JeremyStangroom.Com

Some people have real things to worry about. Not good.

Good news in light of the whole hypochondria thing, they’ve found a gene for MND/ALS.

How Mr Smith came to have a ticking bomb inside his stomach remains a mystery to this day. Ask his neighbours, and you’ll find that they are divided on the matter. Mrs Anderson will mutter darkly about Loki, malevolent spirits and witchcraft. Mr Lush prefers a more prosaic “drunken bet” line of explanation. And as for Mrs Oakley, she’ll talk at length about Feng Shui, personal Chi and Argos catalogues. But on one thing they are all agreed, and that is that the whole affair was A Bad Thing.

Its beginnings were innocuous enough. Four words in fact.

“Stop that infernal ticking.”

At first, Mr Smith wondered whether his wife was talking to him. But as no one else had joined them in bed, it seemed likely.

“Ticking, dear?”

“Yes, that ticking noise,” she said, gesturing at him impatiently. “It’s disturbing my prayers.”

After thirty-five years of marriage, Mr Smith knew better than to disturb her prayers, so he held his breath in the somewhat optimistic hope that this would deter the ticking. Unfortunately, the ticking noise, now audible to him, and clearly oblivious to the niceties of religious devotion, continued unabated.

His wife, Bible primed, glowered.

“It’s not me, dear,” he protested, suspecting immediately that it was. “It’s probably the plumbing.”

“What nonsense, it’s that liver-sausage. You know liver-sausage doesn’t agree with you.”

It didn’t occur to Mr Smith to question Mrs Smith on the link between liver-sausage and ticking tummies, to ask her how the hell she supposed liver-sausage could cause ticking. Rather, as he always did on these occasions, he immersed himself in his favourite copy of Wisden, finding comfort in memories of the sight and sound of leather on willow. Mrs Smith, for her part, settled down to her preferred bedtime reading, The Book of Job. She enjoyed nothing better before sleep than to dream up new and ingenious misfortunes to test the faith of that so righteous man.

In the morning, the ticking was worse. Mrs Smith was compelled to reconsider her liver-sausage theory and opined that forces more sinister were at work. Mr Smith was more concerned with breakfast than sinister forces, but even he began to imagine himself a giant alarm clock. Little was said while they ate, until Mr Smith hit upon the notion that an impromptu alarm clock impression might do something to lighten the atmosphere. Unfortunately, Mrs Smith was not in the mood to be lightened, or perhaps her comic sensibilities were offended, either way, breakfast ended on a sour note.

Happily, there was no time to dwell on the unpleasantness. It was Sunday morning and church beckoned. In fact, for Mrs Smith, it would be more accurate to say that it summoned or subpoenaed. Mr Smith experienced the pull less strongly, but he found his wife strangely motivating, and in any case the five minute walk to Golspie Evangelical Free Church was agreeable enough.

The events that unfolded in the church that morning have been the subject of endless debate and commentary. In the immediate aftermath, everybody spoke with a single voice. It had been a terrible, but inexplicable tragedy. However, disagreements soon emerged, with claim and counter-claim flowing fast. High Church Christians thought the explosion a warning that people really shouldn’t enjoy themselves too much in church. Low Church Christians blamed the Pope. The Psychic Times ran an article titled “Spontaneous Combustion: Explosive New Evidence”. The Skeptic Magazine countered with “Spontaneous Combustion: The Myth Exploded”. Politicians blamed each other, asylum seekers and the credit crunch. Strangest of all, a group calling themselves Rage Against Campanology were keen to claim responsibility. However, the RAC, as they called themselves – much to the consternation of many road users – were later forced to retract their claim when it was pointed out that the Evangelical Free Church had had neither bell ringers nor bells. But, of course, what got lost in all the hullabaloo is that there is no simple truth about what happened that Sunday morning. Truth and fiction, as many first year philosophy students will tell you, have been the same thing for at least thirty years.

