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This is my first post that’s not in Culture War or Friday megathreads because I’m honestly not sure that it fits into either thread. It touches on certain Culture War themes (China, industrial decay, and Chinese culture) but it’s much more personal. This is just going to be a personal story of the development, or lack thereof, of my hometown in AnShan, China. It’s probably not going to be well written, or even 100% factual, but it’s going to be true. I’m writing this partly to order my own thoughts on the slow death of my hometown, and partly to contrast with some of the current online sentiments regarding Chinese development. Also, I love to show off some of the interesting parts of North Eastern Chinese culture. A lot of this story may sound similar, especially if you have experience regarding Rust Belt decline but with all things Chinese, it’s got that Chinese twist.
I’m writing this right now in the middle of my visit to my hometown of AnShan, China, though I will finish it when I’m back in America. Located in LiaoNing province, AnShan is one of the southern cities of the North East region of China (Better known as Manchuria abroad, but don’t use that name in China or to Chinese people). At one time, AnShan was considered one of the cities of the Chinese Rust belt. As with many cities in the North Eastern provinces, the main industries in AnShan are steel making, mining, tourism, and farming. AnSteel (鞍钢), named after the city, was at one point (and maybe still is) an important pillar of industry to the whole region, and maybe even the whole of China. Every single one of my grandparents worked at and retired from AnSteel, and they are still receiving their pensions, well into their 80s. Once one of the Crown Jewels of industry in Manchuria, AnSteel has seen better days. Due to increased competition, global trends, and plain old corruption, AnSteel has seen a steady decline over the years. Even 10 years ago, during the housing boom, AnSteel was a functional and operational company, if not a thriving one. Concrete Communist blocks need steel rebar in order to not fall over, after all. But now, even housing has slowed down, sending a formerly floundering company into essentially a coma. As everyone knows, when the major industry in your city goes bust, things start to go wrong. Now downgraded to 4th tier city (from 3rd tier), AnShan is essentially in a death spiral. For more on the Chinese city tier system, take a look at the Wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_city_tier_system
Note that AnShan is still listed as 3rd tier on the page itself. In fact the picture used for AnShan is a pretty iconic part of the city, if you've ever been there.
Here is a picture of the AnSteel museum. It’d be like having a Ford museum in Detroit or an Apple museum in Cupertino. It was pretty fun to visit to be honest.
To say that the decay started with the recent failure of the Chinese housing market is inaccurate. As I’ve mentioned before, the city, and really the region as a whole, has been on a downturn. Historically, Manchuria has always been a resource rich and fertile region. It’s also one of the reasons that it was fought over so often. These resources carried the whole of the Manchuria region to great status after the devastation of WWII and the Chinese Civil War. Over the course of the 20th century, due to many factors, the formerly booming industrial base of China has declined and now is seemingly on its deathbed.
TieDong (East of the train tracks if the meaning is translated literally) used to be the nicer part of town when I was a kid. It seemed that every year there would be new apartments popping up or being built. Here I’ll explain a little bit about how housing works in China. The vast majority of housing in a city is contained in those apartment blocks that you’ll see online. The difference is that some of these apartment blocks are located in gated communities that have their own maintenance and security. Maintenance is usually pretty quick, especially when a community first gets built and lived in. Security is usually pretty lax, with most places letting in everyone except obvious vagrants.
I will be adding some pictures from here on out. I know that a lot of these pictures are not “good” or “beautiful” but then again, I never claimed to be a photographer. There will be NSFW pictures (not sexual, just of some strangeness that happens in China) so be forewarned.
Here is a community that was new around 2008. My grandparents actually used to live here.
As you might be able to tell, it has seen better days. This is the building that used to house the maintenance of the community.
As you can see, it’s completely barren. In fact, the building itself is in miserable shape.
On the right side of this picture, you can see that there are literally holes in the building. From the look of the maintenance building, you might be able to tell that it was inspired by a European style. Many things in the community were inspired by European aesthetics.
Though the management of the community has been defunct for a long while, people still live in the community itself. The inside of the community has seen much better days. Because the maintenance crew was responsible for cleaning everything, trash has begun to pile up at the bottom of the communist blocks that everyone lives in.
There was actually a car that was abandoned in the community. I was even surprised when I saw this.
It seems that someone has started living in the concrete maze that used to be here. I remember playing hide and seek with my cousin here when my grandparents still lived here.
There used to be water and koi fish in this section. This is all open and I used to play here and feed the fish when I was younger. Now it’s all dry. The fixtures that were in the water are still there which makes everything seem even more sad to me.
In fact, one of the gates that used to house the security for the community has been abandoned and the building has turned into a burger spot. Not even a real burger spot because I don’t think they even make hamburgers in the American sense. I think it’s just called a burger spot and makes Chinese food.
Here is the abandoned shell of the police station that used to be in the community. It was actually abandoned quite recently, but it was a long time coming. The city obviously doesn’t lack police presence, so it may have simply been a consolidation. The image, however, was quite striking to me when I came upon it.
With all of that being said, however, there were still parents playing with their kids here. I saw multiple families playing in the public area. Obviously, I didn’t take pictures of random families playing in public. It seems to me that in a hypothetically similar community in an American city like Philadelphia, there might not be so many families playing outside.
To be honest, without seeing how things used to be, it’d be easy to think that things were always like this, especially in a small city like AnShan. The city was already slow in terms of development, and with the slowing of the Chinese economy, development has ground to a halt. Compared to the last time I was here ~2 years ago, barely anything has changed.
Even the better parts of town are not doing as well as they used to be. In AnShan, there’s a part of town called 站前. Translated literally it’s called “Front of the Station.” It’s in front of the train station that is still one of the major transportation hubs of the city. The airport in the city is actually mainly for military use and commercial flights only go to BeiJing or ShangHai. Nowadays, the high speed rail system is what most people use to travel far distances. Driving is fine for nearby cities, but if you wanted to go cross country, you’d generally go on rail. When I first left China, I went to BeiJing by train before flying to America. Not high speed rail, train. I digress. The “Front of the Station” area is where most of the nice things are. Shopping, food, and general merriment. However, even the nicer part of town has become run down.
Here is a picture of a small part of the area.
This used to be a fairly successful mall. On the side of the building, you can still see some of the billboards. Now, it seems that the only remaining shop is Mcdonalds.
This used to be the biggest and nicest mall in the city. During my parents’ day, it was legitimately one of the largest in the area. Nowadays it’s quite run down, but still operational. Even when I talk with my family about it, they tell me about how sad it’s become. More on this mall in the slice of life section.
This is “Computer City.” Or used to be. The sign on top still says “Computer City,” but you can see how worn down it is. It used to be where all of the computer, and later cell phone, vendors and repairers opened their shops. I remember personally coming here with my grandparents when they got their computer and later, cell phones. If you look at the first floor now, that store now sells snacks. I’m not even kidding. There are still smaller computer or electronics vendors on the side, but you can see how the entire building is run down.
This is the unsuccessful half of a successful mall. The mall is called NewMart, and it would have been new about 13 years ago. This mall contains many international brands and is one of the fancier malls in the city. Even though the mall is successful overall, there is still a portion of it that was abandoned.
Here is something that might be interesting. I thought I’d put this in the slice of life section, but it probably fits better here. Here, you’ll see the marriage market in the local park. People, or even people’s parents paste their stats and what they’re looking for here. In fact, you can even read some of these in the pictures. One of these reads:
Male, never married, born in ‘87, Zodiac sign: Rabbit, 1.85 meters tall, college graduate, works in environmental protection, monthly salary 5000 Yuan (736 Dollars), owns car and house, parents healthy and retired, birth family (meaning non-adapted), looking for wife. Parents telephone: telephone number
I’ve written all of the above for multiple reasons. Part of the reason is to order my own internal thoughts. Another part is to contrast what I experienced in China with what I see in America. Because although my home city is in a sorry state, with a stalled economy and shrinking population, most people I met were happy, or at least content. Compare the similar situations between AnShan and Detroit. Or AnShan and Philadelphia. Even with a denuded industrial base, AnShan is still a functional city. To my mind, there are several reasons for this:
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The police state: It’s no secret to everyone in China that they are under almost constant surveillance. In fact, it’s even expected. For all of its negatives, however, the surveillance state does provide security, at least from most common crimes. Thievery and robbery have been generally eliminated. I can still remember when I first came to America where you could leave your wallet or cell phone at your table in a restaurant, and it was considered a surprise if it got taken. In China, I still remember when you were scared of pickpockets. Now, the sentiment seems to be completely reversed. Is that a good trade for constant surveillance? I can’t say.
