame mechanics for the bad advice you got on fixing your car from the guy at the bicycle shop.
If you complain about psychological things to a medical doctor, on of the first questions they should ask is "have you been on any medication, or used any other kind of drug?". Psychiatrists should be asking the same thing.
I know this. The reality is once you behave crazy as I did (because of the meds), they just assume things and put their assumptions before the process.
Then I did complain to the Doctor that I think the meds are causing this, but she refused telling me that she administers them frequently to the patients and never has seen reaction like this. According to fda.gov about 1% population has paradoxical reaction to Benadryl (i.e. people get anxious like I did instead of calming down). The paradoxical reaction is cause by liver enzymes working differently in my body. She just didn't know. When I said this she looked at me even more suspiciously.
Once they set their mind on you being crazy, that's it. The more you tell, even being right and correct, will seem more crazy talk making them more convinced of your mental issues.
I thought with psychiatrist will be better, but he was even worse. Treated me like child & crazy person right from the door step.
I'm so glad the anxiety stopped on its own day later and that my suspicion of medications causing it turned out true.
I mean they were able to convince me that I'm crazy. I'd believe them... that's how bad the system is.
> You were prescribed anti-depressants by a medical doctor (most likely without even the most rudimentary training in mental health), and you blame psychiatrists?
Psychiatrists are medical doctors. Many of them work in hospitals. Why are you assuming he was prescribed antidepressants by a medical doctor who isn't a psychiatrist?
EDIT: He even says it was a psychiatrist: "Psychiatrist didn't even ask questions and prescribed me anti-depressants."
You had a bad experience (and it was a bad experience) with one doctor, and you're writing off two professions?
A simpler course of action would have been to write a gentle complaint letter. In England you'd start by getting advice from Patient Advice and Liaison (PALs) who help you through the process.
The true test of whether someone's really anti-authoritarian is how they behave when they're in authority. 99% of people who use "question authority" as an excuse for what is really anti-social behavior fail this test.
Where did that number came from? I think that such a percentage is exactly the same for pro-authoritarian people. Should they get authority for themselves they became anti-social in an instant.
And I think that really this percent is not 99%, not even 50%, closer to the single digits really. It's just that these anti-socials impact pro-social people much more that other pro-socials.
PS: pro-social is just an opposite for anti-social. Nothing complicated.
anti-social means that a person does not conform with what authority says.
"authority" has an opinion on religion, good manners, social interaction, biodiversity, climate change, whales hunting, and every possible topic on earth.
People can choose to fight the authority at any level they want on any topic they want.
Two people can fight authority on different topics, both of them see each other as anti-social; but both of them are anti-authority.
"Choose your weapons, your enemy has been chosen long ago, even before you realized." -- anonymous
"anti-social means that a person does not conform with what authority says."
Simply incorrect, both etymologically and logically. Authority is hierarchical; society is peer to peer. Authority is hard power; society is soft. When you're anti-authoritarian you're defying hierarchy and force. When you're anti-social you're just being a jerk to your neighbors. Not the same thing at all.
The reality is that political dissenters are often diagnosed with schizophrenia if they, for example, accuse their government of crimes. Of course governments do commit crimes, but one can only acknowledge the crimes of someone else's government, or crimes that occurred long ago.
Even in the United States, the automatic reply to any significant claim of criminal behavior against the US government is "bat-shit crazy conspiracy theorist".
Governments, including the United States, project through their propaganda and education, a false reality in which the most important state actions are always moral and justified.
There is a type of mass pathology going on in which almost everyone ignores facts that contradict the official reality presented by authority.
I think this is unfortunately a normal aspect of group behavior because I have observed it even in a small technical group where the manager decided that Windows Communication Foundation worked differently than it actually did and everyone went along with it even though the documentation clearly stated otherwise.
Your anecdotal evidence isn't very strong support. If someone had instead stood up in the group and told the manager he was wrong, would you believe the opposite, that not blindly following leadership was the norm?
I explained to the manager and the group how they were wrong about that and got fired.
The business about it being a normal group behavior is really a side issue though, and I'm not trying to make a scientific case.
The bigger issue is government suppression of dissent by the misuse of psychiatry or just by suggesting theories involving criminal activities of the government are signs of insanity.
Yet I've been told multiple times in the past five years that I'm undermining authority. By both management and peers. (Sometimes admiringly, by colleagues who think I'm the only person who isn't subject to the leader's reality distortion field.) I've asked what I can do to not be as "disruptive" and nobody can quite produce anything concrete.
I think there's something about my attitude that people can detect -- I do believe that authority needs to be earned with results. And even though when I have defended the current authority, again this is not good enough, because I'll do it in terms of "we need to be unified", "we don't know everything X knows", "X has taken on this leadership role and it costs him a lot, no one should question X's dedication", etc.
The one thing I'm not saying is that we should all bow down to X just because "he's the man". There is something about this atavistic concept of authority which demands a posture of submission, often literally. You don't look the other person in the eye any more, you allow yourself to be swept up in his obsessions, his sense of humor leaks into yours, and you treat his ideas as automatically superior. You're supposed to be happy even if he snatches a slice of cake right off your plate. I just don't have it in me.