7 ms·

The Psychopolitics of Trauma

58 points by rendx 3y ago

eimrine 3y ago
> You can give people simple math/logic problems and confirm that they get the right answers. Then you can change the wording from “five apples and eight oranges”, to “five Democrats and eight assault weapons” and these same people will flounder and say idiotic things.
- roenxi 3y ago
  I think it is too flippant to say "lose basic reasoning abilities". What they are probably doing (further research required, I didn't read his referencee) is re-contextualising the problem from a logic puzzle to a situation where they have to demonstrate in-group allegence; which has a higher priority than getting the technically correct answer and/or accurately showing their reasoning. Ie, they can reason fine and know what they are saying makes no sense, but the situation is one where the speaker believes a technically correct answer conflicts with their best long term interests. It is like fashion. The point isn't that anyone thinks there are new innovations on how to look good every decade or so - the point is to keep making arbitrary changes to figure out who is in the in group. The political equivalent of fashion means believing things that don't make sense.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
iraqmtpizza 3y ago
>If you’re a right-winger who feels tempted to dismiss this response, imagine having to sit through a six-week diversity training workshop and give the answers the lecturer wants or else you’ll fail If only bachelor's degrees could be gotten in six weeks
- aszantu 3y ago
  if you know all the answers you can just memorize the answers and fly through the exams w/o knowing anything really - unless it's a bachelor of science where you actually have to understand the concepts to do the math or programming
  - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
    yes indeedy four years of diversity training for the low low price of $150,000. but at the end it's all worth it because you can express your true thoughts when you get to the workplace
  - demondemidi 3y ago
    Do you lack the meta cognition to see that you just dismissed everything except science and programming as rote mindless regurgitation, or are you being wildly sarcastic? Because your post is a walking hacker news trope.
    - aszantu 3y ago
      If you can pass the exams with the knowledge you have, you don't need to study for four years unless you want to spend the money. If you can't, feel free to repeat the exams after four years of studying. The whole system is a game and you can either play it honest or game it to earn more money with the phd. The losers are the honest ppl, who think they can study and then try to work their loans off for the next 10-15 years...
- nathan_compton 3y ago
  I've been through a lot of diversity training and I've never been compelled to say anything or even fill out a quiz that went beyond "did you listen to this material." If I was ever expected to parrot a party line it was _always_ "Tell us you understand that we can get sued if you do X." I work in an area where DEI is emphasized more than even at a University in general. I've never found it to be particularly onerous and often find it interesting. When people act like these often banal things (often more or less explicitly directed towards shielding the organization from liability) are compelled speech in front of a firing squad, I have to wonder whether they've really done any. Incidentally, I've seen old white guys say all sorts of stuff at these trainings. I've never heard of anyone getting fired or pushed out of a position.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
    Sounds like you've never attended an American university. I envy you.
    - nathan_compton 3y ago
      Man, I attended American universities my whole life and I work at one.
      - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
        Then you lack any empathy for anyone who has to falsify their beliefs to get a grade. You doubt that I had to come in after class to get the content my speech approved for public speaking class because conservative radio might have naughty ideas, even though it's censored by the FCC (yes, speech class, in which the content of the speech is completely beside the point)? This was like 2010. I can only imagine how bad it is today
        iraqmtpizza 3y ago
- advael 3y ago
  Weird I got my bachelor's in a pretty famously left-leaning place and zero of my grades depended on attending any diversity trainings whatsoever That said, I also might be speaking from the privileged position of not having as many triggers about this topic as many others. I can't tell you how many people I've met for whom completely innocuous-seeming things - such as a person going out of their way to separate some recycling from their garbage - can set off quite the tirade about "wokeism" or whatever. I have to have sympathy for these poor souls. They've clearly been through a lot
  - guappa 3y ago
