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Diagnosing a fragile nation, with Dr Tanveer Ahmed
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Society's approach to mental health is, well, healthier than it was in the past. The stiff upper lip, suck it up, ‘be a man’ mentality has been replaced by a more open and accepting conversation around depression, anxiety and trauma.
However, this evolution has also brought with it some troubling consequences: an unhealthy ennoblement of victimhood, difficulty instilling resilience in young people and a fear of uncomfortable truth’s that need to be spoken. It raises the question, has Australia become a fragile nation? To answer the question, Will is joined by psychiatrist, journalist and author of ‘Fragile Nation: Vulnerability, Resilience and Victimhood’, Tanveer Ahmed.
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Buy 'Fragile Nation' here.
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Transcript
Australia's Mental Health: Fragility or Progress?
00:00:14
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Australiana from The Spectator Australia, a series of conversations on Australian politics and life. I'm Will Kingston. I think most people would agree that society's approach to mental health is, well, healthier than it was in the past.
00:00:31
Speaker
The stiff upper lip, suck it up, be a man mentality has been replaced by a more open and accepting conversation around depression, anxiety, and trauma. However, this evolution has brought with it some troubling consequences, an unhealthy ennoblement of victimhood, difficulty instilling resilience in young people, and a fear of uncomfortable truths that need to be spoken. It raises the question, has Australia become a fragile nation?
00:01:00
Speaker
Help me answer
Tanvir Ahmed: Roots and Career in Psychiatry
00:01:01
Speaker
that question. I'm joined by a psychiatrist, journalist, and author of Fragile Nation, Vulnerability, Resilience, and Victimhood Tanvir Ahmed. Tanvir, welcome to Australia. Oh, great to be with you, man. I'd be remiss if I didn't start a conversation with a psychiatrist by asking about their childhood.
00:01:21
Speaker
It's a fair question in terms of why did I become a psychiatrist? Psychiatrists are known for being, to some extent, the rebels of medicine. They're usually people in medicine on the outer a little. They often feel like they don't quite belong.
00:01:36
Speaker
in the more traditional areas like surgery or most of the things that what's called physicians like cardiologist or kidney specialist whatever it might be. So you do tend to be a little bit different and that's often quite positive you often get quite interesting people in psychiatry.
00:01:54
Speaker
In terms of what you referred to about childhood, the average person who becomes a psychiatrist in medicine, they tend to have a few things in common. One, they're very interested in stories. Here you are on a podcast. It has a lot of overlaps with journalism. A lot of psychiatrists are interested in the arts because they're interested in meanings and myths and stories because it's all about bigger meanings.
00:02:19
Speaker
The other thing about psychiatrists and surgeons often sort of joke about psychiatrists that they're not terribly decisive, everything's grey, and that's true compared to sort of black and white things like taking something out of your body, like cutting something out.
00:02:36
Speaker
psychiatry is hugely gray every aspect of it is if not vague it's not definitive so it often requires people who are comfortable with that when nothing's quite definitive there's no absolutes.
00:02:52
Speaker
And you have to be quite comfortable with this unease and uncertainty. And it has huge overlaps with the humanities, if you like, stories, you know, literature, anthropology, spirituality, religion, all these kinds of things. So that's partly why I was interested in that arena. I want to pick up on one word that you said there, which is that psychiatry attracts outsiders.
00:03:19
Speaker
You were born in Bangladesh. You migrated to Australia as a young child.
The Decline of Islamic Fundamentalism and Identity Politics
00:03:23
Speaker
You grew up in a migrant family in the Western suburbs of Sydney. How did that part of your childhood influence how you see the world today? Great question, Will. It's funny, look, I mean, Australia is full of, Australia and the US for that matter, you know, large parts of the Western world are full of immigrants and children of immigrants. And that does present a challenge because you're trying to
00:03:47
Speaker
I guess you're trying to work out what parts of your past you keep and what aspects of your new culture that you embrace. It is a tough balance because some people go too far the other way. Then it's almost like your identity is a little bit shaky. That's what I've noticed. It's almost like you've got to find a happy balance between
00:04:11
Speaker
your parents' traditions, your past, as well as embracing the present. So for me, in some ways, I had an added dimension because my family were arguably, if not outsiders, they're a little bit different within our community because they weren't terribly religious.
