Скачать или смотреть The Psychology of Psychotic Compassion

June 2025 marked a dark period in British politics. In one single week a series of events took place in the UK Parliament that illustrated in the most practical manner the concept of “psychotic compassion” as a psychological explanation for the, in actual practice, deeply uncompassionate actions of

British politicians:

14th June – The Government announcement of a previously refused National Enquiry into Grooming Gangs (Reverse Ferret)
17th June – Partial decriminalisation of Infanticide
20th June – Assisted Suicide Bill passed

This video explores the psychology underlying these events via the work of Arthur Koestler the author of arguably the most insightful novel about the totalitarian mindset - “Darkness at Noon” (1940). I use this novel and an additional Koestler essay ‘The Yogi and the Commissar’ (1942) to discuss the nature of today’s ideology superficially driven by compassion and social concern. Koestler uses the image of the colour spectrum of light waves to discuss the opposite ends of the political spectrum with regards to compassion and fellow-feeling and I question how his conceptualization of the Rainbow might provide a new way of seeing a symbol currently colonized by identity politics.

Kathleen Stock Death Cult article:
@https://unherd.com/2025/06/when-did-o...

Anthony Cheney article about Koestler:
@ https://s-usih.org/2018/10/arthur-koe...

British National Gallery’s “Curated Look at Kindness”:
@https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/st...

Images used under the Creative Commons License:
@https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...

Black Spectrum:
@https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...

#psychology #identitypolitics #ideology