14 ms·

How bad are things?

264 points by lkrubner 11y ago

lkrubner 11y ago
This is a great excerpt: -------------------------- This is part of why I get enraged whenever somebody on Tumblr says “People in Group X need to realize they have it really good”, or “You’re a Group X member, so stop pretending like you have real problems.” The town where I practice psychiatry is mostly white and mostly wealthy. That doesn’t save it. And whenever some online thinkpiece writer laughs about how good people in Group X have it and how hilarious it is that they sometimes complain about their lives, it never fails that I have just gotten home from treating a member of Group X who attempted suicide.
- deleted 11y ago
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- nirmel 11y ago
  I'm one of those people who say that almost all people in America have it really good, and everyone should stop complaining. I'm trying to understand why I'm wrong about the following: - Most people in America are struggling - Most people outside America are struggling much, much more, to a degree not fathomable by Americans. - Therefore, people in America should acknowledge they have it really good and stop complaining.
  - joesmo 11y ago
    "Most people outside America are struggling much, much more, to a degree not fathomable by Americans." You cannot possibly know the level of anyone's suffering except yourself. How do you know how much people are struggling in or out of America? How do you know people outside America suffer more? How do you compare suffering? You don't. You can't. Even if you did, it wouldn't matter. You're comparing problems as if they were numbers. They're not. They're not comparable. What hurts one person a lot may not hurt another very much and vice-versa. Postulating a thing you cannot possibly know is where you're wrong. Not to mention belittling the problems of millions of Americans by subjecting them to your random judgement.
    - isolate 11y ago
      Cutting someone's head off is not necessarily worse for their friends and family than insulting them?
      - joesmo 11y ago
        I think you replied to the wrong comment.
        isolate 11y ago
        No, but I probably misread yours if you didn't understand my question. I thought you said different kinds of suffering are incomparable, and so I asked about not being able to compare two specific kinds of suffering, murder and insults. (Or rather, acts that can induce suffering and the suffering that results.)
        joesmo 11y ago
        No, I said you can't compare people's suffering because you can't measure it, regardless of what's causing that suffering.
        lucio 11y ago
        yes you can, a beaten wife is suffering more than a person who gets insulted. Both are suffering, but the wife is in the worst situation.
        isolate 11y ago
        All I'm doing is trying to examine your claim at the extremes. At the other end, are we able to tell the difference between zero suffering and some suffering?
  - BobTheCoder 11y ago
    Comparatively good does not mean actually good.
  - firebones 11y ago
    I haven't seen your logic nailed specifically as a logical fallacy [1][2], but there's something similar to a logical fallacy involved in the type of argument you're making. Namely, that having it relatively good globally should prevent someone from "complaining" (or seeking to improve their situation) locally. [1] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AppealToWorseProblems http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AppealToWorseProb... [2] http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=641605 http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=641605
    - nirmel 11y ago
      Appreciate your citing this fallacy. We certainly can complain about problems that exist, regardless of their severity, perhaps because they affect us or people we care about. But I think there is a real problem when worrying about one problem comes at the expense of caring about another more severe problem. Contrived thought experiment: You have the magical power of either curing your own toothache, or curing the world of AIDS. You choose to cure your toothache because it affects you. I would argue you should have considered the alternative. The problem is not that you can't care about problems that are less severe than others, but given finite availability of "care" in your own mind and in the world, it is better to direct our "care" to where it can have the biggest impact.
      - ThrustVectoring 11y ago
        You have much better information and much better leverage to attack problems in your own life than those in, say, Sub-Saharan Africa. Plus, there's all the ways that you're a more effective altruist if you aren't distracted by a toothache, or aren't malnourished because you donated your entire food budget.
      - firebones 11y ago
        I see where you're going, but "magical powers" take this so far into the realm of hypothetical that I don't think we can use it as a basis for argument. But let me allow it, and move it to the real of practicality. Based on the skills and resources I now have, the contribution I can now make with my skills and resources (the "magical powers" at my disposal) would only fractionally help cure AIDS. At best, I might be able to supply a certain number of people with life-extending HIV meds by contributing all my assets and future income. And why AIDS versus a hundred other maladies where my entire wealth and income improves and extends lives? Or does balancing the ability to build capital effectively come into play? Would we be better off with the issues the Gates Foundation is tackling if Bill Gates had decided to spend all his time from 1975 forward working with an NGO trying to eradicate malaria and polio? Or getting in a position where he focused on first world problems so that he could address some global issues? I appreciate your concern--but "care" isn't necessarily a point in time measurement or a zero sum game--it's possible to care about multiple things at once, and it's possible to care proportionately more as means allow. (And in many cases, it might be more efficient to do so.)