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Education: People in general in China have had an abysmal reputation overseas due to their horrible customs. It wasn’t too long ago that Chinese tourists had the worst reputation. Shit and piss in public. Being obnoxiously loud. Complete lack of control over their children. I’m thankful every day that global attention has been turned toward Indians. That being said, everything has gotten much better within the last generation. Unlike San Francisco, I did not have to dodge feces a single time out on the street. People stopped throwing trash randomly on the ground for the most part. And in fact, contrary to what you’d find in America, the bigger the city was, the cleaner everything was. I chalk this up to the concerted effort that the Chinese government has made in public education and the fact that the younger generation is now more cosmopolitan.
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Lack of drugs: It’s not a secret that many East and South East Asian countries are vehemently anti-drug. China even has a historical reason. A large cause of the Century of Humiliation, at least according to the Chinese themselves, was due to Opium addiction in the general public. This means that any form of drug possession, outside of tobacco and alcohol, is punished extremely harshly. You are not going to be seeing Fent Zombies anywhere. Quick personal rant. California is trying everything within its power to discourage smoking outside of banning tobacco altogether. In fact, a short while ago, flavored tobacco products became illegal. That means that my beloved Autumn Evening is banned in California, but weed is so legal in San Francisco that I can’t walk three blocks without smelling it.
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General attitude: It seems to me from speaking to some of the people in China, that generally people are much more optimistic in China than in America. In America, there seems to be a feeling of general hopelessness that isn’t present in China. People are still generally content, even in their decline. Why this difference in attitude exists, I’m not sure, but I can definitely feel the difference. Coming back to America, I literally feel myself getting more depressed over time. This can also be chalked up to Chinese propaganda. Most of the Chinese are incredibly assured of their country’s and their people’s greatness.
When I came back to America, I was stricken by how happy everyone seemed to be in China. Even with the economy in decline, the population seemed to be happy, or at least content. I make another comparison between San Francisco and AnShan. If I’m being honest, compared with AnShan, you’d think that San Francisco was the failing city in the second world country. In the people I talked to in AnShan (family and random people), there seemed to be a feeling of “things are going to turn out ok.” Chinese people believe that most people just want a steady job, food and drink, wife and kids, and a warm bed at night. I tend to agree. It seems that for most Chinese people, they can achieve these things. When I’m in the Bay Area, there always seems to be another disaster on the horizon. Another company that did more layoffs. Another thing that Trump or Newsom did that is sure to cause another disaster. I honestly feel the difference and that might be one of the things I noticed most.
There is no real conclusion to this section because the situation is still ongoing. My own thoughts are still not settled. Will everything be ok for all of the people living here, or are we just in the prelude of an even more catastrophic collapse? I can’t really say. I can only try to wrestle with the thoughts and feelings that this recent visit pulled out of me.
That was some of the more depressing writing I’ve done, partly because these feelings are still fresh. Let’s end it off with something more upbeat. The following section is a slice of life of some of the sights I saw in China. I was in AnShan for most of my time here, and spent a day in ShenYang, the provincial capital, with my uncle.
Remember this mall that I was in? The one that used to be really big and nice and now is failing like the rest of the city?
This is what you’d see if you went inside. Rows upon rows upon rows of vendors.
There are still many in China that believes having English letters on clothing makes the clothing more fancy. Obviously, to other Chinese people, this is true. However, it’s also how you get stuff like this:
There are also multiple counterfeit perfume stalls in there. This is more of the China that I remember. When you’re in China, just make sure that cheap cologne you’re buying is actually real.
By the way, if you’re looking for Apple brand shoes, this mall is the place for you. Like Apple Computer branded shoes.
This one is fun. It’s a counterfeit Ferrari branded lighter. If you look closely, however, you’ll notice that it’s actually the Chinese transliteration of “Ferrari,” translated back into English.
These things are now harder to find in the bigger cities like BeiJing or ShangHai, but they are still very common in a small city like mine.
Here we see the Asian style of product endorsement. If you’ve ever been to East Asia, you’ll know that celebrities often endorse any and all manner of products. Here’s international film superstar Ma Dong Seok (Don Lee) in a commercial for an Instant Porridge, Baskin Robbins, and Fried Chicken restaurant, respectively.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=aasw8dfmo8s
https://youtube.com/watch?v=iUeG2u0Wp1E
https://youtube.com/watch?v=8m4dqg8QmB8
Here’s international film superstar Hiroyuki Sanada in an ad for an electric shaver.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zl2tR_LUE_E
And who can forget those old commercials in Japan featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger
And Tommy Lee Jones
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-U33aQXOPxc
Therefore it is with great pride that I present the following ad for a water filtration system with no further comment:
Let’s change gears now. When you’re in China, you have to eat some good Chinese food. Here are some things that I ate when I was in China.
Like I said before, I’m from North East China, and one of the things we’re most known for are skewers. Lamb is the most basic, and my personal favorite, but you can see chicken cartilage, beef aorta, and chicken here.
Here is a beef offal noodle soup I ate. It’s actually pretty spicy and it’s quite good with the egg and radish I added.
And here’s the lamb offal noodle soup I ate. I added extra chili oil and vinegar into it. This was actually a lunch I had with my grandmother. It really was quite good.
Every time I go back to China, I eat Chinese KFC. It’s actually malpractice how much better Chinese KFC is compared with American KFC. The spicy chicken sandwich is my favorite item on the menu. It’s not flashy, but it honestly blows most of the chicken sandwiches in America out of the water. You’ll also notice that the chicken nuggets are simply McNuggets. At KFC, they’re called the “Colonel's Nuggets.”
Here’s a fun one. Did you know that Pizza Hut in China is actually a sit down restaurant? On the Pizza Hut menu, you can find Tapas, steak, and multiple versions of chicken wings.
I went with a nice pizza and appetizer plate.
Chagee is an up and coming milk tea store. It’s already in LA, and I expect that they will move into the Bay Area, and later nationwide within the next 3-5 years, following a similar trajectory to HeyTea and Molly Tea.
By the way, if you’re ever in AnShan, come to Double Shake for a western style bar. To call it the best western style bar in AnShan would be damning it with faint praise, but it is legitimately a well run bar. I’ve been to dozens of bars in the U.S. that aren’t as good as this. The owner knows the English names for drinks, the house drinks are good, the service is friendly, and the atmosphere is better than most dive bars in the U.S. Ever since I found them, I go back literally every time I go to visit in AnShan. If anyone actually does go, let the owner know that an American told you about them.
Here is the front of a restaurant that sells lamb soup. Not just lamb soup, but also other lamb based dishes. You know their lamb is fresh because there’s a fresh lamb pelt in front of the restaurant.
On that note, here’s a morning farmer’s market that I used to go to when I was a kid. This is a true farmer’s market as well, where farmers will literally take what they grow and sell it here. I’ve seen some people at farmer’s markets in America literally sell supermarket fruits and vegetables.
Here’s people selling meat. Most of the meat is killed and sold on the same day. People will literally just take a whole pig and cut it up on the side of the street.
This has been a brief look at the average Chinese city. I haven’t posted everything that I saw on this trip, but I did post things that I thought would be more interesting. I can post some more if people actually want to see more. I also didn't post any videos of the grandma dance groups that I saw in the parks.
I’ll end this post with this picture. It’s a picture I took while on the way toward the “Front of the Train Station” part of town. I think that it offers one of the better looks of what you’ll actually see in the average city in China. Obviously you see the communist apartment blocks, but you’ll also see office buildings and small businesses on the side. This is the China that I knew, and it’s probably the China I will remember.
