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It’s easy when politics doesn’t actually impact you. If you had relatives being deported or being shot by the police, it’s likely that you wouldn’t just tell yo

It’s easy when politics doesn’t actually impact you. If you had relatives being deported or being shot by the police, it’s likely that you wouldn’t just tell your friends/family « sorry, i have no control over this » I know it’s extreme but it’s the reality. For someone who is impacting by politics (say lost their jobs due to COVID), you can’t just stay on the sideline and ignore it. You just have the great privilege of letting other people take care of that dirty work. Is taking a news diet good? Absolutely. Lots of crap out there and a mental break is needed once in a while. But ignoring the suffering of people around you is just bad.

Karunamon 6y ago
That ties right back into the original comment, though. The quantity of suffering in the world is great, and even those of us with the ability to do something about some small part of it (already a pretty small number) are severely limited in their impact. For the most part, it's non-actionable info. You bring up "relatives being deported or shot by the police", but the number of people on HN that describes is going to be tiny. The average HN user is less likely than most to have been burned by COVID due to the remote-friendliness of tech jobs. For me, the calculus works out like this: 1. Is it possible for me to do anything substantial about it? (Throwing a few bucks at a charity or "raising awareness" about the large social problem everyone already knows about does not count as "substantial") 2. If it is possible, do I have the ability? (Financially, mentally, physically, temporally) 3. If the answer to both of these questions is "no", then it is non-actionable and not worth expending my own limited energy on. The vast majority of things you hear from the news media fail both of these tests. They are intended to provoke you or scare you about something that is mostly out of your sphere of influence.
- tehjoker 6y ago
  This is a profoundly dispiriting stance. Many individuals have made a difference in the past and will continue into the future. The primary way individuals make differences is either by changing the way people think about something, by assembling a group to strategize around their issue, or physically preventing the bad thing from happening.
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    All of those people you mention had something where they could physically and practically do something about the problem. My comment addresses the vast majority of instances a human learns about a problem where that isn't the case. Your sphere of concern and your sphere of influence are two different things at the end of the day. If you've decided some social problem is within your sphere of influence, then by all means, take whatever helpful action you can - just do not pretend that this encompasses all problems, or for that matter that the number of problems is not infinite. Down that path lay depression and burnout.
    - tehjoker 6y ago
      You get to pick which problems you want to work on, just don't pretend you can't work on them.
      - Karunamon 6y ago
        Don't pretend you can. What would you suggest I do about North Korea's or China's human rights abuses, for instance? These are the kinds of problems I'm talking about.
        tehjoker 6y ago
        That's going pretty far afield. I would recommend following the rubric I learned from Scahill and Greenwald which is pay attention to things happening domestically because you can do something about them. I don't pretend there aren't infinite problems, or ones difficult to access, but I strongly caution against treating political problems as something that are immovable.
        fsflover 6y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycotts_of_Chinese_products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycotts_of_Chinese_products
      - BeetleB 6y ago
- maxerickson 6y ago
  You bring up "relatives being deported or shot by the police", but the number of people on HN that describes is going to be tiny. You are pretty much silently appending and fuck them when you present that like this.
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    I'm sorry you feel that way, but it's an argument based on pure statistics. HN doesn't have the headcount necessary for a significant number of its members to either be directly or indirectly (via relatives) affected by either of those two events.
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      That's the point. You shouldn't have to be directly effected by it to think it is worth discussion and other attention.
      - Karunamon 6y ago
        And of what good is that discussion and other attention if you can't actually do anything about it (or have already done all you reasonably can), other than ruining your own mental health?
        maxerickson 6y ago
        Maybe none. But I'm not sure dismissing the suffering of other people is actually the thing that will be better for mental health.
        Karunamon 6y ago
        Definitely none. Nobody said anything about dismissing anything, only being realistic about what you have the ability to do and how you let your attention be directed by third parties. If something is not within your sphere of influence in any way, then it is, by definition, a waste of your energy to be concerned about.
- myWindoonn 6y ago
