He wasn't taken. He took himself. Exercise: Everytime you remove agency, reintroduce it.
"I am depressed". No, you are depressing yourself. "I am helpless". No, you are making yourself helpless. These are active processes. Let's get more controversial: "I am being bullied". No, you are letting people bully you.
I know this is harsh. I know the societal memes and phrases are the warm place. A sigh, the Soma of "Nothing can be done" or "Somebody needs to do something!!" is not a solution but paralysis.
You can read it in the article: The parents did everything for the addict, he did nothing himself. It didn't work out now, did it? Never does.
(Not absolving the Sacklers of their guilt, that is a separate issue)
Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. If you want to make a nuanced point about personal responsibility, ok, but turning it into a big binary polarity and then blaring condemnatory, dismissive rhetoric at the pole you disapprove of is no way to do this.
You say you know it is harsh—that's already a reason not to do it here. Maybe "harsh" can do some good when there's already a strong relational connection with the other person. (Emphasis on maybe, because people who take harsh stances generally are paying more attention to their own ideas than to the person they're commenting on—but no doubt it does happen sometimes.) Here, however, you're broadcasting to thousands of people over the internet, with zero relational connection. In such a context, it's merely provocative and destructive, and one could even say selfish.
I feel as if I did that. Maybe my writing comes across way differently, maybe my comments are not as direct as they could be - but if that is already too upsetting for this crowd, you will never get any actual critical comments. You will never arrive at any traction, at any truth. Too bad, I expected more here. My error.
Case in point:
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says
I'm sorry - I don't mean to pile on! - but I don't think you did that. The comment didn't include interesting specific information; it was a moral hectoring. Those do not come across well on the internet.
> Nobody replying to me did that. Amazing.
Not amazing—quite predictable, given the provocation. In cases like this, the root comment bears the most responsibility. Here are some further explanations of what I mean by this, in case you or anyone want more:
> > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says
> Nobody replying to me did that. Amazing.
You worded everything in absolutes. If you ask people to take the strongest interpretation of that, you're asking them to just concede that you're right.
I think you actually seem to get it that there's something dangerous about identifying with the problem (e.g. I am depressed) but you're jumping to conclusions about agency from there. No one who replied wanted to make that leap, nor did you offer any compelling reason to do so.
I started writing out a much longer response to this, but it just got very ranty so I'll cut it short. If you insist on such a reevaluation as to why people aren't in their best state, a one word answer "lazy", "attention seeking" (okay thats two words, you get the idea), "weak" isn't going to cut it. You need to continue to ask yourself why that is the case, why are these people so apparently lazy, that they would allow it to work negatively upon them? I obviously don't buy your argument, I think the expectation of complete agency in a society run on hundreds of thousands of people is a bit of a fantasy, but you could have a point. You just don't have anything yet.
Another argument against it, why not turn the mirror on yourself. Why are you not richer, stronger, more popular, happier? Maybe you are somewhat of all those things already, but a wild guess is that your not the strongest, richest, most famous and happiest person in the world. So why not, are you weak, lazy and shallow? Or, perhaps is the truth a bit more complicated?
I have seen the homeless as people to be pitied and helped. Just weak people, down on their luck. So you help them, right?
I let a homeless man sleep in the hallway of my building. He took a shit in front of my door.
Now if I had seen the homeless as what they actually are, maybe weak, maybe helpless, but still people with agency who can be absolute assholes, that wouldn't have happened.
And I hate that this is overlooked. Maybe if the parents in the article wouldn't have fallen into this trap, their son would still be alive.
The assumption everyone downvoting seems to make is that I don't have compassion or as you do, I see them as "weak", "lazy" or "attention seeking" (notice how you are seeing them as that, not me).
I can have compassion and ask them to do their part. That actually solves the problem.
You don't seem to have much interest in answering the crux of my point, which is the continual asking of why until you get to the true reasons why things are the case. Instead, you've just given another high level example.
