Cluster B Society

 

I subscribe to Christopher R. Rufo”s reader-supported online publications, and, I am responding to an article he sent me on 10/9/23. I will highlight what interests me and then comment on it. The title of his article is Welcome To Cluster B Society: Psychological dysfunction is now valorized and embedded in our institutions. We need to understand what we are dealing with.”

 

My response: I know little about psychology but from Medical News Today online, Cluster B personality disorders seem real and are described there as “  . . A person with this type has difficulties regulating their emotions and behavior. Others may consider their behavior dramatic, emotional, or erratic. There are four cluster B disorders: antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic personality disorders. September 30, 2020.”

 

I am not going deep into what I do not understand and am not trained but I am a keen student of human nature, and I believe my Mavellonialist psychological orientation, such as it is, gives me some credence when I say I am not overly awed or daunted by the threat that we are a Cluster B society. I do not deny that the Marxist cultural revolution has spawned a generation or two of sick, narcissistic young people.

 

I have long held, since I likely hold one or two disabilities myself, that no human is without flaw or a handicap or two, some far more serious and disabling than others. Nonetheless, if a young person is taught that their abilities and disabilities are gifts from God, as are the interlocking, intersectional set of group identities that they naturally carry, these traits can be a blessing not a curse. It is those, that non-individuate, that run in packs, that loathe themselves, that group-live, that follow sick secular religions that are totalistic ideologies in disguise, whose conformist followers self-loathe, and worship the elite, the guru, the demagogue that lead their ism rather than worship a good deity and self-realize as a living prayer to that deity, who are valorizing Cluster B disorders. These are very sick altruists and groupists, even if they are selfish, hysterical, theatrical, self-indulgent, and narcissistic.

 

Anarchist indiviudator supercitizens, what we need for the future, these great souls will love and serve God and carry their pathologies, their psychological disorders, their character flaws with themselves all their lives openly admitting to them while refusing to allow their pathologies to be their destiny though they idiosyncratically inform personal choice.

 

A personal of psychological health, healthy self-love, self-discipline, and self-reform will have high self-esteem and divine help so that personal psychological issues are dealt with and overcome if lived with. If the person needs drugs or therapy to get by, fine, but each person, no matter how disabled, can self-realize to some extent, perhaps prodigiously and brilliantly if she pushes herself.

 

I suspect Rufo agrees with me for the most part.

 

Rufo: “There is a creeping sense that our society has turned upside-down. Healthy debate is replaced by activist hysterics. Speech is declared violence; violence is excused as speech. Masculinity is condemned as ‘toxic,’ while men in dresses are celebrated in the public square. It feels as if we are in the midst of a society-wide mental breakdown.”

 

My response: Rufo is articulate and accurate as usual. Speech is never violence and must be completely free and uncensored, and violence is violence, never speech, and it must be vigorously prosecuted where laws have been broken. Marxists are revolutionaries and a system-wide mental breakdown was what they wanted and are getting as a people freed of up traditional culture and metanarrative are existentially moorless so their self-hatred is ramped up as fear and anxiety fill their inner emotional vacuum; such a frightened, panicky people become very sick, very amenable to mass movements and radical themes and will adopt the socialist ideology leading to Communism government, for power was all that the radicals ever wanted in the first place, despite their hypocritical claims about seeking compassion and just treatment of the oppressed.

 

Rufo: “ . . . A strange new pattern of psychological dysfunction has infiltrated our institutions . .  Wherever we turn, that creeping feeling sets in: our society is sick; our institutions are out of balance; our public life has been consumed by a cluster of disorders that appeal to our worst instincts and derange our most vital social functions.

 

What happened? Why have old standards suddenly vanished in favor of narcissism, hysteria and moral theatrics—all in the name of ‘care’?

 

If we have any hope of recovering our sanity, we must first understand what we are dealing with.”

 

My response: This sharp young man lays out his case so well.

 

Rufo: “Every historical period develops unique psychological characteristics that shape public life. After World War I, we had the ‘Lost Generation,’ shell-shocked and disillusioned. In the mid-twentieth century, we entered the ‘Age of Anxiety,’ characterized by a sense of existential dread in the face of the atomic bomb. And 50 years ago, we saw the rise of ‘the culture of narcissism,’ which social critic Christopher Lasch described as a society obsessed with ego, desire and self-image.”

