Munchausen’s Children
Evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad casts an eye over politically corrected academia:
There is a disorder known as Munchausen syndrome, wherein I fake illness and I go to the hospital because that will garner me a lot of attention and sympathy… I think this hyper-victimology poker is a manifestation of this type of syndrome. I can garner a lot of sympathy by constantly seeing life through a prism of endless victimhood. People respond to that. “Oh, it’s okay, you’re protected here.” It’s hard to argue this stuff with me, though, because I can always use the card of “I escaped execution in Lebanon, therefore you better have a really strong victimology story to outdo mine.” And usually they run away. So this is what happens when people are using their identity for these types of purposes. It’s grotesque.
Dr Saad’s recent lecture at the University of Ottawa can be viewed in full here. A brief taster, with illustrations by Matthew Drake, can be viewed here.
“The Greek word from which “manus” was derived is feminine but has what would be a masculine ending if it were of Latin origin. Or so I was told in my linguistics classes.”
Your linguistics teachers were wrong. 1. The Latin word ‘manus’ is not derived from Greek. 2. The classical Greek word for hand is ‘kheir’.
I am convinced that health issues, both mental and physical, are being used as signaling for a variety of reasons.
Which makes it all the more fun for those of us with actual mental/physical health issues. Any mention of difficulty is taken as status-signalling whinging.
Your linguistics teachers were wrong
Ok, then, why is are all the Romance words for hand feminine despite their masculine endings?
“Illus manus” doesn’t resolve to “la mano” the way “illa aqua” resolves to “el agua” (“las aguas”; a feminine word with a singular masculine article).
It came from SOMEWHERE.
Which makes it all the more fun for those of us with actual mental/physical health issues.
________________
The same may be said for false rape allegations, domestic violence reports, discrimination claims, etc. The hue and cry from the phonies diminishes the empathies for the truly afflicted.
There is, of course, an end point for all of this, but I imagine it may be something quite frightening. Either we collectively wise up and stop the runaway train or we brace for the inevitable impact. I fear, as I’m sure most here do, that the collective wising-up ain’t gonna happen.
So, I again proffer my *sad face*.
Damn you HTML italics!! (shakes fist skyward)
Fixed.
[ Shoots skyward, cape billowing, to perform other daring rescues. ]
David,
Such feats of derring-do rightly deserve tribute be paid. I’m off to the tip jar.
Thank you,
Damsel in Distress
I’m off to the tip jar.
May your towels remain fragrant after even the lengthiest spell in storage.
It came from SOMEWHERE.
On the subject of confusing genders, in Portuguese there are a few Greek-derived nouns that are masculine despite an apparently feminine ending, e.g. cinema, sistema, programa.
” I have noticed that some people now appear to collect mental health diagnoses and parade those.”
Next up: Neurodiversity: “I’m not crazy, I’m a member of a neurominority. You must tolerate me and make accommodate my obnoxious behavior.
Sorry David: I neglected to close that html tag.
try again
Uni president wants to drown the bunnies.
For some reason, this is seen as odd, so Uni president then starts firing staff as well.
Um. I recommend someone take up a different hobby.
—and, if my impromptu html fix attempt doesn’t work, cleaning up the cascading italics as well . . .
in Portuguese there are a few Greek-derived nouns that are masculine despite an apparently feminine ending, e.g. cinema, sistema, programa
Same in Spanish.
It’s el problema, so “no problemo” is doubly Spanglish.
Hal: What was your impromptu html fix that clearly worked?
I tried a second comment closed with an italics-off tag.
Then I tried a third comment with both opening and closing italics tags.
Hal: What was your impromptu html fix that clearly worked?
. . . . David may have to chime in on mebbe doing something, but actually what I saw after posting was continuing italics—so my reaction at that point was Ehn, Oh, well, David will fix. If the impromptu fix did work, the issue with html is that everything has to be in balance, matching, on/off, etc.
So when you go digging into the source code of the page, you’ll see that I started my post with < / i > . . without all the spacing in there, to be the closing italics tag to balance the starting tag from up the page . . . and then continued with the rest of my post.
“everything has to be in balance, matching, on/off, etc…”
Exactly.
“…So when you go digging into the source code…”
Which my aging eyes have ever more trouble doing, sigh.
“…you’ll see that I started my post with < / i >…”
That was the one thing I didn’t think to try. I’ll remember or the future.
Thanks!
Huh. Just spent some time reading a blog by a person claiming to have Multiple Personality Disorder due to being sexually abused by her mother and a cult whilst a child. Normally, I’d be quite skeptical, but…Rotherham happened, and that still seems unbelievable.
Seems like a good place for a “check tag symmetry” function, eh?
Seems like a good place for a “check tag symmetry” function, eh?
OTOH, one could just hit the “preview” button before posting…