00:04:28
Speaker
One of the things I have written about before, Will, is how through, especially 10, 20 years ago, around arguments around terrorism and debates around that, I talk about how many communities, Muslim communities, would become almost more religious. They'd become more religious
00:04:48
Speaker
after having migrated. So many of the kids like me who grew up in places like Sydney and other parts of the Western world, they often became more religious in it while growing up as a part of asserting a type of identity. So they felt they didn't belong, and this was the arena that they felt they did belong. See, I could observe that, but I wasn't able to embrace it.
00:05:15
Speaker
in part because my parents were never terribly religious and look for a whole range of reasons. So in that respect, I guess I've always felt like an outsider, whether it's in my ethnic community, to some extent medicine. And that's the classic story wheel for people who become writers. You know, like I'm a writer, and as a writer, you're sort of always an observer. So it's not atypical that I've often felt like an outsider, regardless of what
00:05:44
Speaker
arena around professional, social, ethnic group, et cetera. You said that you were writing about Islamic fundamentalism, say 10 to 20 years ago. It gets me thinking, I don't think we actually think about this as much or we don't hear about it as much as we did, say 10 to 20 years ago in the early 2000s and the 2010s. Has Islamic fundamentalism become less of a problem or are there other reasons it's receiving less attention than it wants to?
00:06:12
Speaker
Overall, it's probably become slightly less of a problem in part due to enforcement. Also, I think.
00:06:19
Speaker
many Islamic communities, there's a lot more stigma around it, and they don't necessarily see it as a terribly attractive option, which is a good thing. In some respects, we've been quite successful. That's just not in Western communities. That's also in Islamic communities around the world. If you see terrorism as a type of social protest, I think the prestige of that
00:06:48
Speaker
has receded very significantly, which is a good thing. Our governments deserve credit, as do a lot of governments and communities right around the world. In that respect, it's very positive. But the broader theme of Islamic terrorism is identity politics.
00:07:07
Speaker
and it's about identity, it's about resentment, the politics of resentment, of grievance, of trying to almost fight for status around being marginalized, that kind of stuff. So those broader trends
00:07:23
Speaker
are far from having receded. So in some ways, Islamic tourism was a prelude to some of the wider themes. It was a very major, especially, what's the word, I guess a violent or very visible form of identity politics. But that aspect of identity politics is not receded in any form at all. If anything, it's magnifying,
Victimhood and Psychological Harm in Society
00:07:49
Speaker
it's exploding in an even bigger way.
00:07:53
Speaker
This is really interesting and I want to quote a little snippet from Fragile Nation on this point. You said, modern ideologies such as communism and Islamism have their roots in the denial of the individual and in turn the significance of any private psychological realm. Modern identity politics with its focus on the section of the community who are constructed as broadly vulnerable and encouraged to wear their ties to their group as political armour are derived from similar thinking
00:08:23
Speaker
So my question is, how would you assess the dangers of identity politics in comparison to those ideologies that you mentioned in the book? Yeah, I guess that, I mean, as you just read out, you know, a fundamental thing is the denial of the individual, the denial of individual responsibility. So even, you know, the moral dimension is
00:08:47
Speaker
There's a projection of all types of distress. So I feel a level of pain. I feel a degree of distress. Automatically, that's projected to the outside. That's got nothing to do with me as an individual. That's to do with social structures. It's to do with power structures outside, whether it's government or society, whatever it may be.
00:09:11
Speaker
That's a very dangerous position. Suddenly, what any individual does, especially if you're deemed to be of a so-called marginalized group, you're just not responsible anymore. That has huge implications for the day-to-day function of society. At a deeper level, that's what identity politics, the implications of identity politics are.
00:09:38
Speaker
that individual responsibility, that what I do, how I conduct myself and how that affects other people, that whole realm is diminished. And then you have a very different society where the boundaries and rules of interaction and the meanings of human communities are suddenly very different and dangerously different.
00:10:06
Speaker
This is really interesting. We had a conversation with philosopher Susan Nyman. That'll be out by the time that this conversation comes out. One thing that she said in that interview was, we need to focus less on the victims of history and more on the heroes of history. The reason she said for that was, whilst yes, we do need to remember victims, we need to restore them in some respect.
00:10:28
Speaker
Focusing overwhelmingly on victims we overlook the concept of agency which is what i think you are getting at there my question is what is the there is obviously a lot to framing oneself as a victim today there is there is there is a there is a psychological appeal it seems to saying i'm part of a victimized group what is behind that appeal of victimhood for so many people.