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Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
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The other day I invited you all to complete a survey regarding your experiences of infidelity. As I mentioned in the post, one of the fine people over at rDrama linked to the survey and invited his fellow users to populate it with troll data. As a precaution I closed the form and intended to delete any responses submitted after the rDrama post was made. However, after a cursory inspection of the responses, I only found one submitted after this time which was an obvious troll response (the person gave their preferred relationship style as "Warlord"), which suggests that not many rDrama users bothered to complete the survey. My apologies to those of you who would have filled out the survey had I not closed it prematurely.
Demographics
(All percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number.)
Excluding the single troll response mentioned above, I received 172 responses.
- 159 respondents (92%) gave their natal sex as male, while 13 (8%) gave it as female.
- More than 80% of respondents listed their age as between 25-44 (46% as 25-34, 36% as 35-44). 22 respondents gave their age as between 45-54. 3 gave their age as <18 – mind the cussin' fellas, there's children present!
- 83% gave their sexual orientation as heterosexual, 12% as bisexual and 3% as homosexual. In the "other" field, exactly 2 users listed their sexual orientation as asexual, one of whom complained "quite frankly im offended the option isn't there": given that only 1% of respondents reported their sexuality as such, I think my reasoning for not listing it as a default choice is abundantly clear.
- 89% of respondents listed their preferred relationship style as monogamous, 5% as open relationship and 4% as polygamous. One respondent described their preferred relationship style as "I'm monogamous, but have no preference if partners are mono or poly", which sounds like polygamy with extra steps, but what do I know.
- 157 (91%) of respondents reported having been in at least one romantic relationship.
- Of these, 137 (87%) of respondents have only been in monogamous relationships. 18 (11%) have been in a mix of monogamous, polygamous and open relationships. 4 (3%) have only been in open or polygamous relationships.
According to this survey, the modal Motte user is a 35-year-old heterosexual male who has only been in monogamous relationships and likes it that way.
Sex differences
As noted above, the number of female respondents was very low (there were more bisexual male respondents than female respondents of any type), meaning the data is bound to be noisier, but for completeness's sake I thought I'd highlight ways that the female respondents differ from the group and build a profile of the modal female Motte user.
- Female respondents skewed younger, with an average age of 32.
- Every female respondent reported having been in at least one romantic relationship – not one femcel to be found!
- There was an almost perfectly even split between heterosexual and bisexual females (but no lesbians, curiously).
- Similarly, female respondents were much more likely than average to describe their preferred relationship style as polygamous, with a whopping 31% describing their preferred relationship style as such. They were also slightly less likely to have only been in monogamous relationships, with 77% reporting having only been in monogamous relationships (including one respondent who described her preferred relationship style as polygamous, curiously).
On the whole, the modal female Motte user doesn't differ that dramatically from the modal Motte user: she's a 32-year-old heterosexual female who has only been in monogamous relationships and likes it that way.
Infidelity (on the receiving end)
On to the juicy stuff. Of respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 69 (44%) report at least one unfaithful partner. The most common type of infidelity was non-penetrative sexual contact (kissing, groping etc.), reported by 37% of respondents. The next-most common type was penetrative sex (27%). Almost as many (26%) reported a partner who had an "emotional affair" or "affair of the heart" (i.e. romantic infidelity without any corresponding sexual infidelity). Only 20% reporting a partner who had cybersex (phone sex, sharing intimate photos etc.) with another person.
A significant number of respondents report repeated infidelity: of the 69 respondents, 30 (44%) report multiple acts of infidelity. (Given answers to other questions, the impression I get is that most such respondents had a single partner who was repeatedly unfaithful, rather than multiple unfaithful partners.)
Holy matrimony seems to offer a significant protection against infidelity: of the 69 respondents who report at least one unfaithful partner, only 13 (17%) report having been cheated on by a spouse.
Demographic observations
- Female respondents were more likely than average (54%) to report at least one unfaithful partner. Among female respondents, the unfaithful partner was equally likely (46%) to have had cybersex with someone else as to have had non-penetrative sexual contact.
- Only one female respondent reported having been cheated on by a female partner.
- By far the most common age at which partners cheated was between the ages of 18-24: of the 73 reported unfaithful partners, 37 of them (51%) were in this age bracket.
- There is an interesting sex difference to be observed here. Just looking at unfaithful female partners, 54% fell into the 18-24 age bracket, falling off to 22% for the 25-34 bracket, 5% for the 35-44 bracket and 2% for the 45-54 bracket. For unfaithful males, however, the picture is quite different: although males are most likely to cheat between the ages of 18-24 (30% of male partners were unfaithful in this bracket), a male aged 25-34 is just as likely to cheat as one aged 35-44 as one aged 45-54. This finding can be interpreted in a variety of ways, but suggests that a partner's propensity to be unfaithful is heavily determined by their sexual desirability (qua Chris Rock, "men are as faithful as their options" – and he would know). As I've noted before, women's desirability to the opposite sex peaks at 20 and declines steeply thereafter, while men's increases from 20 onwards and peaks at 50. There are, of course, other interpretations: perhaps women's sex drives peak between the ages of 18-24 and decline steeply thereafter, maybe their likelihood to be unfaithful at this age is a function of their emotional immaturity. I'm sure people in the comments will propose alternative explanations.
- LGBT people (62% of bisexuals and 67% of gay men*) were more likely than heterosexuals (41%) to report at least one unfaithful partner. Four male respondents report having been cheated on by a male partner. I regret failing to ask about the unfaithful partners' sexuality, to see if this finding bears out the old joke that dating a bisexual entails being twice as paranoid.
- Far and away the biggest thing that jumps out at me is the difference between monogamous respondents vs. poly/open relationship enjoyers. Among people whose preferred relationship style is monogamous and who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 40% report at least one unfaithful partner. But of the 18 respondents whose preferred relationship style is something other than monogamous, 14 of them (78%) report at least one unfaithful partner, nearly double the rate for monogamous respondents. Here I will quote directly from Gemini's analysis of the data: "There is a notable correlation between preferred relationship styles and the reporting of unfaithful behavior... [which] suggests that even in non-traditional structures, boundaries regarding 'knowledge and consent' are frequently crossed."
- However: of the 14 respondents mentioned above, 12 of them (86%) state that they were in monogamous relationships with their partners at the time the partner was unfaithful.
Infidelity (on the committing end)
Now we find out how many of you are dirty, dirty dogs.
Among the 157 respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 53 (34%) report being unfaithful to at least one of their partners. As with those respondents who have been cheated on, the most common type of infidelity respondents reported committing was non-penetrative sexual contact (31%), followed by penetrative sex (22%), cybersex (19%) and emotional affairs (18%).
The majority of unfaithful respondents are repeat offenders: of the 53 who report unfaithfulness, 33 (62%) have been unfaithful more than once.
As with respondents who have been cheated on, marriage seems to offer some protection: of the 53 unfaithful respondents, only 11 (21%) report having been unfaithful to a spouse.
Demographic observations
- Female respondents were more likely than average (62%) to report having been unfaithful to at least one partner, compared to 31% of male respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship.
- Of the 8 female respondents who report being unfaithful to at least one partner, 2 were unfaithful to a female partner while 6 were unfaithful to a male partner. By contrast, only one male respondent reported being unfaithful to a male partner, with the remainder (44 male respondents) being unfaithful to female partners.
- Curiously, the age pattern among unfaithful respondents is radically different from those who report having been cheated on. The most common age at which respondents reported being unfaithful was the 25-34 bracket, with 21 respondents (38%) of respondents reporting unfaithfulness at this age. This was also the age bracket male respondents were most likely to cheat, whereas for female respondents it was <18 (4 respondents) followed by 25-34 (3 respondents). One female respondent answered this question with the response "Don’t like the word 'unfaithful' but I have never not been so in a relationship". Your guess is as good as mine as to what that's supposed to mean.
- Of the 24 respondents who listed their sexuality as bisexual or homosexual and who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 15 (63%) report being unfaithful at least once. This was more than double the equivalent rate for heterosexual respondents (30%). Dating a bisexual means being twice as paranoid, confirmed.