The church that morning was filled with a high octane, spiritual bonhomie. Mrs Smith was in her element. She had sung uproariously, arms flung to the heavens, the opening hymn, a disco version of Onward Christian Soldiers. She had listened rapt, as Dave – If my Christian name is okay for God, it’s okay for you – the microphone toting preacher, had explained to them that the Toronto Experience, all roaring and meowing, was part of the chaos of End-Times. And she had joined in the rapturous applause, after Maureen had testified that God had granted her a personal miracle and banished her bunions. And so it was, in the visceral exuberance of the occasion, that she found herself on her feet shouting, “Yes, yes, my husband, my husband,” after Dave had enquired, all basso profondo compassion, whether anyone in the congregation was fighting a personal battle with the Devil.

Mr Smith, it must be said, was a little taken aback by this turn of events. He felt the eyes of the congregation upon him, and imagined himself a lion, tables turned, at a Billy Graham revivalist meeting. Preacher Dave, in contrast, looked overjoyed at the prospect of doing battle with the Devil.

“Mr Smith, will you please approach the stage.”

He meant to refuse, to stay steadfastly where he was. But as the church fell silent in expectation, he experienced first-hand the irresistible power of the crowd. Suddenly, Nuremberg rallies, all serried ranks, seemed explicable. He was aware that in the silence, the ticking of his stomach was audible. He moved towards the stage, on the way passing Maureen, of bunion fame, and reached Dave, preacher and Smiter of  Demons.

“Hello,” said Mr Smith.

Dave peered at Mr Smith suspiciously, as if “Hello” was not the kind of greeting he expected from the Devil.

“Mr Smith, your wife has testified before this church, that you are presently doing battle with the Devil. In the name of the Lord, I command you to disclose the nature of this battle.”

“Well, Dave,” said Mr Smith, “I can only imagine that my wife is referring to the strange ticking noise that seems to be emanating from my stomach. But I hardly imagine…”.

“Don’t!” screeched Dave. “Don’t for one moment underestimate the cunning of Satan. He takes many forms. Just remember the Serpent!”

Mr Smith was about to protest that Serpents were one thing, alarm clocks quite another, when he was bashed in the stomach by Smiter Dave’s microphone. The sound of ticking immediately filled the church. There was a collective congregational gasp, and assorted Hallelujahs, Amens and Praise the Lords. Even Mr Smith was momentarily disconcerted.

“That,” cried Dave, “is the sound of the Devil!” With his free hand, he grabbed the top of Mr Smith’s head and pulled down hard. Mr Smith was bent almost double.

“I say, steady on,” he gasped.

“Devil, I command you in the name of the Lord, be gone from this man’s body. I cast you back into The Pit!”

The congregation was on its feet, many people with arms stretched out towards the sky. They were calling to Dave, to the Lord, to anybody listening, to rid Mr Smith of his tick-tocking Devil. Mr Smith was hauled up again, and the congregation were commanded to silence. The hubbub died down. The Smiter of Demons placed his free hand on Mr Smith’s forehead, and with eyes half closed began, softly at first and then more loudly, to speak in tongues.

“Deshil holles eamus. Deshil holles eamus. Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!”

The congregation, as one, followed his example. The noise levels swelled again, and the drunken, ecstatic mass of the fervent faithful swayed in a visceral union. Mr Smith began to shake and, unable to bear the intensity of the sound any longer, he screamed. As he did so, an alarm went off inside his stomach. The congregation were stunned into a gaping silence. The ringing skewered the air, and then, as abruptly as it had started, it stopped and with it the ticking noise.

There was absolute silence, save for the breathing of the assembled masses. And then, turning to his congregation, Dave proclaimed, with all the fervour he could muster, “We have heard the music of angels.”

It sounded like a bloody alarm clock to me, thought Mr Smith, a split second before the explosion.

