I came up with that phrase during a five segment, about the left obsession and obedience to identity politics. i had never thought about this idea ever before, but now i realize its a real, honest phenomenon. (this is me patting myself on my own back for creating a term to describe it).

so, the idea came a few days after watching a Todd Haynes movie called "Safe," which told the story of a vacuous young woman falling prey to the hysteria of environmental illnesses. The tale takes place in the late 1980s, and having been an editor at Prevention magazine in the early 1990's, I know the experience. The "environmental illness" movement focuses on the concept that everything around you was making you sick. At first, it was foods, then it was chemicals, fillings, shampoos etc - then it was "indoor toxins," and then "outdoor toxins," and so on. Hucksters saw this as an opportunity to sell phony products and supplements, promising to "detoxify" your body. People would fork out thousands of dollars for cult-like cleanses and enemas, or long retreats in the middle of nowhere, to sweat out your poisons.
The movie Safe chronicles this woman descent into this toxic-paranoia - believing everything gets her sick until she ends up in a no-windowed small dome - the safest space on earth, where nothing can touch her.

the moral of this story: if you focus on something like immunity - wondering what's effecting and what's making it worse, you will implode. You will collapse into a world in which only your fears matter.
This is hypochondria at its most crippling.

I saw in this a parallel to identity politics. Your identity is a lot like your immune system -- weak or strong ,it simply exists whether you think about it or not. Its an unconscious action. But, once you start thinking about your identity, and focusing on it - what effects it and what weakens it -- you end up in the same place as a hypochondriac. You are convinced everything out there is harming you! Hence the phrase "societal hypochondria" - a psychological disorder in which everyone around you in some way is harming you, and your only goal is to seek a "safe" space -- that small round enclosure cut off from other people.

When you come across someone afflicted by intersectionality politics, by the identity obsession - you're see someone paralyzed by this hypochondria. they cannot interact like normal humans: because they believe your words, your actions, YOUR identity harms them.

You are like the indoor and outdoor toxins pummeling the person plagued by environmental illnesses.

that's my deep thought for today.