00:10:56
Speaker
Yeah, look, great question, Will. And I think there are a bunch of trends. So in a part of identity politics is you're essentially competing for status in the public realm.
00:11:06
Speaker
And the competition is about grievance. And it is about, I have higher level of grievances, or I have a historical injustice. So people are almost competing over what level of historical injustice do I have. And as soon as you can claim that or argue that, then you can demand some sort of privilege.
00:11:29
Speaker
That's very attractive. Hence, we do have almost a public sphere where people are competing for different types of grievance and historical disadvantage. Thirty years ago, we were competing around status for who had the best sports car or who had the bigger house.
00:11:45
Speaker
How has that changed? Well, to be honest, you can have both. So, I mean, the people who are proclaiming their pain, you know, soon after their proclamation of pain and, you know, acquiring a degree of status, I mean, they'll also pursue the sports cars and the flash house, I suspect that's the reality. But there's a whole bunch of other trends. And you will know through the book, where I touch on that, it left us in this, you know, mental health is a very powerful way to think of the culture.
00:12:13
Speaker
especially as we become in a more less religious, secular society, the language of psychology
00:12:20
Speaker
is increasingly the language of human experience. Beyond it being the language of human experience, it's also the language of morality to some degree, of values and morality. Often the language of psychology also overlaps with that. Some wider trends that have happened in society is the subjective experience has been elevated.
00:12:46
Speaker
And this overlaps a lot with mental health. So suddenly, I guess how you feel in a very simplistic level, feelings have been elevated. And sometimes that clashes with what might be called objective truth.
00:12:59
Speaker
You know, the notion of objective truth has been depicted as a kind of harsh, almost masculine trend, if you like. And as a result, it's been diminished. With my truth coming to the fore. Exactly. Yeah. And there's almost, yeah, there is a gender component to that. I think there's always a feminized component to this is how I feel. And when you say feminized, it doesn't always mean women. It's more a trend. You know, men can also have feminized.
00:13:29
Speaker
expressions, if you like. So there is a broader trend in the public sphere of a lesser threshold for something to be deemed harmful, a wider importance on feelings and the subjective experience, especially if you're deemed to be from a marginalized group and not just deemed if you can convince others from a marginalized groups that acquire status.
00:13:54
Speaker
And then there's this whole notion of sensitivity of harm. And in terms of political philosophy, it's very interesting because your listeners will be very familiar with the John Stuart Mill idea of freedom should extend
00:14:09
Speaker
to the point where your actions commit harm to others and then it should stop. Now, he would never have considered the notion of psychological harm, yet that's become a very major thing in the last decade or two in our society where the very
00:14:28
Speaker
if not obscure, but quite a gray arena of when somebody might be harmed psychologically, especially in diverse societies, you can, I mean, any comment you make, you know, someone's likely to get offended by. So that's really changed the nature of public discourse, where there's constant tension of free speech, objective truth, versus psychological harm.
00:14:54
Speaker
And that notion of psychological harm is really, I think it's limited all types of modern discussion. There's a lot to unpack there, so I want to take a few of those themes in turn. First is that concept creep that you mentioned around how we think about notions of trauma and harm.
00:15:17
Speaker
No, the concept of harm and trauma was initially construed very seriously and very narrowly, but in more recent times it's expanded to cover all manner of agitations in our daily life. What are the consequences of that shift?
00:15:33
Speaker
No, you're exactly right, Will. And I said in my work too, where I'm often kind of challenging people. One of my jobs, I guess, is often doing reports around compensation claims. And it is fascinating to see the change. And it's something I've spoken to about older colleagues, you know, who've worked for many decades and they see the huge change where suddenly just merely having a perception that you've been harmed psychologically.
00:16:01
Speaker
So somebody says something or does something or sends an email, whatever it might be. And historically, there would have been a certain standard that this is an acceptable reaction to whatever incident. Whereas now that is almost shifted, if not entirely to a significant extent, that if someone perceives something as harmful, that is some sort of truth. Like automatically that
00:16:27
Speaker
Okay, well, you know that they thought it's their truth as you say and that changes the dynamics very significantly and Dangerously so and and we say it all the time, you know, whether it's me too or a whole range of cultural tens where perceptions are
00:16:46
Speaker
have become more important than objective reality. And is that because I guess psychological harm by its very nature is more difficult to see and to diagnose than physical harm, breaking your arm? For example, is something which everyone can agree has happened or not happened. It's much harder to be able to, I imagine, diagnose and see psychological conditions.
