This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
If you've been on twitter in or around the tpot space the last few days, you may have seen Aella blowing up and deciding to go private. I won't recount the whole story, but it is in screenshots in the link earlier.
Suffice to say, apparently she searched her name and saw a ton of vitriolic attacks and discussions around her online presence. She claims that the worst part is the "overwhelming hate with nobody defending me. People are ashamed publicly to support me, they don't want to be called a simp or cringe."
Long story short she basically said that she is heartbroken, is "so sad the world is shaped this way," and decided to quit twitter and go locked for the foreseeable future.
For some quick background, aella is a prostitute. She is extremely successful, and has built up a huge presence on twitter as well as a cult following in rational spheres. She does data science work as well, and claims to be autistic. She is polyamorous and openly promotes and campaigns for that lifestyle, as well as doing drugs. Some of her stunts include things like tattooing her name on the body of men who have sex with her, having orgies while sharing details of who got to get in, etc.
A few darker claims are that she pushed her two younger sisters into sex work (one of them, by her own admission on twitter, was doing camgirl jobs before she turned 18.) She has also said some... problematic things that are edging around support for pedophilia, although she's canny enough not to come right out and say it.
Now as I'm sure many people here agree with, I don't exactly agree with aella's views or lifestyle. That being said I am still torn, the world is a cruel place. At the same time, aella has probably caused harm to a lot of others with her lifestyle and especially her approach to promoting it online.
This equivocation points to an actual underlying tension/confusion I have around liberal expression. On the one hang I think polyamory, sex work, and some of the.... encouragement aella has around minors watching point &c is quite bad, and should not be allowed to happen in the public square. I think a certain amount of shaming is absolutely good and necessary.
However, perhaps I'm frail hearted or something because it does hurt to see so many attack her so viciously, when they clearly have so much hate in their hearts. Perhaps it's Pollyannaish but I wish that we could do our shaming in a more dignified, and less clearly antagonistic way. It seems that most of the people shaming her, from my read at least, clearly enjoy looking down and judging someone harshly, seeing themselves as better than her. From my perspective, that's not just as bad as what she's doing, but still bad.
I'm wondering, I suppose, whether there's a way we can employ shame in a truly good way as a society? Can we somehow shame people without turning into monsters ourselves, in order to protect our children and especially young girls from (imo) degenerate and overall unhealthy lifestyles?
To be kind to the cruel is to be cruel to the kind. Watching Aella's reputation go down in flames is what prevents young girls from wanting to follow in her footsteps.
Either being a whore is high status, or it is low status. If high status, good and proper to encourage your daughters to embrace that career. And if low status... this. This is what low status looks like.
So before you feel pity for Aella, remember the alternative.
I feel bad about it, too. But it has to be done.
I'm inclined to think of Romans 3 and Romans 12.
3:8:
And 12:17-21:
I can sense that some criticism of Aella, or this defense of public shaming, is going to come from a perspective informed by Christian morality. So I feel it is worth the reminder that this sort of consequentialism is directly and explicitly condemned.
I disapprove of Aella's behaviour. But the command is clear: do not do evil that good may come, and do not repay evil for evil.
Yeah this is where a lot of my tension comes from. (As you can see from my flair I'm Christian.)
That being said, I also like Chesterton's quote about virtues gone mad:
Basically we can't be compassionate at the expense of truth and other virtues like chastity. There's a limit to how compassionate we can be while still being "good".
Off topic but... why would one take that away from you flair? I suspect that very few people here can read Greek, so most probably have no idea what it means. I definitely don't, anyways.
It would probably be more clear in Latin letters - it reads Kyrie, poieson me organon tes agapes sou.
It means, well, exactly what he said, but you can probably recognise words like organon (instrument, tool) and agape (love). One resonance that you get in Greek that carries over well into English is that organon can mean any kind of tool, for any purpose, but also suggests a musical instrument (and thus is the source of English 'organ'), so it brings to mind playing God's love as if it is music.
