uncompensated driving, commute times, etc
people don't realize how much their car is costing them. IRS rate is like $0.60 a mile. running errands for work all day? 45-minute commute? yeah you're effectively making less than minimum wage now
very difficult to get people to understand though
It's not that every psychological problem is directly due to capitalism (though many are directly or indirectly) it's that capitalist psychology mostly cares about profitable treatments, whether they're effective or not. I'm inclined to think some form of talk therapy or psychoanalysis may be more helpful to a lot of people than solely symptom-based treatment. But who can afford to go to therapy for years?
Even from the pharmaceutical side, we're mostly just tweaking the mechanisms of consciousness without necessarily addressing or understanding the holistic structure, so the best we can hope for is trying various meds until one sort of works. But most of us can't afford to spend years trying a new med every few months, with all the turbulence and uncertainty that goes along with it.
Cbt, dbt and the like are somewhat useful at treating certain symptoms, but generally fail to address root causes. And the way they're often applied, they seem more intent on teaching people to accept their treatment under capitalism than anything.
Consciousness is complex in a way that isn't effectively modeled by insurance-mediated healthcare and science, which overemphasizes quantitative variables in a field that's profoundly qualitative. Not to mention the obsession with the individual, ignoring the systems that individuals exist within.
Tbh I feel like that's more a fault of capitalism than a shortcoming unique to psychology.
Assuming this is coming from a lack of friendship:
Start with a pet, if possible. Then work your way up.
Getting my cat a few years ago helped take the edge off so I didn't come off as so desperate or distant (oscillating between the two extremes).
Then slowly picked up effective habits and retrained bad habits in interacting with people. Still working on it.
If you mean you feel lonely within your existing friendships, there's a degree to which that is "normal" or at least somewhat universal. Some philosophers would say true connection with another person is fundamentally impossible. But even if that's the case, we can find meaning and beauty in the process of trying to achieve the unachievable. Happiness comes not from finally filling an unfillable lack (a mythical ideal), but the novelty or enjoyment of the process.
I get shitbox Toyotas for under a couple grand and run them into the ground. Whatever maintenance I can afford.
I don't trust cars nor roads nor drivers
:michael-laugh:
Ironically I think 20 hours is about the estimate for reading it if you read 300 wpm, iirc
Of course it's pretty dense theory so most people aren't gonna be reading at a fiction pace. Took me a few months to get through it.
I agree with one exception:
There's a certain type of person who has no coherent message, their whole purpose is to engage in bad faith. In that case any attempt to attack the message is futile due to the asymmetrical nature of disinformation. And the disinformation that spreads so effectively is often stuff that dials into people's subconscious assumptions. So it's not always obviously absurd to average people.
See Sartre's description of how antisemites use this tactic:
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
The difficulty people have, from what I've witnessed with federation, is differentiating good from bad faith users. And I see this very much from all sides: putting it broadly, people got used to a certain Overton window. Thus it's easy to assume someone with a foreign opinion doesn't actually hold that opinion, they're just trolling or crazy. I think it's best to assume good faith until proven wrong, otherwise the trolls have succeeded in their goal to poison all dialogue and exchange.
Another thing worth keeping in mind, Lemmy represents a major threat to corporate social media. The best way for this threat to be eliminated is if, in its infancy, it fragments and stagnates due to drama like this. It's very easy to make an account on any instance, or multiple accounts.
It's also been my impression that the meme of federation being impossible has taken up 95% visible discourse, with the perceived ills that the meme is based on only being like 5%. One of those things where a small problem is artificially blown up until it becomes the big problem it was falsely claimed to be. I've seen a few people voice this sentiment: that their only exposure to the drama is people complaining about the drama. I saw a similar suspicious phenomenon happen on Reddit a few times.
This is kinda a good example of how everything filters through material class relations, until something that was radical can end up supporting the system.
A study of Christianity (and I'm sure most religions) is very interesting for this dynamic, a thousand years' tug of war between liberatory and repressive interpretations of doctrine, each subsuming the other in different ways (usually favoring the elites).
Oh fuck I thought the mattress was a railing
Was thinking it wasn't too bad, as a kid I always loved those kinda loft areas in bourgeois houses, even though they're pretty impractical
Lmao
Reminds me of the 6" 22 from /r/shittyreloading
I'll try to find it
Tax on second and third homes should be a literal arm and leg
Oh wait corporations would just outsource that on the third world too
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
We're not claiming pedophilia doesn't exist, we're pointing out a dogwhistle that's been pushed by fash for at least a decade now, which tries to do an equivocation attack on queer people using pedophilia. It started on 4chan and has since spread to high level government.
As you probably know, we use the term "dogwhistle" because these attacks are meant to seem innocuous to average people but convey deeper meaning to those "in the know". It's a fascist tactic that's been used forever, see Sartre's analysis of antisemites for a concise description.
This type of thing is a manipulation of signifiers (words and symbols) to obfuscate and confuse concepts (the actual ideas words are supposed to represent). Fascists will dance around with signifiers, making it difficult to pin down and explain their meaning to laypeople who aren't invested or haven't spent the disproportionate effort it takes to keep up. This allows them to avoid rebuttal (because there's no coherent essence behind their words) and hide in plain sight.
So the signifier "I want to kill pedophiles" is particularly insidious, because it's something the average person is already sympathetic towards for obvious reasons. But to a growing demographic of people, it signifies a deeper concept: "I want to kill pedophiles=groomers=queer people". Which is a wild leap of logic, but it's what we're directly observing right now, particularly in red states.
The red flag or smoking gun or hint at this being the case here is the fact that no average person really disagrees with the gist of the sign, so like, who is he speaking to? It's got a distinctly different vibe than MeToo and anti-Epstien sentiment. "If pedophilia is just a sexuality"-- who's saying this? It suggests the existence of a archetypal person in this guy's mind, an Other concept that can be mapped onto whomever.
See also that new Q movie that's so popular, that portrays a mythical version of human trafficking that's dialed right into the rightwing consciousness.
Like, just the fact that it took me this long to poorly attempt to explain this, is part of why it's so effective. I have to very carefully and in depth try to explain the context for why a "good" statement actually means a "bad" thing, making me look at best hypersensitive. Seriously, read the Sartre thing, he's way better with words than I am. I'll try to find it and post it below.