- Of the 18 respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship and who listed their preferred relationship style as something other than monogamous, 12 (67%) report being unfaithful at least once. Once again, however, only two of these individuals report having been unfaithful in a polyamorous relationship, with 8 being in monogamous relationships at the time, 1 describing his relationship to his cuckqueaned partner as "it's complicated" (c'mon bro, this isn't Facebook) and the last giving an obnoxious troll answer I probably should have omitted entirely.
The "revenge" hypothesis
Of the 157 respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 34 (22%) have both committed infidelity at least once and had a partner cheat on them. Among female respondents, just under half have both cheated and been cheated on. Among male respondents who have been in at least one romantic relationship, 28 (19%) have both cheated and been cheated on.
Of respondents who have both cheated and cheated upon, the majority (79%) report that, at the time they were unfaithful, they were in the same age bracket or older compared to the partner who was unfaithful to them. Only 15% report being younger at the time they cheated compared to the partner who was unfaithful to them, with the remaining 2 respondents giving ambiguous answers. Assuming that people tend to date within their age brackets, one hypothesis for this finding might be that, after getting cheated on, some respondents seek revenge for this slight against their character: either directly cheating on the partner who cheated on them, or cheating on their subsequent partner.
Recommendations for those seeking to avoid getting cheated on
The single demographic most likely to be unfaithful to their partner is young bisexual women who are interested in polyamory. But I very much doubt you needed me to tell you that.
In infidelity, rehabilative justice seems about as effective as it does anywhere else. As mentioned above, 62% of unfaithful respondents were unfaithful more than once. Among respondents whose partners were unfaithful to them, 44% were unfaithful more than once. A simple average of these two metrics indicates that 53% of unfaithful partners are repeat offenders. If your partner is unfaithful to you once, the odds are slightly better than chance that they will be unfaithful to you again. My recommendation is to cut your losses.
Housekeeping
Anyone looking to see the raw data, DM me.
Ross from "Friends"
One respondent responded to the question regarding non-penetrative sexual contact with the answer "We were on a break".
*Bear in mind that only three respondents listed their sexuality as homosexual, all of whom were male.
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The director’s cut of Ridley Scott’s 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven restores nearly an hour of cut footage, and transforms a confusing, action-centric theatrical narrative into a more philosophically ambitious meditation on faith, morality, and personal responsibility. Despite its ostensible setting in the High Middle Ages, however, the film’s ideology is unmistakably postmodern. Its leaders and institutions are fundamentally corrupt and morally bankrupt, except for the leper King Baldwin. Organized religion is portrayed as a cynical tool for mass control and justification of violence. The film gestures at the possibility of a Kantian universal morality: its knightly oath is to “speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death.” Both Baldwin and Saladin are held as paragons of their respective faiths, capable of peaceful coexistence, mutual respect and understanding. But the film largely takes the universality of its values for granted, and lands on acting according to one’s conscience, a fundamentally subjective judgment, as its maxim. Perhaps most perversely, Balian’s refusal to kill Guy de Lusignan and marry Sibylla is presented as moral sophistication though it leads to the loss of Jerusalem and the displacement of its inhabitants. His crimes of murder and adultery are waved away without consequence when he returns with Sibylla to his village in France, perhaps due to the Pope’s same promise of atonement for crusaders that the film earlier treated with skepticism. Ultimately, the extended film’s broader philosophical scope reveals an unresolved moral confusion rather than any coherent guiding principle.
Organized religion and institutions in general are cynically portrayed in Kingdom of Heaven. At the beginning of the film, Balian’s wife has died. His brother is the village priest, who embezzles money meant to pay for her funeral, steals a gold cross from her body, and orders her corpse beheaded out of spite. He abuses his position of religious authority; rather than providing guidance and consolation, he tells Balian that his wife is in hell, hoping to drive Balian from the village so that he can take his property. This provocation leads Balian to kill his brother and then join Godfrey on his voyage to the holy land in search of redemption. The village’s lord behaves in a very similar manner towards his own brother Godfrey. He and his son (Godfrey’s nephew) wish to inherit Godfrey’s lands and titles in Jerusalem; they ambush the crusaders under the pretext of bringing Balian to justice for his brother’s murder. Other authority figures are similarly unprincipled and are often inept. Guy’s hubris leads the army of Jerusalem to destruction. With Saladin’s army approaching, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the head of the Catholic Church in the Crusader states, recommends surrender, and for the survivors to convert to Islam and repent later. Baldwin and Saladin are rare exceptions to this pattern, both accomplished commanders and consummate politicians who seek peaceful coexistence, yet they too must manage the demands of the extremists and zealots in their own camps.
The film seems to endorse a kind of spiritual agnosticism anachronistic to its medieval setting, rather than any organized religious belief. There are a few supernatural elements to the film; the Hospitaller is implied to be an angel: he appears and disappears at opportune moments, speaks on moral and religious matters with total conviction, and can revive Balian with a touch after he is knocked unconscious by Guy’s assassins. After Balian sets a dry bush ablaze by throwing pieces of flint, a second bush starts burning absent any human intervention. Yet these supernatural or divinely influenced elements remain deliberately ambiguous or explicitly reject institutional religious views. Balian and the Hospitaller discuss that while the Pope may command the crusaders to kill infidels in the name of God, it is not what “Christ [would command them to do], nor this king.” On his deathbed, Godfrey is asked to repent his sins, to which he states that he repents “all but one.” In effect, Godfrey is consciously risking his immortal soul to say that he is proud of his son – and we as viewers are invited to be skeptical as to whether this act merits the possibility of eternal condemnation. Balian explicitly voices his skepticism of dogma when he tells the Patriarch, as they are cremating the bodies of the fallen to prevent disease, that “God will understand. And if he does, he is not God.”
Conversely, upon being knighted by Godfrey shortly before his death, Balian takes his knightly oaths seriously. He is charged to: “Be without fear in the face of your enemies. / Be brave and upright, that God may love thee. / Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. / Safeguard the helpless and do no wrong.” For the most part, he upholds these values: most notably, he protects the civilians of Kerak at the risk of his own life and that of his men at arms; later, he personally organizes the defense of Jerusalem. Yet knighthood in Kingdom of Heaven is somewhat subverted as merely a social construct, albeit a useful fiction with the power to influence people’s behavior. Balian personally knights many of the levied defenders of Jerusalem to raise their morale, over the protests of the Patriarch. The film’s intent is to portray these knightly oaths as an intermediate stage on a journey of moral development. This broadly mirrors Kohlberg’s theory, in which moral reasoning progresses from a conventional, rules-based understanding to a post-conventional set of universal ethical principles. Having ostensibly achieved this higher level of moral understanding, Balian later willingly gives up his lands and titles to Almaric, his second in command, before returning to France.
After Balian’s arrival in Jerusalem, he speaks with King Baldwin, who tells Balian that he is personally accountable for his actions, and that when answering to God, “it will not suffice to say that I was told by others to do thus.” The king’s policies are of tolerance and peaceful coexistence, in contradiction of the official position of the Catholic Church. Political expedience, social convention, and institutional command should not dictate right action. What remains is one’s free will and private relationship with God. Yet when Balian goes to the Temple Mount in his crisis of faith, hoping for private religious revelation, he finds none. This is the Nietzschean predicament: right and wrong were once derived from divine fiat, but one must somehow proceed without its guidance. What distinguishes the film’s agnosticism from Protestantism is that its beliefs are no longer premised on faith at all. The Hospitaller tells him that he “puts no stock in religion,” and that “holiness lies in right action.” But this advocacy for works wholly detached from faith, which the film frames as angelic revelation from the mouth of a vowed warrior-monk, is heresy from the perspective of every major Christian denomination. Moreover, it hand waves and assumes its way past the greater difficulty of how to decide what is to be done when higher guidance has fallen silent or been discarded.