  - jodrellblank 11y ago
    People in America should stop complaining ... and then what? You acknowledge that Americans have actual, real problems. What is your plan for after Americans stop complaining about their problems? What does that achieve? What happens next? Why is that a desirable future state that you want to encourage?
  - mbrock 11y ago
    You use the word "therefore" as if you had presented a syllogism, but for an actual solid argument you need to explain how the conclusion follows from the premises. Presumably you are making use of a principle that implies that the existence of people suffering more than you means that your suffering is lessened. That can be disputed, but you haven't even argued for it yet.
  - aaronem 11y ago
    The reasoning you present here is exactly equivalent to: - You have a broken arm - Somewhere else in the world, someone has stage IV pancreatic cancer - Therefore your broken arm should be of no concern even to you The flaw should be intuitively obvious, especially to anyone who's ever had a broken arm. But hey, you actually concede you're a robot in your HN profile, your hyperalloy combat chassis is no doubt proof against such mishaps, and why should anyone expect you to understand or care what humans feel?
  - Gibbon1 11y ago
    I think some of this can be summed up in the phrase paycheck to paycheck. People in that situation have to keep running or they fall down. The other is while the US is wealthier than a lot of other places the interpersonal support networks are generally threadbare.
- markmcdonald 11y ago
  I want to defend the "thinkpiece writers" a little bit. I agree that you can't judge someone because they're part of Group X. Its impossible to know what struggles a person goes through. But, at least a few of the thinkpiece writers I've seen are commenting on how Group X uses their privilege to discredit the struggles Group Y or Z has experienced because of Group X. Laughing "about how good people in Group X have it and how hilarious it is that they sometimes complain about their lives" is taking it too far, but I've seen something very similar to the above excerpt used to discredit the very real, systemic struggle of minorities. That makes me cringe. I'm in favor of being empathic to everyone's humanity and not discrediting anyone's struggle.
  - scarmig 11y ago
    Scott (the author) is using "thinkpiece writers" a bit equivocably, I think, with the latter usage being his hobby horse of attacking left wing social justice activists. His counterpoint to you, which I would say has some traction, would likely be that those thinkpiece writers are deploying constructs like "privilege" as a way to discredit the very real struggle of people in groups that don't fall under the accepted rubric of privileged and oppressed, for the very reason that their issues' existence is either ignored or defined out of the category of "systemic oppression." Most everyone is "in favor of being empathic to everyone's humanity and not discrediting anyone's struggle," but as humans everyone seems to have a hard time putting that principle into practice.
    - markmcdonald 11y ago
      > His counterpoint to you, which I would say has some traction, would likely be that those thinkpiece writers are deploying constructs like "privilege" as a way to discredit the very real struggle of people in groups that don't fall under the accepted rubric of privileged and oppressed, for the very reason that their issues' existence is either ignored or defined out of the category of "systemic oppression." This is a good point. Its tough when being candid about the struggles of one group discredits the struggle of another. Honesty is important, but not invalidating someone's hardship is also important.
    - 11y ago
exolymph 11y ago
Welp, now I feel sad. But I think Scott makes a really good point in this post.
draw_down 11y ago
Excellent post, thank you.
- deleted 11y ago
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erikpukinskis 11y ago
I think this is a fundamental property of capitalism. People who are happy and taken care of don't need to spend money and are terrible for the economy. If you can create problems for someone, you can market solutions to them. Some of the best selling products in the world, like Coca-Cola, are themselves creating the the problem they purport to solve. For a century, companies have been pushing cultural changes that make it harder for us to take car of ourselves, privatizing public spaces for socialization, promoting nuclear families over extended families and neighborhoods, narrowing beauty standards, promoting exotic vacations and recreational activities, etc. This has fueled economic growth while making us generally more vulnerable. As the article describes, even if you have enough money to take care of your basic needs, you have a long distance to go to happiness. On the tech side this is quite common too. I would put PowerPoint in this category, too. And most AAA video games. The sooner we can get out of this "money is a proxy for everything because markets are perfect" nonsense the better.