Ramin Jahanbegloo has devoted his entire intellectual life to the project of fostering dialogue between different cultures and societies. However, in April 2006, his endeavours were brought to an abrupt, though temporary, end, after he was arrested and imprisoned by Iranian authorities when on his way to a conference in Belgium. His imprisonment provoked an international outcry. It seemed that he was being punished  – possibly even tortured – simply for his contact with the West. In May 2006, four hundred leading intellectuals, including Chomsky, Habermas and Rorty, signed a letter demanding his immediate release. However, it was not until the end of August that he was finally freed.

Despite this brush with what he says was “inhumanity” and “evil”, Jahanbegloo remains absolutely committed to the project of fostering dialogue and interconnections between human beings and cultures.

“The most important thing I got out of my own experience with evil and the inhuman is that one should not live in bitterness, but rather with a sense of humanity,” he tells me when we meet at the University of Toronto, where he has just become the Dean’s Distinguished Visitor in Human Rights. “One should always try to find ways of remaining ethical in the face of evil and to look for the humanity in the inhuman.”

This imperative to engage with the other, to always seek dialogue and points of connection, is a thread that runs through all his thoughts about the challenges of the modern world. For example, his notion of democracy is founded on the idea that it is necessary to engage with people in what he says is “a daily effort of interconnectedness, dialogue and tolerance”. According to Jahanbegloo, democracy is not simply a matter of safeguarding certain individual rights.

“I think the main goal of democracy is to reduce violence,” he says. “It is not enough simply to talk about rights. We have to add duties into the mix. This is how democracies will improve. If there is no way to talk about shared common values, if one is simply satisfied that these have been defined within a constitution, then things are not going to move forwards.”

The scope and effectiveness of dialogue, of course, is a hot topic at the moment. The processes of globalisation and mass migration of people have brought the West increasingly into contact with different traditions, and particularly with Islam. The “clash of civilisations” thesis holds that we’re likely dealing here with incommensurate beliefs and values, which will limit the usefulness of dialogue. I mention, as an example of the kind of event which suggests that there is little room for an accommodation between two divergent traditions, the row over the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that were published by the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten.

“I do not believe that cultures clash per se,” Jahanbegloo responds. “The clash is between intolerant people within different cultures – it’s a clash of intolerances. The Danish cartoons example is certainly relevant here. The key thing is that whilst freedom of expression is a right in the West, there is no compulsion to act upon that right. Just because we have the right to do something does not mean that we should neglect our duties towards other people. In the Danish case, the clash is between different absolutists in different cultures. People who believe in moral and political pluralism practice their rights in a way that leaves space for others. It has to do with listening and learning. It is not about whether there is the right to publish the cartoons – constitutionally speaking, of course it is legitimate – it is about the fact that it is necessary to think about the consequences of one’s actions if one does not want to harm people, and that puts limits on free speech.”

The problem with this response is the standard thought that we should not be constrained in our actions and speech simply because some people happen to find some particular thing offensive. Supposing people are offended by literature featuring homosexuality, for example. Would this mean that it shouldn’t be published?

“I’m just saying that we have to look at our priorities,” says Jahanbegloo. “You don’t have to think against others to do a work of dissidence. There is no need to forget the other. If the Danish cartoons had been accompanied by an effort to make the Danes understand about Islam, then that would have been an important thing to do, but this didn’t happen. It was accompanied by a lot of prejudice towards Muslims. In Denmark, if you are a veiled woman, it is very hard to get a job. That is a prejudice.

“I would say that in our global world the issue of not harming other people is not just about rights. It also has to do with the problem of understanding each other. We live in an interconnected world, so if we want a better future, we have to be more aware of what we say and how we act.”

There is still the worry that Jahanbegloo is asking us to give up too much here. For example, the nature of religious identity means that I could potentially “harm” a Muslim just by talking about the Prophet Muhammad in a certain kind of way – perhaps by questioning the veracity of the Qur’an. Does this mean that I need to modify how I talk about Muhammad?

