Illness without Etiology: Perpetuating Social Dysfunction and Leviathan’s Bloody Tithe

The scientist from “The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek” by Jenny Wagner

Patient: Doctor, Doctor!  It hurts when I do this!
Doctor: Then don’t do that.

‘Etiology’ is one of those five dollar words that bundles together a number of important concepts, and it’s part of the conceptual core of the sort of arguments I’m making lately about chronic dysfunction in the modern world; both individually, and on a societal level.

‘Etiology’ refers to the source of disease, the root cause of the symptoms.  For instance, take a patient who presents with fever, headache, and swollen lymph nodes.  Each of these symptoms can be addressed individually (cold bath, acetylsalicylic acid, and ginger root, respectively), but if the etiology behind these symptoms is Dengue Fever, then said treatments will be no more effective in curing the ailment than if the attending had performed a dance dedicated to the Demon God Ju-Jujube.

When it comes to medicine we understand this; there’s an entire television genre dedicated to medical mysteries, where Sherlock Holmes-style savants such as Dr House discover the underlying causes of weird, often contradictory symptoms.  But when it comes to Psychology and Sociology – fields steeped in the philosophy of “Otherness” – a term coined by science fiction author David Brin to describe the solipsism of Political Correctness and non-judgmentalism – not only is etiology unavailable, it’s verboten; diagnosing somebody as having Dengue Fever has become tantamount to insulting all the citizens of Florida.

The result is a system of of circular logic: the categories of illness are based upon the presence or absence of certain symptoms – symptoms which are identified as meaningful or irrelevant by the categories themselves.  Thus we’ve created a self-affirming machine which always affirms itself, and is incapable of admitting error – no matter how sick the patient becomes.

The process through which this happened is most obvious with Psychology and Psychiatry.  Starting in the late Seventies, the APA started asking the question “How can we become scientifically legitimate in the eyes of the public?” The past century had seen an explosion in technological and scientific achievements, and a materialist worldview was becoming increasingly common.  More than ever before, people were asking “Where’s the proof?” Medicine – which had once focused on the overall wellness of both body and mind – had made massive strides in treating physical ailments, while mental well being had splintered off into separate fields.  Out of a desire to achieve the same sort of respectability as their medical brethren enjoyed (and thus, ensure access to insurance money and expert status in courts of law) the APA commissioned the DSM III: a technical manual which identified illnesses, and defined their symptoms.  All very lovely and technocratic – but nowhere in the manual was the etiology of these illnesses defined.

At the time, etiology was assumed; it was heavily debated, but there was a presumption causality amongst all professionals in the field.  A cursory examination of Freud’s theories will demonstrate this.  At the core of his Psychoanalysis is the source for the deviance: the Eros/Thanatos urges, the Oepedian/Elektra complexes, et cetera – Freud pointed directly to certain elements within the psyche as being the sources of disordered behaviour.  He wasn’t completely correct, but he premised his work with a definition of where mental illness came from, which implied what a healthy mind would look like.  Although the Behaviouralist school of Psychology (which began to gain dominance in the 40s) disagreed with Freud, they likewise understood that there was a root cause behind the disordered behaviours.

However the DSM III – then IV – and now V – never specified what these root causes might be, and in the meantime society was going through a cultural revolution which questioned all the assumptions we’d previously held as self-evident.  Who are we to say that homosexuality is wrong?  That male headship is the natural form of marriage?  That sexual promiscuity is unhealthy?  That people should be grateful for what they have, instead of being envious of others?

In the 1970s these presumptions would have been taken for granted, and thus a woman exhibiting the symptoms of (what would later come to be called) Borderline Personality Disorder would have had her sexual promiscuity put under the hot light as a possible cause, or at least a major symptom of her illness.  But because these assumptions were never codified – and because the field of Psychiatry was discovering new psychoactive drugs which promised “biological, scientific” solutions, the field was left vulnerable to the lobbying of special interest groups.

The “Refrigerator Mother” hypothesis of schizophrenia – that schizophrenia is  caused by emotionally distant or abusive parents – was abandoned when women’s groups protested.  Homosexuality was removed from the books under similar circumstances.  Brand new illnesses – and through them, new opportunities for paying clients – began to explode onto the scene.