More options
Context Copy link
Ahaha ok maybe it's too mysterious. It translates to "Lord, make me an instrument of Thy love."
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What, specifically, is the evil being done here? Criticizing her? Not praising her loudly enough?
She objects specifically to bullying and cruelty.
I, from the outside, do not object to people disapproving of her sexual behaviour, nor stating that disapproval. I myself just did both of those. I don't think people should obsess over her, stalk her, regularly post vicious comments about her, and so on. Just disapprove, ignore, and get on with life.
Can you give an example of either? I haven't seen anything that I would consider crossing into bullying or cruelty territory.
No one is stalking her, she had to google her name herself to even come across the content that upset her. Obsessing over someone probably isn't healthy, but it's not bullying or cruelty either.
Why? It's completely normal to comment on the public behavior of very public people, and there's nothing "viscious" about that, even if the comments are negative.
If she wants people to keep their disapproval private, she can keep her behavior private.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I do wonder how the average iron age scholar would react to "Pointing out that actions have consequences is evil".
Confused further by the fact that the pointing out essentially IS the consequence here. This is a very similar line of reasoning to "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences".
Odd how this argument seems like an annoying aphorism exactly until you (royal) pick it up and throw it at somebody else
Strong disagree. Like, I get that people believe everything is a social construct and thus all consequences are socially imposed. Or that what matters is not having done the thing, but people finding out you did the thing. But I'm not a blank slatist, I think certain behaviors actually do damage the human animal mentally, emotionally and physically beyond "social constructs", and I think someone looking for a mother of their children should have a right to know that a woman is a proud e-prostitute.
It almost gives me hope yet that no poor schmuck has ruined his life with her in the gravest fashion possible.
see i was commenting on the object level bawwing from aella, not the underlying causes that people are seeing elsewhere. On the object level, from the tweets, shes sad that people are being mean, not that she cant find a husband or is sad that shes a whore or whatever.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't follow Aella. In fact I usually mute anything I see about her. E-girls thrive on attention, and the only correct course of action is to block/ignore.
But what I have seen is that a large part of what set this off was her complaining that she wants to get married and have kids, and no partner she wants to do that with returns the sentiment. She may have also broken up with her long time
partnercuck because he didn't want kids with her? So she was mourning the situation that she would never have these milestones in life she wanted.And then what I saw was people, IMHO rightly, pointing out that if she wanted those things, a life of being a filthy whore in public was mutually exclusive to them. This was a self inflicted wound. And especially zeroing in on her entitlement to a "high quality male" (not her words, but reading between the lines), despite being a literal prostitute that doesn't shower. Like what did she think her value was? The post I saw were blunt about this. Perhaps excessive. But examples must be made lest others fall into the same trap. Consider the sort of man you want, and act accordingly. It's at least known among some men this is what must be done to attract the correct sort of woman. Women just seem to have entitlement.
Had her account muted a long time but finally muted her name since so much leaks through if you follow other TPOT folk. The muted word list is getting long.
More options
Context Copy link
But... There's no way that Aella would actually have trouble finding a partner who wants kids who is okay with her lifestyle. Not some captain of industry, but also not some random meth addict on the street either. There are plenty of total simps in tech with a solid paycheck who'd be thrilled to go for her, and she knows that.
This is all a marketing gimmick. Come save the poor whore with a heart of gold and a mind of platinum!
Aella has talked about her troubles finding a man who is up to her standards before:
It's not that she doesn't want to settle down, it's that, because of the way female hypergamy works, her own level of money, success, and status has drastically shrunk the pool of partners she considers acceptable.
(This, incidentally, is why even the most milquetoast brands of feminism are so misguided; women don't want men who are equal to them, they want men who are older and richer and taller and more powerful than them. By making women equal to men, all you are doing is making men undesirable husbands to women.)