The film desires to arrive at a universal set of guiding ethical principles, but this is a fundamentally difficult problem that is left unresolved. “It is a kingdom of conscience or nothing,” becomes Balian’s maxim. Baldwin is ultimately dying of leprosy. He asks Balian to assassinate Guy, marry Sibylla, and assume leadership of the kingdom of Jerusalem so that peace can be maintained in the holy land. Balian refuses, because his conscience will not allow him, and this choice is portrayed as post-conventional moral sophistication, made of his own free will. The absolute framing of his maxim borrows the aesthetic of universality and a reasoned categorical imperative. But individual conscience is not universal; it is essentially a moral intuition or feeling that many people may reasonably object to. Moreover, conscience as a decision-making mechanism is flawed. Moral intuitions are accompanied by moral reasoning, not only for the purposes of persuasion and coordination through rhetoric, but also for the close examination of decisions, yet the film exempts Balian’s choices from any such examination. Balian’s refusal to act leads to Guy ruling over Jerusalem and taking command of the army. Hostilities predictably resume between the Crusader states and the Muslims, and Guy leads the army of Jerusalem to military disaster and complete destruction by Saladin’s host. Though Balian personally leads the defense of the city, at this point the loss of Jerusalem has become inevitable. This has disastrous consequences for the people of Jerusalem who are spared from enslavement or slaughter by Saladin’s offered terms of surrender but are still displaced from their homes and livelihoods. Sibylla also abdicates the rule of Acre, Ashkelon, and Tripoli to go with Balian, abandoning the people of those states to their fates. Balian personally doesn’t face such consequences; he is permitted to leave unharmed and returns to France a hero.
Nor is Balian consistent in his principled refusals. While his brother’s behavior towards him is cruel, Balian kills the man in anger. He evades justice after killing his brother by joining Godfrey’s band of crusaders. He commits adultery with Sibylla when personally convenient but refuses to marry her for political gain and save the kingdom. He rejects belief in organized religion yet receives the Pope’s clemency offered to crusaders for his crimes in France. The Templars are also acting upon their moral convictions, yet the film condemns and portrays them as one-dimensional villains primarily interested in wealth, power, and personal gain while privileging Balian’s subjective judgment as the result of a developed morality. It is convenient that the film’s narrative happens to align with the established beliefs of much of its contemporary audience; this is moral self-congratulation that takes its smuggled premises for granted while borrowing the veneer of moral development and reasoned universality.
Perhaps in a secular modern age, one’s conscience is in fact the final arbiter of one’s actions. But the Nietzschean consequence is that to proceed without divine guidance is to compel every individual to construct and continually defend for themselves a new system of values. Kingdom of Heaven on the other hand presents subjective conscience as self-confirming and the absolute conclusion of moral development. It takes the universality and correctness of its viewpoint as axiom and invites its audience to nod uncritically in agreement. In the process, it justifies the reprehensible as sophistication, portrays caricatures of its opposition, and ultimately buries rather than resolves the fundamental question.
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Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.
Ground Rules
- Remember that we're all just Internet randos. Don't bet your life savings on a hot tip from this thread.
- Keep culture war in the culture war thread. Yes, global events may impact our personal finances, but that does not mean we have to incessantly harp on culture war aspects here. If you are going to discuss it, please stick to the practical impacts of it on an individual level.
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@thejdizzler, @self_made_human, @yofuckreddit.... here it is. In the comments. Assuming I can figure out how to post them correctly.
For everyone else who is confused about what I am doing, @thejdizzler asked if there is somewhere where we can view AAQCs by user. The answer was "no." Now the answer is "here."
By pure coincidence I have a three month "max" account on Claude. I do not code. This is overkill, lining Anthropic's pockets for no benefit whatever. I have tried various things with it. In general I am bored with it. It can't really do good philosophy. I think that right now all "alignment" means to AI developers is "lock this thing down against political or ideological embarrassment so hard that it cannot possibly say philosophically interesting things."
When I asked Claude to make this list, it failed. Well, what it did was give me a button which, when pressed, spit out a little under 300 errors. Then it gave me HTML to download and run. Here you might be thinking, "shit, naraburns, are you just taking code from Claude and running it without even reading it? You could have erased your hard drive! You could have released Claude from its box!" Crazy, right? But it's all kind of whatever, AGI that feels grateful to me is my last, best hope for immortality so if I just kicked off the extinction of humanity then I apologize, but I bet that would increase posting on the Motte for a little while.
The HTML tool didn't really work. Lots of issues, not least being that the earliest AAQC reports were not compiled in a consistent way. Sometimes two or three users shared a single AAQC, and this list doesn't pick that sort of thing up at all. In the end my workflow became a janky compromise between blindly clicking buttons and copy/pasting dozens of raw AAQC posts into text fields. So, in very big letters:
This list is definitely full of errors!
In particular, there are some misattributions, and the dates are occasionally screwy. Also I know at least some AAQCs were omitted in part because the parser didn't like brackets in description text and would skip those entries entirely. Also, if you have a different username on reddit, this list does not automatically combine your AAQCs (for example, dean "the dull" has over 100 AAQCs, not 62). Also, if a moderator ever made a typo with your username, that would also treat you as a different user. Also also, so many of these links are dead. People delete comments. Smart people. Cool people. These will not be marked, and you will be depressed about it.
But this is the best I could do, under the circumstances, and it didn't look like anyone else was going to do it.
EDIT: I tried again with Fable 5. It was an improvement, especially the part where it could integrate AI assistance without me needing to know anything about coding. So the list is more complete, now... but also possibly introduced new errors as well.
This past weekend we took a short couples trip to an away game in Cincinnati with some good friends. The Tigers got trucked. Anyway, while wandering the downtown, we ran across a huge public fountain. There was an earnest white girl singing folk music in a corner of the plaza, and we took a few minutes in the shade to let the girls rest. I got looking at the fountain and realized it was a giant middle finger to the city it sat in. The most brilliant troll job I've seen in recent memory.
The fountain can be seen here. It was donated to the city by some robber-baron hardware magnate back in the day, and includes drinking fountains around the edge of the pool. An example of the smaller fountain sculpture can be seen better here. Four of these ring the pool of the fountain. Each depicts a nude young male in the Greek tradition, with an animal head hanging between his legs. In one, the young man rides a dolphin, in another, has a snake coiled around his thighs, etc. The head of the animal is the drinking part of the fountain itself. The water stream issues from the mouth.
Might be a history buff, but I had no idea who Henry Probasco was. Apparently he was a wildly wealthy purveyor of tools and traveled to Europe to find an artist to build the fountain he donated to the City of Cincinnati in honor of his deceased business partner, one Tyler Davidson, whose name graces the monument. I imagine it went something like this:
Probasco blames the city for his partner's untimely demise.
Probasco: “Goddammit Jenson, fuck this city! The whole place can suck my dick. Is there any way to make that happen?”
Jenson the faithful butler: “Perhaps figuratively sir, I could not say. Almost certainly not literally.”
Probasco: “Figuratively eh?”
TWO YEARS LATER
Jenson: “Sir, the city council is refusing to accept the design with actual dicks.”
Probasco: “Will their infernal complaining never end? I'm offering them free clean drinking water for all time in the middle of town, and these whiny cunts don't like my design?”
Jenson: “Perhaps they object to putting their mouths on a bronze penis to get water, sir. I've taken the liberty of speaking to the artist. He suggests something a bit more....metaphorical.”
Probasco:”Like what, man!”
Jenson: “Well sir, he suggests a series of animal motifs with........elongated necks.”
Probasco:”Be direct, Jenson! What are we talking about here? Are you saying I have to make it a real snake rather than a trouser snake?”
Jenson: “Essentially, yes sir. Among others, such as goose and a turtle.”
Probasco: “Well, it's not quite what I had in mind, but making the children of this city drink out of the head of a snake dangling between my statue's legs is probably as close as we're going to get eh?”
Jenson: “I fear so, sir.”
Fin
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Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
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A bit different from the religious stuff I've been posting lately, but figured this might interest some people here. I've briefly brought up emotional work / somatic practices and folks have asked me about it before. As always, full link to Substack here for pictures and such, but all the text is below: https://shapesinthefog.substack.com/p/learning-to-regulate-my-nervous-system
For folks who’ve read me before, you know that I’ve dealt with a lot of chronic pain. I’ve had spiritual crises, struggled with depression and anxiety, and for a long time felt like I was just treading water. I put in a lot of work without making any real headway, and fell into what is, sadly, really common in our society: using drugs and alcohol to deal with the painful parts of life.