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  You're saying that a fundamental property of prosperity is a tendency for underconsumption? That capitalism therefore must mitigate it? So then, all your grievances are related to alleged cases of conspicuous consumption that are contrived by companies in response to a satiated, underconsuming populace. I'm unsure of what "privatizing public spaces for socialization" is supposed to mean, or why it would be bad. After all, a private property owner may extend nonpossessory or usufructory rights to usage of their land, which would make it perfectly viable for social gatherings without being necessarily more exclusionary than a commons or public ownership. The promotion of the nuclear family model is an organic result of prosperity, which enables its existence to thrive. Thus, it's a social tendency first and then absorbed by industry. Same with beauty standards. I also fail to see how "promoting exotic vacations and recreational activities" is bad. Your last sentence is confusing. Money is special because it is a good that, particularly fiat money, is almost entirely defined by exchange value over use value, and is the unit at which all other goods are priced relative to. Where are you drawing the association with "perfect markets," or whether markets would even need to be perfect?
  - 11y ago
onetwotree 11y ago
I'm an addict in long term recovery, and I hang out with lots of addicts trying to get or stay clean. Obviously this crowd has problems! But what's interesting is that as I've been making friends who aren't addicts, they have problems that are every bit as messed up as the recovery crowd. There are two main differences, though: "normal" people are much more committed to hiding their problems (I feel as though I only learn about them because people assume I won't judge them), and normal people don't recognize that their unhappiness is a solvable problem. Furthermore, most of them aren't really into the solutions: a leveling of ego and pride, humility, rejection of desire and attachment, and living for something greater than themselves. Addicts, of course, have no choice -- we either develop the skills and tools needed to be happy enough to stay clean, or wallow on in the misery of drug addiction, often to an untimely death. It's kind of sad, but I have no idea how to convince normal people that they can be happier by changing themselves instead of acquiring things or relationships or any other external thing they think will finally make them happy. I feel as though erikpukinskis' comment about capitalism is a big part of the problem, but I'm not sure how to use that observation to help more people be happy. Edit: C'mon HN, we're smart -- ideas on solutions to these problems are better than upvotes :-)
- late2part 11y ago
  Makes me think that everybody's journey deserves respect.
  - onetwotree 11y ago
    Indeed.
- firebones 11y ago
  Answering your edit: don't people have to come to this conclusion on their own, rather than be "convinced"? Doesn't someone have to pass through some period of anhedonia, and the realization that "things" aren't going to make them happier, before they can start to see the structure that will help? If so, and if your desire is to help normal people, I guess your choices are to a) find a strategy that sells anhedonia against the formidable marketing budget of pretty much everyone, everywhere in this culture, or b) capture them on the other side and offer them the structure they need to build a life after anhedonia. 75% of these Robert Pirsig quotes [1] seem relevant, in some way. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10799124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10799124
D_Alex 11y ago
But... from the same site, we have an article entitled "HOLOCAUST GOOD FOR YOU, RESEARCH FINDS, BUT FREQUENT TAUNTING CAUSES CANCER IN RATS", which includes this quote, that attempts to explain why holocaust survivors have on average longer lives: "One possible explanation for these findings might be the “Posttraumatic Growth” phenomenon, according to which the traumatic, life-threatening experiences Holocaust survivors had to face, which engendered high levels of psychological distress, could have also served as potential stimuli for developing personal and inter-personal skills, gaining new insights and a deeper meaning to life." So taking the 20% that receive food stamps, say, and dumping them wholesale into "really miserable people" category seems rather misguided.
- harryh 11y ago
  I think an important difference between holocaust survivors and the people under discussion in this article is that the holocaust ended. One day the allied army showed up and the camps were shut down and the survivors were freed. Their lives immediately and dramatically improved. For most of the people mentions in this blog post there will be no such single & dramatic event.
  - firebones 11y ago
    While I don't think the comparison is perfect, Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow" illustrates several examples of cognitive biases where the expected suffering based on "area under the curve" (e.g., duration of pain in an non-anesthetized colonoscopy, or pain in a cold water torture test) is greater than the actual reported pain, mostly because we tend to report based on the later feelings (liberation, easing of pain) rather than peak pain or the integral of total pain. Perhaps another way of putting this is that confirmation of hope is a pretty powerful antidote to prior pain.
- klipt 11y ago
  > holocaust survivors have on average longer lives Sounds to me like they might have the causation reversed. Maybe only healthier/tougher than average people survived in the first place.
bloaf 11y ago