Note that Aella is 33; she is past the age where she could reasonably expect to find a husband, even if she were not a notorious whore. If she still wants children, at this point her best bet is to become a single mother; in a couple of years, even that will be out of reach.
More options
Context Copy link
The problem, so far as I've gathered, is "the guys I like enough to want something more than a casual sexual relationship don't want to marry me and have kids, and I don't like enough the guys who do want to marry me and have kids to want something more than a casual sexual relationship with them."
She also demands a husband who is okay with her non-monogamous lifestyle. Most men can easily ignore past whoring. It’s current whoring they can’t abide. Makes for awkward breakfasts.
She made millions from OF/prostitution, she has 122,000 substack readers, how many golden spoons could her children possibly need?
I wish women would stop framing their greed/hypergamy as just safeguarding the interests of children. It's about as subtle as the man who claims to like big tits because his future children’s nutrition is always on his mind.
She is reaching the end of her career in the coming decade and still has to live off her earnings for close to half a century. If she cannot arrange some alternative income stream that is probably actually barely an upper middle class lifestyle living off her current wealth and not leaving much to any children.
I think the burden of having a very well known prostitute as your mother also does require some more golden spoon than the average to carry.
And she has been hanging around relatively wealthy successful people and prostituting herself to very rich men for a while. I am sure her perception of wealth is quite skewed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
So, in other words, every woman ever (or, at least, every woman since the sexual revolution).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But simps are gross. Very few women who think anything of themselves (and Aella thinks a lot of herself) is willing to stoop and settle for a simp.
I can't discount it. This could all be part of her hustle. Like I said, I try to ignore her.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't want to get into doing psychology over the Internet on a person I don't know, but yeah. I think she's in the poly bubble, so she imagines it is possible to find a guy, marry him, have kids, and still maintain the sex worker/poly life. Some poly people do handle marriage and parenting while having multiple partners, so she must think it possible for her.
But the kinds of guy she is attracted to, given what she's revealed of her childhood, are not going to be the kinds of guy who want to settle down and marry her (this is where the doing psychology over the Internet part comes in). She plainly has very conflicted views about her father, who seems in the small extract she provided to have been a sadistic piece of shit, and I think she has elsewhere indicated she was sexually abused as a child. Since she seems to have escaped into sex work as a reaction to her upbringing, I think she has put all her eggs into the basket of "I'm hot, I'm sexual, I'm promiscuous and that's okay, suck it repressive ultra-Christian upbringing that punished me for everything, I'm doing all the stuff you said would send me to Hell and I'm loving it!"
So having to face "sexual abuse as a child" and "sex work is low status, nobody wants to marry the whore they've been banging on the side" would crack her psyche right open, and she's already too vulnerable. Hence why (I am speculating hard here) if she seems to be endorsing "porn and exposure to sex aren't bad for minors, what is a minor anyway?" it's to do with reconciling how she was abused as a child: unless she can embrace it as "no, it was all fine!", then that brings back the child's guilt of "I must be a bad person, that is why this is happening to me". And to admit "I am a bad person" then brings back "so my parents were right and I'm wrong and what they did was okay" and that is very much not so. The tension of the contradictions is threatening to snap her mental state apart, so she has to balance it all very carefully.
So, yeah. She's pinned her new identity on "you can be sexy, promiscuous, and desired and loved", and found out the hard way that the "loved" part is not in fact part of the package. 'There's women you have fun with, and women you marry, and they're not the same' is an old truth but still relevant. EDIT: I think the data science work and her being involved in rationalist circles is an admission on her part, not recognised as such, that she does want to be admired for more than her waist-hip ratio, that she wants to be seen as intelligent and having worth apart from her sexuality. But she's sort of trapped right now: if she steps back from the sex work, then what is her unique selling point that sets her apart from "all the other kinda smart, kinda nerdy, kinda mathy rationalist-types"? She's shackled by her brand as "Aella, the sexy rationalist girl".
