urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
No bio...
User ID: 226
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
25d ago
I went to a normal but good public high school like @BahRamYou (please don't ram me), and understood from the get-go that an elite college was out of reach. I thought it was incredibly silly that anyone even countenanced elite college from this background, though some did, and the wokest ones got in. I don't resent it, because I understood that the elite colleges are for the upper class and people the upper class has pity on. I'm middle class, have always been middle class, and I followed the middle class path.
A "good school" to my class is a state school, a "bad school" is a private school, because the only private schools any of my peers were likely to get into would just be tens of thousands more a semester for no extra signaling benefit. Nobody in my class had a stone's chance in hell of getting into any school the upper-middle class would consider "good" unless they were some kind of minority. Getting in-state tuition at a flagship state school was the goal.
My peers are, generally, doing okay. Lots of people working in IT, office jobs, computer programming, nursing, teaching, medical tech, even a couple doctors if I recall correctly. Lots of people having cute babies and building lives together. Some aren't doing well, but that's true for any population of people. Not going to an elite college didn't destroy everyone's ability to live a good and happy life. It destroyed their chance of becoming elite, but they didn't have that expectation anyway. I'm going to teach my children that there's no way on earth they're going to be President or have an elite role, but there's every chance in the world they're going to have a meaningful, fulfilling life if they focus on living according to their values and focusing on the content of their friends' and partners' character instead of their status.
I don't understand the obsession with it, either. Not everyone in society is going to be elite. Some people are going to be normies. The struggle is to identify areas of economic need and study those. Blue collar work is in demand, and we desperately need conscientious people with integrity in these roles that are undervalued for status reasons. White collar jobs still exist.
When people describe all these expectations, all these extracurriculars, all this stress about test scores and good schools and networking and "don't you dare make a mistake"... it sounds so unbelievably suffocating that it's yet another non-miracle to me that so many preppy professional people have concluded our society is deeply oppressive. Because for them, it is.
It is totally fascinating to me that the upper-middle class folks typically hold an ideology that talks a lot about human equality, and says people don't choose their life outcomes, and we need to be respectful of people's different lifestyles, and yada yada yada, but also thinks mediocrity is a terrible life outcome, and you better go to an elite school and have an elite job! The intense pressure I see some people describe is totally alien to me. Sometimes I have to do a double-take, because it sounds like people are describing China and not America.
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urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
4mo ago
If they leave, where do they go? Try to join the US? Create the Dominion of Based Canada?
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urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
5mo ago
Hello all, how are you? I hope you all have been doing well.
I haven't been doing so great. I have personal contacts and a support system, but I think this community is one of the few places where my actual feelings will be understood, and my thoughts appreciated.
I'm struggling with finding psychotherapy that's effective for my combination of depression and anxiety, which I've dealt with since I was a child. I had my first recognizable depressive episode in the first grade, not kidding, so this is something that's obviously deep-rooted and temperamental in nature. In that sense, I'm not looking for "insight therapy" where I'm supposed to suddenly figure out what's causing my problems, but for skills-based therapy that can provide discrete and specific interventions I can rely on when my distress or my anhedonia get the better of me. Even solutions-focused brief therapy sounds better than insight therapy at this point.
I actually have a pretty good handle on my emotions and their causes -- counselors in the past have said I have a lot of insight into my problems. The issue isn't that I don't understand them, or are alienated from the true causes, but that I don't know what to do about the negative behaviors I have already identified I have. I'm not really coming into psychotherapy looking for a diagnosis, but a treatment.
I'd like to illustrate my problems with psychotherapy by talking about my most recent, and current, attempt at seeing a shrink.
The most concerning sign of my worsening depression is my attitude towards other people has gotten pretty harsh -- I'm quick to get angry, make snap judgments, even be tempted to be rude -- which is outside of the norm for me. I see this problem as more of a symptom than an underlying issue; I feel more pessimistic and irritable, so I'm eager to lash out. My real problem, I think, is that I don't have as much patience for others as I used to, because I feel on edge all the time.
