When these are combined in a toxic cauldron it is easy
to understand how we have come to be tragically disconnected from our own
selves. The psychohistorian, Jay Gonen, notes that many suffering from this
disconnection respond with the ‘hyper-vigilance of the haunted, the alert
scanning of the insecure, and the continuous suspiciousness of the vulnerable.’1
Could a better description of disconnection be spoken? The sadness of this
condition is that the disconnection is primarily culturally induced, not the
natural condition of humanity.
Moreover, extrapolating the worldviews, belief
systems, and behaviours of those of us of a European heritage onto the rest of
humanity is untenable, inappropriate, and leads to erroneous conclusions. Much
of our so-called knowledge of human psychology and behaviour patterns come to
us via studies in the behavioural science fields.
Yet, the majority of these studies are inherently
flawed and biased. It is only recently that researchers in the behavioural
sciences have thought to question the potential bias in these studies.
Researchers in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia
did just that only as recently as 2010.2 What they found is
staggering, although probably not surprising. They found that in an analysis of
the top journals in six sub-disciplines of psychology between 2003-2007 ‘…a
full 96% of subjects were from Western industrialised countries, specifically
North America, Europe, Australia, and Israel.’ Staggeringly, this analysis
revealed that, ‘…a randomly selected American undergraduate is more than
4,000 times more likely to be a research participant than is a randomly
selected person from outside the West.’
When these researchers compared the results of these
westernised and Eurocentric studies with those from other parts of the world
they were led to conclude that westernised, Eurocentric culture is weird. In
fact, they were so stunned by this conclusion that they coined the acronym
WEIRD as a label – Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic. It
is an apt tag, as weird also identifies those of us from these cultures as
outliers, statistically speaking, in the expanse of humanity as a whole. In the
Abstract to this research the authors warn that, ‘Overall, these empirical
patterns suggest that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of
human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather
unusual, slice of humanity.’
The writer, political theorist, and researcher, Sarah
Stein Lubrano was interviewed by Rachel Donald (creator of the podcast Planet:
Critical) early in 2024.3 Lubrano cited the research mentioned
above and took the next step. It’s ‘a weird fascination of our weird culture
that we think the self is there and it’s the best and most likely explanation
for human behaviour.’ Whereas, she went on, ‘…people in other cultures
do not think this and that suggests that our sense of self is largely
culturally constructed.’
Where does this leave our understanding of human
psychology and behaviour? Certainly, we have to conclude that our (weird) ideas
of humanity as a whole are flawed and may even be of little use. Where too,
does this leave those of us who do trace our heritage in this (weird) way?
Somewhere along our ancestral path we began to
disconnect from our selves, and we are continuing to suffer the consequences.
Ominously, if Sarah Stein Lubrano is correct, then our Western, Educated,
Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic sense of self is suspect and at variance
with most of the rest of the world. Certainly, our weird construction of the
self differs significantly from that of indigenous and nature-based cultures.
Some self-appraisal and self-assessment would seem to be in order for those of
us living in Western, Eurocentric cultures.
Any self-reflection of this sort must surely begin
with a rejection of our notions of inherent evil, ill-will, nastiness,
brutality, and selfishness at the heart of all humanity. Such notions are
blatant errors.
Holding onto this falsity has saturated our culture
with an enormous array of mental health issues, social behavioural problems,
and sociological harms. The Hungarian-Canadian physician, researcher, and
writer, Gabor Maté, has devoted an entire 500-page book to this topic. The
Myth of Normal,4 according to Maté, is that ‘…what passes for
normal in our society is neither healthy nor natural, and that to meet modern
society’s criteria for normality is, in many ways, to conform to requirements
that are profoundly abnormal in regard to our Nature-given needs – which
is to say, unhealthy and harmful on the physiological, mental, and even
spiritual levels.’ (emphasis in the original)
Writing almost 100 years before Maté, Sigmund Freud
noted this same abnormality. Although Freud also subscribed to a base
nastiness in humans, he did recognise that 1) it is civilisation itself, not
the individual psyche, that disrupts the true nature of people, and 2) the
social ills of the world are symptoms of this. Distressingly, Freud noted that,
given the first two observations, ‘the psychoanalytic approach, or any
individualised approach to psychological healing, may in the larger scheme of
things offer no more than superficial relief.’5
No doubt this, and our weirdness, is why the Jungian
psychologist James Hillman and the novelist Michael Ventura were able to
provocatively title their co-authored book We’ve Had a Hundred Years of
Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse.
Notes:
1. Cited
in Shepard, Paul. Nature and Madness
2. Joseph Henrich, Steven J Heine, and
Ara Norenzayan, The Weirdest People in the World? Working Paper 139,
University of British Columbia, 2010
3. Planet:Critical, interview with Sarah
Stein Lubrano, The Cognitive Dissonance Crisis, Feb 1, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYPBzHLjgw4
4. Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté, The
Myth of Normal, 2022
5. Cited in Chellis Glendinning, My
Name is Chellis & I’m in Recovery from Western Civilisation. p 66
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