I vehemently disapprove of her lifestyle and views, but I do think she's mentally vulnerable and calling people names isn't polite. Now, that does bring us to "but is calling her a prostitute calling her names or is it naming the truth of her situation?" and I think her supporters would say the former, while "she's doing sex work to make a living, that's prostitution" is the latter.
Was she sexually abused? I'm not very familiar with her story. But I thought it was more non-sexual beatings and things like that, at its worst. That's obviously terrible, but I'm not sure it would have the same psychic impact on views of sexuality as being the victim of sexual assault as a child. Does someone more familiar with her story know enough to indicate this?
Link
This is in the context of discussing school as an imposition on autonomy, so it should not be assumed that the molestation occurred at age eight.
I see, I had only ever heard about the parental abuse, not the abuse from extended family.
That seems to demonstrate @HereAndGone’s point — she’s dealt with the abuse by making it not about sex but about autonomy, and so I can see how a strong view that does take sexual transgression as corrupting would be incredibly hard to bear.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I can't give you a direct source, but I did read something where the assertion was made by someone else. And maybe it seems this is the relevant tweet?
Without the context, it's hard to say if she's saying she was molested at age fourteen, or if it happened when she was younger.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Sounds like a Christian should have reached out to her and told her that she is loved - explained forgiveness, sanctification, and water that does not leave you thirsty. Instead, she got a mob calling her names.
Aella grew up very Christian, albeit under the thumb of mentally ill calvinists. I'm doubting it would have helped.
More options
Context Copy link
Whenever I see this argument, I just helplessly gesture in the general direction of Joshua Graham from Fallout: New Vegas, how much the character is beloved in the community despite being extremely religious, before throwing my hands in the air and giving up, knowing I'll never be able to communicate the entire point without a multi-paragraph effort post.
To try and summarize the matter, actual redemption always comes with a cost. If you're not willing to pay the cost, you're not actually redeemed. You're just doing such to excuse your own guilt. Aella seems to just want things delivered to her on a platter, and is complaining her decisions have lead her to this point without any reflection.
You can't force redemption on someone who doesn't want to pay the price.
There's a difference between "very religious, sticks to his values despite being at odds with the society around him" and "beat me until I bled all in the name of 'our loving God demands this'".
Anyway, Calvinism of any stripe, more especially hyper-Calvinism, is going to be gloomy and depressing enough to turn anyone off the faith. "You are going to Hell even if it's not your fault because at the creation of the Universe God decided He would withhold saving faith from you, so there's nothing you can do even if you think you really believe"?
(More complicated than "He decided" since it's "God foresaw you would be damned, and since He is omniscient, what He knows must come true else He would not be omniscient, so that is incompatible with free will and hence you are damned").
More options
Context Copy link
Lately I've been thinking of the argument made in this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=F9xYqQDTHnk
God's love remains, even when we are at our worst. Basically, Christianity is a relationship with Jesus. Jesus looks at us, loves us, first. Being loved comes first, then repentance is the response to that.
Repentance is important, but it's not first. First is being loved by Jesus and us, His body on Earth.
I think it would be harder for Aella, and for others who came out of abusive situations, since they can legitimately argue "I heard all about the love of God and Jesus from people rock-solid convinced they had the truth and believed it, and they were worse than any sinner I ever met afterwards, because who beats a child eleven times in a row for not being sufficiently obedient? This is how that love worked out in practice, catch me falling for the same trap twice".
Unless she had a genuine conversion experience in a different context, and that has to be left up to the will of God.
It doesn't help to just continue abuse because, "well, she's already been abused before so now it's on her to repent." Which is what it comes across as when all I said is that Christians should love her instead of verbally abuse her and people are objecting to that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is just a philosophical argument that allows people to come to the recognition that, despite having done bad things in the past, they do not have to do bad things in the future.