The net effect was the equivalent of a household where the children got a say in when bedtime would be, and whether or not they could have cookies for breakfast; a church where the parishioners could tell the priest which sins he’s allowed to criticize; or a democracy where the voters could demand unlimited bread and circuses.  The psychologists were delighted, because not only were they now recognized as professionals, but they had  also grown their customer base;  now everybody had an illness which could be turned into billable hours – and the perpetual treatment of symptoms, instead of a one-time cure, meant clients for life.  The clients were delighted, because no matter what they did, they now had a professional who would make excuses for their misbehaviour, and an addictive chemical to rely upon instead of being forced to take personal accountability for their choices.  The insurance companies and the government were delighted for the typical reasons.

It’s over the long-term, and at the societal level, where we all suffer from these short-term, local choices.  A perfect example of this is the classification of Asperger’s Syndrome as a mental disorder.

Few realize this, but neither Asperger’s nor Autism are understood in any sort of meaningful manner; they’re nothing but labels begging the question.  We don’t know if there is a physical cause behind them, we don’t know if they’re actually related, and despite all the research that’s been done, they could simply be conflations of certain personality traits, or even a host of different disorders that all manifest similar symptoms.  They are the Lupus of mental illness, and yet we treat them as if they’re a known quantity.

Alex St. John is a prominent personage in Silicon Valley, and one of the men behind Microsoft’s DirectX technology, who often writes about the “Aperger’s Engineer” and how much he loves them.  He’s also a major critic of how Asperger’s has been pathologized as something needing treatment; in his eyes, Asperger’s is a huge advantage in certain fields, and by medicating it, potential geniuses are being brought down to the level of stupid people.

So “Asperger’s” is BY DEFINITION, a high-functioning condition.  These people are NOT characterized as completely socially dysfunctional or developmentally retarded.  They are just, “poor communicators”.  Frankly that could be 99% of the population, it’s a wonder that they only think it applies to 1 in 68 people.  Now Simon [the journalist who was criticizing me], who clearly isn’t autistic because he excels at communicating his ignorance says the following;

“The stereotype has been fully embraced by many software companies.”

Right… because the CONDITION IS A STEREOTYPE.  It’s just a collection of attributes that we arbitrarily ascribe to people and call “Aspberger’s”.  But since Simon is confused by English sentence structure he fails to grasp that the STEREOTYPE perfectly and consistently applies specifically to Asperger’s-Engineers… not just anybody diagnosed with Asperger’s or Autism.  The word was coined as a medical term in 1994, just 22 years ago.  I had been HIRING Asperger’s engineers (nerds) for almost a decade before they even FABRICATED the term.  Prior to the recent invention of the term, I came to be familiar with the same set of symptoms under entirely different circumstances.

…

The sad thing is that a great number of “normal” parents have these kids and have no idea what they are or how to raise them.  Somebody diagnoses them with Asperger’s or ADD and the parents proceed to raise the kids thinking he/she is some kind of retard.

Asperger’s thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  A kid has a bit of trouble socializing in grade school, and instead of leaving him to his own devices to play D&D and maybe pick up social skills when he’s ready for it, we diagnose him as having a “learning disability”.  Then we put him into counselling.  Then we medicate him.  Then we further isolate and ostracize him from “normal” people who are only “normal” because they’re addicted to pornography and celebrity gossip.

We don’t know what it is, but we can sure as Hell treat it, can’t we?  If he gets better – it proves that psychology works!  If he stagnates – it proves the diagnosis correct!  Psychology now has one more client, the State has one more dependent, and the kid has one more excuse for failing at life; on the macro level, another piece of straw is tossed onto the camel’s back.

