Oh indeed. "Oppositional defiant disorder" is a way of using such language to pathologize children who are too bright to be fooled by the hypocrisy of the adults around them and too spirited to meekly accept it and keep their heads down. I've seen some talk that "PTSD" is pathologizing of a natural and expected response to trauma - specifically, "distrust of authority" is listed as a characteristic of PTSD as an "illness" - some people with the PTSD diagnosis challenge this, saying they simply have seen the light, in a sense, because of what happened to them - IOW, they no longer have the wool pulled over their eyes and believe that most authority figures deserve their authority and use it benignly. I don't worship rationality as the "cure" for demogoguery that is used to appeal to people's basest emotions and whip them into a frenzy. A rational argument is neither better nor worse than an emotional argument. And trying to rely soley on rationality ignores the vitally important fact that WE ARE ANIMALS, we have bodies and a complex set of chemical emotions that even the most learned physicians do not quite understand. We don't live in a world of pure mind.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-05-03 08:49 pm (UTC)I don't worship rationality as the "cure" for demogoguery that is used to appeal to people's basest emotions and whip them into a frenzy. A rational argument is neither better nor worse than an emotional argument. And trying to rely soley on rationality ignores the vitally important fact that WE ARE ANIMALS, we have bodies and a complex set of chemical emotions that even the most learned physicians do not quite understand. We don't live in a world of pure mind.