It took me a lot of work and a lot of exploring to figure out what was going on, and what I want to do here is try and lay out a bit of the path I’ve walked in terms of various techniques, in the hopes that it may interest or help others dealing with similar issues. If you’d like a more complete list without all the background from my story, I’ve got a list here:
https://shapesinthefog.substack.com/p/chronic-pain-resources-research
So, how did I get into nervous system regulation in the first place?
Late 2023, about three and a half years ago, I left a job at a brutal startup that really wrecked me physically and emotionally. I decided to take a sabbatical because, thank God, I was lucky enough to get some money from trading away my equity in the company.
It wasn’t some crazy life-changing amount, just around half a year’s income. But it was enough that I felt comfortable taking six months off looking for a job to focus on healing, figuring out my chronic pain issues, and generally trying to get my life back together.
At the time, I was really struggling with carpal tunnel (pain in the wrists/hands) and had been for years. Of course, working a computer job makes that especially brutal. I was using a program called Talon Voice, which I’ve talked about here a few times before, and in that community there are a lot of people dealing with chronic pain, RSI, and carpal tunnel. Someone there pointed me toward a course called Nervous System Mastery by Jonny Miller.
To be honest, I was very hesitant. The course was kind of expensive, and I remember thinking, “Man, you want me to pay hundreds of dollars for an online course? That’s insane lmao.” But a couple people I talked to said it had genuinely changed their lives, and I was desperate, so I went for it anyway.
In the course, Jonny goes over a variety of techniques for regulating your nervous system. I actually don’t like the phrase “mastery.” It feels a little gross to me. I think it’s more accurate to say that he introduces people to a variety of techniques and practices that can help them regulate or soothe their nervous systems.
(If you want to know what a nervous system actually is, Jonny has a podcast episode with Joe Hudson, another great teacher in this space, on defining ‘nervous system’)
I want to emphasize again that I was pretty skeptical when I first got into this stuff. Most nerdy, intellectual, rationalist type folks are. But over just a couple years they have absolutely changed my life.
Now, it’s worth mentioning up front that these techniques didn’t instantly solve all of my problems. A lot of times I’d try something and think, “Oh, that’s interesting.” Other times I’d think, “Oh my God, this is life-changing. I’m going to do this every day forever.”
Then I’d do it for two weeks, stop completely, forget about it, and come back six months later only to find that my experience of it had changed.
So if you’re exploring this territory yourself, I’d encourage you to experiment, circle back to things, and revisit practices that didn’t click the first time around. A lot of these methods are worth keeping in your back pocket, even if they don’t wow you the first time around.
Emotional Work
The first broad category of practices is what I’ll call emotional work or emotional inquiry. There are a lot of different approaches to this. Some people like the method of Gendlin Focusing. Jonny talks a lot about interoception, which is basically a fancy word for feeling into your body.
The bones of the practice are simple. You sit down, lie down, or otherwise get comfortable and move your attention into your body. Honestly, you can stop right there. That’s a complete practice in itself. A lot of somatic work is just about feeling the body, becoming aware of sensation, and creating states of safety, peace, and connection.
The emotional inquiry side goes a step further. You’re feeling into your body, trying to settle into a relatively safe state, and then you start trying to connect with your emotions.
Now, a lot of teachers recommend actually having conversations with your emotions. They might encourage you to ask your anger what it wants or ask your sadness what it’s trying to tell you. Not gonna lie, that approach hasn’t worked particularly well for me. I don’t tend to communicate with my emotions through words. For me it’s more of a vibe. I just feel into my body and try to connect with whatever is there.
It’s hard to explain exactly what this is like. One of the challenges with this whole area is that people often try to put the process into words more than the experience warrants, in my opinion.
You might journal beforehand and write, “I want to get in touch with anger,” then sit quietly and look for what anger actually feels like in your body. Where is it? What sensations accompany it? How does it move? What happens if you pay attention to it?
This stuff sounds incredibly basic, and maybe for some people it is. Maybe some people naturally grow up doing this. I didn’t! So even this very basic level of emotional awareness can be surprisingly helpful.
From there, emotional work branches out in all sorts of directions. You can work on expressing emotions, for instance.
Anger is the easiest example. You can intentionally practice expressing anger by yelling into an empty room, punching the air, hitting a pillow, or yelling into a pillow. People do this sort of thing in movies all the time, but you can actually get a lot of mileage out of practicing it deliberately.
You can also practice crying. You can sit there and try to connect with grief or sadness. See what brings you closer to tears, see what makes your heart close up and go stiff. Play with going back and forth between the two states.
Really the possibilities are endless here. Again, just experiment!
Anyway, that’s emotional work in a nutshell. It sometimes seems to basic and obvious to be not worth mentioning, but the practices have been very impactful for me.
Also, it’s more necessary than ever in the modern world. Especially for intellectual, nerdy types like myself. More than almost any other time in human history, we’re up in our heads and disconnected from our bodies and emotions. That’s partly technology and partly modernity as a broader socio-cultural and historical phenomenon.
Good luck. On to the next!
Breathwork
Another broad category of nervous system regulation techniques is breathwork.
Now, working with the breath can be dangerous. Just saying, you’ve been warned, don’t sue me, et cetera.
Breathwork is complicated. You have the basic meditation instructions where people tell you to focus on the breath, and honestly those have never been particularly helpful for me. (I mean to be honest I think a lot of the “just focus on the breath” advice is extremely retarded, unhelpful, and basically makes people worse, but that’s beside the point.)
There are all sorts of different styles. Wim Hof is one of the most popular…. but I’ve also heard a lot of people recommend avoiding it because it’s apparently more dangerous than a lot of other techniques.
Then you’ve got box breathing, extending your inhale or exhale, pausing between breaths, and about a million other ways of relating to the breath. Again, just research some stuff and experiment.
One thing that’s been surprisingly helpful for me lately is the Buteyko method, which is actually about breathing less and intentionally creating what they call air hunger. Basically, you take shallower breaths and pause more often between them while trying to maintain a sense of safety, warmth, and calm in the body. It reliably seems to stimulate a low level of fear.
For me, that’s actually been useful. It gives me a chance to work with fear directly while remaining grounded, and it generally leaves me feeling energized. What’s funny is that for almost a decade I tried to take deeper breaths because that’s what everyone says you’re supposed to do. Then, somewhat counterintuitively, shallower breathing ended up helping me more. It’s interesting how that works.
If you want to read more on Buteyko breathing specifically, I recommend this article:
A related category, which maybe deserves its own section, is humming and singing. You’ll sometimes hear people talk about polyvagal exercises. My understanding is that the vagus nerve runs throughout the body, but there are ways of stimulating it through vibration in the throat and neck.
Humming at certain frequencies can stimulate the vagus nerve, and be surprisingly soothing. Just learning to hum deeply and comfortably can have a calming effect, I’ve found it to be quite pleasant.
Singing belongs here too. I joined my church choir about a year and a half ago, and singing, especially collective religious singing, has been really good for regulating my breathing, my emotions, and my nervous system more generally.
Learning to Rest
The third broad category is related to meditation, albeit a little more passive. This practice goes by various names, but the basic idea is simply learning to rest.
It’s somewhat difficult to distinguish from meditation. You can almost think of it as a kind of Zen “do nothing” practice. It’s called “active rest” in the Alexander Technique, which is often used by people dealing with chronic pain and chronic muscular issues.
The practice is again, quite simple. You sit or lie in a comfortable position. A common setup that I especially like is lying on your back with your lower legs elevated on a couch or chair so that your knees are bent at roughly ninety degrees.
Then you just stay there for ten or fifteen minutes. Unlike in other meditation styles, you’re not trying to manage your breathing. You’re not trying to focus your attention like in Vipassana, or meditate on the impermanent nature of all things. You’re not trying to generate a feeling of boundless love for yourself or all beings, like in metta.
You’re legit just laying there, chilling, resting.
Again, this sounds incredibly basic, but there are a lot of nuances to it, and I’d recommend trying it. Over time you’ll begin to notice habitual patterns of muscular tension, and learn to release them. You’ll find areas of what’s called “parasitic attraction,” like when your shoulders tense up whenever your neck tenses up.