  You might just be lazy. I haven't kept strict count, but I've chased at least four cryptofascists out of technical communities in the past couple years. My techniques are pretty simple; I introduce basic facts and some background empirical knowledge, and then use them to demonstrate that fascist rhetoric is usually disconnected from actual historical happenstance. My calculus is this: 1. Are they being unmitigated pieces of shit? Are they failing basic norms of conversation and going off on irrelevant and hateful tangents? 2. Is their bullshit correctable? Are there simple and plain truths which, when added as historical context, reveal them to be hateful and insipid? 3. How much will the average person care about this nuance? Even if my points are right, will they actually convince onlookers or are they too technical or tiny? If the answer to all three isn't "yes", then I don't bother writing a reply. I don't know which part of the country you're from. My senator is Wyden, so all I have to do in order to make a positive difference is just vote him back in. Anything beyond that is icing. It is as easy as that; electing antifascists and their sympathizers is not difficult.
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    See, keeping your communities clean is the kind of thing that very much is in your sphere of influence. So is voting (and campaigning, if you can) for good candidates. I'm talking about larger problems than that. Most anything that happens at the federal/geopolitical level, for instance, is non-actionable for the vast majority of people outside of voting or sending letters/phone calls. Also, no need for the insult.
- rchaud 6y ago
  > They are intended to provoke you or scare you about something that is mostly out of your sphere of influence. And yet, every post about H1B visa rule changes will have hundreds of comments bemoaning the selling out of the American IT worker. There will also be much hand-wringing about the on-shoring of foreign jobs and anecdotes about how terrible it is working with Indian consultancy firms. HN commenters want to vent as much as anyone else. They just do it on political posts that they feel affect them personally, even if it's not something they can change directly.
caddemon 6y ago
How many people that keep up with the news actually do a damn thing about it? The vast majority of people that check social media everyday also let "others do the dirty work". And who are the "people around you"? With the internet that could be half the damn world. It sure is a privilege for you not to have to worry about injustices in the Middle East. I'm not saying people should be selfish, but I don't see how what you're suggesting is productive either. Even the most well meaning person on this planet cannot possibly have an impact on all these different issues. Pick some areas you know you can contribute to and focus on that.
npunt 6y ago
Exactly. As members of society we have an obligation to participate in society whether or not we are impacted negatively by its current shortcomings. In fact, the greater our privilege, the greater our obligation. Society would unravel if this were not true, because it would place undue burden on those lacking power to fix society - an impossible task without power. This is the subject of MLK's writing on justice and mutuality, that 'an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere' as well as Niemöller's poem about 'first they came for...'. The question is really how to optimize awareness & participation with personal wellbeing. There's a big difference between getting psychologically clobbered by the outrage engines of social media or TV news, and being able to take in and understand current events in a way that encourages contemplation of how to best participate. One way is to focus our attention and efforts on the things we can control as OP mentions. Another is to shift sources from fast/reactive news to more infrequent and considered sources. Another still is to participate locally and learn things firsthand.
- isoskeles 6y ago
  You may not realize this (or you might, I don't know), but many people who don't want to participate in politics have the sense that our opinions are not at all condoned by the majority of employers or coworkers in our industry. If I were to go around, attaching my real name or face to my opinions as some form of "participation" in society, I would be quite fucked. I don't call that a privilege by any means.
  - npunt 6y ago
    To argue to the extreme for a moment, one can have privilege, such as by way of relative wealth and power in society, and still hold views that powerful groups in society believe are contemptible. Holding certain views does not cancel out privileges one has, nor transform one from privileged to victim. This is especially true in privileges that one has less control over, such as physical and intellectual attributes, place of birth, wealth and opportunities like education and socialization, etc. One may also act on those views believing they are helping society, while consensus in society views those actions as detrimental. A recent example of this is the rioters and insurrectionists at the Capitol believed they were doing something to help society, whereas society judged their actions otherwise. A possible solution to this conundrum is to focus one's participation on areas that are broadly agreed upon to be beneficial to society, so as to avoid accidentally becoming part of the problem, or simply minimize blowback from a disapproving environment. This is a solution that is intentionally sidestepping any particular ethical framework, which may guide one's actions toward different tradeoffs. Another thing worth considering is not all participation in society need be political at all, nor attached to your real name, nor known to your employer. Those are conditions you've attached to your response that were not part of mine.
icelancer 6y ago