“Well, you have a responsibility to learn more about the Prophet Muhammad, that’s the first thing,” is the rather caustic reply. “Why should somebody talk about something they don’t know about? And why is it in always in a very satirical way. This is part of the process of demonization of the East by the West.”

This is not a particularly persuasive response. Take, for example, somebody like Ibn Warraq, who wrote the book Why I Am Not A Muslim. Unless the bar is set unreasonably high, he surely passes the knowledge test. So has he behaved badly by writing his more polemical books?

“It depends on the goals you have in speaking in a particular way,” says Jahanbegloo. “If the goal is to stop dialogue, and to hurt other people, then I would say that was not ethical. But if the goal is to reduce violence, then you need to consider how you’re going to engage with other people. Monologues do not make for a good dialogue. I would go back to the Socratic principle of engaging in a dialogue, and not just speaking in one direction.”

This seems to take us straight back to the problem of the radical incommensurability of beliefs and values. It is possible that there simply cannot be a dialogue about certain kinds of things. It is certainly very hard to imagine any real dialogue occurring if one wanted to write a book questioning whether Muhammad is a historical figure, for example. We’re not necessarily talking about scorn and derision here; perhaps just straightforward critical, historical enquiry.

“I take an Isaiah Berlin view about this,” Jahanbegloo tells me. “One can accept that there are plural values, but at the same time think that there is room for shared values or universal norms. I do think that whilst we might have some incommensurable  values in different cultures, there are also values that we share because we belong to one humanity:, for example, in all religions there is this idea that killing is wrong.”

Again, I think this response is too trite. It is certainly true that the Qur’an holds that killing certain kinds of people is bad. But it would be hard to argue that the Qur’an is particularly opposed to the killing of infidels, for example.

“But that depends on how you define infidels,” Jahanbegloo insists. “It depends on how you read philosophical and religious texts. I distinguish between soft reading and hard reading of texts. Fundamentalists are always those who read philosophical and religious texts in a hard way. But, on the other hand, there are those who have a soft reading of Islam; or take the Dalai Lama who has a very soft reading of religion in general.”

But however you read the Qur’an – and, sure, you can explain away the rather unfortunate passages about the Jews, for example, – it is very difficult to deny that  atheists and polytheists are subject to horribly violent sanctions. It doesn’t require a tendentious reading to come to that conclusion.

“Okay, but you had exactly the same problem in the West for many years. These things need to be discussed and resolved. Take John Locke’s Letter on Toleration: it’s interesting that he had no toleration for atheists. If we just focus on the fact that Christianity equals the inquisition, or that Judaism equals ultra-conservative Jews, then there is no way that you can have a dialogue among faiths and religions. We shouldn’t focus purely on the negative aspects of each organized religion. We also have to look at what people do with their beliefs. It is very interesting that in the twentieth century there were two ways of reading Christianity. You had Martin Luther King’s nonviolent way – you know, the Sermon on the Mount; and you had the ultra-conservative way of reading it, where it becomes almost hate speech.

“You find the same thing in Islam. The Taliban and al-Qaeda use the Qur’an for their own goals. They’re not interested in dialogue.”

There is a difference between Christianity and Islam, though. The West experienced a fairly profound Enlightenment period in the 18th Century. Of course, there was also an Islamic Enlightenment, but it was stamped out. There just hasn’t been this same process of mainstream, internal criticism. There is no equivalent in Islam of Voltaire or the Encyclopedists.

Jahanbegloo  is not convinced by what he sees as my overly negative portrayal of Islam.

“I really think there is a big problem with the way that you’re characterising Islam,” he tells me. “We have this tendency to judge Islam just in terms of the news and media – you know, all the rather shocking events. But it is the wrong thing to do. If we want to judge Islam, then we have to go back to its traditions and the history. If you look at Islamic history, you’ll find that there is an attempt to think about atheism and about how to live with different cultures, as for example in Andalusian Islam.