On the "bad old days:" I think it is important to ask ourselves which of the problems the author is talking about are uniquely "new." For example, PTSD has always been a thing, but our awareness of it has changed. In the past, people with PTSD weren't necessarily thought of as sick even if they were clearly unable to function. A while ago, there would be no ailing grandma "type" as described in the article because whatever diseases they were seeing the doctor for would kill them too quickly. What I'm getting at is that the issues he discusses were just as relevant and prevalent in olden times, but in olden times you also had to worry about being hung for witchcraft or starving to death because food stamps weren't invented yet. We have to remember that "most people today have it pretty good" is a comparative statement, and there were times when everyone was a creationist.
- tailgate 11y ago
  I think you're missing the context in which "people have it pretty good" is said. It's not a statement made by itself out of nowhere, but as part of a moral judgment, to claim people today have right to complain about whatever suffering they are feeling. The author's counterpoint is that it still is pretty terrible even if yesterday was worse.
wpeterson 11y ago
Viktor Frankl wrote about understanding human suffering as the one constant in all our lives and the one thing that binds us all together: “To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.” It's a good exercise to enumerate and guess the dramatic maladies of most people around you, but even that belies the larger truth of all of our shared suffering. It's the human condition.
escape_goat 11y ago
To me, this psychiatrist sounds really depressed and like he may be feeling burnt out or isolated at his job. A theme in the two typical cases he cites is that he isn't actually dealing directly with a patient's problems; in both cases, he's a helpless witness to a serious injustice exacerbating those problems, and perhaps making his own efforts to assist the patient seem particularly futile. He seems to be focused on a globalized sense of precarious life, where almost everyone is nearly overwhelmed with problems, but doesn't go past caveat with respect to addressing any evidence against this (i.e. world not collapsing, psychological resiliency of most people). Struggling with these problems is probably affecting his ability to help others. He should find a good therapist and start working through some CBT exercises if he finds himself thinking like this on a routine basis. Just my two cents based on long-term exposure to psychiatry and depression. I know these things might be really obvious to most people, but I figured they should be pointed out for the benefit of anyone to whom they aren't.
- isolate 11y ago
  The name for this in the helping professions is "compassion fatigue", basically the only way out is to stop trying to help so many people for so many hours per week.
  - trgn 11y ago
    My father in law was a psychiatrist. The "types" described in the article are all too real. He got attached to some of his patients, tried to help them outside his practice. A handful of these people became part of his (and now mine) family's social circle. A woman on SDI became a nanny, a former factory worker is now our handy-man, another guy he put up in an apartment he was rehabbing and still lives there. At some point, some dude lived in my in-laws basement (my wife just shrugged that off, it apparently happened every few years). I cringe when I look back on how I thought about psychiatry earlier. I thought it was rich people just going to complain about how sad they felt instead of just sucking it up. Life is a struggle, for everybody. We have no idea how bad it is indeed. And now, psychiatry to me seems like a terribly lonely profession.
jokoon 11y ago
I can notice at times how people refuse pessimism entirely, like it would be regarded as a bad thing, like it's a crack that triggers other bad things in your life. It's like the X stages of grief, but people are still in denial from the fact that things are not good. Psychiatry is certainly a world I would like to hear more from, I love articles like that. Psychology and how minds work is really one science humans are not good enough at. I see a psychiatrist regularly, and I really wish this science could one day make bigger leaps.
uptownJimmy 11y ago
This is well-written, and seems to touch on some vital part of our current cultural dilemma: when we finally manage to make freedom and relative prosperity available to almost everybody, how do we then handle that freedom and prosperity? How do we manage our time, when so much of it is our own, as compared to most people who came before us? What choices do we make, every day of our lives? I'm no psychiatrist, but I see bad choices and unhappiness every day. I barely escaped that fate, myself, and it's an ongoing struggle, of course. I always thought the admonition should have been rephrased: "With great freedom comes great responsibility." But that seems laughable in a world where so many people seem like confused children locked in a vicious cycle of desire and cheap gratification.
SCAQTony 11y ago
John Watson; 3 November 1850 – 6 May 1907, a Scottish author and theologian: "Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
krick 11y ago
Wow, that's powerful. What I was left thinking the most: so how do I go about coming out of the "bubble"? How do I come to see what "normal people" are?
nightspirit 11y ago
> 3. Or maybe many of the people I know are in fact this unhappy, but they never tell anyone except their psychiatrist all of the pieces necessary to put their life story together. 4. Or maybe many of the people I know are in fact unhappy, but they never explicitly tell anyone and I'm not noticing the other obvious signs because admitting the existence of such would reveal my unhappiness and bring me some questions I wouldn't want to answer.