To be honest I'm not even sure how this new example relates at all. You're simply saying that people can do bad things, which I guess is true, though I don't see how that supports your argument. I don't think anyone was suggesting people have no agency, and can't possibly make any changes in their life, the suggestion is they don't have complete agency, and their life will always be governed by factors beyond their control. Taking your point, yeh, people can be assholes, but why? "Just because" isn't a proper answer, and if it is the same can be used to dispel your argument just as easily.
> notice how you are seeing them as that, not me
Hmmmm, not quite. Your whole argument rests on people refusing to make changes in their life for no apparent reason, and these are typically the words used. You didn't use them yourself, no, but I think it can be quite easily inferred, not least by the fact you called another commenter a coward. Again, following my argument, ask yourself why I thought you would think of them in those terms.
> That actually solves the problem.
Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. I suspect you're right in part, but things tend to be more complicated. Either way, thats not my point. My point is asking why they don't do their part, for example.
They don't do their part because they are not expected to. That is my problem with the "disease" label. That is my problem when talking about homelessness. That is my problem when talking about addiction.
And there are people who make a good living keeping it exactly this way, making bank in the wake of the moral outrage of the "helpers".
>I have seen the homeless as people to be pitied and helped. Just weak people, down on their luck.
They are. They also tend to have high rates of mental illness, which often is what leads them to live transient lives. Leaving them in your hallway unsupervised, though well intentioned, isn't the way to help them. It didn't backfire because people are assholes, it backfired because you operated on a faulty understanding of the situation
Attacking other people like this will get you banned on HN, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. Maybe you don't feel you owe them better, but you owe this community much better if you're participating here. Please don't do this again. Btw, we're specifically trying to avoid the online callout/shaming culture here (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...).
I don't think it's fair of you to use quotation marks when the person you are responding to didn't use that language.
Not is it productive to misinterpret his comment as perpetuating a tired trope and then launch into an emotional rant against something that literally nobody here is supporting.
GP did make a fair point - learned helplessness does nothing but exacerbate your suffering, and taking agency and responsibility for your own mental state is the most effective way to improve things.
Whether the solution comes through lifestyle changes (leaving toxic environment), a simple change in viewpoint or SSRIs, labelling yourself as depressed or burned out and then succumbing to your new fate is never productive. I know this because I've experienced both.
> I don't think it's fair of you to use quotation marks when the person you are responding to didn't use that language.
Which everyone who reads it can clearly see, and understand that I saw that kind of language as a possible response to my question of "why?". I wouldn't say thats any kind of trickery on my part.
> Not is it productive to misinterpret his comment as perpetuating a tired trope and then launch into an emotional rant against something that literally nobody here is supporting.
Theres an irony to saying I "misinterpreted his comment" and then immediately doing the same to mine. It wasn't an "emotional rant", maybe a bit of a rant, but I'm not going to apologise for that. I'm not sure which tired trope I'm perpetuating.
> and the rest...
I think you're missing my point. Perhaps, to use your own words, I could even go further and saying your misinterpretting it and launching into an emotional rant.
My point isn't that people can't change their circumstances, or that self improvement is pointless. Its that so many factors govern these things that its a fantasy to believe anyone is in complete control.
You're not depressed because you just are and theres nothing more to be done, nor are you depressed because you make yourself depressed. Hence why I argued to keep asking why, if you truly believe that your depression is caused by yourself, ask why you would do that to yourself, and keep doing so until you find the true reason.
Just for what it's worth, I wasn't attacking the content of your argument - mainly just defending GP while attacking the tone of yours. What you said wasn't wrong, but it was in response to an argument nobody was making.
I am not entirely in agreement with parent comment, but I need to call false dichotomy on your second argument. There's a whole range of acceptable states between depressed and happiest.
> "I am depressed". No, you are depressing yourself. "I am helpless". No, you are making yourself helpless. These are active processes. Let's get more controversial: "I am being bullied". No, you are letting people bully you.
most people are social animals. it's easy to be an individualist if you have the trait and nigh impossible if you don't.