 

My response: Rufo describes those cultural, successive psychological traits of successive generations with some historical accuracy but that culture of narcissism that Lasch, and now conservatives like Peterson, Prager and, I think, Rufo discredits and refute a  generation obsessed with ego, desire, and self-image and likely that trite, superficial version of self-esteem that offends and turns off said conservative thinkers. They favor individualism and capitalism but they want merited self-respect based on altruistic devotion to the good of others and self-sacrifice to avoid devolving into unsavory individualism of narcissism which is really selfish, groupists calling themselves individualists with self-esteem, when they have no idea what they are talking about, and never self-realized for a second.

 

The Randian first hander and the great souled supercitizen of mine will have earned self-esteem but they are fixing themselves not indulging themselves, and my supercitizen is guided by God, so through the vehicle of great, personal, per capita self-care is how all of society is healed, the general good will be met for the most part. We must not let the pathetic, false group-fad egoism that is groupism in disguise, the mass fantasy practiced 50 years ago and today, mislead us into abandoning the ethos of rational egoism and egoist-individualistic values.

 

Rufo: “Today, we are witnessing the emergence of something new: the ‘Cluster B society.’ Like the culture of narcissism, our digital age has distinct psychological traits, heavily influenced by the rise of personal pathologies and the power of social media. For this generation, the cameras are always on. The audience is always watching. And the old narcissism has transformed into hysteria, moral theatrics, emotional volatility, self-indulgence and outbursts of violence.”

 

My response: The camera is always on, so the hyper-sick extroversion, theatricality, the performing for a digital audience has made for an unholy blend of digital age group-omni-presence and interaction 24 hours a day, mixed with extant, powerful, million-year-old crowd and group behavior instincts and drives reinforcing the worst aspects of group conformity, social rank and competing, low moral behavior and the exaltation of mediocrity over self-development and personally achieved excellence. Groupism is digitally strengthened manifold, and groupism and complete self-loathing and evil masquerading as new on-camera coolness as flash mobs use their smart phones so 80 kids can raid a store in Philadelphia. All is achievable. It is no wonder that the kids are sick and malfunctioning. The miracle is that they are doing as well as they are.

 

Rufo: “ Pyschologists have captured the spirit of our modern culture in four specific pathologies that, together, make up the Cluster B personality disorders: the narcissist, the borderline, the histrionic, and the antisocial.

 

Narcissistic personality disorder is characterized by a sense of entitlement, obsession with one’s own importance, and deep feelings of resentment, often expressed through moral self-righteousness. Borderline personality disorder is marked by an unstable sense of identity, black-and-white thinking, feelings of emptiness, and recurring self-harm and suicide attempts. Histrionic personality disorders exhibits excessive emotionality, sexual provocation, and attention-seeking, often to serve a pathological need for sympathy. Antisocial personality disorder is typified by impulsivity, manipulation, disregard for others, and a penchant for violence and aggression that violates social norms.

 

This cluster of psychopathologies is no longer an individual matter, however, to be dealt with in the privacy of the analyst’s office. On the contrary Cluster B psychological traits have begun to shape the patterns and structures of our culture. The scenes of American public life increasingly resemble a Cluster B psychodrama: victimhood replaces accomplishment as the standard of merit; accusation replaces disagreement as the means of settling disputes; false compassion becomes the primary method of manipulating citizens into compliance; and the whole scheme is enforced with the threat of violence: obey, or suffer the consequences.”

 

My response: Rufo understands the problem and knows how to refute digital psychopathologies introduced by culturally Marxist revolutionaries to overthrown Western culture and prepare the young to live as shattered, New-Age socialist groupies.

 

Victimhood is a group analysis with collectivist totalitarian solutions as remedies so we must teach all victims that they are to blame so that this useful fiction will empower them to individuate and find real solutions to their emotional, material, and spiritual problems.

 

We return to open dialogue and debate, and we shut down no one’s free speech, however bigoted or foolish are their pronouncement. Radical free speech and courteous but tolerant, nonviolent debates between actualizing supercitizens would grow knowledge, wisdom, and intellectual keenness for all. We need not feel compassion for others so much as a remedy for the crisis they are in but to teach them to maverize and then they are near unstoppable in their personal self-saving and self-betterment.

 

All sane and non-violent felons need to be armed and trained so no one, private or from the government of from a foreign country will threaten them with violence to make them surrender their independence, their free thinking, and their self-control. Give them liberty or death.

 

Rufo: “For most of human history, significant personality disorders were treated as problems and their sufferers largely relegated to the fringes of society. But in the emerging Cluster B society, narcissistic, borderline, histrionic, and antisocial psychological traits can now be found in those elevated to positions of power and celebrated by our institutions. The new status quo is an emerging leadership class that rules through emotional blackmail and uses the cover of various ‘victim’ groups to impose its agenda on society. If citizens dissent, they are branded hateful bigots, accused of lacking empathy, and sometimes banished from public life.”