“In addition, I would say that amongst today’s Islamic pluralists, not just in Iran, but also in Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt and Lebanon, there is an effort to create a new Enlightenment. There are a great number of people with Islamic backgrounds trying to engage with this project. The West must try to engage them in dialogue, not simply isolate them by saying that they are just a small number of people. It is tough, but it was also tough in the West. You know, many people forget about the killing of Protestants in Europe. The Western tradition is taken for granted by Westerners. Nobody looks back at the effort it took to get you here.”

But surely this isn’t right. Part of the reason that some people in the West are exercised by this kind of thing is precisely because they don’t take the Enlightenment for granted. Isn’t this why we worry about the encroachment of religious authoritarianism?

“Well, it is certainly taken for granted by those people who just think that secular values are universal values, that they are the best values, and that these values alone should be employed in the political framework of Europe,” Jahanbegloo replies. “Take the situation in France for example: there are five million Muslims living there. They are not Arabs, they are French, and it is necessary to engage in dialogue with them. Look at the situation in Britain – the fact that some British Asians do not feel British and are attracted by fundamentalist views  is partly because they haven’t been engaged in dialogue, which has created what we might call mental ghettos. It is a huge problem. In most European countries, Muslims have been rejected, and they’ve been pushed towards the periphery.

“It goes back to the issue of how you educate people, how you engage with them. There is a need to be understood, to be taken into account. Does Europe want to be a continent of diversity or not? Do we have a monolithic view of Europe or a multicultural view? If you don’t engage the younger generation in the work of democracy, if you don’t help them to see themselves as citizens, then you increase the likelihood that they will be attracted by fundamentalist ideologies. It’s very important that Europe should have governments of dialogue. They have to be flexible towards the new issues and problems of the world – some of which have to do with multiculturalism and globalization.”

Jahanbegloo has always stressed the role of intellectuals in the project to deepen the connections between cultures and to bring about democratisation. I wonder how optimistic he is about their ability to achieve social change?

“The intellectuals in the Middle East could certainly play a very important role,” he tells me. “Priority number one is for them to engage in an inter-cultural dialogue. This is a philosophical and ethical imperative. It is important to embark upon this project before we think about the more pragmatic stuff. There is a tendency for governments just to think in terms of Realpolitik, and to ignore the possibility of a rich inter-cultural exchange. This is why I engage in this kind of dialogue: young people need to know more about the West.”

He explains that in Iran the dialogue with the West tends to take place within the institutions of civil society – in journals, artistic performances and intellectual settings. He is optimistic that this intellectual engagement with young people can drive social change.

“In the Middle East, intellectual ideas have always been effective in the process of modernization and democratization. Even in the Gulf States, the younger generation of people in governing bodies do not think the way their grandfathers used to think. They have a less tribal view of Islam, and a less feudal view of politics. The fact that today they engage culturally and politically in their societies shows that things are different. They don’t want to repeat what their grandfathers were doing.

“It’s likely that even Saudi Arabia will change. Certainly women’s organisations and associations are pushing for a liberalisation. Also, you should not underestimate the work of the trans-nationals – those people from Saudi or the UAE who live in London or who are studying or working there. They don’t just learn about British football or cricket. They also learn about the work of citizenship – about how to be a responsible citizen. Teaching tolerance and citizenship must be one of the priorities of democratic societies.”

I ask him whether his experience of being imprisoned has undermined his optimism?

“Absolutely not. It has helped me to understand that there is no way one can proceed or succeed with hatred, or resentment, or revenge. When you’re a prisoner in solitary confinement, especially if you’re a dissident, you do ask questions about why people need to humiliate each other in order to show their own greatness, which of course happens at all levels of politics. Somebody such as Gandhi didn’t need to humiliate people. He was always looking for the noble side of human beings. It was very important for him to engage in dialogue with the human behind the inhuman.