Unfortunately, I think my new therapist saw this as a bigger part of my problems than it is, and we ended up going down a rabbit hole of "let's explore your feelings of annoyance to see what they tell you about your hidden emotions," and "your negative judgments of other people must be reflective of too much self-criticism." I didn't get any value out of this.
Another issue for me is that psychotherapists are all-in on "unconditional positive regard." This often feels to me like therapists pledging never to actually criticize the problems of the clients who are coming in for a critical eye on their problems.
My current therapist likes to bill himself on being "shame-free," but I'm coming to believe that the optimal amount of shame for personal growth, even in a therapeutic relationship, is not zero. While I don't think a therapist should be mean to their clients, I do think some level of fatherly Jordan-Peterson-style, "get yourself together, man, make something of yourself, you're better than this!" would be incredibly helpful and motivating.
One particular incident stands out -- I was talking about how I got in a social media rabbit hole of drama-reading that made me angry (a common thing for me, as themotte knows), and how I knew I shouldn't do it but did it anyway. He was quick to jump in and suggest "taking the shouldn't out of it," which instantly rubbed me the wrong way and made me feel like my convictions weren't being respected. He seemed surprised when I expressed a strong resolve to just... not use social media, because I see it as harmful to me. Has he never had a client who resolved to avoid things that are bad for them?
It's not that I feel my "shouldn'ts" in this area are imposed on me, or act as a source of guilt... I just recognize that this thing isn't something I like, it's not compatible with my value system, and I don't want to do it any more. I worry this particular therapist has made "avoiding negative judgments" so integral to his therapeutic approach that even when a client comes with an earnest sense that a particular behavior is wrong for them, he still feels the need to taboo their sense of resolution as maladaptive.
I do wonder if this is just a personality difference between men and women, where the average man is motivated more by rising to the challenge of fulfilling expectations and the average woman is motivated more by knowing people care about her and will support her regardless. This is one of the strong reasons why I wonder if the severe over-representation of women in psychology is really distorting the practice, so much so that even men are tailoring their treatment of male clients to the average woman's preferences and needs. When someone a while ago talked on here about "lefty mental health," think that was part of what they were talking about.
So, I feel like my current bout of therapy isn't working. We're not clicking. I've never actually had this happen before, despite trying therapy several times in my life -- I've always just kind of gone along with things, not thinking too much about what I'm looking to get out of therapy other than someone to listen. Now that I've thought critically about what I want to gain from treatment, I'm more judicious about what I need in a therapist. So I don't think this particular guy has the expertise or the right frame of mind to offer skills-based therapy, and is just generally a bad fit for me.
But I'm kind of stuck. As I've said, I've tried psychotherapy several times in my life, and it's made little difference in the overall trend of my mental health. In an earlier attempt at therapy, the only actual unit of value was the advice to use deep, slow breathing as a quick antidote to anxiety (something something parasympathetic nervous system), which to this day can legitimately feel like taking some sort of dissociative drug in terms of how chilled out it can make me.
If therapy has anything to offer me, I don't think it consists of therapeutic theories or piercing insight, but would offer more practical steps to counter negative self-talk and reduce bad thought/behavior spirals. The problem I have is not that I don't understand my problem and don't understand when my thoughts and behaviors are unhelpful, it's that, in the moment, I either feel egosyntonically aligned with the unhelpful things, or I feel situationally powerless to counter it. What I need is a therapist who recognizes that, and can provide direct and practical advice.
But increasingly I just feel like psychotherapy is a dead-end, and what I actually need is to finally get my GP to refer me to a psychiatrist, who might be willing to try one of the fancier anti-depressants that sometimes help people with treatment-resistant anxiety and depression. I've bounced between a few SSRIs and SNRIs in my life, but haven't seen much difference other than the fucked-up sex drive.
Hell, shock my brain at this point, I just don't want to feel on edge any more.
Any thoughts? Please be gentle.
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urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
2mo ago
I think I recall a Louis CK bit where he said modern marijuana is much more potent than stuff back in the day. Does that ring true to you?
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