264 points by lkrubner 11y ago

This is a great excerpt: -------------------------- This is part of why I get enraged whenever somebody on Tumblr says “People in Group X need to realize they have it really good”, or “You’re a Group X member, so stop pretending like you have real problems.” The town where I practice psychiatry is mostly white and mostly wealthy. That doesn’t save it. And whenever some online thinkpiece writer laughs about how good people in Group X have it and how hilarious it is that they sometimes complain about their lives, it never fails that I have just gotten home from treating a member of Group X who attempted suicide.

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nirmel 11y ago
I'm one of those people who say that almost all people in America have it really good, and everyone should stop complaining. I'm trying to understand why I'm wrong about the following: - Most people in America are struggling - Most people outside America are struggling much, much more, to a degree not fathomable by Americans. - Therefore, people in America should acknowledge they have it really good and stop complaining.
- joesmo 11y ago
  "Most people outside America are struggling much, much more, to a degree not fathomable by Americans." You cannot possibly know the level of anyone's suffering except yourself. How do you know how much people are struggling in or out of America? How do you know people outside America suffer more? How do you compare suffering? You don't. You can't. Even if you did, it wouldn't matter. You're comparing problems as if they were numbers. They're not. They're not comparable. What hurts one person a lot may not hurt another very much and vice-versa. Postulating a thing you cannot possibly know is where you're wrong. Not to mention belittling the problems of millions of Americans by subjecting them to your random judgement.
  - isolate 11y ago
    Cutting someone's head off is not necessarily worse for their friends and family than insulting them?
    - joesmo 11y ago
      I think you replied to the wrong comment.
      - isolate 11y ago
        No, but I probably misread yours if you didn't understand my question. I thought you said different kinds of suffering are incomparable, and so I asked about not being able to compare two specific kinds of suffering, murder and insults. (Or rather, acts that can induce suffering and the suffering that results.)
        joesmo 11y ago
        No, I said you can't compare people's suffering because you can't measure it, regardless of what's causing that suffering.
        lucio 11y ago
        yes you can, a beaten wife is suffering more than a person who gets insulted. Both are suffering, but the wife is in the worst situation.
        isolate 11y ago
        All I'm doing is trying to examine your claim at the extremes. At the other end, are we able to tell the difference between zero suffering and some suffering?
- BobTheCoder 11y ago
  Comparatively good does not mean actually good.
- firebones 11y ago
  I haven't seen your logic nailed specifically as a logical fallacy [1][2], but there's something similar to a logical fallacy involved in the type of argument you're making. Namely, that having it relatively good globally should prevent someone from "complaining" (or seeking to improve their situation) locally. [1] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AppealToWorseProblems http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AppealToWorseProb... [2] http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=641605 http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=641605
  - nirmel 11y ago
    Appreciate your citing this fallacy. We certainly can complain about problems that exist, regardless of their severity, perhaps because they affect us or people we care about. But I think there is a real problem when worrying about one problem comes at the expense of caring about another more severe problem. Contrived thought experiment: You have the magical power of either curing your own toothache, or curing the world of AIDS. You choose to cure your toothache because it affects you. I would argue you should have considered the alternative. The problem is not that you can't care about problems that are less severe than others, but given finite availability of "care" in your own mind and in the world, it is better to direct our "care" to where it can have the biggest impact.
    - ThrustVectoring 11y ago
      You have much better information and much better leverage to attack problems in your own life than those in, say, Sub-Saharan Africa. Plus, there's all the ways that you're a more effective altruist if you aren't distracted by a toothache, or aren't malnourished because you donated your entire food budget.
    - firebones 11y ago
      I see where you're going, but "magical powers" take this so far into the realm of hypothetical that I don't think we can use it as a basis for argument. But let me allow it, and move it to the real of practicality. Based on the skills and resources I now have, the contribution I can now make with my skills and resources (the "magical powers" at my disposal) would only fractionally help cure AIDS. At best, I might be able to supply a certain number of people with life-extending HIV meds by contributing all my assets and future income. And why AIDS versus a hundred other maladies where my entire wealth and income improves and extends lives? Or does balancing the ability to build capital effectively come into play? Would we be better off with the issues the Gates Foundation is tackling if Bill Gates had decided to spend all his time from 1975 forward working with an NGO trying to eradicate malaria and polio? Or getting in a position where he focused on first world problems so that he could address some global issues? I appreciate your concern--but "care" isn't necessarily a point in time measurement or a zero sum game--it's possible to care about multiple things at once, and it's possible to care proportionately more as means allow. (And in many cases, it might be more efficient to do so.)
- jodrellblank 11y ago
  People in America should stop complaining ... and then what? You acknowledge that Americans have actual, real problems. What is your plan for after Americans stop complaining about their problems? What does that achieve? What happens next? Why is that a desirable future state that you want to encourage?
- mbrock 11y ago
  You use the word "therefore" as if you had presented a syllogism, but for an actual solid argument you need to explain how the conclusion follows from the premises. Presumably you are making use of a principle that implies that the existence of people suffering more than you means that your suffering is lessened. That can be disputed, but you haven't even argued for it yet.
- aaronem 11y ago
  The reasoning you present here is exactly equivalent to: - You have a broken arm - Somewhere else in the world, someone has stage IV pancreatic cancer - Therefore your broken arm should be of no concern even to you The flaw should be intuitively obvious, especially to anyone who's ever had a broken arm. But hey, you actually concede you're a robot in your HN profile, your hyperalloy combat chassis is no doubt proof against such mishaps, and why should anyone expect you to understand or care what humans feel?
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  I think some of this can be summed up in the phrase paycheck to paycheck. People in that situation have to keep running or they fall down. The other is while the US is wealthier than a lot of other places the interpersonal support networks are generally threadbare.
markmcdonald 11y ago
I want to defend the "thinkpiece writers" a little bit. I agree that you can't judge someone because they're part of Group X. Its impossible to know what struggles a person goes through. But, at least a few of the thinkpiece writers I've seen are commenting on how Group X uses their privilege to discredit the struggles Group Y or Z has experienced because of Group X. Laughing "about how good people in Group X have it and how hilarious it is that they sometimes complain about their lives" is taking it too far, but I've seen something very similar to the above excerpt used to discredit the very real, systemic struggle of minorities. That makes me cringe. I'm in favor of being empathic to everyone's humanity and not discrediting anyone's struggle.
- scarmig 11y ago
  Scott (the author) is using "thinkpiece writers" a bit equivocably, I think, with the latter usage being his hobby horse of attacking left wing social justice activists. His counterpoint to you, which I would say has some traction, would likely be that those thinkpiece writers are deploying constructs like "privilege" as a way to discredit the very real struggle of people in groups that don't fall under the accepted rubric of privileged and oppressed, for the very reason that their issues' existence is either ignored or defined out of the category of "systemic oppression." Most everyone is "in favor of being empathic to everyone's humanity and not discrediting anyone's struggle," but as humans everyone seems to have a hard time putting that principle into practice.
  - markmcdonald 11y ago
    > His counterpoint to you, which I would say has some traction, would likely be that those thinkpiece writers are deploying constructs like "privilege" as a way to discredit the very real struggle of people in groups that don't fall under the accepted rubric of privileged and oppressed, for the very reason that their issues' existence is either ignored or defined out of the category of "systemic oppression." This is a good point. Its tough when being candid about the struggles of one group discredits the struggle of another. Honesty is important, but not invalidating someone's hardship is also important.
  - 11y ago