I see. I had a hard (physically manifested) depression episode recently and had to pull myself by hair and stubborness out of it, so your viewpoint seems valid for the ones who do. But it’s not what society feels. Your anger towards “yourselfness” does a good job, but I guess you’ve been helped, at least instructed on some details. That kid may not have had such privilege, spiralling down on his own (you can’t be strong if you don’t realize that you’re vulnerable, if it doesn’t click as “I allow it to happen”). And one can OD by chance while not being anywhere near the end of that slippery slope.
While advice like this might have been alright if it was in a self-help book where the OP was looking for ways to approach the situation, it is completely uncalled for and inappropriate in this situation.
You need to lay off on the Jordan Peterson. It's more complicated than "clean your room".
> "I am depressed". No, you are depressing yourself.
You're assuming a brain that's in good working order. It's difficult to imagine a different one. Consider that not everyone's window into consciousness works like yours does.
Are you asking why would they bring up a disease in a talk about what is commonly thought of as diseases, or are you asking something else?
> why are you deflecting
This is funny, because you are deflecting in your comment as well. If you feel like folks should not deflect, you should engage with what they say and then tell them to not deflect. Then it becomes more relatable, because it is not hypocritical :)
> chemical imbalance (it isn't)
Depression is a catchall term for many different problems. Some are well understood to be purely chemical (depression unrelated to thoughts, circumstances or environmental factors such as season or food), some are well understood to be environmental: That means "just stop removing agency" could be a way to tackle it, although it famously does not work for most people. Why do you suppose your answer does not suffice for most? Do you feel this is evidence of yet more weakness?
It seems to me you do not enjoy one-dimensional answers to your own thoughts, so why do you insist on having them about other people?
> who sells that pill
You might say the same thing about the smallpox vaccine: Someone sells it. Following your implied point: Perhaps this means that it is not a problem, clearly money changes hands so perhaps there is a profit motive (and potentially this means it is the only motive and potentially that means the requirements are fabricated. That is quite a leap!). While it is reasonable to follow such a thought process, perhaps in this case it does not suffice to follow it, recognise a potential problem and dismiss the original solution entirely. Mostly because if you talked to even-handed professionals (many of whom have similar concerns as yours, if a bit more nuanced by practical experience and what I would hesitantly call empathy), you might find that folks have considered these questions (and do every single day) and to this date they have not been answered in a way that provides a solution for every single case.
Your previous comments are dead so I have to respond to multiple posts at once here. Sorry.
> He wasn't taken. He took himself. Exercise: Everytime you remove agency, reintroduce it.
I used the term "taken" as a rhetorical thing to ask a deeper question about cosmic unfairness. It makes no claims of level of responsibility and I feel like you knew this and just wanted to make a bizarre ramble about something you read in a bad self-help book.
> "I am depressed". No, you are depressing yourself. "I am helpless". No, you are making yourself helpless. These are active processes. Let's get more controversial: "I am being bullied". No, you are letting people bully you.
The hell does this have to do with my post exactly? I told a story about my cousin dying from a heroin overdose and you go off on (not even) a tangent about bullying or something.
Also, that's a pretty ridiculous thing to begin with. How are bullied people "letting themselves" be bullied? A kid that's bigger than them decides to physically hurt a kid smaller/weaker than them. What exactly is the smaller kid supposed to do? This isn't the god damn Karate Kid, life isn't a cheesy eighties movie, most of the time the kid just has to be bullied. It's not fair, it sucks, and victim blaming is not helping anything.
> Let's say depression is a purely biological problem, the chemical imbalance (it isn't), take a pill and be be healed! Right?