    I have heard 1st hand a guy who loves to bicycle tell a disabled man (who can in no way bicycle) that he must never buy a car, because they are bad for the environment. A different time, a woman passing by felt the need to stop and scold a friend who had said a non politically correct joke, explaining that he could only laugh at them because he's a privileged white male. He's a privileged white male immigrant whose school time included training to run into bomb shelters because there was a war going on. And the woman was a white non-immigrant. People who scold you for saying words such as "ghetto" or "retard" will then say "lame". I've met so many of these people. They're so boring and entitled. In general I think anyone not minding their own business when nobody is getting harmed is boring and entitled. On both sides of the woke fence.
    - subjectsigma 3y ago
      Ha, I have so many of these. I think my favorite was getting scolded one time for saying the pandemic was “almost over” because that was a “dangerous idea”. I was in an elevator with the woman scolding me. Perfect stranger, no idea who she was. I was wearing a N95 mask and she had no face covering.
dandanua 3y ago
Today's culture indeed exaggerates what a trauma is, but politics is a bad area to argue about it. Politics can cause wars, deaths, suffering for millions of people. It is a real trauma, just anticipated in the future.
Modified3019 3y ago
This was actually a fascinating read. I found it quite relatable and explanatory of an earlier time in my life where I was accidentally self-harming myself by being obsessed with certain emotionally topics before finally quitting cold turkey.
ivansavz 3y ago
Key quote from near the end of the article: > Suppose that outrage addiction is, in fact, trauma addiction. That means the media ecosystem is a giant machine trying to traumatize as many people as possible in order to create repeat customers, i.e. trauma addicts. Combine that with the explicit, confessed desire on both sides to “trigger” the other as much as possible, and you have a lot of very clever people all trying to maximize one another’s trauma levels. On the external level, that looks like weaving as strong a narrative of threat and persecution as possible and trying to hit people in their psychological weak points. On the internal level, it means making sure they replace their normal ability to update with a series of triggers that make them replace reality with pre-packaged stories about how the other side is innately evil and everything they do is for specific threatening and evil reasons.
- totetsu 3y ago
  This is how I end up watching videos of IDF soldiers running people over in tanks.
  - thelastparadise 3y ago
    And how does that make you feel?
  - whearyou 3y ago
    And me of Hamas members parading their dead, sexually assaulted trophies
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
coldtea 3y ago
>In April and May of 2013, Yale Law professor Dan Kahan — working with coauthors Ellen Peters, Erica Cantrell Dawson, and Paul Slovic — set out to test a question that continuously puzzles scientists: why isn’t good evidence more effective in resolving political debates? For instance, why doesn’t the mounting proof that climate change is a real threat persuade more skeptics? Ah, the good old psychologization of politics ("those disagreeing are not just wrong, they're crazy or at least mentally affected"). Stalinist USSR would be proud. The idea that this might be a charged political question for a reason didn't cross their minds, or that there might be valid subtleties like: Is scientific fact a matter of consensus? Is something a "consensus" if those disagreeing are excluded (while still being scientists with credentials and everything) - which also means those that potentially disagree have reasons to hide appear as agreeing? Consensus is not really required in hard science judgements where you can just measure things or do an experiment and be done with it. So this is not that cut-and-try then, but depends on interpretation of lots of data points and theories? Can scientists ever consent on something that's nevertheless wrong? Does it still count as disagreeing if you agree on climate change being a problem but disagree on the identification of the main causes? Does it still count as disagreeing if you agree on climate change being a problem but disagree on the solutions proposed? Of course you don't get grants or fill politics-adjacent papers by being subtle about such things.
- watwut 3y ago
  > Consensus is not really required in hard science judgements where you can just measure things or do an experiment and be done with it. This is not true. Hard science judgements still require consensus and one experiment does not prove all that much.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >Hard science judgements still require consensus Only a trivial one. Which is not really challenged. Nobody really questions the value of the acceleration due to gravity down on Earth, or whether a body with mass X and another with Y will both fall at a rate R in a vacuum for example. And if they do, a simple experiment will show them otherwise.
AltruisticGapHN 3y ago
