urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
No bio...
User ID: 226
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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?
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
1mo ago
To mirror Scott's ACX survey: In the past 24 hours, have you thought about the Roman Empire? If so, what was the context of that thought?
This thing sounds like something that could be written by a leftist, with just a few words changed. I mean, imagine something like this:
Compared to my early 20s self, I am a lot less prone to ingrouping with the kind of Liberal people who deliberately shut themselves off from the world by retreating to the ‘burbs—people who just want to be comfortable and don’t have a burning desire to change the world. I’ve also lost any protective instinct toward people who stay in a shitty poor area with no opportunities just because they have a sentimental attachment to their ghetto hometown. My experiences have taught me that these people want nothing to do with my vision for the world and aren’t my comrades in any meaningful sense.
Actually, this sounds more believable than the original text. It's certainly more likely to be somewhere in ChatGPT's training corpus.
It's no wonder this man hates the Midwest -- he's basically a progressive activist, just with one or two ideas swapped around! The actual conservatism (and the pragmatism and realism he labels as "smallmindedness") he found there is as alien to him as it is to the woke moralist, and he rejects them for the same reason. They, in turn, reject his utopian vision -- because they're stupid and reactionary and the world is going to leave them behind. They're not on the right side of history. Don't they realize how much work there's been in academia right-wing internet forums about the systemic racism against Black people White people deeply ingrained in American society? Just do another search-and-replace of "smallminded" and put in "prejudiced."
@FiveHourMarathon and I have gotten into arguments in the past about the nature of conservatism, but regardless of where one draws the line between conservative and reactionary, this guy is on the other side of it. This is not the writing of a conservative, desiring to hold on to the lasting traditions that have been gifted to him by his upbringing. This is an ideologue, a radical, someone animated by the same spirit of the age that motivates the Communist revolutionary or the social justice activist. And he has the same smug self-assurance that, if empowered, would drown his neighbors in a lake and call it baptism.
Everything this guy writes is just a massive argument for Hlynka's position -- the strong form, not the way-too-far version he started saying later on -- that white identitarians are schismatic progressives, not really conservatives. I know he made some very strong and silly claims that extrapolated too far from the connection he saw. But guys, this right here is exhibit A.
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urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
17d ago
ME1 is my favorite game of all time, but I agree with the criticisms of the trilogy as a whole. I feel it went immediately and, ahem, massively downhill from there.
The reason I like ME1 isn't even because of the power fantasy, which I don't care about very much, I desperately want games where the main character isn't all that powerful. I'm actually annoyed we don't see more of those. Let me be a damn shopkeeper with a girlfriend, damn it.
What I liked about ME1 was the character work and the worldbuilding, which I think was pretty good. People praise ME2's character work, but my problem is I think they stretched themselves out too much, and had too many characters to focus on the important ones. I also agree the characters of Miranda and Jack were bad. The only acceptable female romance options in Mass Effect are Liara, Tali -- and I'll go to bat for this one -- Ashley "religious tomboy" Williams. I hear the chicks really dig Garrus. And I mean really dig Garrus.
There is insufficient storytelling about male characters having compelling romantic relationships with women in all mediums. I dare everyone to try to find actually-sensitive storytelling about male-female relationships, from a male perspective, that isn't 1. pornography 2. completely hamfisted or 3. downplayed. Apparently there's "not a market for it" and "why do you love women that much, that's gay" but, uh, this is my thing, my question with each and every story I engage with is "how high quality is the love interest subplot."
The stuff I get is generally not great, but I have to take the crumbs I can get from the master's table. The best stuff might literally be fanfiction. Somehow teenagers on the internet are doing a better job with a whole genre than the entire media apparatus.
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urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
4mo ago
Like most men under 40, I enjoy gaming as a way to spend my free time. However, I feel guilty about struggling to enjoy or be successful at gaming 'classics' like Super Mario Bros or Skyrim. My gaming interests are narrow but deep, and I find e-sports games transient and fast-paced games too demanding on my hand-eye coordination.