Depression is a blanket term for a lot of things, and is somewhat overloaded. Sometimes people just feel sad, and maybe telling them to get over it will work, but for people like myself with manic depression, it really isn't that simple. You can do any amount of exercise or dieting trying to suck it up, and everything will still feel hopeless, you'll still blame yourself for everything, you'll still catastrophize everything, you'll still yell at people who don't deserve it, and you'll still have to talk yourself out of bed every morning [1]. When that's the case, what exactly are you supposed to do? Are you disputing that those people exist?
Also, your hypothetical is completely absurd, there are plenty of things that have physiological causes that we can't just take a pill and be healed with. Do you think cancer is just an attitude problem? How about amputees? Are they just so stupid that they don't take a pill and be healed? What a strange and completely misinformed take.
I honestly feel bad for you. Whatever sequence of events led to this strange pseudo-edgelord hardass chud persona must have been tough.
[1] Not all depressed people and not all manic depressives. Describing my symptoms.
I mean, I agree with you, life is harsh and we all need to practice more personal responsibility.
However, there are a lot of cases where things are out of someone's control and they're really helpless.
Like depression. Take a pill? No, it's wade through the medical system trying to find a doctor who will graciously grant you the magic paper. And if you don't find one, tough shit.
Then there's the case of a girl being chained and dying of dehydration, for which the accomplice wife of the ISIS piece of shit who did it got 10 years in prison. Not only was the girl helpless, she wasn't even helped by someone who could.
These two things made me reply. I probably shouldn't have, but whatever, we're all shitposting here.
They say that scientists rarely get any real work done after they win a Nobel prize, because the prestige warps their self-expectations in a way that guides them away from things they could actually make progress on and towards heights that are too difficult to climb. Avoiding this has guided career my up until now and I can safely say I have been totally successful at eliminating even the slightest risk.
Not since 9/11 , the security theatre is still very painful, even in first. I'm sure it's much more comfortable if you're flying general aviation, but that's still way more expensive than commercial ever was, even in the 60s
I don't have an arab complexion, but TSA has never been that much of a hassle for me. Is it really that bad for you? I just have to take my belt and shoes off and take my laptop out. There are lines, but it usually doesn't take me more than 20 minutes to get through.
I guess you got lucky by travelling domestic only in the US. 3 Hour lines at Heathrow passport control are not uncommon. US border agents can and will deny entry for to foreigners for any or no reason. Had a rifle raised and pointed at me while bag was searched in Sri Lanka.
And no liquids, and repeat this hassle at 50% of the airports you stopover (depending on how lazy they were when designing the “safe” zones and terminals)
"Management" is a public health crisis like cancer, diabetes or heart disease. Nothing else and nothing more.
Anecdotal: In the Interview I found this in, Pfeffer cites a colleague who asked managers what books they read about their job: None. They were not reading at all.
Hey hedberg10. Unrelated to this topic but I couldn't find your contact info and don't know if HN even allows private messaging.
I just want to say thank you for this comment you made 21 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28669421. I'm reading Learned Optimism at the moment, and following your list to have a better state for myself. And I think it's working. My life was on a downward slope somewhat and your comment (well, TeMPoRaL's too) turned it around. Thank you.
I would argue that most of the western world is already there.
With mass media begin projected from every flat surface, less and less people are actually 'reading' (and I don't consider doom scrolling Facebook to be 'reading'), so we are one large ash pile away from the core message of the book.
You're right, it should have it's own name. It's much closer to drug use. Constantly context switching with high emotionality. "Dopamine streaming"?
It takes a lot longer to put out an inflammatory book and it's harder to actually write one, because it has to be a whole book, not just 3 paragraphs. There was a lot less data easily accessible, meaning you had to have instincts of a seasoned craftsman or luck. The medium itself really did help us out for a long time.
Well, I'll have you know I graduated summa cum laude from Lemönade Ständ Universität, which is a very prestigious institution in Luxemburg, when I was 6.
I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces.
Long work hours
-which might or might not be bullshit
Addicting novelty seeking
-small dopamine hits
-and it's enablement
-phones
-never ending scrolling
-being rich to have access
Procrastination
-mix of fear, uncertainty, belief it will be better at a
later time
I believe all of these should be tackled individually.