“Since we have been talking about freedom of speech, and individual rights, it bears saying that it isn’t possible to find meaning in the way we act and speak unless we take the other into account. Also, we need to think of our engagement with the other as a process of exchange, a way of going beyond the axis of monologue and prejudice that is created by those social, political and ideological ideas that stop our democratic engagement with other people and other cultures.”

This originally appeared in Issue 41 of The Philosophers’ Magazine.

I’ve just posted a (somewhat caustic) response to a fairly egregious piece on something calling itself The Free Speech blog. Entertainingly, my comment is currently being held back for ‘moderation’!

 I live in Toronto, Canada. It’s winter, which means it’s cold. Not UK cold, but minus 30 degrees cold – the kind of cold that polar bears complain about.

Anyway, I figured that there would a limit to how often I’d want to run the city streets looking like some kind of demented iceman, so I decided to try out a local gym. No problem, I did a vigorous workout messing around on a mat with a large red ball, and then decided that in fairness to Toronto perhaps I ought to take a shower. I headed towards what I thought were communal showers, but I was a bit distracted calculating how long I’d have to diet before I’d have a body like Robert Downey Jr’s (for about 27 years, I worked out).

Now I did think it was a bit odd that the showers were curtained off, but I was in a state of undress, carrying a small bar of soap, so I wasn’t hanging around. I marched straight through the first gap in the curtain… and found myself in a shower cubicle that must have measured 2ft by 2ft, face-to-face with a similarly naked, and frankly rather startled, man. I squawked, he threw his sponge at me, and well… the whole thing was terribly undignified…

Operation Ore was big news in the UK for a while. It was, in the words of the BBC, the largest police hunt of internet paedophiles there has ever been in that country. It started after the United States Postal Inspection Service passed to the UK police a list of more than 7000 people who had allegedly used their credit cards in order to access web sites featuring child pornography. To date, nearly 4000 people have been arrested in the course of the investigation.

It is, of course, a good thing if this investigation prevents the occurrence of harm to children. Nevertheless, it does bring to light a number of interesting and difficult questions about ethics, the internet and sexual imagination.

Paedophilia is normally taken to mean the sexual attraction of adults to children. The first point to make, therefore, is the obvious one that viewing child pornography is not synonymous with paedophilia. Indeed, it is difficult to see how it is possible to draw any general conclusions about a person from the simple fact that they have looked at pornographic images of children. Consider, for example, that such a person: might be a regular user of child pornography and also might pursue face-to-face sexual encounters with children; might have viewed these images out of curiosity, been shocked to find that they were sexually aroused by them, but have no intention of looking at them again; or might have looked at these images because they were curious about the internet, but have no particular interest in pornography.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that the internet is a relatively new technology. Prior to its advent, possession of child pornography, correctly or incorrectly, was widely perceived to be a good indicator of a propensity to engage in the physical abuse of children. But the internet has removed many of the barriers which in the past might have deterred relatively casual “pornophiles” from amassing collections of photographs. Easier access means that increasing numbers of the simply curious will have viewed this kind of material. In sum, then, the relationship between the use of child pornography, paedophilia and child abuse is complex.

However, it is an important point that the absence of a sexual response when viewing pornographic images of children is not sufficient to guarantee that this activity is morally acceptable. There are apparently strong arguments which suggest that simply viewing child pornography is a moral wrong. For example, one such argument is that the supply of these kinds of images follows the demand for them, and that if people view these images – certainly if they pay for them – they are part of a process which necessarily involves children being harmed.

This is a persuasive argument, but it has its problems. For instance, whilst it is plausibly levelled at the person who regularly downloads child pornography from a commercial web site, it is much less convincing when applied to the person who occasionally downloads a picture from an internet newsgroup.

