RANKING PSYCH-THEORIES AND PHILOSOPHIES I HATE There is much to be said about the ‘Important Thinkers,’ about their legacy, how we’ve grown from their study, and so on and so forth. Happily, I shan’t be saying any of it, and will instead treat you all to a scathing report on my absolute least favourite products of their vaunted theories. Mankind is not meant to think so hard about these things, lest mankind fall into a depressive spiral and refuse to emerge from mankind’s collective Room of Despair for several decades. I will be accepting zero questions at this time, thank you. #9: Constitutional Psychology According to 1940s William Sheldon, not only is it not ‘what’s on the inside’ that counts, but it’s actually the outside that determines the inside. Making a case for different body types producing different personalities, he identified three and ascribed them traits. In case anyone’s looking for this week’s Weird Personality Quiz, here you go. If you’re round/soft, you’re an Endomorph— relaxed, tolerant, and extroverted. If you’re square/muscular, you’re a Mesomorph— dynamic, assertive, and aggressive. If you’re thin/ delicate, you’re an Ectomorph— introverted, thoughtful, and sensitive. Obviously, the jury’s out on whether any of this is at all accurate; body chemistry probably does have some sort of impact on personality, but so does like a zillion other things. I can’t say if it’s scientifically wrong or not, but I absolutely can say I think it’s stupid and his later analysis of it for delinquency is absurd. Don’t typecast people based on their looks. 1/5 stars for lack of sociological awareness. #8: Nihilism ‘Meaningless! Meaningless!… Everything is meaningless.’ While the Ecclesiastes forerunner comes to a very different conclusion to possibly the most depressed of the 20th Century philosophical movements, it certainly sums it up well initially. What’s life without a greater religious or moral purpose, in the absence of those structures? Meaningless, says the Nihilist. Utter bullshit, says I. If your superiority complex is big enough to demand you have some sort of overarching cosmic plot for your life in order for it to mean anything, then I pity your friends and family. How shallow life must be, to value the people around you so little that you believe you have nothing of worth. Optimistic nihilism is a different ballgame, but the traditional version is the worst. 2/5 stars. #7: Misanthropy If you hate your fellow human beings, be it for their lack of knowledge, inexplicable but insufferable ways, or how they all seem awful, then congratulations— you are a misanthrope, and I don’t like you either.
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You will likely be unsurprised to learn that a lot of philosophers are said to be misanthropic— Emmanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jean-Paul Sartre, for instance. What really gets me about this is not just the outright dismissal of the goodness of people, of family, or art, or culture, or literally anything else that we are privileged to experience as thinking beings (although that definitely grinds my gears). No, it’s that misanthropes are people too. Like, dude, how much do you have to hate yourself to create an entire branch of thought dedicated to it? 2/5 stars, incredibly obnoxious. #6: Brutalism …architecture has theory? Yes, yes it does, and this one is the ugliest branch of concrete box design that you can imagine. The Cold War had a huge impact on the generations within it, and architects are no different. Brutalism took the uncomfortable, threatening air of the late 60s and 70s and turned it into buildings that reflected an underlying concern with exposure and society’s ugliness, long hidden away. Unfortunately, this was just popular enough (and cheap enough) to make it into a lot of Australia’s government-designed buildings, such as libraries, schools, hospitals, police stations, and universities. The infamously ugly UTS Tower is one of these and is a pebblecrete-clad blight on the general landscape of Sydney. I’m absolutely devastated that, as a country, we didn’t get the airy lines of Art Nouveau, or even the geometry of Art Deco, in favour of boxy concrete and a lack of windows. 2/5 stars. #5: Radical Behaviourism This is one of those big thoughts by an important man, this one by the name of B.F. Skinner. He states that free will is an illusion, and that all human behaviour is essentially the direct result of conditioning, either positive or negative. First of all, I’m going to point out that Skinner is a terrifying name for a psychologist. Second, I am absolutely enraged by this because while I disagree with it on a fundamental level, I can’t prove him wrong or anything else right. It’s just one of those things you can’t have a full answer to, like why a friend would get back together with an ex-boyfriend who’s clearly bad for her. There are a thousand possible answers, and they’re all up in the air because we can’t test them adequately enough, or we’re as confused about it as our friend is, despite being in the situation. Life, as it turns out, is troublesome to analyse. Mainly my offence at this boils down to the fact that I Am Not A Computer And You Cannot Simply Program Me. If I’m making decisions based on prior experience in an environment, either positive or negative, then that’s not