00:17:10
Speaker
Oh, look, absolutely, absolutely. And I think this is one of the issues where because it's harder to measure, harder to quantify and harder to be definitive about, there's a lot more room to exploit it. And I think that's what's happening now. Often the ideas around psychology and psychiatry and mental health, they will have a significant academic depth, but they seem especially prone to be exploited in the public realm, especially this notion of psychological harm.
00:17:39
Speaker
where as soon as there's a difficult debate, increasingly mental health is often used as a way of avoiding scrutiny, often used as a way of trying to avoid difficult debates and people exploit it essentially. People and groups exploit
Psychological Disorders vs. Moral Failings
00:17:54
Speaker
it.
00:17:55
Speaker
as a way of trying to limit scrutiny. And a way of stopping and a way of avoiding taking responsibility for your actions. There's a very interesting character that pops up in your book who repeatedly cheats on his wife and he comes to you looking for some form of psychological diagnosis for this behavior.
00:18:16
Speaker
where most people I think historically would say he's just a bit of a dick. But in his mind, there has to be something psychologically wrong with him for him to be doing this as opposed to just morally doing things which are not acceptable. How do you go about helping people delineate between psychological disorders and bad behavior? Yeah, look, Tobias, I would say not easily. And in my job,
00:18:46
Speaker
You could raise the question whether bad behavior is even relevant. Our job is often to explain behavior and not to make any sort of value judgment on it and often around behavior, certainly in a legal sense. Part of my, one of my roles is giving opinions for courts and what they're most interested in
00:19:11
Speaker
is does this person have a set of behaviours that is modifiable if they undertake some sort of treatment? Now that doesn't always completely overlap with a definable mental illness. It might have kind of limited overlaps, often it does. So often I see my job as
00:19:35
Speaker
Okay, so this person's committed a crime. They'll have various vulnerabilities, psychological and otherwise. If I can give the court a set of instructions, a plan that if this person engages in some level of treatment,
00:19:51
Speaker
that the likelihood of them committing another act of crime is much lower, that's often what the court is most interested in. And then the various grey disorders are almost of lower priority, even though you do have to argue them and make a link in the court arena, if you like.
00:20:11
Speaker
It's a good example. On one level, at a personal level, I would say I'm conflicted. Do I believe in evil, good or bad? There is a part of me that does, I would say. I would say I've certainly seen people that, while they might have had a bad childhood, etc., whatever it might be, I've certainly seen people that seem to invoke a feeling, whether it could be called evil or whatever it is, but you can certainly feel especially dark.
00:20:37
Speaker
And there is a part of me almost uncomfortable with some of the legal work that I do where almost any type of behavior, you can almost explain away. And it completely takes away the notion of individual responsibility and the very basis, which is really the very basis of our moral structure. And so sometimes that work
00:21:02
Speaker
makes me a little bit uncomfortable where you can psychologise and explain away everything. But I guess the way I justify it is, okay, it's not that people don't need to be punished, but usually when people make improvements to their behaviour, there's an element of carrot and stick. So I definitely believe in the stick with a little bit of carrot and I guess the justice system is a good place to employ that.
00:21:29
Speaker
This is an unfairly broad question for a relatively short podcast, but I'm going to ask it anyway. You mentioned the notion of evil and morality in that sense. Let's go to the classic nature of a nurture distinction. When you look at what you see in a respect as being evil, how do you reflect on the way that society has made someone that way compared to the way that they just are innately?
00:21:56
Speaker
Look, to be absolutely frank, the vast majority of cases, you can't help feel sorry for them because they usually are from a disastrous early life in some ways. There's a lot of conflict. They didn't necessarily have stable structures of any kind. But the reality is you'll see a variety of people, some people were able to overcome that and don't necessarily commit crimes or poorly, et cetera. So that's where there are still choices
00:22:24
Speaker
throughout people's life and you know ultimately you know you still have to we're not automatons you know we're not just there kind of just as machines primed and so you can still make choices and you can still have free will
00:22:39
Speaker
And that's what I think there is overlap with. I guess a moral view of life more generally, whether you're religious or not, it is relevant when you consider that 10 different people with similar experiences may well make 10 different choices, you know, when they're exposed to some sort of event. So
Marginalization and Identity of the White Working Class
00:22:56
Speaker
that's where, regardless of how technical you are,
00:22:59
Speaker
you know, how scientific I am, I can't help see a moral dimension, you know, to life in general. That's interesting. I will pause there to remind everyone that Tanvir is a regular contributor to The Spectator Australia. Sign up today and you'll get your first month free. And it's just $2 a week for the first year of your subscription. Outrageously good value. Go to spectator.com.au forward slash join.