> Ancient warriors apparently didn’t get PTSD. And many who actively served in WWI and WWII didn't either. At the heart of trauma is helplessness. That is why it tends to cement in childhood when you are truly helpless. You don´t have your own home to run to, or your own money to buy food etc. And, you're small and weaker than so called "adults". If a soldier didn't feel helpless while defending their country there's a good chance they haven't developed trauma. Trauma then is a form of disregulation in the nervous system, a conditioning, a form of imprint where the nervous system routinely "triggers" in sympathetic activation, fight/flight/freeze.
- red_admiral 3y ago
  I thought that WWI is when "shell shock", as it was then caused, started to become a big topic? You're probably right that _most_ soldiers from WWI (at least the ones who came back alive, and survived the Spanish flu) didn't develop PTSD, but in ancient times it seems like it was unheard of as opposed to unusual. I was always told in my family that my great-grandfather was "never the same again" after he came back from WWI, and I think PTSD in some form is the most likely explanation.
  - chongli 3y ago
    Helplessness as an explanation checks out there as well. Hunkering down in a trench or a foxhole as shells rain down endlessly, blowing up everything around you. Sounds like one of the most powerful ways to inflict abject helplessness. Compare that to the ancient battlefield where you had a spear in hand and your friends at your side. You’d have a lot more sense of agency and if things looked really bad you could run away or surrender. Of course if your opponent was rounding up and executing all of the prisoners then you would feel pretty helpless waiting for your turn, but then you wouldn’t live to tell the tale of your trauma.
  - silveraxe93 3y ago
    WWI was also arguably when soldiers became helpless. Being deployed meant huddling in a trench waiting for an artillery shell to strike you out of the blue.
advael 3y ago
I like this article, and I think the relationship between politically-charged discourse and trauma is important not only because it gives us insight into people's behavior, but because this is being deployed strategically There are many contexts, including education and workplaces, where discussion of politics is discouraged to varying degress, ranging from cultural norms to strict policy. This both results from and in turn exacerbates a tendency to politicize certain topics for tactical reasons A really stark example I saw in 2021 was a shift in tone about vaccination for COVID-19, where we went from the Trump administration trying to reassure the public that the crisis would be solved by accelerating vaccine development, and then as the rollout of vaccination programs were taken over by the Biden administration, a sudden shift on the right to intense skepticism of vaccination (as well as every disease control measure of any kind), which has resulted in a lot of demands that people be allowed to put e.g. colleagues at work or school at risk because things like vaccination requirements amount to "political acid testing". This whiplash-inducing form of position-switching for political advantage is characteristic of the Republican party (see also their recent strange reversal on funding additional aid at the US southern border, seemingly because their presidential hopeful wants to campaign on this being an ongoing crisis that the current administration is doing nothing about), but they're not the only ones guilty of demanding silence or deference to people's contrarian positions on a vast array of topics in many contexts on the basis that they're "political", often after creating the situation where they are political hot topics themselves
- northzen 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - cassepipe 3y ago
    Yes, and... ? This is not the great counter you think it is and you are not addressing any of the points the person you a responding to took the time to bring up so you are just engaging in low effort flamewar. Please don't
DrDroop 3y ago
Otherwise a good article, but labelling hyper-political people as mere victims is doing them too much of a service. The only sure-fire-way of detecting a covert or malignant narcissist is in how much they signal their victim hood status and their moral superiority. It takes a certain kind of person to google for videos of Ben Shapiro and then get outraged about the things he says. This behaviour is not much different (expect in severity) then Justin Smollett tying a noose around his neck.
- kys_now 3y ago
  [flagged]
lynx23 3y ago
There will be a point in time when we will have to have the discussion if journalism and media are an essential and important part of democracy (which is what they says over and over again), or the downfall of our society. Given that most media outlets have money as their primary incentive, and "playing nice" more as a protective shell, I am leaning towards the point of view that we need to find ways to let the public know that media isn't always good, and sometimes pure poison for our actual communities. Social media has made the problem more clear. However, conventional media are not immune to fueling outrage.