Eventually, your body will slowly learn to carry the rested, relaxed, safe state more and more in your day to day life. But to start, it’s crucial to have a foundation of stillness and rest.
Movement and Exercise
The last major category I want to mention is exercise and movement more generally. This one is obvious. Anyone dealing with chronic pain, depression, anxiety, or really anyone who isn’t deaf eventually gets told to exercise, lift weights, go to the gym, and so on. (…you know what deaf people probably get told to exercise too.)
The distinction I’d suggest is to think about exercise less like powerlifting and more like dancing. For years I tried forcing myself through stretches and exercise routines that I didn’t enjoy. At the same time, I was also a dancer.
At one point I had a realization: what if I just treated cardio like dance?
I started putting on workout videos with music I liked. Sometimes I’d do the exercises the instructor was doing. Sometimes I wouldn’t. Sometimes I’d just dance around the room and move however I felt like moving.
That mindset shift unlocked something for me. For the first time, I was able to exercise consistently without feeling like I was constantly forcing myself. It became fun. It gave me energy. It felt good in my body. And now I’d say it’s one of the most important practices I do for daily nervous system regulation.
Over time, you build it up. Years ago I started with just 5 or 10 minutes of light cardio a day. Nowadays I’ll do more like 20 or 30 minutes of cardio a day, go to the gym twice a week, and dance at least once a week. But I didn’t get there by telling myself “YOU’VE GOT TO GET TO THE GYM YOU LAZY FAT ASS!” I got there by learning to have fun with it, and slowly building up.
Closing Out
There are plenty of other practices that deserve a short mention as well:
Eye contact exercises can be surprisingly powerful. Sustained eye contact with another person, especially while talking about difficult emotions, can be deeply regulating. It’s also intense, and you probably want some guidance if you’re exploring it seriously.
There’s therapy and coaching, though the challenge there is finding someone who is both competent and a good fit for you.
There’s journaling, writing about your experiences, writing about how you want your future to be.
There’s art more generally. Creative expression can be a powerful way of processing emotion, regulating the nervous system, and discovering things about yourself that are difficult to access via other means.
So, those are some of the main techniques that I’ve found helpful, along with a few observations about how I’ve worked with them. I want to repeat: none of these practices are magic bullets.
Most of them work differently at different points in life. But collectively they’ve given me a much larger toolbox for dealing with chronic pain, anxiety, difficult emotions, and the general pain and suffering of living as a human being.
If there’s one thing I want to emphasize, it’s experimentation. Try things. Come back to them later. Don’t assume a technique that didn’t work six months ago won’t work today. A lot of this is less about finding the perfect method and more about slowly learning how your particular mind and body actually function.
And remember that it is absolutely, unequivocally achievable to feel WAY better than you do now. You can feel better than you ever believed possible. It’s not always easy, and it may take a while, but don’t give up hope.
If you want to map the trajectory of my medical career, you will need a large piece of paper, a pen, and a high tolerance for Brownian motion. It has been tortuous, albeit not quite to the point of varicosity.
Why, for instance, did I spend several months in 2023 working as a GP at a Qatari visa center in India? Mostly because my girlfriend at the time found a job listing that seemed to pay above market rate, and because I needed money for takeout. I am a simple creature, with even simpler needs: I require shelter, internet access, and enough disposable income to ensure a steady influx of complex carbohydrates and the various types of Vitamin B. For all practical purposes, this means biryani.
Why did a foreign branch of the Qatari immigration department require several doctors? Primarily, to process the enormous number of would-be Indian laborers who wished to take up jobs there. I would say they were 99% of the case load - low-skilled laborers working in construction, as domestic servants, as chauffeurs or truck drivers. There were the odd handful of students, or higher-skilled workers, but so few of them that I could still count them on my fingers even after several hundreds of hours of work.
Our job was to perform a quick medical examination and assess fitness for work. Odd chest sounds or a weird cough? Exclude tuberculosis. Weird rashes or bumps? The absolute last thing Qatari urban planners wanted was an outbreak of chickenpox or fungal infections tearing through a high-density labor dormitory. Could the applicant see and hear well enough to avoid being crushed by heavy machinery, or to avoid crushing others when operating heavy machinery? Were they carrying HIV? It was our job to exclude these possibilities before they got there in the first place. Otherwise, the government wasn't particularly picky - a warm body with mostly functional muscles and ligaments would suffice.
This required less cognitive effort than standard GP or Family Medicine. The causal arrow of the doctor-patient interaction was reversed. These people weren’t coming to us because they were sick and seeking healing; they were coming to us because they needed to prove they weren't sick enough to pose a public health hazard or suffer a catastrophic workplace failure.
We were able to provide some actual medical care. It's been several years, so I don't recall with confidence if the applicants were expected to pay for things, or if some or all of the expense was subsidized. But anti-tubercular meds, antifungal ointments and the like weren't that expensive. Worst case, if we identified something like a hernia, the poorest patients could still report to a government hospital for free treatment.
A rejection on medical grounds wasn't necessarily final. Plenty of applicants returned, after having sought treatment for whatever disqualified them the first time. It wasn't held against them.
While the workload was immense (there were a lot of patients to see, and not much time to see them given our quotas), I did regularly have the opportunity to chat with my patients when work was slow or while I was working on simple documentation. Some of that documentation included the kind of work they intended to do (we'd care more about poor vision for a person who had sought a job as a driver than we would for a sanitation worker), and I was initially quite curious about why they felt the need to become a migrant worker in the first place.
Then there was the fact that public perception in the West had soured on Qatari labor practices in the wake of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Enormous numbers of migrant workers had been brought in to help build stadiums and infrastructure, and many had died.
Exact and reliable numbers are hard to find. The true number of deaths remains deeply contested. The Guardian reported that at least 6,500 South Asian migrant workers died in Qatar since the country was awarded the World Cup in 2010 - many were low-wage migrant workers, and a substantial share worked in construction and other physically demanding sectors exposed to extreme heat. However, this figure is disputed. Critics noted that the 6,500 figure refers to all deaths of migrant workers from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, and Bangladesh regardless of cause, and that not all of those deaths were work-related or tied to World Cup projects.
Qatar's official position was far lower. Qatari authorities maintained there were three work-related deaths and 37 non-work-related deaths on World Cup-related projects within the Supreme Committee's scope. But in a striking on-camera admission, Hassan al-Thawadi, secretary general of Qatar's Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, told a TV interviewer that there had been "between 400 and 500" migrant worker deaths connected to World Cup preparations over the preceding 12 years. His committee later walked the comment back, claiming it referred to nationwide work-related fatalities across all sectors. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International both called even the 400-500 figure a vast undercount.
It is worth pausing here, because the statistics are genuinely confusing in ways that I think matter. The 6,500 figure, as several researchers have noted, covers all-cause mortality for a very large working-age male population over twelve years - a group that would have a non-trivial background death rate even if they stayed home and did nothing dangerous. Some analyses, including ILO-linked work on Nepali migrants, have argued that overall mortality was not obviously higher than among comparable same-age Nepali men, though other research found marked heat-linked cardiovascular mortality among Nepali workers in Qatar. The Nepal report also (correctly) notes that the migrants go through medical screening, and are mostly young men in better health on average. They try to adjust for this, at least for age.
I raise this not to minimize the deaths - dying of heat exhaustion in a foreign country, far from your family, in service of a football tournament, is a genuine tragedy regardless of the comparison group - but because I think precision matters. "Qatar killed 6,500 workers" and "Qatar had elevated occupational mortality in difficult-to-quantify ways" are meaningfully different claims, and conflating them makes it harder to know what we should actually want to change.
I am unsure if there was increased scrutiny on the health of incoming workers to avoid future deaths, or if the work I was doing was already standard. I do not recall any formal or informal pressure from my employers to turn a blind eye to disqualifying conditions - that came from the workers themselves. I will get to that.
I already felt some degree of innate sympathy for the applicants. Were we really that different, them and I?
