Blog Awards and the psychologically imbalanced

Congratulations to all the winners and to those who organised and presented the Blog Awards on Saturday night. , it was a very enjoyable event.

It’s always interesting to meet the faces/personalities behind the computer screen. Myself and Gavin had a really interesting conversation, ranging across politics, religion and war with Michael Nugent of That’s Ireland. John Waters also came up for analysis and I mentioned an article that Waters had written in April 2006 for the now defunct Catholic newspaper, The Voice.

Waters was writing about David Beckham’s admission that he suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Beckham had spoken about how he was addicted to rearranging hotel rooms and lining up cans of soft drinks to make ‘everything perfect’.

Most of the article is taken up with an explanation of OCD and how the condition affects people. Here’s how Waters concludes the article which is entitled –

Beckham’s obsession is a God complex.

“But there are ways of seeing such things other than in a clinical context. What is called OCD, if it should appropriately be called a disease at all, is quite manifestly a disease of the spirit.

Yes, it can be tracked in a clinical context, but excessive emphasis on this aspect can obscure the fact that it is one of a host of escalating symptoms of atheistic society, in which the contagion of disbelief is placing enormous and unacknowledged or misdiagnosed pressure on the individual to become the ‘god’ of his or her own life. Other such conditions include alcoholism, drug-addition, gambling, over-eating and excessive dieting.

One does not have to be a David Beckham, and be described in newspapers as ‘godlike’, to suffer from these modern afflictions. And while they may indeed be relatively amenable to clinical diagnosis and pharmaceutical or therapeutic treatment, the result of such interventions can frequently result in the suppression of symptoms while the underlying condition is left unaddressed.

The desire to impose order on the universe and to become unsettled at our inevitable failure to do so is ultimately a symptom of the compulsion to take over from a God we no longer know.

In the modern world, saturated with unbelief, this can afflict both believer and unbeliever. Denied the certainties that informed the serenity of our ancestors, we feel increasingly pressured to occupy in our own lives the throne where once we would have acknowledged the presence of our creator. The self-imposed pressure to become the ‘god’ of our own lives is, literally, driving us mad.

There is but one solution, and it is neither a pill nor a therapy: the idea that there is One who has all power, in whose hands all order is ultimately decided.”

Clearly, David Beckham is not the only one suffering from a psychological imbalance.

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