Ciara Kelly: In a western world where we’re desperate to ‘be seen’ we care more about assaults on our ego than on our person

"Because our physical needs are largely taken care of, have we moved on to becoming consumed by issues related to self-esteem?" Photo: Getty

Ciara Kelly

I’ve been musing on a couple of seemingly unrelated news stories from the UK. The NHS says it’s overwhelmed by the number of adults looking for a diagnosis of autism or ADHD — from people who are self-diagnosing from stuff they’ve seen online. And Police Scotland say they’ve been overwhelmed by complaints under their new hate crime legislation. They received more than 8,000 reports that a “hate crime” had been committed in the first week of the law being enacted.

There’s a salutary warning for us here as the police have said many of the complaints appear to be vexatious in nature, with people weaponising the new legislation for personal or political reasons. The more I hear about hate speech legislation, the less I like.