>> It’s easy when politics doesn’t actually impact you. If you had relatives being deported or being shot by the police, it’s likely that you wouldn’t just tell your friends/family « sorry, i have no control over this » My grandparents paid attention to politics, as did many in the United States at the time. TV news was watched, no Internet, lot of newspaper reading. They were sent to Tule Lake and interned for being Japanese-American all the same; their possessions stolen by a government who doesn't care if its citizens "care" about politics. The average person has no control over "politics." Caring about it didn't save my grandparents, nor the protests of all of their friends. No one took care of that dirty work. That's the great delusion.
- WaitWaitWha 6y ago
  Yep. All the talk and writing mean nothing when push comes to shove. Are you willing to die for what you believe in? And, before one answers this hastily, think about it. I have come to realize most are quite selfish in various way, myself included.
  - nobody9999 6y ago
    >Are you willing to die for what you believe in? And, before one answers this hastily, think about it. Your point is well taken. Certainly there are issues and problems that gravely trouble people of integrity and good conscience. However, while sometimes there are things we can do within our own lives to address those issues and problems, often there isn't any way to have a measurable impact. That's not to say we should just give up. On the contrary, I think it's important to try to improve the lives of those around us within the scope of our focus, abilities and resources. When I was a young man (in my twenties), I would often wonder if the work I was doing (tech) was really making the world a better place in a serious way. That really bothered me for a while. But I came to realize that while we can't all have a measurable, global positive impact on the world, we most certainly can have a local positive impact on the people and world around us. Do I create better working conditions for people in Bangladesh? No. Can I genetically engineer a more effective SARS-CoV2 vaccine? No. But I can treat those around me with respect, act with integrity and support my community. I can do constructive work within my chosen profession. And I can speak out when I see injustice, intolerance and hate. Will that end the pandemic or halt the war in Syria or end world hunger and poverty? No. But if I can do my part to lift up those near me, act with honesty and integrity and create constructive solutions for the projects I contribute to, I can be satisfied that I'm having a positive impact on the world around me. None of that requires that I be willing to die for that, but that doesn't mean I'm not having a measurable, positive impact on the world.
kortilla 6y ago
> It’s easy when politics doesn’t actually impact you. And it doesn’t for 99.999% of the US. How much time and energy was lost on the first Trump impeachment and the year investigation leading up to it. Absolutely no relevance for the day to day life of US residents. How much time was spent hearing about a phone call to Ukraine? Also not relevant to real life. Even the events in Congress last week were bad, but literally had no impact on people’s lives outside of the politicians/cops/etc in the building.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kodah 6y ago
> It’s easy when politics doesn’t actually impact you I do not consume the news or social media and don't find this to be true. Politics do impact me. I was arrested when I was 21, prior to joining the military, for an offense that was quite trivial. I was man-handled, hauled off to jail, and forced to wait until a friend read that I was arrested in the town paper (yes, that was pretty humiliating too) and bailed me out. I'm a veteran, one that's been to Afghanistan with mild to average combat experience. When I got out in 2012 I watched my friends struggle, I struggled, and there were few options to get support and help. The help that was available often came with a catch 22. There was a time I spoke about these experiences more candidly under my real name and I was attacked by other veterans and even non-veterans for doing so. The statistics are grim from my point of view and that's not just speaking about suicide statistics. Things have, in some ways, gotten better. I've used my success to help fund some of my friends starting foundations that focus on jobs and mental health but progress is slow. A number of my childhood friends were killed during the opioid epidemic, some while I was mid-service and was unable to go home to bury them. The list goes on. When I read things like: > You just have the great privilege of letting other people take care of that dirty work. It always comes across as a dismissal, that I must be just living in denial or that I've somehow reached some stage in life where these things don't affect me anymore. Feel free to read through my post history, they do. When I talk to my friends that are still patching their lives together post-service I am reminded that my own journey continues on-wards and often with them. They are the only people I can readily depend on to know experiences I know the way I know them. The problem with politics is that change is slow. Getting a whole country the size of the United States to realize why and how your group is important and worth paying attention to takes time, energy, and resources which do not appear over night. People will doubt you, even question you, and it takes a piece of you with it every time they do. These are exacerbated if you appear mad, vindictive, or frustrated in the process and it's hard not to. News on the other hand moves at the speed of lightning. Attitudes and windows of understanding rapidly close and open and it can be difficult to watch in real time. I've told people before that history is macro-understanding, news is micro-understanding, and social media is nano-understanding. History I can do, the rest; well, it's a bit overwhelming and it has everything to do with my attachment to these subjects and the discourse in between that inevitably belittles me as a human with real experiences.