- guappa 3y ago
  How can you vote with no information? Might as well just pick a card from a shuffled deck…
  - jocaal 3y ago
    Making the assumption that the majority will always make the right choice is absurd. The real value in democracy is kicking out whoever is currently in charge every few years and you can indeed do that by picking the next person at random.
    - guappa 3y ago
      The idea is that they make the best decision for themselves, not the right decision (which is a completely meaningless definition). And since they are the majority, at least the majority of people will be happy. Rather than the minority being happy.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - lynx23 3y ago
    How can you vote with skewed "information"? Might as well just pick a card from a shuffled deck…
DinaCoder99 3y ago
It seems a lot more crazy to not care how society works, personally.
- xcode42 3y ago
  I don't think the argument is to not care how society works at all. But if people are caring so much that it's making them act in irrational and harmful(both to themselves and others) ways maybe we/they need to dial it back a bit for both our/their and society's good. It's not at all clear that this "culture of outrage" is having a positive impact in how society works, and if it isn't maybe we need to stop.
  - DinaCoder99 3y ago
    It's not clear that "culture of outrage" is even a thing to begin with when, again, the alternative is to not place value on how society works to begin with. I mean, you could be entirely satisfied with how society works, but that also strikes me as irrational.
- kys_now 3y ago
  Ignorance is bliss
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
movpasd 3y ago
I thought this article was very insightful. I think one element to recognise is that politics is the fundamental way we make collective decisions. It is extremely important, both in a rational sense and (with humans being social animals) emotional sense. The article focuses on the irrational or pathological aspect of toxic politics, and that is definitely relevant. But also important is to recognise that a strong emotional response is not irrational, even if the resulting thoughts aren't. The outcome of the political process _does_ seriously affects our lives. I think that be acknowledging this, it's easier for us to notice and mindfully accept our emotional reactions to politics, see through the filter of our experience, and therefore make more informed decisions — and ultimately that's our only way out of a trapped prior.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  > I think one element to recognise is that politics is the fundamental way we make collective decisions. It is extremely important, both in a rational sense and (with humans being social animals) emotional sense. "the moment God crapped out the 3rd caveman a conspiracy was hatched" -- all decisions are eventually politics.
kstenerud 3y ago
> Ancient warriors apparently didn’t get PTSD Ancient warriors didn't get PTSD because they fought the "normal" way that we'd evolved to fight: hand-to-hand (and of course there were arrows). Not sitting in a trench for months in awful weather, suffering disease and exhaustion while you wait to be bombed, or ordered to charge into machine guns and mortars with little chance of even encountering the enemy before you die in the mud. Not living in a base among a potentially hostile populace where anyone could shoot you in the back, or lay a bomb for you, or box you in traffic and machine gun the whole vehicle to Swiss cheese. The "you vs your opponent, fighting to the death" is not the traumatic part; it's the constant waiting for a pervasive, effectively invisible force that kills off or grievously injures your comrades one-by-one (losing friends until you finally stop making them in order to keep the pain at bay), and you're powerless to stop it because all the weapons are so huge and deadly and attack from range or concealment, at all hours, and your own personal strength and training - although they help - aren't going to count for much against it.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  I don't believe "ancient warriors didn't get PTSD" or that somehow fighting hand-to-hand avoids it. You're still dealing with killing, watching your friends get killed, war crimes, torture, uncertainty, hunger, discomfort, etc. Just because it's not described doesn't mean it didn't exist. It's an example of survivorship bias as well, because nobody writes about the ones that died miserably.
incomingpain 3y ago
>I didn’t personally feel traumatized by Trump’s election. Imagine this article was written by a Trump supporter. Flagged in a heartbeat. >is that in college a bunch of people tried to cancel me for something I’d intended to be an anti-racist joke, but which apparently didn’t come out that way. Former friends turned against me, I got a few death threats, Then again, a Trump supporter would never have this viewpoint. The author is identifying something rather unique to their side of politics.