 

My response: Where someone is psychologically sick, it is not something to be celebrated and seen as the new normal, or popular, desirable or to be emulated. If the sick person can maverize a bit, living with his disability, fine. If not, he needs to go on social security benefits for life. Our favoring traditional, Western culture must oppose and push back to the fringes the valorization of collective mental illness by the twisted elites pushing this systemic pathology as the replacement Marxist culture. Their guilt-tripping, their emotional blackmail, their canceling dissenters that do not buy fully their ‘compassionate” embracing of victimhood narratives that support the radical agenda—all of this is melodramatic cover, a ruse to cover their relentless power-grabbing, their only objective persistently chased after by them.

 

Rufo: “While these strategies are contemptible, they are also extraordinarily effective in controlling what we think, what we say, and how we act. And they have slowly transformed our institutions into what psychologist Andrzej Lobazewski calls a ‘pathocracy,’ or rule by psychological dysfunction. This has become our new social order. Once a thoughtful observer internalizes this phenomenon, he will start to see it everywhere: the Cluster B traits have been formalized and entrenched in our human resource departments, government policies, cultural institutions, and civil rights laws . . . In a Cluster B society, psychological disorders are job qualifications rather than problems to be solved; ideology replaces competence as a marker of distinction.”

 

My response: I agree with his clear grasp of the mess. Ideology or group ethos conformity replaces competence as a mark of distinction—how low we have fallen.

 

Rufo: “Politics, too, have been compromised. Earlier this year, Nebraska state senator Machaela Cavanaugh exemplified this cultural shift, when, instead of offering reasonable debate, she screamed hysterically for nearly two minutes on the floor of the state legislature, bringing herself to the point of tears: ‘We need trans people! We love trans people! Trans people belong here!  We need trans people! We love trans people! Trans people belong here!’ Senator Cavanaugh’s deranged moral theatrics are a vivid representation of the attention-seeking, black-and-white thinking, and the excessive emotionality associated with Cluster B.”

 

My response: I want people to self-realize into supercitizens but always people should be humble, polite, and courteous and quiet in public and at home. Real self-confidence and deep self-esteem are integral to the quality of individualism or rational egoism that does not require or countenance humiliating but flamboyant strutting and embarrassing oneself in public to make a point or carry the day. That degrades the self, degrades public discourse, and is pernicious to the preservation of harmonious civil society. Public freak shows is not compatible with good legislating or crating sensible public policy.

 

Rufo: “In the new pathocratic regime, emotional manipulation, compassion-encoded antagonism, and theatrical accusation become the staples of political discourse. The goal is not to arrive at answers but to browbeat opponents and make them feel remorseful for denying left-wing orthodoxy.”

 

My response: Thanks to sharp cultural warriors like Rufo, Peterson, Levin, and Prager, we are onto Progressive attacks and tricks, and we reject it all.

 

Rufo: “Where do these phenomenon emerge from? While their specific origins might be obscure the modern university is the primary replication site for Cluster B pathologies. On campus, the pathocracy rules.”

 

My response: Note that professors, human resource people, students, staff, and administrators on campus are now pure groupists and true believers in the cultural, postmodernist Marxist mass movement. They run in packs, they live in institutional hierarchies, so each de-individualized individual on campus socially, institutionally, and economically has a certain rank in that hierarchy. All are hyper altruistic and purely collectivized so their existence as mob creatures renders them devoid of personality, individual opinion or will, and their self-loathing is maximized. Such sick, evil campus clones cannot grow, prosper, or have a future.

 

Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prager are correct in urging that we shut down the lost universities for now to rid society of this plague.

 

Rufo: “Journalist and social critic Heather Mac Donald reveals the basic contours of this regime in a 2023 City Journal essay titled ‘In Loco Masculi,’ where she argues that the dramatic rise in the number of female college administrators –who now dominate campus culture—has led to a growing obsession with ‘safety’ and ‘victimhood.’ Rather than prioritize academic achievement and substantive debate, administrators have elevated nebulous, therapeutic concepts such as trauma, white fragility, and systemic injustice. Mac Donald concludes: ‘When students claim to be felled by ideas that they disagree with, the feminized bureaucracy does not tell them to grow up and get a grip. It validates their self-pity.. . . . As a result, American college students find themselves in the midst of an unprecedented mental health crisis . . . The more we indulge Cluster B-style pathologies, the more we replicate them within our institutions.”

