Perhaps I do the profession a disservice; perhaps this profession provides some superior mental technology not available through the old-fashioned resorts to friendship and character. I have yet to see a convincing example of it, if so. Entire nations seem to get on without it. A friend of mine once pointed out, when contemplating the weak ninnies who populate the West Coast: a substantial portion of these people's ancestors took a wagon train across America and fought off savage attacks by natives. Yet a good fraction of these people feel a need to engage in pathetic "rent a friend" behavior. As such, one can only look upon the "caring industry" as a sign of extreme cultural decadence.
The article touches on several important points. For one thing, it is rarely commented upon that people are a lot less happy than they used to be. No conservative can emphasize this fact enough: we used to be a happy people, and we no longer are. Even today, conservatives tend to be happier; this seems to me the ultimate utilitarian argument against "progressive" insanity. Tradition is there because it works. The scale and pervasiveness of therapeutic thinking is also rarely commented upon. While there are many large professions which did not exist 100 years ago, there are no other large professions which touch upon the human soul. The fact that the therapeutic complex is the enemy of the family, nationalism and traditional social institutions is also not emphasized enough, nor the idea that this social atomization was engineered. It is also not often noted that political correctness and speech codes have their roots in the therapy industry.
The age of caring is a more skeptical age, but also a more tolerant one, expressing a distrust of authority and an antipathy to old enthusiasms that wavers between laughter and disgust. It would be wrong to say that people today deny the world; they simply prefer to ignore it, presenting a blank wall of indifference to how people live and what they believe. They prefer meeting their psychological needs through a therapy session rather than through a community of blood brothers.