58 points by rendx 3y ago

> You can give people simple math/logic problems and confirm that they get the right answers. Then you can change the wording from “five apples and eight oranges”, to “five Democrats and eight assault weapons” and these same people will flounder and say idiotic things.

roenxi 3y ago
I think it is too flippant to say "lose basic reasoning abilities". What they are probably doing (further research required, I didn't read his referencee) is re-contextualising the problem from a logic puzzle to a situation where they have to demonstrate in-group allegence; which has a higher priority than getting the technically correct answer and/or accurately showing their reasoning. Ie, they can reason fine and know what they are saying makes no sense, but the situation is one where the speaker believes a technically correct answer conflicts with their best long term interests. It is like fashion. The point isn't that anyone thinks there are new innovations on how to look good every decade or so - the point is to keep making arbitrary changes to figure out who is in the in group. The political equivalent of fashion means believing things that don't make sense.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

iraqmtpizza 3y ago

>If you’re a right-winger who feels tempted to dismiss this response, imagine having to sit through a six-week diversity training workshop and give the answers the lecturer wants or else you’ll fail If only bachelor's degrees could be gotten in six weeks

aszantu 3y ago
if you know all the answers you can just memorize the answers and fly through the exams w/o knowing anything really - unless it's a bachelor of science where you actually have to understand the concepts to do the math or programming
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago
  yes indeedy four years of diversity training for the low low price of $150,000. but at the end it's all worth it because you can express your true thoughts when you get to the workplace
- demondemidi 3y ago
  Do you lack the meta cognition to see that you just dismissed everything except science and programming as rote mindless regurgitation, or are you being wildly sarcastic? Because your post is a walking hacker news trope.
  - aszantu 3y ago
    If you can pass the exams with the knowledge you have, you don't need to study for four years unless you want to spend the money. If you can't, feel free to repeat the exams after four years of studying. The whole system is a game and you can either play it honest or game it to earn more money with the phd. The losers are the honest ppl, who think they can study and then try to work their loans off for the next 10-15 years...
nathan_compton 3y ago
I've been through a lot of diversity training and I've never been compelled to say anything or even fill out a quiz that went beyond "did you listen to this material." If I was ever expected to parrot a party line it was _always_ "Tell us you understand that we can get sued if you do X." I work in an area where DEI is emphasized more than even at a University in general. I've never found it to be particularly onerous and often find it interesting. When people act like these often banal things (often more or less explicitly directed towards shielding the organization from liability) are compelled speech in front of a firing squad, I have to wonder whether they've really done any. Incidentally, I've seen old white guys say all sorts of stuff at these trainings. I've never heard of anyone getting fired or pushed out of a position.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago
  Sounds like you've never attended an American university. I envy you.
  - nathan_compton 3y ago
    Man, I attended American universities my whole life and I work at one.
    - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
      Then you lack any empathy for anyone who has to falsify their beliefs to get a grade. You doubt that I had to come in after class to get the content my speech approved for public speaking class because conservative radio might have naughty ideas, even though it's censored by the FCC (yes, speech class, in which the content of the speech is completely beside the point)? This was like 2010. I can only imagine how bad it is today
      - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
advael 3y ago
Weird I got my bachelor's in a pretty famously left-leaning place and zero of my grades depended on attending any diversity trainings whatsoever That said, I also might be speaking from the privileged position of not having as many triggers about this topic as many others. I can't tell you how many people I've met for whom completely innocuous-seeming things - such as a person going out of their way to separate some recycling from their garbage - can set off quite the tirade about "wokeism" or whatever. I have to have sympathy for these poor souls. They've clearly been through a lot
- guappa 3y ago
  I have heard 1st hand a guy who loves to bicycle tell a disabled man (who can in no way bicycle) that he must never buy a car, because they are bad for the environment. A different time, a woman passing by felt the need to stop and scold a friend who had said a non politically correct joke, explaining that he could only laugh at them because he's a privileged white male. He's a privileged white male immigrant whose school time included training to run into bomb shelters because there was a war going on. And the woman was a white non-immigrant. People who scold you for saying words such as "ghetto" or "retard" will then say "lame". I've met so many of these people. They're so boring and entitled. In general I think anyone not minding their own business when nobody is getting harmed is boring and entitled. On both sides of the woke fence.
  - subjectsigma 3y ago
    Ha, I have so many of these. I think my favorite was getting scolded one time for saying the pandemic was “almost over” because that was a “dangerous idea”. I was in an elevator with the woman scolding me. Perfect stranger, no idea who she was. I was wearing a N95 mask and she had no face covering.

