Hypersensitivity and Anxiety Nonsense

                                              Hypersensitivity

Colonel Mordaunt's Cock Match, 

Johann Zoffany (1733-1810)

Photo Credit:Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

We live in an era of hyper-sensitivity, with nuance and tone far more important than 10 years ago. As a broadcaster and journalist, it’s sometimes hard to keep up to speed with what you can and can’t say in case it causes offence. On television and radio, balance is paramount, even when it is patently ridiculous. Polemics are forbidden unless we present an opposing point of view.

When I dared to criticise Meghan for allowing her friends to talk to a US magazine, I was called a racist. It is impossible to make any comment other than adulatory about the Duchess without being trashed on social media. For pity’s sake, can we rein all that in a tad? The Duchess of Sussex even has George Clooney leaping to her defence.

There needs to be reasoned debate in modern society, an allowance that it’s OK to be a republican, that perhaps the royals live in a protected and pampered world. That there is a clear contradiction between wanting privacy but announcing your baby on Instagram – a fake medium if ever there was one.

…In modern Britain hypersensitivity is rampant, a paralysing disease that’s out of control. So many topics are on the “red alert” list on social media or in print, encouraging us to constantly self-censor in order to avoid an unnecessary confrontation that might rub someone up the wrong way. We are in danger of following the pattern established by some of our universities who “no-platform” anyone whose views could be “upsetting” – i.e. not held by the politically correct students.

(Janet Street-Porter, The i, 2019)

As a broadcaster and journalist is it not your duty to say how things are even if it does cause offence? If you are a member of the social media brigade should you not assume that some of your views are going, in your words, to be trashed? 

Anxiety

Beata Beatrix, 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, (1828-1882)

Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

…Anxiety is our civilisation’s curse: it would be surprising if children didn’t pick it up, and we adults should acknowledge our responsibility. Some days exposure to all media and regulation feels as if we are being overseen by a malevolent tyrant who has decided that people must not relax. “Keep ‘em scared, keep ‘em guilty!”

The message emanates not only from news bulletins with their moralising and generalising commentary. It infects every genre: documentaries, violently paranoid crime dramas, angry contemptuous satire, despairing think pieces. With every breath we are reminded of looming environmental disaster, pollution, threats to health from every conceivable foodstuff, street crime, foreign malevolence, terrorism, digital spying, financial instability and the prospect of a destitute old age. “Keep ‘em scared, keep ‘em guilty.”

The public conversation barely acknowledges the dull truths: that most of us aren’t desperate, most fellow citizens are reasonably kindly inclined, and our health and its services are better than earlier generations dreamed of. Even in the private sphere there is no rest from niggling anxiety: are we unfashionable, ludicrous, ugly, fat, unfit, wrinkled? Have we failed to acquire the latest "must have" or alternatively do we have so much we have personally ruined the planet? Should we spend hours on a Marie Kondu declutter, and if so, how to recycle our rejects without guilt.

Are we likely, quite accidentally, to end our career and reputation in an instant by saying or doing something that might be taken as racist, abusive, misogynist, ableist, white privileged, transphobic, homophobic? Oh, and are we looking after our mental health? Why aren’t we happy and positive every day – are we ill? If for a moment we reckon that life is a decent dry joke, science a hopeful marvel and our friends and family love us warts and all does that make us disgustingly complacent? 

…As for the lesser but corrosive anxieties we [the media] cause – the envious froth of fashion, showbiz, celebrity, and competitive interior decoration – for heaven’s sake, we’re only trying to entertain! Or, in the case of advertisers, to sell stuff. You don't have to pay attention. 

Yet that isn’t always easy: we are beasts driven by a primitive instinct to keep up and fit in with the herd, and to keep checking every horizon to be prepared for flight or fight. Few of us with this animal instinct feel like predators: the rest of us are more like prey, trembling baby rabbits in a world of cats and foxes. Or, in our case pandemics, tumours, killer robots, Alzheimer’s, jihadists, obesity, extinction, the far right, the far left, Trump, King Jong-un, … personal humiliation…

No wonder the children pick it up. Especially when they are constantly assured that their generation will be poorer than ours and that exam grades are the basis of everything.

The bassline throb of anxiety distorts the gentler melodies of pleasure. Anxiety needs to be challenged, set in proportion, firmly left downstairs at night alongside the smartphone and the TV. Optimism, hope and energy need to be fed and shared. Yet how many of us put proper effort into that?

(Libby Purves, The Times, 2019)

Well Libby, where do I start with this?

 Are we unfashionable, ludicrous, ugly, fat, unfit, wrinkled? Yes, to most.

Have we failed to acquire the latest “must have”? Yes.

Do we have so much we have personally ruined the planet? No.

Should we spend hours on a Marie Kondo declutter, and if so, how to recycle our rejects without guilt. Who is Marie Kondo? I don’t recycle all my rejects and don’t feel guilty about this.

Are we likely, quite accidentally, to end our career and reputation in an instant by saying or doing something that might be taken as racist, abusive, misogynist, ableist, white privileged, transphobic, homophobic? No doubt some will think these things about me.

Oh, and are we looking after our mental health? I have no idea.

Why aren’t we happy and positive every day. Do we have any control over that?

Our friends and family love us warts and all - does that make us disgustingly complacent?

Guilty, disgustingly complacent.

The envious froth of fashion – You’re right. Complete and utter froth.

 Showbiz, celebrity, and competitive interior decoration. Let’s stick with froth – such a good word.

Or, in the case of advertisers, to sell stuff. You don’t have to pay attention. Too true. Use the remote to erase advertisements on TV. If reading turn the page when they appear.

We are beasts driven by a primitive instinct to keep up and fit in with the herd. I don’t know if you’re right there, Libby. Perhaps as children we are.

Anxiety needs to be challenged, set in proportion, firmly left downstairs at night alongside the smartphone and the TV. Optimism, hope and energy need to be fed and shared.

Should I be anxious if I am not anxious? Optimism, hope and energy need to be tempered with their opposites – the glass half full is still half empty.