00:23:23
Speaker
I want to go a bit deeper on a couple of specific chapters in the book. The first is a chapter titled, Angry White Men. There's been a lot that's been written about the marginalization of the working class and particularly working class white men in the US and the UK. The trend has been one explanation for the rise of Trump and for the Brexit vote. Have you seen a similar pattern playing out in Australia?
00:23:48
Speaker
To a lesser extent, I think what you're alluding to, I can't remember if I read that before Trump was elected or not, but it was certainly in and around the time, angry white men. And I guess I was referring kind of alluding to white working class patience and that I'd seen and the sense of exclusion or disenfranchisement, if you like.
00:24:09
Speaker
that some of them had felt. Often there were people who had some sort of physical injury, could no longer work, and just could not engage with the modern economy in the way. Their loss of identity, their loss of status was often channeled through a manner of things, whether you call it populism and types of racism or conspiracy theories, all sorts of other types of movements.
00:24:33
Speaker
So that notion, and the whole Trump rise was very closely linked to that, and y'all don't need to tell your listeners about that, how this major group in society was almost not listened to, and beyond not listened to, they're almost depicted as somehow privileged.
00:24:51
Speaker
yet they were losing in so many aspects of the economy and society. Look, I guess the key difference in Australia, and I think this is a positive in many respects, is we have a more forgiving welfare state. We are less dependent on manufacturing and some of these other jobs. Our primary industry is much bigger as a percentage of the economy. So in terms of economy, we're almost an old school economy in some ways.
00:25:21
Speaker
So that probably also has limited our challenges around there. Now, it's definitely an issue. And arguably the last election, it was almost the polar opposite.
00:25:35
Speaker
where it wasn't about white working class men, it was about middle class women, professional women, which is almost the twin to the white working class men that we're talking about. So they tend
Shifting Masculinity: Challenges and Adaptation
00:25:50
Speaker
to be, if not polar opposites, but they're a marker of the different tensions and the fault lines. That appears to be modern fault line of elections today and of politics.
00:26:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's really interesting. The other thing which comes out really strongly when you write about this cohort of people is how changing notions of masculinity have impacted the way that they live their lives and a difficulty in coming to terms with that. I think you mentioned it very briefly before. Can you expand on how you've seen that play out?
00:26:26
Speaker
It is a tough one, isn't it? I think it's one of the biggest issues in society now, how men try to transition to a different economy, a different social organization. There's infinite amounts written about this, books by Hannah Rosen, like The End of Men, etc.
00:26:44
Speaker
What are men for anymore? We barely need men to reproduce anymore. As manufacturing dies, increasingly there's fewer jobs when male physical prowess is of significance. You can almost ask the question, what are men for anymore? In mental health, this comes about, I'm trying to think in a whole range of ways.
00:27:07
Speaker
One, they're the group at least likely to present in mental health. They're far more likely to come through the forensic system. What I mean by that is they're far more likely to commit crimes when they in fact need treatment, which is part of the reason I enjoy that sort of work. But also, it goes beyond that and it's about
00:27:25
Speaker
How do they form an identity? How do they sustain relationships? What's the right way for them to almost assert their maleness? What's a healthy way of doing that? And that's not, it's not an easy question in today's world where brawn is not very prized. Brains are far more substantial than brawn in the modern economy. So a lot of traditional aspects of what might be called maleness
00:27:54
Speaker
are overall diminished. That certainly presents challenges for all kinds of men. I want to understand, and there's no one size fits all answer here, but what is a healthy way for men who feel disenfranchised to be able to respond to some of these trends? In an age where it feels like men, there are many men, particularly young men who don't know what is expected of them as a society,
00:28:20
Speaker
What are healthy ways to be able to respond to some of these challenges as opposed to maybe some of the unhealthy responses that you would see in your practice every day?