With Sociology the tune is slightly different, but the song remains the same.  All of our conversations revolve around symptoms, never the cause.  When discussing poverty, we never points out the root causes which stem from the individual; that poor moral choices are what start the cycle in the first place.  Instead we create a welfare system that’s just as addictive and destructive as an SSRI.  We do the same thing with single motherhood; instead of condemning the irresponsibility of the woman who carelessly reproduced with a deadbeat, we attempt to mitigate the symptoms, thus encouraging more bad behaviour since it no longer comes with a hangover.  The whole field of Social Justice, as originally envisioned by John Rawls back in 1971, completely eschews the causes and seeks only to mitigate the results.  Blacks are over-represented in violent crime?  Then change the enforcement techniques.  Men gravitate towards higher-paying careers?  Then subsidize women’s College attendance.  Immoral behaviour in general creates second-order mental illnesses, guilt, self-loathing, failure to self actualize, poverty, emotional fragility, and dependence?  Build a Safe Space!  Ban Hate Speech!  It is the Current Year!

Scientism – that is, the philosophical application of the Scientific Method to all arenas in life – is a deeply flawed and psychotic ideology.  Science deals well with the objective world; that which can be immediately observed and affected.  Questions asked by the Humanities, however, reach down into our primal cores and up towards the ineffable.

Science can tell you whether or not a certain monkey has status within the tribe, but it can’t explain the deeply held subjective understanding of why this behaviour is noble and that behaviour is vile.  They might proffer post-hoc Evo Psych explanations, but if they eschew their intrinsic understanding of morality, their predictions will always fall short.

Science can tell you whether or not a man broke the law, but it can’t tell you whether or not the law in question was a Good law, the sort of law which would lead to the emotional, physical, and spiritual advancement of the civilization.

At the heart of Scientism is man worshipping man; man trying to define man, and trying to live by the standards of man.  It utterly ignores the place of God; whether that God be the Prime Mover who is behind all things, or the God of the Word who is needed to complete math, or the God of Beauty who saw that it was good, or the God of Justice who calls upon man to do his duty.  The follower of Scientism winds up spinning in circles and chasing his own tail, swearing allegiance to tautological systems which always have a remainder when you calculate them through.

Sometimes the remainder is a young man with ADD, whose brain is destroyed by Ritalin.  Sometimes it’s an entire generation, destroyed through their parents’ hedonism.  And sometimes it’s millions upon millions of inconvenient people who, so long as they remain alive, will continue to hold back the Revolution.

The ‘etiology’ of an illness refers to its cause; by pointing out that the illness has a cause; it reaches down, towards God the Prime Mover.  It also implies that the cause was disordered – that it was wrong, in and of itself, and thus reaches up towards God the Judge.

The true study of the Humanities – whether it be History, Literature, Psychology, or Politics – ultimately forces the student to confront ugly truths about themselves.  Their own shortcomings, their own disordered behaviour, and their own propensity to choose venal, callow, expediency over what it moral, healthy, and true.  It is a bracing reminder that we must live our lives vigilantly, and that we must constantly take personal responsibility – whether it be for something as straightforward as looking out for drunk drivers on the road – or maintaining our physical health and hygiene – or paying off our debts and keeping our promises – it’s the realization that the machinations of man will not save us from ourselves.  Traffic laws will not keep us perfectly safe, medical doctors do not have a magic pill, and no amount of financial manipulation will fix an economy made up of spendthrift fools.

We have replaced God with Leviathan, the dead mechanical god which constantly malfunctions; it permits us our sins, and promises to mitigate the circumstances, and oh – if we only weld on this new piece, finally we will have Utopia!  But Leviathan is not a perpetual motion machine, whatever his adherents might claim; he only operates when fuelled, and the high-octane stuff that moves his gears is the blood of innocents.

He takes his payment in dismembered baby parts from Planned Parenthood.

The price has always been paid in blood.  The Pagans understood this.  The moderns only pretend not to.  And the Christians, well – we were lucky enough to have someone else who was willing to pay the price.  The wages of sin is death – and the etiology of death is sin.

This is the knowledge, plain for all to see, which becomes readily apparent when you admit etiology to your study of social malfunction; this is why the Scientific Rationalists reject the study of underlying causes.  It would force them to confront the reality of Leviathan’s tributes; it would dethrone man from the altar – both as an object worthy of worship, and as an acceptable object of sacrifice.

So long as we continue to ignore it, this bloody tithe will continue to be paid.  God help us all; we built this Hell with our own hands.