By David Simmons
The Romans believed that irrational
reaction to events or circumstances was a feminine trait, and when
they decided they needed a word for it, they turned yet again to that
treasure trove of useful terms, ancient Greek. The solution was
ὑστερικός, “suffering in the uterus”, which became
hystericus in Latin.
The word has stood the test of time,
not just in the European languages but far afield. Out of curiosity,
I asked Google Translate to find the Thai word for hysteria, and it
answered ฮิสทีเรีย. The
patented Davidic System of Thai Transliteration used exclusively by
this blog renders that as histeria.
Did hysterical male Romans not exist?
Seems unlikely, but it’s clear they saw uncontrolled emotion as a
weakness, and – like all doomed empires – subscribed to the myth
that females were the “weaker sex”, and therefore to blame.
So why is hysteria a weakness? Because
it muddles the mind, lets emotion obscure rational analysis. And
without rational analysis, we make stupid, dangerous choices.
But it can also be useful. This is seen
most clearly in the politics of fear, which with few exceptions
determines the world we live in.
There are many recent examples of this.
Brexit is one; the 2016 US election, especially the presidential
campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton was another.
The politics of fear was used
shamelessly by both sides of the debate leading up to the June 23,
2016, vote by UK citizens on whether to remain in the European Union.
And after the Leavers narrowly won the referendum, the hysteria was
relentless: The economy will be in ruins (as if it wasn’t already);
climate change will be unstoppable (as if it isn’t already);
workers’ rights will be unprotected (as if Britons haven’t
ensured that by continually voting in conservative governments); the
pound is in the toilet (as if the blow to the carry trade’s
billionaire beneficiaries is a tragedy anyone but them should give a
damn about).
Another example is Russophobia, which
at the moment appears to be the only basis for government foreign
policy in Western nations. It is sometimes called the new Cold War,
but unlike that old hysteria about the Soviet Union, this time it has
a convenient boogieman to allow it to be personified.
Every time I hear about Vladimir
Putin’s latest crime, I think of Thaksin Shinawatra, the
tycoon-cum-populist-politician who upset the applecart of
establishment rule by Thailand’s Bangkok-based elite. Not only was
he a despised upstart from the country’s mostly rural northern
hinterland, he was a brilliant manipulator of every system he
touched, outdoing every crook in the comfortable royalist elite. And
unlike them, he shared that power with his rural base, diversifying
wealth away from the capital and into the villages and farms of the
common people. They loved him for it, cared little that he used the
power they gave him to line his pockets (name one Thai politician who
hadn’t done the same, or worse), and locked the reactionary
opposition out of power so firmly that its only option was to send in
the troops.
Since then, with Thaksin driven into
exile, every ill that Thailand suffers from is blamed on him. The
last democratically elected government was headed by his younger
sister Yingluck, but the dominant hysteria was that in fact Thaksin
“ran the country” from his suite in Dubai, while simultaneously
making himself even richer by travelling the world making business
deals, “buying votes” for every successive political party that
rose from the ashes of bans by the corrupt courts, and even provoking
a near war between Thailand and Cambodia over a little-known Buddhist
temple ruin on the border.
 |
| How to stop worrying. |
Like Thaksin, Putin is apparently
omnipotently evil. Not only did he “invade Ukraine”, he plans
next to invade Estonia, which as we all know is the linchpin of
European existence. Hence NATO’s sabre-rattling on Russia’s
borders has nothing to do with fattening the only US industry that is
still growing, the arms industry, through lucrative sales to
frightened Europeans and everything to do with “stability” and
“security”.
Putin is also personally responsible
for the Olympics doping scandal. And he “undermined US democracy”
by helping WikiLeaks reveal the dirty tricks of the Democrat National
Committee against Bernie Sanders, and by unleashing his “propaganda
arm” RT to cover events ignored by the mainstream media, such as
Occupy Wall Street and the dangers of fracking.
All this brings to mind a hymn that was
popular a hundred years or so ago when I was an evangelical
Christian, the first two lines of which are adapted here:
Vlad can do anything, anything,
anything
Vlad can do anything but fail.
He’s Vlad the Unfailer.
Meanwhile hysteria, whether naturally
occurring or deliberately provoked, obscures people’s ability to
see real dangers. Crippling economic inequality and destruction of
the environment are the results of a dysfunctional system of which
the EU and both main US political parties have been primary agents.
The threat of war is pushed toward boiling point by those who would
profit from it, primarily the arms industry.
The womb is the source of human life,
and should be a symbol of hope. Should we blame the Romans for seeing
it instead as a source of unreason, a tool of the unscrupulous to
obfuscate reality?
Might as well; it’s easier than
dealing with genuine dangers.