dandanua 3y ago

Today's culture indeed exaggerates what a trauma is, but politics is a bad area to argue about it. Politics can cause wars, deaths, suffering for millions of people. It is a real trauma, just anticipated in the future.

Modified3019 3y ago

This was actually a fascinating read. I found it quite relatable and explanatory of an earlier time in my life where I was accidentally self-harming myself by being obsessed with certain emotionally topics before finally quitting cold turkey.

ivansavz 3y ago

Key quote from near the end of the article: > Suppose that outrage addiction is, in fact, trauma addiction. That means the media ecosystem is a giant machine trying to traumatize as many people as possible in order to create repeat customers, i.e. trauma addicts. Combine that with the explicit, confessed desire on both sides to “trigger” the other as much as possible, and you have a lot of very clever people all trying to maximize one another’s trauma levels. On the external level, that looks like weaving as strong a narrative of threat and persecution as possible and trying to hit people in their psychological weak points. On the internal level, it means making sure they replace their normal ability to update with a series of triggers that make them replace reality with pre-packaged stories about how the other side is innately evil and everything they do is for specific threatening and evil reasons.

totetsu 3y ago
This is how I end up watching videos of IDF soldiers running people over in tanks.
- thelastparadise 3y ago
  And how does that make you feel?
- whearyou 3y ago
  And me of Hamas members parading their dead, sexually assaulted trophies
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

coldtea 3y ago

>In April and May of 2013, Yale Law professor Dan Kahan — working with coauthors Ellen Peters, Erica Cantrell Dawson, and Paul Slovic — set out to test a question that continuously puzzles scientists: why isn’t good evidence more effective in resolving political debates? For instance, why doesn’t the mounting proof that climate change is a real threat persuade more skeptics? Ah, the good old psychologization of politics ("those disagreeing are not just wrong, they're crazy or at least mentally affected"). Stalinist USSR would be proud. The idea that this might be a charged political question for a reason didn't cross their minds, or that there might be valid subtleties like: Is scientific fact a matter of consensus? Is something a "consensus" if those disagreeing are excluded (while still being scientists with credentials and everything) - which also means those that potentially disagree have reasons to hide appear as agreeing? Consensus is not really required in hard science judgements where you can just measure things or do an experiment and be done with it. So this is not that cut-and-try then, but depends on interpretation of lots of data points and theories? Can scientists ever consent on something that's nevertheless wrong? Does it still count as disagreeing if you agree on climate change being a problem but disagree on the identification of the main causes? Does it still count as disagreeing if you agree on climate change being a problem but disagree on the solutions proposed? Of course you don't get grants or fill politics-adjacent papers by being subtle about such things.

watwut 3y ago
> Consensus is not really required in hard science judgements where you can just measure things or do an experiment and be done with it. This is not true. Hard science judgements still require consensus and one experiment does not prove all that much.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >Hard science judgements still require consensus Only a trivial one. Which is not really challenged. Nobody really questions the value of the acceleration due to gravity down on Earth, or whether a body with mass X and another with Y will both fall at a rate R in a vacuum for example. And if they do, a simple experiment will show them otherwise.