But they have to stop wanting to do bad things.
I'm not saying appealing to the idea of Jesus's love as all-forgiving is wrong, mind you. I'm just pointing out it's not a magical panacea where you mumble words and all of a sudden everything is fixed.
I didn't say that anywhere. I'm saying, love comes first, then repentance. Repentance is necessary. But it doesn't happen first.
Les Miserables is on the mind, consider Jean Valjean and his moment of repentance. After a life of getting kicked around, he steals the Bishop's valuables. And in response, the Bishop loves him, saves him from going to Prison again, gives him more than he stole. And that is the moment that Jean Valjean actually feels sorry for his actions. Once he experiences true love.
You can say, that's just a story. But there is a reason why it rings true. The world is full of bitter people who will stay bitter forever unless someone breaks their shell with love.
Will it always work? No. But does it work? In my experience, yes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Not true in the slightest. Redemption is about turning your heart towards God, and He lets the sun shine on the just and the unjust alike. He does not require payment, he's not a debtor that we owe. He is a healer.
To quote scripture, 'Go forth, and sin no more.'
You equate 'cost' as if it's something to be paid to God. No. It's something you pay to yourself.
If you prefer a secular version, you can't force someone into therapy when they don't want to heal.
More options
Context Copy link
The cost is turning your heart towards God. You cannot be redeemed and an unrepentant whore. God does not redeem the unrepentant.
More options
Context Copy link
At a minimum, redemption requires that you admit you were wrong, that you stop doing bad things, and that you work to fix the evils you have done. Aella has done none of this.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't know if that would work. By her account, she was raised by parents in a small, niche, hyper-Calvinist denomination who believed very strongly in "spare the rod and spoil the child", so all the Good News is tainted for her with "my parents literally beat me bloody for normal childhood mistakes then said this was the will of God".
Ah well, Saint Mary of Egypt, pray for her!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yep. Pretty common for sin to feel good in the moment. That's the whole "trick" of it.
Childhood trauma does not entitle you to a lifetime of unlimited compassion from others.
I've been seeing this meme more and more across wide swaths of social media - and from all corners. People are starting to point backwards to "childhood trauma" (ill-defined, subjective, and often shrouded in mystery) as the root of all their problems. This is neo-Freudianism but, somehow, with less rigor and logic.
The entire process of adolescence and early adulthood is the process of recognizing that when bad things happen to you, you have some level of control in how you react to them. Yes, there are some things that are incredibly and objectively traumatic. They will take time to heal, but you have the tools and capability to fuel that healing process if you developed emotional maturity.
When people fail to do this, they not only become unreliable, they become socially dangerous. Most of the men in prison right now had a childhood of neglect and abuse to at least some degree. They are repeating the patterns they were exposed to. Sadly, many of them lack the IQ to even sort their emotions into reasonable buckets, let alone manage them constructively. Should we extend our inexhaustible supply of compassion there way, let them out, and hug them until they've changed? Alarmingly, about half of the voting population would YesChad.jpeg this idea.
This is all part of the rot and incipient counterproductive nature of "therapy culture." It invites negative feedback loop rumination on bad feelings, the opposite of personal agency, all while promising constant absolution from responsibility that one can presume and demand of others. It's a kind of inverted religion; a kind of satanism, if you will. A self-referential cult of the victim ego.
Returning to Aella, and the sexy-rationalist-e-girl archetype, perhaps you had some level of childhood trauma. Let's assume this trauma was real and not cultivated by a very online life that invites all of us to make emotional mountains of molehills. You're (self-proclaimed) like, really, really smart or whatever. Perhaps you ought to take the time to sort through your own emotional baggage and then move beyond it. In her tweets, she is literally calling for internet friends and strangers to defend her honor to other (mostly) internet strangers. This is an obvious sign of emotional immaturity. She is outsourcing emotional regulation to other people through the odd mode of chivalrous honor codes.
