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I think that poverty really is a state of mind, and so SLS, as a thing separate from mental health, inadequate health care or material deprivation makes a lot o

I think that poverty really is a state of mind, and so SLS, as a thing separate from mental health, inadequate health care or material deprivation makes a lot of sense to me. Once you start seeing life as shit, something where no good change is possible and no effort is rewarded, you really are stuck in the shit reality. On the other hand, it’s possible to be materially very poor, but totally happy. To see life as full of abundance, good purpose and to find joy in it.

dwb 3y ago
This is the sort of rhetoric that harms poor people. Being poor can cause states of mind, but is not a state of mind in itself — it is clearly and simply an economic position. The article is not talking about people thinking of themselves as simply poor and therefore unhappy or unhealthy, but a much more complex relationship.
- fellowmartian 3y ago
  On individual scale you’re right, but on the collective level I think both you and GP are right, it’s a feedback loop. Places become poor for different reasons: shifting economic realities, fall of the previous civilization (eg USSR, which is my experience), etc. Places remain poor when people feel trapped inside vs consciously deciding to call the place home.
  - dwb 3y ago
    I sort of acknowledged that when I said it was a complex relationship. I'm sure there are feedback loops set up where experiencing poverty makes you more likely to stay poor, and so on. But to say poverty is simply a state of mind seems drastically and dangerously wrong to me.
wiseowise 3y ago
> To see life as full of abundance, good purpose and to find joy in it. Given that most (if not all) enjoyable things in life involve some kind of a fee (however small), that’s hard to do.
- midasuni 3y ago
  You'll never watch your life slide out of view And then dance, and drink, and screw Because there's nothing else to do
pierat 3y ago
And this is what neoliberalism does to a brain. Notice that when communists are discussed, the same sayings "communism has killed millions of people". Well, so has capitalism. Probably even more than communism. Except, capitalists always rephrase this to point blame towards the individual. Homeless rising? Should have worked harder! Don't have medical? Should have worked harder! Medical privatized and going to shit? Should have worked harder! It's the same tired refrain, blaming individuals for system based problems. Maybe, just maybe, capitalism is kinda shit?
- fellowmartian 3y ago
  I don’t see anything particularly neoliberal about that comment? If anything it’s version of slightly misguided Zen Buddhism. There’s a communist version of every tired refrain you listed (but with more jail time and gulags), so I don’t see how it’s solving anything. Maybe life in general is kinda shit sometimes?
  - beebeepka 3y ago
    It's bottom of the barrel right wing hogwash. Calling it neo liberalism is good enough, imho
- gooseus 3y ago
  And this would be the same tired refrain of every tankie who will justify atrocities committed under communism by pointing out that bad things also happen under capitalism. I'd call myself a neoliberal (for lack of a better term), but I agree that the OP's comment is naive and is the kind of things that almost always comes from people who have never experienced actual scarcity or desperation for more than a second of their lives. But the idea that any form of communism can be put forward as a general solution to scarcity would be amusing if it wasn't so common. Capitalism is shit, but it's shit for the same reason that every communist system ever instituted ends up shit. Because every system is vulnerable to exploitation by a small group of well-positioned individuals, and if those individuals are shitty (or become enthralled to a single shitty individual) then your whole system turns to shit under them. Communists (and libertarians) seem to only learn enough history to speed-run through all the same mistakes... It's the same mentality of people who design a new framework/language believing it solves a bunch of problems in existing languages/frameworks, while naively ignoring the problems that those existing bloated languages/frameworks had been designed to solve... usually problems of scale, fault-tolerance, and reliability. And to be clear, there isn't anything wrong with designing new languages, or frameworks, or economic manifestos. These are all good exercises that more people should take on, if only to learn for themselves how difficult and complex they can be and to disavow themselves of the notion that who came before must have been corrupt and/or stupid. Imo, there is no "one size fits all" framework for good governance and we'd be better served by talking more about design patterns, anti-patterns, best practices, potential vulnerabilities/exploits, and how well each system we've seen implemented implemented their solutions... is the pattern itself bad, or the implementation? Or maybe it's a fine pattern that is just really hard to implement and doesn't scale reliably because of certain properties of the underlying language we're using or the machine architecture we're deploying onto?
bigbillheck 3y ago
Poverty is really a state of not having money.

