The Importance of Being Quite Certain

Observed Contemporary Manifestations

(Illustrative, Non-Exhaustive)

Note: The following examples are provided to aid recognition of diagnostic patterns in everyday contexts. They should not be interpreted as moral judgments, but as routine behavioral expressions of underlying stabilizing mechanisms.

W-01 Normative Subject Positionality Disorder

Contemporary Manifestations

Tourism

• Treating foreign locations as “experiences” rather than places

• Asking “Do they speak English?” as a logistical default, not a question

• Assuming confusion indicates local deficiency rather than one’s own unfamiliarity
  
  

Campus Life

• Describing courses as “too political” when positionality becomes explicit

• Expecting international students to explain themselves on demand
  
  

Visa / Mobility

• Surprise when passport privilege is named

• Discomfort when mobility is framed as unequal rather than earned
  
  

W-02 Universalization Compulsion Syndrome

Contemporary Manifestations

Study Abroad

• Expectation that one semester produces cultural understanding

• Framing exposure as mastery (“I really get the culture now”)
  
  

Policy Talk

• “Rules-based international order” invoked without specifying whose rules

• Framing values as “shared” before they are negotiated
  
  

Classroom Discourse

• Statements beginning with “Everyone wants…”

• Difficulty tolerating unresolved difference
  
  

W-03 Administrative Sublimation Disorder

Contemporary Manifestations

University Bureaucracy

• Excessive reliance on forms, statements, and procedures in moments of conflict

• Referring complaints into process rather than addressing substance
  
  

Foreign Policy

• Sanctions framed as “pressure” rather than coercion

• Border controls justified as “capacity constraints”
  
  

NGO / Aid Discourse

• Metrics replacing outcomes

• Process language substituting for accountability
  
  

W-04 Projection-Stabilized Hierarchy Response

Contemporary Manifestations

Tourism

• Referring to places as “chaotic,” “underdeveloped,” or “overwhelming”

• Describing discomfort as evidence of local disorder
  
  

Immigration & Visas

• Security risk language disproportionately applied to certain regions

• “Cultural fit” used as an administrative placeholder
  
  

Media Consumption

• Pathologizing political instability elsewhere while normalizing it at home
  
  

W-05 Reassurance Repetition Complex

Contemporary Manifestations

Institutions

• Annual diversity statements with unchanged power structures

• Rotating committees addressing the same issue without closure
  
  

Foreign Policy

• Repeated “reset” narratives

• Apologies issued without reparative mechanisms
  
  

Campus Culture

• Endless town halls

• No endings, only iterations
  
  

W-06 Narcissistic Injury Sensitivity Response

Contemporary Manifestations

Classroom

• Experiencing critique of systems as personal accusation

• Framing discomfort as silencing
  
  

Public Discourse

• “You can’t say anything anymore”

• Procedural escalation in response to being questioned
  
  

Travel & Identity

• Feeling personally attacked by critiques of tourism or mobility privilege
  
  

W-07 Theoretical Overextension Tendency

Contemporary Manifestations

Academia

• Applying a single framework to all phenomena

• Excessive citation density as insulation against uncertainty
  
  

Student Behavior

• Over-theorizing lived experience to avoid material implication

• Mistaking interpretation for action