(Side note: I bet Scott does it)
It....kinda should though?
We have good evidence to believe that free will is mostly BS at this point but even if you aren't about that line of thinking it is still true that childhood abuse ruins your life outcomes. We have some knowledge of things like the impact on your brain chemistry and psychological development, we can point to incredibly poor outcomes and paucity of truly effective treatment.
People just don't get better without a lot of good genetics, supportive nursing and lucky life events the majority of the time.
Doesn't mean you have to accept or interpersonally tolerate them, but you should have empathy and compassion.
It is in all likelihood not her fault and her brain is fundamentally broken and society does not have the tools to force her to do what is required to get better.
Citation needed.
Citation needed. Also, there's literally a cottage industry in within hollywood that does nothing besides making films about people who overcame their childhood to do amazing things.
Citation needed.
Citatio--nevermind.
Let's say you come back with bulletproof evidence for all of your claims. Think through the implications. How do we as a society ever hold anyone accountable for anything? What "counts" as trauma? Who decides? How do you account for individual variation in the ability to cope with negative emotions?
The whole point of our legal system is that it is based on the premise that there is the law and only the law. Your personal circumstances have little to do with how you are judged against the law*. "Your honor, I had a really hard childhood. I think you should take that into account during this armed robbery trial." That would be pants-on-head insane because it would mean every single law and every single interaction with it would be an inherently subjective exercise. There would, in effect, be no laws. No laws, no society ... you get the picture.
Compassion and empathy do not outrank truth.
By implication, you're also preemptively condemning literal children to a life of low expectations and patronization. "Damn kid, your mom was a crackhead and dad beat you? Well, don't feel bad about being semi-homeless for a while, it isn't your fault." Or, in this specific Aella case, "Sure, sure, honey, you're a multi-millionaire with a massive online following, but you go right ahead and have a public meltdown." Why not encourage them to rise to their potential? Why not deliver the much, much better message of "despite what has happened in your past, you can create a good life and be a valued, pro-social member of whatever community you choose**"
Pairing all of this with your initial dubious claims we have yet another example of the satanic nature of current therapy. It's the embodiment and fulfillment of the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations. It takes otherwise healthy people who may need some encouragement and turns them into fragile, dependent slaves to the cult of "self-care", "triggers", "boundaries", etc. Many are literally permanently drugged and then reminded that such drugging is "necessary" to keep them ..... stable? I'll take volatile but responsible and competent over "stable", flaccid and burdensome.
Admittedly handling this well requires some flexibility of thinking that is going to be challenging for the general population, but just like how HBD claims doesn't mean we have to treat *ethnic group * like ass, just because free will is limited doesn't mean that we can't punish people for misbehavior, arrange society in various desirable ways, and so on.
Let's start with the free will statement. The strongest form of the argument is something like this: we have good data on things like efficacy of treatments, causes of various things, outcomes given various adverse childhood experiences and so on.*
We can cobble together some genetic data and presentations, certain kinds of childhood experiences like gross sexual exploitation, family history of other mental illness, family history of substance abuse, etc and say "this kind of person is enormously unlikely to ever overcome their circumstance." Can we do this for most people? Well not right now anyway, but for certain kinds absolutely yes.
Should we allow them the chance to make their own mistakes instead of doing something first? Different question. Should we let them run roughshod over things? No, but different question.
This definitely applies to certain patterns of child abuse.
A better example is probably opioid abuse. Medication assisted treatment (this is not safe injection sites) originally started as highly stigmatized and disliked but has grown to be approved by most in medicine because what we've found is that once addicted (rarer then you might think) most people just don't recover.
Free will need not apply. The thing is too dangerous.
Look for other options.
We know that external locus of control and efforts at getting people to help themselves work for those who can, so we should try, but thought leaders should be aware that some populations and situations just aren't going to get fixed without outside intervention.