00:28:29
Speaker
Yeah, look, great question, Will. And you're right, you can go either way in this sort of setting. You know, when you're distressed, you don't feel like you belong, you don't have a role in life. You know, you can go down the path of substance abuse or your relationships falling over, mental health problems, conspiracy theories, you can go to internet rabbit hole. So there are a variety of not so healthy options, but you know, obviously a much healthier option is thinking about, okay, well, how can I still contribute?
00:28:59
Speaker
Can i adapt and learn new skills can i not blame the other or the outer what do you want us to overlap with the very original questions you asked. The part of the notion of fragile nation is.
00:29:14
Speaker
If we interpret our distress as coming from outside of us, then that's a classic overlap with identity politics. At a root level, any distress you feel in identity politics is automatically the fault of the power structure or of a different group. That's extremely problematic.
00:29:39
Speaker
Whereas a healthy way is going, okay, well look, it's not to suggest societal structures aren't significant, but any person that presents to me, part of my job is to go, okay, what's modifiable? What is more related to you as an individual? There will be societal and wider aspects, which certainly in a consultation room, you'll have a limited
00:30:05
Speaker
ability to impact me part of my reason for even writing and getting involved in public commentary is exactly that that i was interested in contributing to the broader public policy discussions that overlap directly with the patients i saw often when i in terms my treatment with the patients. Often i have limited powers you know i can prescribe drug or i can talk to them etc and that can still be very powerful.
00:30:32
Speaker
but it still has
Finding Meaning in a Secular World
00:30:33
Speaker
very limitations when I guess the origins might lie in systemic arenas. There's the separate but related question of the search for meaning today. And I think if you look at that cohort of people, I think a lot of them are struggling with how do they find meaning in their lives when say traditional notions of what it means to be a man are changing and also
00:31:02
Speaker
when traditional religion is on the decline in most of the Western world. In fact, in the book you point to a few different things which are almost proxies for religious transcendence today, from alternative medicines to identity politics groups.
00:31:17
Speaker
This is the broader thing when it's very hard to suddenly, you know, sometimes conservative groups go too far and we need to go back to, you know, the fifties of, you know, we're all in churches, we're religious, we do this and it's a Sunday roast with a kind of religious family, this sort of stuff. We're not going to easily go back to that type of scenario.
00:31:36
Speaker
But at the same time, that scenario tells you many of the things people need. And that is often a connection, some level of community, some level of structure. And that doesn't have to come from religion or whatever else. But you almost have to try harder in that type of setting, where you don't have already access to more traditional community, like religion, et cetera. Now, meaning doesn't have to come from religion.
00:32:03
Speaker
You know, often look at a psychiatrist, often you're a fool, but what I tell people is we probably overthink meaning, like just merely having something that you feel is useful. Often that's enough in terms of a work point of view. And then you need a handful of close relationships, either it's intimacy,
00:32:19
Speaker
in the form of a partner. But even if you don't have that, you can still have quite close intimate relationships. And this is where there's this notion of an healthy adulthood requires what's called love and work, that you have close intimate relationships.
00:32:35
Speaker
and that you're engaged in what's known as purposeful activity. So you're doing some sort of activity. It doesn't have to be paid. It could be volunteering. It could be parenting. It could be linked to schooling or manner of things. That is a type of purposeful activity, and the combination of that and loving relationships is ultimately what gives people meaning. Yes, people pursue
Australia's Multicultural Successes and Challenges
00:32:57
Speaker
all manner of other things. It could be more traditional religion. It could be
00:33:01
Speaker
It could be podcasts, whatever it is. It could be all manner of things that you find as a way of contributing and connecting. There is definitely something in Western society. There's a yearning for what might be called transcendence. There's a yearning for myth as a way of explaining the world. By that I mean stories, stories that might seem fanciful for us.
00:33:24
Speaker
still seem to communicate some level of meaning. There's a big demand for community. We know that and often that's quite dynamic, but unfortunately quite flimsy. But this way, I think the notion of meaning, which is a loose word, in my experience, life doesn't have to be that complicated. If you feel like you're doing something useful and helping other people in some way, just that alone gives you the foundations of a meaningful life.
00:33:52
Speaker
I do really like that because it's a very practical way of approaching it. If people are searching for this vague notion of meaning, chances are they'll never get there because they don't know what that ends up looking like. It's a very kind of just a vague nebulous term. Love and work.
