A recent article in the Hillsdale College Imprimis May/June 2014 publication was adapted from a speech delivered
by Dr. Anthony Daniels entitled "The Worldview that Makes the
Underclass." In this speech, Dr. Daniels, who also writes under the
penname of Theodore Dalrymple, revealed some startling facts he discovered during
his years as a doctor and psychiatrist in Birmingham, England. Here are
just a few to chew on:
"Everyone lived in households with a shifting cast of members, rather than in families."
"If there was an adult male resident, he was generally a bird of passage with a residence of his own somewhere else."
"To ask a child who his father was had become an almost indelicate question. Sometimes the child would reply, 'Do you mean my father at the moment?'"
"By the time they are 15 or 16, twice as many children in Britain have a television as have a biological father living at home."
While these fact are
certainly startling to those of more conventional sensibilities, here are two
statements that demonstrate the depth to which our culture has reduced the
sense of responsibility:
"Few homes were without televisions with screens as large as a cinema—sometimes more than one—and they were never turned off, . . . But what was curious was that these homes often had no means of cooking a meal, or any evidence of a meal ever having been cooked beyond the use of a microwave, and no place at which a meal could have been eaten in a family fashion."
"Surveys have shown that a fifth of British children do not eat a meal more than once a week with another member of their household, and many homes do not have a dining table."
With this as a backdrop,
Dr. Daniels proceeds to share that what people mean is often not what they say.
One must take heed to the way something is expressed to derive the
subtleties of what is being said. His example involved a murderer saying
of his/her action, "the knife went in," rather than "I stabbed
him/her." Semantics? Think about the implication. Dr.
Daniel asserts, "it implied that it was the knife that guided the hand
rather than the hand that guided the knife." Why would one seek to
separate the intent and the action? One logical explanation is that the
individual sought to remove, or seriously diminish, personal responsibility for
what happened.
Such is the case when
someone claims that substance abuse, physical abuse, or some other moral impropriety
is a “disease” for which there is no cure, but merely an ability to mitigate
consequences through interventions, replacement medication, or some form of
self-help support. Dr. Daniel states, “In the United States, the National
Institute of Drug Abuse defines addiction quite baldly as a chronic relapsing
brain disease—and nothing else. I hesitate to say it, but this seems to me
straightforwardly a lie, told to willing dupes in order to raise funds from the
federal government.”
He further clarifies, “Be
that as it may, the impression has been assiduously created and peddled among
the addicts that they are the helpless victims of something that is beyond
their own control, which means that they need the technical assistance of what
amounts to a substantial bureaucratic apparatus to overcome it.”
What place does
responsibility play? Dr. Daniel contends,
“. . . the whole basis of the supposed treatment for their supposed disease is
rooted in lies and misconceptions.” He
states that research has demonstrated that most addicts spend at least 18
months abusing heroin sporadically before they become “addicted.” All during the intermittent use, the abuser
is well aware of the consequences of heroin use. Daniels concludes, “In other words, they show
considerable determination in becoming addicts:
It is something, for whatever reason, that they want to become. It is
something they do, rather than something that happens to them.”
Just as Dr. Daniels’
examples of the poor communities in Birmingham, England demonstrate the social
results of a lack of responsibility, so a life wasted in the mire of substance
abuse demonstrates the consequence that results when one fails to accept
responsibility for his/her own actions relating to the use of mind-altering
substances in an illicit or illegal manner.
Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.