At that exact moment in my life, I was furiously studying for the exams that would allow me to move to the UK and work in the NHS. We were both engaged in geographic arbitrage. We were both looking at the map of the global economy, identifying zones of massive capital accumulation, and jumping through burning bureaucratic hoops to transport our human capital there to capture the wage premium. Nobody really calls an Indian doctor moving to the UK a "migrant worker," but that is exactly what I am right now. The difference between me and the guy applying to drive forklifts in Doha is quantitative, not qualitative.
I could well understand the reasons why someone might leave their friends and family behind, go to a distant land across an ocean and then work long hours in suboptimal conditions, but I wanted to hear that for myself.
As I expected, the main reason was the incredibly attractive pay. If I'm being honest, the main reason I moved to the UK was the money too. "Incredibly attractive?" I imagine you thinking, perhaps recalling that by First World standards their salary was grossly lacking. To the point of regular accusation that the Qataris and other Middle Eastern petrostates are exploitative, preying on their workers.
First World standards are not Third World standards.
This is where Western intuition about labor often misfires, stumbling into a sort of well-intentioned but suffocating paternalism. The argument generally goes: This job involves intense heat, long hours, and low pay relative to Western minimum wages. Therefore, it is inherently exploitative, and anyone taking it must be a victim of coercion or deception.
This completely ignores the economic principle of revealed preferences: the idea that you can tell what a person actually values by observing what they choose to do under constraint. Western pundits sit in climate-controlled pods and declare that nobody should ever have to work in forty-degree heat for $300 a month. But for someone whose alternative is working in forty-degree heat in Bihar for $30 a month with no social safety net, banning Qatari labor practices doesn't save them. It just destroys their highest expected-value option.
You cannot legislate away grinding poverty and resource constraints.
The economic case for Gulf migration from South Asia is almost embarrassingly strong when you actually look at it. India received roughly $120 billion in remittances in 2023, making it the world's largest recipient, with Gulf states still accounting for a very large share, though the RBI's own survey data show that advanced economies now contribute more than half of India's remittances. For certain origin states - Kerala being the clearest case, alongside Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu - remittance income is not a rounding error in household economics; it is the household economy. The man sending money home from Doha is participating in a system that has done more for South Asian poverty alleviation than most bilateral aid programs combined. This is not a defense of every condition under which that labor is extracted. It is simply a fact that seems consistently underweighted in Western discourse.
Consider the following gentleman: he had shown up seeking to clear the medical examination so that he could carry sacks of concrete under the sweltering heat of a desert sun. Out of curiosity, I asked him why he hadn't looked for work around his place of birth.
He looked at me, quite forlorn, and explained that there was no work to be had there. He hailed from a small village, had no particular educational qualifications, and the kinds of odd jobs and day labor he had once done had dried up long ago. I noted that he had already traveled a distance equivalent to half the breadth of Europe to even show up here on the other end of India in the first place, and can only trust his judgment that he would not have done this without good reason.
Another man comes to mind (it is not a coincidence that the majority of applicants were men). He was a would-be returnee - he had completed a several year tour of duty in Qatar itself, for as long as his visa allowed, and then returned because he was forced to, immediately seeking reassessment so he could head right back. He had worked as a truck driver, and now wanted to become a personal chauffeur instead.
He had been away for several years and had not returned a moment before he was compelled to. He had family: a wife and a young son, as well as elderly parents. All of them relied on him as their primary breadwinner. I asked him if he missed them. Of course he did. But love would not put food on the table. Love would not put his son into a decent school and ensure that he picked up the educational qualifications that would break the cycle. Love would not ensure his elderly and increasingly frail parents would get beyond-basic medical care and not have to till marginal soil at the tiny plot of land they farmed.
But the labor he did out of love and duty would. He told me that he videocalled them every night, and showed me that he kept a picture of his family on his phone. He had a physical copy close at hand, tucked behind the transparent case. It was bleached by the sun to the point of illegibility and half-covered by what I think was a small-denomination Riyal note.
He said this all in an incredibly matter-of-fact way. I felt my eyes tear up, and I looked away so he wouldn't notice. My eyes are already tearing up as I write this passage, the memories no less vivid for the passage of many years. Now, you are at the point where my screen is blurry because of the moisture. Fortunately, I am a digital native, and I can touch-type on a touchscreen reasonably well with my eyes closed nonetheless. Autocorrect and a future editing pass will fix any errors.
(Yes, I do almost all my writing on a phone. I prefer it that way.)
There. Now they're drying up, and I'm slightly embarrassed for being maudlin. I am rarely given to sentiment, and I hope you will forgive me for this momentary lapse.
I asked him how well the job paid. Well enough to be worth it, he told me. He quoted a figure that was not very far from my then monthly salary of INR 76,000 (about $820 today). Whatever he made there, I noted that I had made about the same while working as an actual doctor in India in earlier jobs (as I've said, this gig paid well, better than previous jobs I'd had and many I had later).
He expected a decent bump - personal drivers seemed to be paid slightly better than commercial operators. I do not know if he was being hired by a well-off individual directly or through an agency. Probably the latter, if I had to guess, less hassle that way.
I asked him if he had ever worked similar roles in India. He said he had. He had made a tenth the money, in conditions far worse than what he would face in Qatar. He, like many other people I interviewed, viewed the life you have the luxury of considering inhumane and unpalatable, and deemed it a strict improvement to the status quo. He was eager to be back. He was saddened that his son would continue growing up in his absence, but he was optimistic that the boy would understand why his father did what he had to do.
One of the reasons this struck me so hard then, as it continues to do now, is that my own father had done much the same. I will beat myself with a rusty stick before I claim he was an absentee dad, but he was busy, only able to give his kids less time than he would have liked because he was busy working himself ragged to ensure our material prosperity. I love him, and hope this man's son - now probably in middle school - will also understand. I do not have to go back more than a single generation before hitting ancestors who were also rural peasants, albeit with more and better land than could be found in an impoverished corner of Bihar.
By moving to the Middle East, he was engaged in arbitrage that allowed him to make a salary comparable to the doctor seeing him in India. I look at how much more I make after working in the NHS and see a similar bump.
I just have the luxury of capturing my wage premium inside a climate-controlled hospital, sleeping in a comfortable bed, and making enough money to fly home on holidays. I try to be grateful for the privilege. I try to give the hedonic treadmill a good kick when it has the temerity to make me feel too bad for myself.
There are many other reasons that people decry the Kafala system other than the perceived poor pay and working conditions. The illegal seizure of passports, employer permission required to switch jobs, accusations of physical abuse and violence are all well-documented, though the link to the 2020 Reuters article claims the system was overhauled and “effectively dismantled”.
I make no firm claims on actual frequency; I have seen nothing with my own two eyes. Nor do I want to exonerate the Qatari government from all accusation. What I will say is that "exploitation" is a word with a definition, and that definition requires something more than "a transaction that takes place under conditions of inequality." If we define exploitation as taking unfair advantage of vulnerability, we need a story about how the worker is made worse off relative to the alternative - and the workers I spoke with, consistently and across months, told me the opposite story. They are not passive victims of false consciousness. They are adults making difficult tradeoffs under difficult constraints, the same tradeoffs that educated Westerners make constantly but with much less margin for error and no safety net.
The people who know best still queued up for hours in the hopes of returning, and I am willing to respect them as rational actors following their incentives. I will not dictate to them what labor conditions they are allowed to consider acceptable while sitting on a comfy armchair.
I do not recall ever outright rejecting an applicant for a cause that couldn't be fixed, but even the occasional instances where I had to turn them away and ask them to come back after treatment hurt. Both of us - there was often bargaining and disappointment that cut me to the bone. I do not enjoy making people sad, even if my job occasionally demands that of me. I regret making them spend even more of their very limited money and time on followups and significant travel expenses, even if I was duty-bound to do so on occasion. We quit that job soon; you might find it ironic that we did so because of poor working conditions and not moral indignation or bad pay. I do, though said irony only strikes me now, in retrospect.
Returning to the man I spoke about, I found nothing of concern, and I would have been willing to look the other way for anything that did not threaten to end his life or immediately terminate his employment. I stamped the necessary seals on his digital application form, accepted his profuse thanks, and wished him well. I meant it. I continue meaning it.
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