exolymph 11y ago

Welp, now I feel sad. But I think Scott makes a really good point in this post.

draw_down 11y ago

Excellent post, thank you.

deleted 11y ago
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erikpukinskis 11y ago

I think this is a fundamental property of capitalism. People who are happy and taken care of don't need to spend money and are terrible for the economy. If you can create problems for someone, you can market solutions to them. Some of the best selling products in the world, like Coca-Cola, are themselves creating the the problem they purport to solve. For a century, companies have been pushing cultural changes that make it harder for us to take car of ourselves, privatizing public spaces for socialization, promoting nuclear families over extended families and neighborhoods, narrowing beauty standards, promoting exotic vacations and recreational activities, etc. This has fueled economic growth while making us generally more vulnerable. As the article describes, even if you have enough money to take care of your basic needs, you have a long distance to go to happiness. On the tech side this is quite common too. I would put PowerPoint in this category, too. And most AAA video games. The sooner we can get out of this "money is a proxy for everything because markets are perfect" nonsense the better.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
You're saying that a fundamental property of prosperity is a tendency for underconsumption? That capitalism therefore must mitigate it? So then, all your grievances are related to alleged cases of conspicuous consumption that are contrived by companies in response to a satiated, underconsuming populace. I'm unsure of what "privatizing public spaces for socialization" is supposed to mean, or why it would be bad. After all, a private property owner may extend nonpossessory or usufructory rights to usage of their land, which would make it perfectly viable for social gatherings without being necessarily more exclusionary than a commons or public ownership. The promotion of the nuclear family model is an organic result of prosperity, which enables its existence to thrive. Thus, it's a social tendency first and then absorbed by industry. Same with beauty standards. I also fail to see how "promoting exotic vacations and recreational activities" is bad. Your last sentence is confusing. Money is special because it is a good that, particularly fiat money, is almost entirely defined by exchange value over use value, and is the unit at which all other goods are priced relative to. Where are you drawing the association with "perfect markets," or whether markets would even need to be perfect?
- 11y ago