Karunamon 6y ago

That ties right back into the original comment, though. The quantity of suffering in the world is great, and even those of us with the ability to do something about some small part of it (already a pretty small number) are severely limited in their impact. For the most part, it's non-actionable info. You bring up "relatives being deported or shot by the police", but the number of people on HN that describes is going to be tiny. The average HN user is less likely than most to have been burned by COVID due to the remote-friendliness of tech jobs. For me, the calculus works out like this: 1. Is it possible for me to do anything substantial about it? (Throwing a few bucks at a charity or "raising awareness" about the large social problem everyone already knows about does not count as "substantial") 2. If it is possible, do I have the ability? (Financially, mentally, physically, temporally) 3. If the answer to both of these questions is "no", then it is non-actionable and not worth expending my own limited energy on. The vast majority of things you hear from the news media fail both of these tests. They are intended to provoke you or scare you about something that is mostly out of your sphere of influence.

tehjoker 6y ago
This is a profoundly dispiriting stance. Many individuals have made a difference in the past and will continue into the future. The primary way individuals make differences is either by changing the way people think about something, by assembling a group to strategize around their issue, or physically preventing the bad thing from happening.
- Karunamon 6y ago
  All of those people you mention had something where they could physically and practically do something about the problem. My comment addresses the vast majority of instances a human learns about a problem where that isn't the case. Your sphere of concern and your sphere of influence are two different things at the end of the day. If you've decided some social problem is within your sphere of influence, then by all means, take whatever helpful action you can - just do not pretend that this encompasses all problems, or for that matter that the number of problems is not infinite. Down that path lay depression and burnout.
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    You get to pick which problems you want to work on, just don't pretend you can't work on them.
    - Karunamon 6y ago
      Don't pretend you can. What would you suggest I do about North Korea's or China's human rights abuses, for instance? These are the kinds of problems I'm talking about.
      - tehjoker 6y ago
        That's going pretty far afield. I would recommend following the rubric I learned from Scahill and Greenwald which is pay attention to things happening domestically because you can do something about them. I don't pretend there aren't infinite problems, or ones difficult to access, but I strongly caution against treating political problems as something that are immovable.
      - fsflover 6y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycotts_of_Chinese_products https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycotts_of_Chinese_products
    - BeetleB 6y ago
maxerickson 6y ago
You bring up "relatives being deported or shot by the police", but the number of people on HN that describes is going to be tiny. You are pretty much silently appending and fuck them when you present that like this.
- Karunamon 6y ago
  I'm sorry you feel that way, but it's an argument based on pure statistics. HN doesn't have the headcount necessary for a significant number of its members to either be directly or indirectly (via relatives) affected by either of those two events.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    That's the point. You shouldn't have to be directly effected by it to think it is worth discussion and other attention.
    - Karunamon 6y ago
      And of what good is that discussion and other attention if you can't actually do anything about it (or have already done all you reasonably can), other than ruining your own mental health?
      - maxerickson 6y ago
        Maybe none. But I'm not sure dismissing the suffering of other people is actually the thing that will be better for mental health.
        Karunamon 6y ago
        Definitely none. Nobody said anything about dismissing anything, only being realistic about what you have the ability to do and how you let your attention be directed by third parties. If something is not within your sphere of influence in any way, then it is, by definition, a waste of your energy to be concerned about.
myWindoonn 6y ago
You might just be lazy. I haven't kept strict count, but I've chased at least four cryptofascists out of technical communities in the past couple years. My techniques are pretty simple; I introduce basic facts and some background empirical knowledge, and then use them to demonstrate that fascist rhetoric is usually disconnected from actual historical happenstance. My calculus is this: 1. Are they being unmitigated pieces of shit? Are they failing basic norms of conversation and going off on irrelevant and hateful tangents? 2. Is their bullshit correctable? Are there simple and plain truths which, when added as historical context, reveal them to be hateful and insipid? 3. How much will the average person care about this nuance? Even if my points are right, will they actually convince onlookers or are they too technical or tiny? If the answer to all three isn't "yes", then I don't bother writing a reply. I don't know which part of the country you're from. My senator is Wyden, so all I have to do in order to make a positive difference is just vote him back in. Anything beyond that is icing. It is as easy as that; electing antifascists and their sympathizers is not difficult.
- Karunamon 6y ago
  See, keeping your communities clean is the kind of thing that very much is in your sphere of influence. So is voting (and campaigning, if you can) for good candidates. I'm talking about larger problems than that. Most anything that happens at the federal/geopolitical level, for instance, is non-actionable for the vast majority of people outside of voting or sending letters/phone calls. Also, no need for the insult.
rchaud 6y ago
> They are intended to provoke you or scare you about something that is mostly out of your sphere of influence. And yet, every post about H1B visa rule changes will have hundreds of comments bemoaning the selling out of the American IT worker. There will also be much hand-wringing about the on-shoring of foreign jobs and anecdotes about how terrible it is working with Indian consultancy firms. HN commenters want to vent as much as anyone else. They just do it on political posts that they feel affect them personally, even if it's not something they can change directly.

