Toxic zeitgeist

Theodore Dalrymple (a nom de plume) writes exceptionally well and with perspicacity about the human condition. He is credited as being a perceptive social commentator who: “…worked for many years as a Psychiatrist and doctor in a large British inner city hospital and the large prison nearby”.

This is a brief excerpt from his book “Spoilt Rotten: the toxic cult of sentimentality”, a book I would recommend as necessary reading in order to understand better the collapse of social values in the West today:

“The Christian view is much less sentimental than the secularist. The secularist sees victims everywhere, hordes of suffering people who need rescue from injustice. In these circumstances, it has become advantageous to claim victimhood for oneself – psychologically as well as financially – because to be a victim is to be a beneficiary of injustice. This is why so many highly privileged people, who by the standards of all previously existing populations, lead lives of outstanding comfort, freedom and possibilities, claim the status of victim.” (pg 203)

I have no idea whether or not the good Doctor is a Christian or merely an older person who has grown up within a Christian zeitgeist, but I do know that his observations and experiences are uncannily precise and offer insightful glances into the human eccentricities we see so much in evidence around us.