AltruisticGapHN 3y ago

> Ancient warriors apparently didn’t get PTSD. And many who actively served in WWI and WWII didn't either. At the heart of trauma is helplessness. That is why it tends to cement in childhood when you are truly helpless. You don´t have your own home to run to, or your own money to buy food etc. And, you're small and weaker than so called "adults". If a soldier didn't feel helpless while defending their country there's a good chance they haven't developed trauma. Trauma then is a form of disregulation in the nervous system, a conditioning, a form of imprint where the nervous system routinely "triggers" in sympathetic activation, fight/flight/freeze.

red_admiral 3y ago
I thought that WWI is when "shell shock", as it was then caused, started to become a big topic? You're probably right that _most_ soldiers from WWI (at least the ones who came back alive, and survived the Spanish flu) didn't develop PTSD, but in ancient times it seems like it was unheard of as opposed to unusual. I was always told in my family that my great-grandfather was "never the same again" after he came back from WWI, and I think PTSD in some form is the most likely explanation.
- chongli 3y ago
  Helplessness as an explanation checks out there as well. Hunkering down in a trench or a foxhole as shells rain down endlessly, blowing up everything around you. Sounds like one of the most powerful ways to inflict abject helplessness. Compare that to the ancient battlefield where you had a spear in hand and your friends at your side. You’d have a lot more sense of agency and if things looked really bad you could run away or surrender. Of course if your opponent was rounding up and executing all of the prisoners then you would feel pretty helpless waiting for your turn, but then you wouldn’t live to tell the tale of your trauma.
- silveraxe93 3y ago
  WWI was also arguably when soldiers became helpless. Being deployed meant huddling in a trench waiting for an artillery shell to strike you out of the blue.

advael 3y ago

I like this article, and I think the relationship between politically-charged discourse and trauma is important not only because it gives us insight into people's behavior, but because this is being deployed strategically There are many contexts, including education and workplaces, where discussion of politics is discouraged to varying degress, ranging from cultural norms to strict policy. This both results from and in turn exacerbates a tendency to politicize certain topics for tactical reasons A really stark example I saw in 2021 was a shift in tone about vaccination for COVID-19, where we went from the Trump administration trying to reassure the public that the crisis would be solved by accelerating vaccine development, and then as the rollout of vaccination programs were taken over by the Biden administration, a sudden shift on the right to intense skepticism of vaccination (as well as every disease control measure of any kind), which has resulted in a lot of demands that people be allowed to put e.g. colleagues at work or school at risk because things like vaccination requirements amount to "political acid testing". This whiplash-inducing form of position-switching for political advantage is characteristic of the Republican party (see also their recent strange reversal on funding additional aid at the US southern border, seemingly because their presidential hopeful wants to campaign on this being an ongoing crisis that the current administration is doing nothing about), but they're not the only ones guilty of demanding silence or deference to people's contrarian positions on a vast array of topics in many contexts on the basis that they're "political", often after creating the situation where they are political hot topics themselves

northzen 3y ago
[flagged]
- cassepipe 3y ago
  Yes, and... ? This is not the great counter you think it is and you are not addressing any of the points the person you a responding to took the time to bring up so you are just engaging in low effort flamewar. Please don't

DrDroop 3y ago

Otherwise a good article, but labelling hyper-political people as mere victims is doing them too much of a service. The only sure-fire-way of detecting a covert or malignant narcissist is in how much they signal their victim hood status and their moral superiority. It takes a certain kind of person to google for videos of Ben Shapiro and then get outraged about the things he says. This behaviour is not much different (expect in severity) then Justin Smollett tying a noose around his neck.

kys_now 3y ago
[flagged]

lynx23 3y ago

There will be a point in time when we will have to have the discussion if journalism and media are an essential and important part of democracy (which is what they says over and over again), or the downfall of our society. Given that most media outlets have money as their primary incentive, and "playing nice" more as a protective shell, I am leaning towards the point of view that we need to find ways to let the public know that media isn't always good, and sometimes pure poison for our actual communities. Social media has made the problem more clear. However, conventional media are not immune to fueling outrage.