dwb 3y ago

This is the sort of rhetoric that harms poor people. Being poor can cause states of mind, but is not a state of mind in itself — it is clearly and simply an economic position. The article is not talking about people thinking of themselves as simply poor and therefore unhappy or unhealthy, but a much more complex relationship.

fellowmartian 3y ago
On individual scale you’re right, but on the collective level I think both you and GP are right, it’s a feedback loop. Places become poor for different reasons: shifting economic realities, fall of the previous civilization (eg USSR, which is my experience), etc. Places remain poor when people feel trapped inside vs consciously deciding to call the place home.
- dwb 3y ago
  I sort of acknowledged that when I said it was a complex relationship. I'm sure there are feedback loops set up where experiencing poverty makes you more likely to stay poor, and so on. But to say poverty is simply a state of mind seems drastically and dangerously wrong to me.

wiseowise 3y ago

> To see life as full of abundance, good purpose and to find joy in it. Given that most (if not all) enjoyable things in life involve some kind of a fee (however small), that’s hard to do.

midasuni 3y ago
You'll never watch your life slide out of view And then dance, and drink, and screw Because there's nothing else to do

pierat 3y ago

And this is what neoliberalism does to a brain. Notice that when communists are discussed, the same sayings "communism has killed millions of people". Well, so has capitalism. Probably even more than communism. Except, capitalists always rephrase this to point blame towards the individual. Homeless rising? Should have worked harder! Don't have medical? Should have worked harder! Medical privatized and going to shit? Should have worked harder! It's the same tired refrain, blaming individuals for system based problems. Maybe, just maybe, capitalism is kinda shit?

fellowmartian 3y ago
I don’t see anything particularly neoliberal about that comment? If anything it’s version of slightly misguided Zen Buddhism. There’s a communist version of every tired refrain you listed (but with more jail time and gulags), so I don’t see how it’s solving anything. Maybe life in general is kinda shit sometimes?
- beebeepka 3y ago
  It's bottom of the barrel right wing hogwash. Calling it neo liberalism is good enough, imho
gooseus 3y ago
And this would be the same tired refrain of every tankie who will justify atrocities committed under communism by pointing out that bad things also happen under capitalism. I'd call myself a neoliberal (for lack of a better term), but I agree that the OP's comment is naive and is the kind of things that almost always comes from people who have never experienced actual scarcity or desperation for more than a second of their lives. But the idea that any form of communism can be put forward as a general solution to scarcity would be amusing if it wasn't so common. Capitalism is shit, but it's shit for the same reason that every communist system ever instituted ends up shit. Because every system is vulnerable to exploitation by a small group of well-positioned individuals, and if those individuals are shitty (or become enthralled to a single shitty individual) then your whole system turns to shit under them. Communists (and libertarians) seem to only learn enough history to speed-run through all the same mistakes... It's the same mentality of people who design a new framework/language believing it solves a bunch of problems in existing languages/frameworks, while naively ignoring the problems that those existing bloated languages/frameworks had been designed to solve... usually problems of scale, fault-tolerance, and reliability. And to be clear, there isn't anything wrong with designing new languages, or frameworks, or economic manifestos. These are all good exercises that more people should take on, if only to learn for themselves how difficult and complex they can be and to disavow themselves of the notion that who came before must have been corrupt and/or stupid. Imo, there is no "one size fits all" framework for good governance and we'd be better served by talking more about design patterns, anti-patterns, best practices, potential vulnerabilities/exploits, and how well each system we've seen implemented implemented their solutions... is the pattern itself bad, or the implementation? Or maybe it's a fine pattern that is just really hard to implement and doesn't scale reliably because of certain properties of the underlying language we're using or the machine architecture we're deploying onto?

bigbillheck 3y ago

Poverty is really a state of not having money.