 

My response: Mac Donald and Rufo are smart, wise, see the problem and the need to grow up and deal our inadequacies as individuals, not claim victimhood status.

 

I have Mavellonialist context, so I can point out some potential or actual defects in their analysis. Note that women are running colleges. Note that women governors like the gal in New Mexico (banning the right to own guns in public) and Michigan and New York are such Progressive fascists and then the pathology of women running campuses seems understandable.

 

Women more than men are naturally even more groupist, more altruistic, more inclined to favor group identity, group-values and group-rights as where good people gravitate if they are smart just and compassionate. In short women naturally are more selfless, selfish, collectivist and self-hating than men, on average, maybe 10% more so, so women are less rational, less just, more evil and more authoritarian (Renouncing and systemically suppressing individualism, liberty, gun ownership,, capitalism, limited government, Christianity, and the power to run one’s own life and affairs with littler more than basic government institutions existent, with little interference from the state, the community or peers.) than men are, and men mostly born evil, emotional, collectivist, group-living, irrational and favor living in bureaucratic hierarchies over liberating anarchist individuated supercitizenry. The miracle is how good America is despite the flaws and willful blindness of its men and women adults.

 

Women running universities with now 60% of students being girls with a purely collectivist culture, ideology and authoritarian power structure how could college not be corrupt mush, just cranking out illiterate, uneducated social justice activists, not competent not able to produce anything for more ideology more tyranny?

 

 

Mac Donald and Rufo do rightly tell the psychologically sickened kids to get over it and get healthy and work and get married have a career have babies and be adult and successful, leaving campus myopia far behind.

 

Again, these sickened college kids though narcissistic and selfish, are not individuals chasing after enlightened self-interest of benefit to themselves directly and to all society indirectly. They run in packs and are selfless, but none are more narcissistic and selfish than herd worshipers.

 

I do not hate women. I love women and expect great things from them, if they are exposed to and agree to adopt some good values. Women are smart and can maverize and become great souls as well or better than any man, but their natural low self-esteem, their heightened emotionality, their love of living in groups and hierarchies are a traditional source of them keeping themselves, their children, their men, and their society oppressed, evil, poor, collectivist and Satan-worshiping.  If women can liberate themselves, they will carry all with them to New Jerusalem. If they fail to become individual great souls, there is no future for humanity.

 

Rufo: “Rather than reverse course, university administrators have leaned into this broken model. On campus, students are told that they are always under attack, that their safety is constantly threatened. And rather than strengthen young people for the challenges of life, administrators fight to sanitize the campus environment and shut down any speech deemed ‘harmful’ or ‘offensive’—the perfect recipe for enabling and encouraging Cluster B-style narcissism and hysteria . . . Some right-wing critics have taken to calling this strange new state of affairs ‘the Longhouse,’ a matriarchal form of society that privileges the values of care, concern, and feminine social strategies. In a essay for First Things, the pseudonymous writer explains that women now outnumber men in professional-managerial roles and vastly outnumber the in human resources and compliance, which exerts outsize influence on professional and cultural norms.

 

The Left has touted the Longhouse for years. In her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton confidently declared that the ‘future is female.’ And in a much-discussed 2010 essay for The Atlantic, Hanna Rosin christened this change, ‘The End of Men.’

 

But while some celebrate this shift, our ‘female future’ has a darker side. Contrary to the messages one gets from elites, biological sex differences are real, and a societal imbalance between the two has negative effects for everyone.”

 

My response: the morality of moderation indicates that we need a slightly patriarchal society with all human adults encouraged to maverize as living angels, allowing all pathologies, all disabilities, all talents, all strengths all essential and accidental gender traits, necessary and possible, to be used by women and men to take advantage of their intersectionalized, personal set of group identities and memberships to self-realize in a singular way.

 

Rufo: “Taken too far , overly feminized leadership produces exactly the kind of Cluster B society we observe today: one in which identity is rewarded over merit., victimhood is prized over competence, and antisocial behavior goes unchecked. Moral narcissism become the coin of the realm, and political conflicts are settled through blackmail and manipulation.”

 

My response: I wish to clarify: in a Cluster B society, group identity is rewarded over merit, grounded in individual identity, individual rights and individual superior performance and effort. Victimhood must be shed for self-reliance and self-starting. Anti-social behavior needs to be stunted socially and at work, and if criminal, the police need to curb it.

 

Anti-social behavior and crime of any kind would largely disappear in a world where the right set of good values would guide future youth to maverize and serve God all of their lives.

 

Rufo wrote a brilliant article.