onetwotree 11y ago

I'm an addict in long term recovery, and I hang out with lots of addicts trying to get or stay clean. Obviously this crowd has problems! But what's interesting is that as I've been making friends who aren't addicts, they have problems that are every bit as messed up as the recovery crowd. There are two main differences, though: "normal" people are much more committed to hiding their problems (I feel as though I only learn about them because people assume I won't judge them), and normal people don't recognize that their unhappiness is a solvable problem. Furthermore, most of them aren't really into the solutions: a leveling of ego and pride, humility, rejection of desire and attachment, and living for something greater than themselves. Addicts, of course, have no choice -- we either develop the skills and tools needed to be happy enough to stay clean, or wallow on in the misery of drug addiction, often to an untimely death. It's kind of sad, but I have no idea how to convince normal people that they can be happier by changing themselves instead of acquiring things or relationships or any other external thing they think will finally make them happy. I feel as though erikpukinskis' comment about capitalism is a big part of the problem, but I'm not sure how to use that observation to help more people be happy. Edit: C'mon HN, we're smart -- ideas on solutions to these problems are better than upvotes :-)

late2part 11y ago
Makes me think that everybody's journey deserves respect.
- onetwotree 11y ago
  Indeed.
firebones 11y ago
Answering your edit: don't people have to come to this conclusion on their own, rather than be "convinced"? Doesn't someone have to pass through some period of anhedonia, and the realization that "things" aren't going to make them happier, before they can start to see the structure that will help? If so, and if your desire is to help normal people, I guess your choices are to a) find a strategy that sells anhedonia against the formidable marketing budget of pretty much everyone, everywhere in this culture, or b) capture them on the other side and offer them the structure they need to build a life after anhedonia. 75% of these Robert Pirsig quotes [1] seem relevant, in some way. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10799124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10799124

D_Alex 11y ago

But... from the same site, we have an article entitled "HOLOCAUST GOOD FOR YOU, RESEARCH FINDS, BUT FREQUENT TAUNTING CAUSES CANCER IN RATS", which includes this quote, that attempts to explain why holocaust survivors have on average longer lives: "One possible explanation for these findings might be the “Posttraumatic Growth” phenomenon, according to which the traumatic, life-threatening experiences Holocaust survivors had to face, which engendered high levels of psychological distress, could have also served as potential stimuli for developing personal and inter-personal skills, gaining new insights and a deeper meaning to life." So taking the 20% that receive food stamps, say, and dumping them wholesale into "really miserable people" category seems rather misguided.

harryh 11y ago
I think an important difference between holocaust survivors and the people under discussion in this article is that the holocaust ended. One day the allied army showed up and the camps were shut down and the survivors were freed. Their lives immediately and dramatically improved. For most of the people mentions in this blog post there will be no such single & dramatic event.
- firebones 11y ago
  While I don't think the comparison is perfect, Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow" illustrates several examples of cognitive biases where the expected suffering based on "area under the curve" (e.g., duration of pain in an non-anesthetized colonoscopy, or pain in a cold water torture test) is greater than the actual reported pain, mostly because we tend to report based on the later feelings (liberation, easing of pain) rather than peak pain or the integral of total pain. Perhaps another way of putting this is that confirmation of hope is a pretty powerful antidote to prior pain.
klipt 11y ago
> holocaust survivors have on average longer lives Sounds to me like they might have the causation reversed. Maybe only healthier/tougher than average people survived in the first place.