guappa 3y ago
How can you vote with no information? Might as well just pick a card from a shuffled deck…
- jocaal 3y ago
  Making the assumption that the majority will always make the right choice is absurd. The real value in democracy is kicking out whoever is currently in charge every few years and you can indeed do that by picking the next person at random.
  - guappa 3y ago
    The idea is that they make the best decision for themselves, not the right decision (which is a completely meaningless definition). And since they are the majority, at least the majority of people will be happy. Rather than the minority being happy.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- lynx23 3y ago
  How can you vote with skewed "information"? Might as well just pick a card from a shuffled deck…

DinaCoder99 3y ago

It seems a lot more crazy to not care how society works, personally.

xcode42 3y ago
I don't think the argument is to not care how society works at all. But if people are caring so much that it's making them act in irrational and harmful(both to themselves and others) ways maybe we/they need to dial it back a bit for both our/their and society's good. It's not at all clear that this "culture of outrage" is having a positive impact in how society works, and if it isn't maybe we need to stop.
- DinaCoder99 3y ago
  It's not clear that "culture of outrage" is even a thing to begin with when, again, the alternative is to not place value on how society works to begin with. I mean, you could be entirely satisfied with how society works, but that also strikes me as irrational.
kys_now 3y ago
Ignorance is bliss

deleted 3y ago

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movpasd 3y ago

I thought this article was very insightful. I think one element to recognise is that politics is the fundamental way we make collective decisions. It is extremely important, both in a rational sense and (with humans being social animals) emotional sense. The article focuses on the irrational or pathological aspect of toxic politics, and that is definitely relevant. But also important is to recognise that a strong emotional response is not irrational, even if the resulting thoughts aren't. The outcome of the political process _does_ seriously affects our lives. I think that be acknowledging this, it's easier for us to notice and mindfully accept our emotional reactions to politics, see through the filter of our experience, and therefore make more informed decisions — and ultimately that's our only way out of a trapped prior.

red-iron-pine 3y ago
> I think one element to recognise is that politics is the fundamental way we make collective decisions. It is extremely important, both in a rational sense and (with humans being social animals) emotional sense. "the moment God crapped out the 3rd caveman a conspiracy was hatched" -- all decisions are eventually politics.

kstenerud 3y ago

> Ancient warriors apparently didn’t get PTSD Ancient warriors didn't get PTSD because they fought the "normal" way that we'd evolved to fight: hand-to-hand (and of course there were arrows). Not sitting in a trench for months in awful weather, suffering disease and exhaustion while you wait to be bombed, or ordered to charge into machine guns and mortars with little chance of even encountering the enemy before you die in the mud. Not living in a base among a potentially hostile populace where anyone could shoot you in the back, or lay a bomb for you, or box you in traffic and machine gun the whole vehicle to Swiss cheese. The "you vs your opponent, fighting to the death" is not the traumatic part; it's the constant waiting for a pervasive, effectively invisible force that kills off or grievously injures your comrades one-by-one (losing friends until you finally stop making them in order to keep the pain at bay), and you're powerless to stop it because all the weapons are so huge and deadly and attack from range or concealment, at all hours, and your own personal strength and training - although they help - aren't going to count for much against it.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago
I don't believe "ancient warriors didn't get PTSD" or that somehow fighting hand-to-hand avoids it. You're still dealing with killing, watching your friends get killed, war crimes, torture, uncertainty, hunger, discomfort, etc. Just because it's not described doesn't mean it didn't exist. It's an example of survivorship bias as well, because nobody writes about the ones that died miserably.

incomingpain 3y ago

>I didn’t personally feel traumatized by Trump’s election. Imagine this article was written by a Trump supporter. Flagged in a heartbeat. >is that in college a bunch of people tried to cancel me for something I’d intended to be an anti-racist joke, but which apparently didn’t come out that way. Former friends turned against me, I got a few death threats, Then again, a Trump supporter would never have this viewpoint. The author is identifying something rather unique to their side of politics.