Also, there is a suspicion that the primary function of these kinds of arguments, regardless of their veracity, is to provide a rational underpinning for prior moral convictions. In other words, even if there was no harm associated with adults finding children sexually arousing, people would still think it wrong; but arguments which show that there <i>is</i> harm associated with these desires perform the useful function of solidifying this baseline moral commitment.

This line of thought raises another thorny issue which is integral to the debate about pornography on the internet. This concerns whether sexual imagination, <em>in and of itself</em>, is the kind of thing about which it is sensible to make moral judgements. For example, if a person fantasises that they are a rapist are they, <em>for those thoughts alone</em>, deserving of our moral condemnation?

Yes, is the answer suggested by the philosopher Gordon Graham, in his book <em>The Internet: a philosophical enquiry</em>. He argues that the causing of an outward harm is not the only mark of a moral wrong. “In an older language,” he writes, “there are gross appetites and interests. People can resist them, fail to do so or wilfully indulge them. Which they do is relevant to moral character, just as whether people’s thoughts about others are charitable or uncharitable, contemptuous or sympathetic, are morally relevant facts even if their outward treatment does not specially reflect these attitudes.”

As ever, though, these arguments are not conclusive. Most significantly, they appear to presuppose what they need to demonstrate; namely, that there <em>are</em> such things as gross appetites and interests where there is no outward harm. Also, it seems possible to come to the opposite conclusion to the one reached by Graham. For example, it doesn’t seem particularly counter-intuitive to argue that the person consumed by uncharitable feelings, who nevertheless behaves charitably, in some sense behaves heroically.

The fact that there are complicated arguments to be had about the internet, pornography and sexual imagination in no way mitigates the harm that some children suffer at the hands of pornographers and predatory child molesters. However, what it does mean is that it isn’t possible to arrive at the truth about the internet, child pornography and its consumers by uncritically taking the tabloid line, and indeed it seems the BBC line, that Operation Ore is about unmasking more than 7000 dangerous perverts.

Okay, so this is a true story, and unfortunately not my finest ever moment. A little while ago I travelled to Paris with my partner – we’ll call her Ann – for a marathon race I ended up not doing (due to being incapacitated by general decrepitude).

The hotel room was bijou (i.e., tiny), but somewhat surprisingly it did have a bathroom, though with a sliding door and a catch thing you pressed down to open it. Right next to it there was a small wardrobe set into the wall – and it too had a sliding door and a catch thing.

Anyway, it was the middle of the night, and pitch black, and I was awake, and I needed to go to the lavatory. Because I’m a considerate type, I thought I’d do my best not to wake Ann. So I slid out of my bed, tiptoed around her bed towards the bathroom. Very impressively, I managed all this without being able to see a thing. I got to the wall with the bathroom, and felt my away along it until I came to the bathroom door. I thought well I won’t turn on the bathroom light, I’ll open the door, close it, then turn the light on, so it doesn’t wake Ann. So very carefully I slid the door open, took a step inside, and closed the door. I was spectacularly silent. Mice were envious. I heard the click of the latch, and thought “Success! Now I can turn on the light”. So I began to feel around near the door for the light switch, but I couldn’t find it. So I was cursing, and thinking it was ridiculous, it ought to be easy to find. Anyway, eventually I decided to give up, and just feel my way to the lavatory. So I took a step forward – as one would. And smack! – I walked into a wall! I let out a strangled cry, but, you know, I didn’t want to wake Ann, so I controlled myself. And in my head I was cursing the bathroom designer:

“Bloody ridiculous people, they build a bathroom, they don’t put the light switch near the door, and then they build a wall two feet from the door. Completely absurd! I wouldn’t build a bathroom like that!” – that kind of thing. Well you can imagine.

Anyway, so I thought, if I take a step to the right then I’m going to get to the open bit, because I could remember that the lavatory was on the right of the bathroom. So I take a step to the right, and…

Crash! I walk into another wall, but also at the same time almost strangle myself on what turned out to be a load of coat hangers! I was in the bloody wardrobe! In the middle of the night. And it was pitch black. And worst of all, I’d managed to lock myself in there (or so I thought).