bloaf 11y ago

On the "bad old days:" I think it is important to ask ourselves which of the problems the author is talking about are uniquely "new." For example, PTSD has always been a thing, but our awareness of it has changed. In the past, people with PTSD weren't necessarily thought of as sick even if they were clearly unable to function. A while ago, there would be no ailing grandma "type" as described in the article because whatever diseases they were seeing the doctor for would kill them too quickly. What I'm getting at is that the issues he discusses were just as relevant and prevalent in olden times, but in olden times you also had to worry about being hung for witchcraft or starving to death because food stamps weren't invented yet. We have to remember that "most people today have it pretty good" is a comparative statement, and there were times when everyone was a creationist.

tailgate 11y ago
I think you're missing the context in which "people have it pretty good" is said. It's not a statement made by itself out of nowhere, but as part of a moral judgment, to claim people today have right to complain about whatever suffering they are feeling. The author's counterpoint is that it still is pretty terrible even if yesterday was worse.

wpeterson 11y ago

Viktor Frankl wrote about understanding human suffering as the one constant in all our lives and the one thing that binds us all together: “To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.” It's a good exercise to enumerate and guess the dramatic maladies of most people around you, but even that belies the larger truth of all of our shared suffering. It's the human condition.

escape_goat 11y ago

To me, this psychiatrist sounds really depressed and like he may be feeling burnt out or isolated at his job. A theme in the two typical cases he cites is that he isn't actually dealing directly with a patient's problems; in both cases, he's a helpless witness to a serious injustice exacerbating those problems, and perhaps making his own efforts to assist the patient seem particularly futile. He seems to be focused on a globalized sense of precarious life, where almost everyone is nearly overwhelmed with problems, but doesn't go past caveat with respect to addressing any evidence against this (i.e. world not collapsing, psychological resiliency of most people). Struggling with these problems is probably affecting his ability to help others. He should find a good therapist and start working through some CBT exercises if he finds himself thinking like this on a routine basis. Just my two cents based on long-term exposure to psychiatry and depression. I know these things might be really obvious to most people, but I figured they should be pointed out for the benefit of anyone to whom they aren't.

isolate 11y ago
The name for this in the helping professions is "compassion fatigue", basically the only way out is to stop trying to help so many people for so many hours per week.
- trgn 11y ago
  My father in law was a psychiatrist. The "types" described in the article are all too real. He got attached to some of his patients, tried to help them outside his practice. A handful of these people became part of his (and now mine) family's social circle. A woman on SDI became a nanny, a former factory worker is now our handy-man, another guy he put up in an apartment he was rehabbing and still lives there. At some point, some dude lived in my in-laws basement (my wife just shrugged that off, it apparently happened every few years). I cringe when I look back on how I thought about psychiatry earlier. I thought it was rich people just going to complain about how sad they felt instead of just sucking it up. Life is a struggle, for everybody. We have no idea how bad it is indeed. And now, psychiatry to me seems like a terribly lonely profession.

jokoon 11y ago

I can notice at times how people refuse pessimism entirely, like it would be regarded as a bad thing, like it's a crack that triggers other bad things in your life. It's like the X stages of grief, but people are still in denial from the fact that things are not good. Psychiatry is certainly a world I would like to hear more from, I love articles like that. Psychology and how minds work is really one science humans are not good enough at. I see a psychiatrist regularly, and I really wish this science could one day make bigger leaps.

uptownJimmy 11y ago

This is well-written, and seems to touch on some vital part of our current cultural dilemma: when we finally manage to make freedom and relative prosperity available to almost everybody, how do we then handle that freedom and prosperity? How do we manage our time, when so much of it is our own, as compared to most people who came before us? What choices do we make, every day of our lives? I'm no psychiatrist, but I see bad choices and unhappiness every day. I barely escaped that fate, myself, and it's an ongoing struggle, of course. I always thought the admonition should have been rephrased: "With great freedom comes great responsibility." But that seems laughable in a world where so many people seem like confused children locked in a vicious cycle of desire and cheap gratification.

SCAQTony 11y ago

John Watson; 3 November 1850 – 6 May 1907, a Scottish author and theologian: "Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

krick 11y ago

Wow, that's powerful. What I was left thinking the most: so how do I go about coming out of the "bubble"? How do I come to see what "normal people" are?

nightspirit 11y ago

> 3. Or maybe many of the people I know are in fact this unhappy, but they never tell anyone except their psychiatrist all of the pieces necessary to put their life story together. 4. Or maybe many of the people I know are in fact unhappy, but they never explicitly tell anyone and I'm not noticing the other obvious signs because admitting the existence of such would reveal my unhappiness and bring me some questions I wouldn't want to answer.