*Simplest place to start if you want to examine the research base is ACE studies.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You can have some empathy for her(it does seem like her childhood was pretty bad) without approving of any of her decisions, or even refraining from judging her choices.
oh yeah you can say she's a fucking moron and I dont want my daughter doing that ....and at the same time, her life made her that way and you can feel bad for her.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Sorry, I can't choose to not judge Aella as a nasty hoe even though she had a rough childhood because I lack the free will to choose otherwise.
Yeah fair, being judgmental IS probably more determined by your life history and cultural context, however thinking she is a nasty hoe (I mean, I do too...the shower thing? Eesh) is not incompatible with having empathy for her and awareness of the life history that likely brought her to the set of beliefs you find odious.
Sorry, my lack of free will prevents me from choosing to feel empathy
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I stopped reading at this point. Thinking that free will is a solved debate makes me not take any of your other arguments seriously.
That's highly antagonistic given literally the next words of that sentence.
Ahh. As I said, I stopped reading ahaha. Yeah perhaps it is antagonistic.
I do have a lot of sympathy for child abuse, but as the person says you can't have infinite compassion. Infinite compassion for anything will ruin you.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Does what?
Posts a thoughtful essay on defending Aella while also discussing the many sided argument about her public persona, her personal history, and how we should think about judgement in the twitter sphere.
Or some fucking bullshit like that.
Sounds on brand alright.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I agree with most of your arguments, but I have to jump in with #notalltherapy here. I have been helped quite a bit by therapeutic modalities, even though it took me years to find ones that worked with good practitioners.
Unfortunately, like with most fields, good therapists are few and far between. In general I'd estimate 90%+ of therapists out there provide negligible effects, or actively make their clients worse off. And indeed, much of the issues are the "cult of ego" stuff as you point out.
That being said, the truly good therapy that's out there can be life changing. Especially if it's focused on somatic practice and "emotional armoring" in the Reichan sense.
Very much agree on trauma not being an excuse to hurt others, though.
Your choice of words alone in that sentence suggests a verbal IQ (if not general IQ) in the top 5% (and I'm probably underestimating). You're posting on a niche forum that hyper-indexes on good argumentation. The most liked posts on here routinely surpass 500 - 1000 words.
Therapy didn't help you, you helped you. I know, that's an outlandish claim to make. I don't know your whole story. How could I be so presumptuous blah blah blah. But this is yet another part of therapy culture I find so contemptuous. For the success stories out there - like yours - I believe 99% of them are just that person improving their life. The therapist was in no way necessary. But the therapist then takes the credit. And invites well-intentioned and genuinely praiseworthy people - such as yourself - to proclaim the advantages of therapy. At best, at the absolute best, you could maybe view a therapist as a coach in the sports sense. They help you stay disciplined, offer nurturing advice, whatever. But who went out and did the thing? You did.
Where therapy isn't a satantic self-religion, it's a grift. Where it isn't a gift, it's non-sexual emotional prostitution. Where it isn't even that (in the academy) it's a rent seeking non-scientific field that shits out pop self-help books backed by "TeH scIencE" and propagated over social media. Evil turtles, all the way down.
Semi-related tangent: Can't find the article / essay, but I remember a ACX style post about how most alcoholics who aren't a) extremely low agency (i.e. retardation levels of IQ) and b) past the point of the dangerous chemical addiction wherein cessation can be fatal, will self-resolve their alcohol consumption to manageable levels over the course of their life. Alcoholics Anonymous is more or less a placebo. I'd love to find that article again as I have enough people in my personal orbit who essentially have been functioning alcoholics for several years at a time, become completely sober for several years, and then resolved to totally responsible occasionally social drinkers after about a decade mixture of the preceding two phases.
Ahaha I appreciate it. I honestly can't give therapy too much credit - Jesus Christ saved my life more than anything. That being said, going to therapy and learning especially about somatic modalities (paying attention to what you feel in your body, your emotions etc) is a big part of what led me to Christ. So perhaps I can say He can work through these tools.
