It's not me. It's you

What's wrong with this world? The answer I keep coming back to is that we let psychiatrists run it, not pilots.

Why is that a problem, if so? Well, psychiatrists believe that blaming yourself is sick; it's something to cure. Pilots believe blaming yourself before anyone else is healthy; it's something to encourage.

A psychiatrist tries to assure his patient that things aren't his fault; a pilot resists the temptation to exclude anything from being his fault, at least potentially. A shrink wants you to go easy on yourself, including your vices; a flight instructor urges you not to be complacent even about your virtues.

A distraught man -- so the story goes -- complains to his doctor about wetting his bed. There's nothing wrong with him physically, so the doctor sends him to a psychiatrist. A few weeks later the patient calls back with effusive thanks.

"Your shrink is a miracle worker. You remember how upset I was? Well, he cured me completely."

"Great -- so you're not wetting your bed anymore?"

"Oh, I am, I am," replies the patient, "but now I am proud of it."

I'm not belittling the psychiatrist's achievement, if the story is true. However, the attitude it encourages makes us what we are: A generation proud of fouling our own nests.

Some of us have become incapable of ever suspecting a flaw in our performance, and ascribe all expressions of disapproval to the malice or prejudice of others. This may be a necessary defence mechanism for the fragile, I suppose; a kind of mild, sub-clinical paranoia that doesn't prevent them from functioning, but removes any danger of them ever having to face reality.

Here's a story that isn't apocryphal. In the late 1970s, a writer complained in a Toronto magazine about the public's attitude toward female drivers.

"When my husband is driving the car we usually get to our destination without incident," she wrote, "but when I'm driving at least one driver will honk, yell, or shake his fist at us."

She was convinced that her experience showed how prejudiced people were against women. It never occurred to her that if she couldn't drive from point A to B without somebody yelling and honking at her, the problem may be her driving.

Needless to say, defence mechanisms for the fragile often look like character defects to independent observers. But whether character defect or personality trait in individuals, blame-deflection honed to a fine art makes it ideal for socio-political movements. True believers shape, channel and structure blame-deflection until it's elevated to the profound insight: "It's their fault, not mine!"

About 10 years ago, news agencies reported a lady driving 18 kilometres the wrong way on France's A62 motorway linking Toulouse and Bordeaux. Rather remarkably, she managed to go the entire distance without a mishap. Eighteen vehicles weren't so lucky. They were involved in seven collisions, as motorists tried to scramble out of her path. I don't know what her excuse was but I'd be surprised if she didn't have one.

Blaming others is common to both men and women as a cast of mind, but men get little institutional support for it these days. Women do. Feminism is by no means the only movement that has elevated defensive paranoia to a central creed, but it's one whose dogma acquired the status of a state religion. Others are catching up, though. All groups -- ethnic, religious, environmental, disability, even sexual preference -- are seeking to have everybody else's political or historical views, customs and ambitions, whether in support or in opposition, reclassified as "human rights" or "discriminatory practices" and either outlawed or made compulsory.

Who unleashes Ms. Wrong Way of Toulouse? We do. A driver who thinks she's yelled and honked at only because she's a woman won't see it as her task to improve her driving, only to raise the consciousness of others until they stop yelling and honking at her. Better still, until they accept her driving as the norm.

The casual observer may see a psychotherapist and a flight instructor walk side by side, but they live on different planets. The first revolves around Feeling Good; the second, around Doing Well.

Early in my flight training, an aircraft tried to enter a piece of sky my instructor and I were occupying at the time in our plane. It wasn't exactly a close call, but we had to take evasive action.

"What's wrong with those guys?" I asked.

"First let's see if there's anything wrong with us," my instructor replied. "Did we make a mistake? Those guys are here today, gone tomorrow, but our mistakes ride in the cockpit with us all the time."

I remember his remark because it was so wonderfully old fashioned. You don't hear such advice from political activists or shrinks. A flight instructor doesn't worry about your self-esteem; he just wants you to land in one piece. If we're in a mess today it's because we've been listening too much to therapists and not enough to pilots. Now, with our self-esteem intact, we're falling out of the sky.