I really like Quantic Foundry's Gamer Motivation Model. According to my results, the two components of games I really love are what they call "Creativity" and "Immersion." I like playing games that give me the opportunity to enter a different world and role-play as a different person. I also like games which provide opportunities to build and customize things.
Games like Star Wars: The Old Republic, despite flaws, satisfy my desire for a complex storyline, character customization, and player housing. Further, while BioWare games often fulfill me with their strong stories, Bethesda games don't. I find their characters wooden, with bland dialogue and settings.
But I feel like I'm the sort of person who ought to be playing a broader range of games. I have the personality type, and my friends throughout life have always been inveterate gamers.
At times, I feel like a dog eating crumbs that fall from the master's table, satisfied only by limited (and often buggy or underdeveloped) aspects of games which focus on motivations -- like competition, or blowing stuff up -- that are more common among the core gaming demographic.
I suppose my struggle is to identify what is actually valuable to me -- is it to play the 'gaming classics,' or is it to focus on games that satisfy my unique preferences? Can anyone relate to having such unique tastes?
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
1mo ago
How does this match up with decreasing fertility even in countries where women are generally not part of the workforce, as brought up by other commenters?
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The current paradigm is "women's bodies are defective male bodies, men's brains are defective women's brains." That's not an explicit viewpoint or something that anyone intends directly, it's the outcome of the slow process of commoditizing human beings and molding them into good little workers and subjects who are obedient, pliant, and don't rock the boat. Anything that stops them from doing this is a flaw which the powers that be seek to destroy -- signal-boosting any ideology that seems likely to accomplish it. Once again, this isn't a conspiracy; it's a prospiracy, a side effect of powerful institutions doing what powerful institutions do, and of humans in powerful positions doing what humans do: endorsing ideologies that subconsciously go along with their pre-existing goals. This is the origin of "woke capital."
Women are more likely to uphold institutions and, as girls, to sit still for long periods of time (like you say), and are less likely to shout loudly about the emperor having no clothes. Men are less likely to do things that remove them from the workplace for a period of time (especially bear children), and more likely to slave away at work for hours on end while abandoning their families at home.
Institutions, especially corporations, want their employees to be male in the ways that benefit them and female in the ways that benefit them. They don't want people, they want androgynous commoditized worker bees. They want cattle and not pets, human docker containers cloned and scaled at will from the amorphous "cloud" of the "workforce." The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings. You will own nothing and you will be happy, and your storage will be separated from your compute and kept in trust by Amazon.
My girlfriend has gotten explicit advice that she should never get pregnant, it will "hurt her career." She detests these people who have established a system that expects her to sacrifice her biological and spiritual drive to bear and raise beloved children in the name of economic productivity and ruthless inhuman competition. This system sees bearing and raising the next generation of human beings, the most fundamental purpose of society, as a distraction from the more worthy goal of creating wealth for Wall Street. It asks this of men too, but because of the unchangable realities of being a sexually-dimorphic mammalian species, this requirement hurts women more than men. The entrance of women into the workforce on the same terms as men is the true systemic oppression of women. The left used to know this, like when Elizabeth Warren wrote The Two Income Trap. But it has forgotten it as its funding has shifted to corporations "woke" to their own interests, who are more likely to fund the striking of a child in the womb than to pay for the care of that which is born. And the abortionist feminists celebrate them for their avarice like good little girls.
The goal isn't to turn men into women or women into men. That's an ideological side effect, like "Communism" in Stalinist Russia. The goal of Stalin was to empower himself. And so it is with woke capitalism. (Perhaps real woke has never been tried?)
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
2mo ago
My understanding is that predestination wasn't originally interpreted by Calvinists as eliminating free will -- the argument for predestination wasn't total determinism, it was total depravity. So, the view was that people have free will (in a philosophical sense), their will is just totally entangled in sin such that it is impossible to choose the good without prevenient grace. Which, well, is essentially the Christian consensus since Augustine (at least in the West; the Orthodox are harder to pin down, though they would certainly insist that salvation is totally connected to cooperation with grace), but the unique proposition of Calvinism is that such grace is given only to the elect, and is irresistible.
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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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