caddemon 6y ago

How many people that keep up with the news actually do a damn thing about it? The vast majority of people that check social media everyday also let "others do the dirty work". And who are the "people around you"? With the internet that could be half the damn world. It sure is a privilege for you not to have to worry about injustices in the Middle East. I'm not saying people should be selfish, but I don't see how what you're suggesting is productive either. Even the most well meaning person on this planet cannot possibly have an impact on all these different issues. Pick some areas you know you can contribute to and focus on that.

npunt 6y ago

Exactly. As members of society we have an obligation to participate in society whether or not we are impacted negatively by its current shortcomings. In fact, the greater our privilege, the greater our obligation. Society would unravel if this were not true, because it would place undue burden on those lacking power to fix society - an impossible task without power. This is the subject of MLK's writing on justice and mutuality, that 'an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere' as well as Niemöller's poem about 'first they came for...'. The question is really how to optimize awareness & participation with personal wellbeing. There's a big difference between getting psychologically clobbered by the outrage engines of social media or TV news, and being able to take in and understand current events in a way that encourages contemplation of how to best participate. One way is to focus our attention and efforts on the things we can control as OP mentions. Another is to shift sources from fast/reactive news to more infrequent and considered sources. Another still is to participate locally and learn things firsthand.

isoskeles 6y ago
You may not realize this (or you might, I don't know), but many people who don't want to participate in politics have the sense that our opinions are not at all condoned by the majority of employers or coworkers in our industry. If I were to go around, attaching my real name or face to my opinions as some form of "participation" in society, I would be quite fucked. I don't call that a privilege by any means.
- npunt 6y ago
  To argue to the extreme for a moment, one can have privilege, such as by way of relative wealth and power in society, and still hold views that powerful groups in society believe are contemptible. Holding certain views does not cancel out privileges one has, nor transform one from privileged to victim. This is especially true in privileges that one has less control over, such as physical and intellectual attributes, place of birth, wealth and opportunities like education and socialization, etc. One may also act on those views believing they are helping society, while consensus in society views those actions as detrimental. A recent example of this is the rioters and insurrectionists at the Capitol believed they were doing something to help society, whereas society judged their actions otherwise. A possible solution to this conundrum is to focus one's participation on areas that are broadly agreed upon to be beneficial to society, so as to avoid accidentally becoming part of the problem, or simply minimize blowback from a disapproving environment. This is a solution that is intentionally sidestepping any particular ethical framework, which may guide one's actions toward different tradeoffs. Another thing worth considering is not all participation in society need be political at all, nor attached to your real name, nor known to your employer. Those are conditions you've attached to your response that were not part of mine.

icelancer 6y ago

>> It’s easy when politics doesn’t actually impact you. If you had relatives being deported or being shot by the police, it’s likely that you wouldn’t just tell your friends/family « sorry, i have no control over this » My grandparents paid attention to politics, as did many in the United States at the time. TV news was watched, no Internet, lot of newspaper reading. They were sent to Tule Lake and interned for being Japanese-American all the same; their possessions stolen by a government who doesn't care if its citizens "care" about politics. The average person has no control over "politics." Caring about it didn't save my grandparents, nor the protests of all of their friends. No one took care of that dirty work. That's the great delusion.