So I had to call to Ann for help:

Me: “Help!”

Ann: “What!? What do you want? Go to sleep.”

Me: “Help, I’m stuck!”

Ann: “What do you mean? It’s dark. What do you mean you’re stuck? How can you be stuck!? Where are you?”

Me: “I’m in the wardrobe!”

Ann: “What are you doing in the wardrobe!!?”

Me: “I was going to the lavatory!”

Ann: “In the wardrobe!!!!?”

In his essay, The Median Isn’t the Message, Stephen Jay Gould recalled that when he was first diagnosed with abdominal mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer, his consultant suggested that maybe he shouldn’t read too much about his condition. Gould, of course, ignored the advice, and headed straight for Harvard’s medical library. He soon discovered why ignorance can be bliss; his illness was incurable and the median mortality after diagnosis was only eight months. Happily, Gould beat the odds, and survived his mesothelioma, but not before he had terrified himself (though he has since died of an unrelated cancer).

Ivan Noble

This happened more than twenty years ago. Nowadays it doesn’t require a trip to the library to scare yourself witless; just a few mouse clicks will do it. Ivan Noble, who recently died of brain cancer, documented his two year struggle with the disease on the BBC Online website. His third entry, titled ‘Net Terrors’, written shortly after his diagnosis, tells how he was browsing the internet at four one morning, when he came across a site where a patient with the same tumour had asked a doctor how many people with their condition were still alive three years after diagnosis. The reply was ‘none’. Noble, quite sensibly, decided that, for a while at least, he was going to stay clear of medical web sites.

However, there is one group of people who cannot stay clear of such sites. They are the internet hypochondriacs; or, as they have been called, the cyberchondriacs. In the past, hypochondriacs would scour medical dictionaries and the like in order to track symptoms and self-diagnose; now they interrogate search engines and visit online forums. It’s a growing problem. An American study in 2003, found that eighty percent of adult internet users had at some time used the net to research illness related subjects; and some six percent use it for that reason everyday. According to Dr Trefor Roscoe, a GP and computer specialist, doctors are now being inundated by patients with cyberchondria or ‘internet printout syndrome’, as it is also called.

Of course, there is nothing new about hypochondria; the syndrome has been recognised since the days of the Roman physician Galen. But the problem with the internet is that it meets and fuels the hypochondriac’s obsessive need for health-related information in a way which no other medium has managed. Brian Fallon, the co-author of Phantom Illness: Recognizing, Understanding and Overcoming Hypochondria, is in no doubt that in this regard the internet has made things worse for the person suffering health anxiety.

The trouble is compounded by the fact that the information on the internet is unregulated. This is the perennial problem for anybody who uses the internet for the purposes of research. Information is frequently deprived of the authority which makes it reliable. Therefore, if you’re suspicious that the tingling in your limbs means that you have multiple sclerosis, it is a certainty that in time you’ll find someone on a health forum willing to confirm your suspicions; or, if you’re feeling tired, and suspect that it might be the sign of some serious illness, it won’t be long before somebody suggests that you have lupus or some other weird autoimmune disease.

Fallon advises his patients to stay clear of the internet: ‘In a loose sense, a hypochondriac becomes almost addicted to looking up information, examining himself, and getting reassurance from other people. Checking just makes things worse.’ Ivan Noble also struck a cautionary note:

It is wonderful that so much information is available and that patients can be as well informed as they want to be. But it is very difficult to filter that information. It is not possible to start to search the net and hope to see only encouraging news. Along with the details of therapies, diets and clinical trials, there is cold, clinical information out there about how many people die and how they die. Link leads to link and it is easy to terrify oneself like I did.

Hypochondriacs beware, then; the internet can seriously damage your mental health.

Related Post: I’m an internet hypochondriac.