I actually agree with the emotional prostitution part. Ironically I wasn't able to get a ton out of therapy until I did a bunch of research on my own, learned to sort of discern who is actually wise and who is full of shit, and then pick from there. If you aren't able to do that discernment yeah, you're kind of screwed sadly.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Or, more relevantly, most people in therapy don’t need to be there, and doing therapy on a healthy person can’t help, might hurt.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't know if she's capable of that, though. Again, doing untrained psychoanalysis over the Internet, but by all accounts her method of dealing with her traumatic upbringing was "do a shit load of LSD and permanently fry my brain" which is not really helpful. And if she does have to face it all and acknowledge that she does bear responsibility for her choices, plus confront her past, I do think she's liable to crack right open and maybe not be fixable.
I hope she gets help. I don't know if she wants it or if anyone in her life is in a position to tell her to do so (the main fault of the nice rationalist EA people is that they are too damn nice and so fearful of appearing judgemental or telling people how to live their lives or seeming to be unaccepting that they will hum and haw and tie themselves into knots while literal rapists are taking advantage of the culture to get away with being abusive and manipulative). I don't think anyone in her circles feels capable of telling her "this is not a good choice" or that she would listen to anyone who did tell her that.
If she's compounded her trauma through years of maladaptive behaviors, then the question has to be asked: to what extent is she culpable for her own behavior? If that answer is "below the level of generally agreed upon adult responsibility" then we're talking about involuntary psychiatric commitment.
But we're not talking about that because she's obviously a high agency, capable individual. That's my whole point - she's making these choices on her own. And, thus, my compassion is effectively zero because I know she can change but she chooses not to.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I mean yeah, I think perhaps the cruel part here is that she was showered with money, attention, fame, and general encouragement because her shctick lined up with progressives stated values. But when it comes to actually living out those values, most people seem to pull back.
She could easily find a rationalist eligible bachelor to have kids with in her stated lifestyle. She’d just have to settle for ‘eligible’ rather than ‘attractive’(in the broad sense, rather than just a synonym for handsome).
More options
Context Copy link
She was/is not showered with money, attention, fame and general encouragement exactly due to that but moreso for offering the direct possibility or at least a fantasy of sex with an attractive yet intelligent woman for the stereotypically sexless and nerdy rationalist community. It's not progressives in general who are obsessed with Aella (most would of course not even know of her and a large amount of her statements are offensive to progressives as well), it's this one particular group and its subgroups.
More options
Context Copy link
I think there's perhaps a lot of truth to what you think. Giving praise and encouragement to behaviors that feel good but are long-run self-defeating is actually cruelty, not niceness.
I'm reminded of the cliche of fat/ugly women yas queen'd by her friends and being confused why no high value men want to settle down with her. Or what I'd guess is the counterpart of nice guys being praised for being meek and submissive and being confused why he gets no 1st or 2nd dates. I don't know how often either happens, but I'm pretty sure they're cliches for good reason.
Recently, in video games there have been a number of high profile failures by major AAA studios that spent the better part of decade making games that either failed spectacularly (e.g. Concord) or just did mid in sales, nowhere near enough given the dev costs (e.g. Assassin's Creed: Shadows, Dragon Age: The Veilguard), and one common talking point I saw was that these devs probably got nothing but affirmations as they were developing these disasters that appealed to themselves and almost no one in the target audience. And as a result, many of these devs face layoffs and even closure. We don't know if the narrative of internal echo chambers of affirmations is actually correct, but if it is, then these affirmations weren't nice, they weren't kind, they were cruel, for encouraging the devs to create games that would end up dooming their jobs or their studios or both.
Perhaps there are cruel ways to discourage the type of lifestyle that Aella practices. Perhaps most ways of discouragement are cruel. But that doesn't make the encouragement of such any less cruel.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link