WaitWaitWha 6y ago
Yep. All the talk and writing mean nothing when push comes to shove. Are you willing to die for what you believe in? And, before one answers this hastily, think about it. I have come to realize most are quite selfish in various way, myself included.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >Are you willing to die for what you believe in? And, before one answers this hastily, think about it. Your point is well taken. Certainly there are issues and problems that gravely trouble people of integrity and good conscience. However, while sometimes there are things we can do within our own lives to address those issues and problems, often there isn't any way to have a measurable impact. That's not to say we should just give up. On the contrary, I think it's important to try to improve the lives of those around us within the scope of our focus, abilities and resources. When I was a young man (in my twenties), I would often wonder if the work I was doing (tech) was really making the world a better place in a serious way. That really bothered me for a while. But I came to realize that while we can't all have a measurable, global positive impact on the world, we most certainly can have a local positive impact on the people and world around us. Do I create better working conditions for people in Bangladesh? No. Can I genetically engineer a more effective SARS-CoV2 vaccine? No. But I can treat those around me with respect, act with integrity and support my community. I can do constructive work within my chosen profession. And I can speak out when I see injustice, intolerance and hate. Will that end the pandemic or halt the war in Syria or end world hunger and poverty? No. But if I can do my part to lift up those near me, act with honesty and integrity and create constructive solutions for the projects I contribute to, I can be satisfied that I'm having a positive impact on the world around me. None of that requires that I be willing to die for that, but that doesn't mean I'm not having a measurable, positive impact on the world.

kortilla 6y ago

> It’s easy when politics doesn’t actually impact you. And it doesn’t for 99.999% of the US. How much time and energy was lost on the first Trump impeachment and the year investigation leading up to it. Absolutely no relevance for the day to day life of US residents. How much time was spent hearing about a phone call to Ukraine? Also not relevant to real life. Even the events in Congress last week were bad, but literally had no impact on people’s lives outside of the politicians/cops/etc in the building.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

kodah 6y ago

> It’s easy when politics doesn’t actually impact you I do not consume the news or social media and don't find this to be true. Politics do impact me. I was arrested when I was 21, prior to joining the military, for an offense that was quite trivial. I was man-handled, hauled off to jail, and forced to wait until a friend read that I was arrested in the town paper (yes, that was pretty humiliating too) and bailed me out. I'm a veteran, one that's been to Afghanistan with mild to average combat experience. When I got out in 2012 I watched my friends struggle, I struggled, and there were few options to get support and help. The help that was available often came with a catch 22. There was a time I spoke about these experiences more candidly under my real name and I was attacked by other veterans and even non-veterans for doing so. The statistics are grim from my point of view and that's not just speaking about suicide statistics. Things have, in some ways, gotten better. I've used my success to help fund some of my friends starting foundations that focus on jobs and mental health but progress is slow. A number of my childhood friends were killed during the opioid epidemic, some while I was mid-service and was unable to go home to bury them. The list goes on. When I read things like: > You just have the great privilege of letting other people take care of that dirty work. It always comes across as a dismissal, that I must be just living in denial or that I've somehow reached some stage in life where these things don't affect me anymore. Feel free to read through my post history, they do. When I talk to my friends that are still patching their lives together post-service I am reminded that my own journey continues on-wards and often with them. They are the only people I can readily depend on to know experiences I know the way I know them. The problem with politics is that change is slow. Getting a whole country the size of the United States to realize why and how your group is important and worth paying attention to takes time, energy, and resources which do not appear over night. People will doubt you, even question you, and it takes a piece of you with it every time they do. These are exacerbated if you appear mad, vindictive, or frustrated in the process and it's hard not to. News on the other hand moves at the speed of lightning. Attitudes and windows of understanding rapidly close and open and it can be difficult to watch in real time. I've told people before that history is macro-understanding, news is micro-understanding, and social media is nano-understanding. History I can do, the rest; well, it's a bit overwhelming and it has everything to do with my attachment to these subjects and the discourse in between that inevitably belittles me as a human with real experiences.