00:34:09
Speaker
There are very practical things you can do to get closer to those things. And often that's our job, at least in my work, to sort of go, look, you don't actually need to contemplate the universe and stuff all the time to get to a happier place. And often the happiest people are the people at least thinking about this sort of stuff. But they've got strong relationships. They're connected to their communities. They do some sort of work.
00:34:32
Speaker
that is useful and you can do almost anything. You can do all manner of things. Some of the happiest people I know are little old ladies who knit scarves for their grandkids and their friends and stuff. They feel a sense of joy and connectedness and feel they contribute.
00:34:49
Speaker
So it sometimes doesn't take much. But the combination of purposeful activity, what we could call work, and some sort of emotional connection with at least a handful of people, that's enough to get by.
00:35:05
Speaker
Yeah, really interesting. I want to turn to a different topic. I want to turn to multiculturalism because obviously, given your background and given the people that you speak to every day, you see the way that different cultures are coming together in this melting pot within Australia. Do you think multiculturalism has been a success or a failure in Australia? Look, overall, I would say success. And the key reason we've been a success as we're as we're very picky about our migrants overall,
00:35:33
Speaker
And many of the challenges we've had in migration usually overlap with the arenas where we've been less picky. So it might have been refugee groups or etc. But even then we've been overly quite successful and our problems have been relatively limited. And a lot of other countries around the world will look at Australia and go, yes, you've had its success, but you're just super picky with your migrants.
00:35:56
Speaker
which to some extent is true. And some people say, well, you haven't been terribly responsible as a kind of wealthy, kind of one of the wealthiest countries in the world, taking in more people who won't automatically be able to contribute your economy. So that, you know, that's an argument for a different debate. But overall, I do think Australia is one of the most successful, diverse and tolerant societies in the world. But we've had a unique model.
00:36:24
Speaker
When you look at Europe and other parts of the world, you can still argue bringing in lots of different groups of people is positive and largely a success. But I think in many parts of Europe in particular, they're just a large groups of immigrants that have struggled to integrate. They'll often have higher crime levels. And I guess in Europe, a lot of people from North Africa and the like.
00:36:46
Speaker
So going accessibly to multiculturalism and you know the deep philosophical meaning of multiculturalism is that you have different cultures and you can let them live by their different value systems. I think that is definitely a problem and you know we began our conversation with terrorism. The terrorism stuff absolutely overlaps.
00:37:06
Speaker
with the failures of multiculturalism because underneath acts of terrorism are this notion of we live in a diverse society. What I think is legitimate, even though it's harmful to my society and I'm a victim of my society, even though I get given all these sort of privileges and somehow a historical injustice is some sort of justification of bad behavior or trying to
00:37:34
Speaker
relegate other groups, you know, that becomes a justification. And that, I think that's really problematic. The elephant in the room of the multiculturalism debate is that it is, well, it is accepted to celebrate every ethnic or cultural group with one exception. And that is the white or Anglo-Saxon ethnic group. If people were to come out in, in the media today and say, I'm proud to be white or I'm proud to, to have an Anglo-Saxon heritage.
00:38:03
Speaker
it would be considered to be a very divisive thing to say. You quote a conservative thinker, Ryan Salaam, who said that because that option has been denied to white ethnic people, they're reduced to celebrating ideological causes, free speech, rule of law, that sort of thing, which have been stripped from any cultural content.
00:38:23
Speaker
Is that a problem? To some extent, I think that's where a lot of these debates around white supremacy, etc. Free speech does sometimes become a proxy because you can't outwardly sort of go, oh, you know what? I'm an Anglo-Saxon. I have these traditions.
00:38:41
Speaker
I'm really proud of these traditions and they have this sort of history. Automatically, that in modern discourse has almost a racist edge to it. That's why often celebrations around free speech or protests around it do have this deeper aspect where even though
00:39:00
Speaker
The arguments around it seem, relatively, what's the word, free of cultural baggage in the same way. They do become a proxy for almost, if not Anglo-Saxon supremacy, at least a notion of what that tradition and what that culture and what that history can be exceptionally proud of, but almost unable to speak of.
00:39:25
Speaker
There's another
Historic Guilt and Contemporary Debates
00:39:26
Speaker
red here in this cultural conversation and it's come out very strongly in the voice debate that we are having at the moment. That is the concept of historic guilt. So I would suggest that historic guilt is a reason many Australians will end up voting yes in the upcoming referendum. Curious to get your thoughts on this from a psychological or psychiatric perspective, how do you think about the concept of historic guilt?
