Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Current psychological thinking puts most behavioral problems into classes, the main one being obsessive-compulsive disorder.

There are many degrees to it.

OCD can be as simple as having to have everything in a particular place, not caring whether that place is logical or not, to gross manifestations such as some homicidal behaviors.

The psychs don't talk about OCD much in the wider sense, though, so I will.

I'm talking about OCD on a societal scale. A few examples:

• Bush Derangement Syndrome, wherein the mere mention of the President or some of his activities kicks off in the sufferer a psychotic episode, complete with ranting and elevated vital signs similar to those found in life-or-death situations. About 30 per cent of the adult population has this Syndrome. That thirty percent is also known as LeftyLoonies, Moonbats, Liberals and other less-professional sobriquets.
• Music and film star fanatics. These people will stop at nothing to have even the most inane shred of gossip about their selected idols examined, re-examined and re-re-examined. The TV show "American Idol" is the best current example, with valuable TV broadcast time taken up by what-if shows like "Idol Tonight" that do endless speculation of what the amateur singers and the amateurish judges on the actual show will say or do. The series "Survivor" is also in this grouping, although it seems to have worn itself out for the most part, and is fast fading from the scene (except for re-runs, of course).
• Marketing that deliberately over-hypes a product. The best current example is all this bulltwaddle about the "DaVinci Code", wherein Leonardo DaVinci, artist and inventor extrordinaire, is supposed to have been mixed up in some Catholic Church plot to take over the world (and find the Holy Grail), and how he left clues, or codes, in his works to tell people how it would be done. It's madness, not only because they picked the wrong religion to write the book about (it should be Islam, not Catholicism), but because, like all OCDs, it diverts the attention of the world from real problems.

All of this misplaced attention of our society has a real-world danger. There are only so many waking hours in a day, and if the idle time during those waking ideas is taken up with inane and un-necessary consideration of non-events, then there is that much less time to consider the real problems of the society, and solutions to them.

The business colleges get part of the blame here. I have lived long enough to see a complete revolution in marketing. When I was young (50 years ago), marketing consisted of a smiling lady on TV or in a slick-paper magazine ad selling you a product with simple body language to focus your attention, and maybe a lyrical slogan to wrap it up. Marketing became a big deal in the '60's, so now we have to have a multimedia circus to introduce a new product. The goal is to start a mental stampede, well before the actual introduction of the product, and keep that stampede going, deliberately fostering OCD in the prospect so that they will buy the maximum amount of the product. You could call it the "gotta have it" style of selling. It has brought us pitchmen like Ron Popeil and Billy Mays, to name two.

Using OCD to pitch products doesn't always work, though. The most famous case was the New Coke disaster, wherein the Coca-Cola company changed the formula of Coke (some say to make it taste more like Pepsi, which was eating into their market share). Legions of Coke drinkers stopped using the product and Coke took a huge financial bath. This failure of marketing strategy has been dissected minutely and is studied in every business college in the world.

The New Coke disaster has lessons for us, as well.

It's simply this: it's OK to like something for your own personal reasons. If you like the taste of a soft drink, don't change brands. If you like a political message, don't change parties.

That is called independent thinking, and it's what started this country, and it's what must continue it.