Have you heard 'State not story' (sometimes 'Story follows state')?
This comes from trauma therapy, specifically Polyvagal Theory. Patients have their life story and often think of it as the reason for their current problems, when in reality a huge portion of that might be their body, ie the state of their nervous system, informing a story they tell themselves, making mental illness an infinite loop.
So for self management: Get into a happy state and you'll be productive.
Body:
-sleep
-food
-water
-sun
-posture
-exercise
Mind:
-well basically "Learned Optimism" by Martin Seligman
My main point being: How we learn what hard work is (the Hollywood version), and how work needs to feel (Stress! Panic! No sleep! Hustle! Endless To Do lists!) is very wrong and gives you anxiety => puts your body into a bad state.
And if you are in the bad state and unproductive, people usually resort to "I'm not doing this right, I need to put me into the bad state harder!". See the endless tools you listed. The problem lies elsewhere.
I've heard of the concept, but not under this name.
I also have mixed feelings about it. It feels nice at a surface level, but I'm not sure if the details follow. Are our brains really that bad at interpreting signals from the body? When I scrape my leg, I just feel that my leg hurts - but if I have lower but more persistent pain, my brain doesn't flag it as a leg issue, but instead starts telling me I hate my job?
More than that, I don't like how this view is typically used to peddle what I dubbed as "fuck off" advice. Take e.g. the "Body" list you've attached: essentially "sleep, diet, exercise". Aka. things that are often given as generic advice to solve one's mental problems. My personal experience (both of applying the advice on myself, as well as observing people) tells me that these do not work beyond fixing some extreme deficiencies - but they're the perfect thing to tell someone so they go away. They waste a year trying and failing to fix their problem, constantly blaming themselves for failing to stick to good sleep schedule / diet / exercise regime, but through that year they don't bother you anymore.
Even if these interventions did work like that - which I doubt they do - they're usually impractical. Getting into a perfect shape and sleep schedule is a years-long effort requiring sacrifices few people can make without throwing most of the nice things in their life away (it's not like they can cut out their job, so it's the personal time that gets sacrificed), and results are high-maintenance. So it isn't a good answer for the modern lifestyle, unless it brings order-of-magnitude improvements. Which we know it doesn't (otherwise everyone even moderately successful would be also fit and sleeping well).
I think hedberg10 and all these 'fuck off' advice guys have a point. It's just really hard to achieve that.
Don't take this wrong, but I noticed that your last paragraph could've been one of mine, and that it reads like defeatism (which I admit I practice a lot). It's a bad habit to have, and I'm struggling to get rid of mine.
It's that habit that makes me not want to start going into the gym in the first place to fix my body and my daily routine. That habit makes me think that gyms are full of people, commuting sucks, it takes time out of my already full schedule and because it takes years to get a perfect body it's not going to fix my daily life now, so why bother?
I've been trying to fix my productivity for a while and this realization of my self-defeatism inspired me to actually go jog after I post this comment. And for what it's worth, if it does not work, at least I've tried it.
Hopefully this can act as a mirror for you as well, as your comment acted for me. Good luck getting your emotions in shape.
Well now youre doing exactly what I described. You make my suggestions into a to do list and feel bad.
The point is to feel better. Thats the start of everything. Not "I have accomplished all tasks, now I can feel good".
Notice how I didnt even define what a "good" sleep pattern is and what you made of it, then proclaiming that to be unreachable, feeling worse. Maybe a good sleep schedule for you is to sleep during the day? Who cares. Its whatever makes you feel good. The second you judge yourself, you lose.
Perhaps. To be clear, my complaint isn't directly against you or your advice. But you asked if I heard about this concept, so I commented on what I've heard of it, and what advice I've heard that follow or are adjacent to it.
"Swipe up and hold to eject!" chirps Alexa as we plunge 200 feet in 2 seconds...