00:39:51
Speaker
It's a tough one, isn't it? I find it hard at a group level. When I see patients, I think at a family level, it is significant. And where this whole notion comes about is from Jewish groups and the Holocaust and this idea of transgenerational transmission of trauma. And there is something in that without question. But again, it can't go too far. And it just diminishes the role of an individual. You know, more obviously connected to our past and
00:40:20
Speaker
even generationally, that can have a big impact. And you think of Aboriginal groups like Stolen Generations, etc. It's unquestionable that someone born even two, three generations later is connected to that and affects their identity. Whether that's automatically traumatic or not, I think is up for question. But I think where historical injustice just goes too far is where essentially people
00:40:47
Speaker
who deserve no penalty. I mean, the classic one is in the gender debates these days where you'll have often middle class women receive privileges over working class men based on some notion of historical injustice. And that's a new type of injustice. So I think setting up any sort of policy around historical injustice usually invites
00:41:13
Speaker
a more present injustice, usually invites a new forms of injustice that are far more immediate. That makes sense.
Societal Happiness and Psychiatry's Role
00:41:25
Speaker
I've got two questions to finish and it goes to what I would say, I'm perhaps oversimplifying your profession, but it goes to the root of what you try and do, which is to try and make people happier.
00:41:37
Speaker
You've been a psychiatrist for, what is it, over 20 years now? About 15, close to 15. 15. A long time. Do you think we've become more or less happy as a society since you started your career? Tough one. I guess there's various measures of it. We've become more concerned about the notion of happiness. And I guess I'd challenge you, not so much challenge, but I'd clarify that.
00:41:59
Speaker
my job is not necessarily make people happy. And there's a famous Freud quote. He says, look, my job is to take people away from kind of pathological versions of distress to common unhappiness. So often my job is to help people function better in work and relationships by reducing the level of their psychological symptoms.
00:42:24
Speaker
Now, that may be a path to what's called happiness, but I mean, happiness is in a clinical term, so I can't easily measure it, but usually, it's not always necessarily that people are happier then, although often they are, but they are often more functional and they might be in less distress. So that's often our role in psychiatry and psychology, but you are right at a cultural level,
00:42:54
Speaker
There's almost a bigger pressure on the notion of happiness. And because it's such a loose term, it overlaps with that notion of psychological harm and gives it more room to be exploited in public debates. And that's often the case. But I do think we can be, what's the word, mindful
00:43:16
Speaker
That policy should be geared to I guess what might be called gross national happiness etc but it that's usually subjective it's very difficult to measure and it has huge overlaps with the whole range of.
00:43:31
Speaker
contributors that go beyond what we can control. It goes far beyond public policy, et cetera. So that's why we need to be wary of the happiness debates. Say with the Labour Party, wellbeing has become a big term, wellbeing budgets, et cetera, and that overlaps strongly with these debates around happiness.
00:43:50
Speaker
but there's a lot to be wary about there. And sometimes you can almost become a bit tyrannical and sort of go, okay, you have to be happy, et cetera, whether it's in the workplace or elsewhere. So I'd be very wary
Conclusion and Book Promotion
00:44:04
Speaker
of wading into debates around happiness, especially in the public policy realm. I think there's another whole podcast episode on that particular topic, but we are running out of time to
00:44:18
Speaker
Fragile Nation is a brilliant book. I'd recommend it to anyone that wants to understand the psychological factors that are driving some of the tectonic shifts in society today. And to your great credit, it's written in the most wonderfully warm and funny style. Congratulations on the book. I think you wrote it a few years ago now, but if anything, it is more relevant today when you did write it. You can, of course, also catch a ton of his writing in The Spectator Australia. Mate, thank you very much for coming on Australiana today.
00:44:45
Speaker
Pleasure, Will. I'm also a columnist of the Financial Review. So for your listeners that read that. Go out and get your spectator Australia subscription first. And then if you have any cash left over, please go and sign up for the AFR. Thanks. Pleasure, mate. Thanks for having me on, Will.
00:45:00
Speaker
Thank you very much for listening to this episode of Australiana. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review. And if you really enjoyed the show, head to spectator.com.au forward slash join. Sign up for a digital subscription today and you'll get your first month absolutely free.