Stoicism is the basis of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. Which proposes similar mental exercises to antifragility. I don't think this is original with me, but current psychological interventions, as described, are the opposite of CBT/Stoic advice.
"I don't think this is original with me, but current psychological interventions, as described, are the opposite of CBT/Stoic advice."--IIRC Jon Haidt and Greg Lukianoff coined this idea in The Coddling of the American Mind.
I've never been overly fond of "counselors," which I regard as about a half of a click removed from witchdoctors. The entire industry is, and has always been, rife with charlatans and self-interested megalomaniacs. Want bad advice? Go find professional counseling.
I've seen (and, unfortunately, been a client of) a lot of bad therapists who took a then-sick person and made them sicker. But I've also seen a lot of good therapists. I don't think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I think many do for sure. But there are still good counselors out there (it's a big industry, after all). If you're curious, I'd recommend looking up Jonathan Shedler, Seerut Chawla, and Camilo Ortiz; as well as therapists who follow and agree with them.
I notice this kind of behavior in my pampered, affluent college town. Kids here have every privilege, but some fraction of them - mostly boys- seem to never really grow up and develop any drive of their own. They stay in this town, eventually move into their parent's house when they die, and never seem to live up to their full potential - working part time, no kids. They'll be in their 30s but give off the impression of being in their teens. I wonder how much of this is from overparenting - they're constantly in this protective bubble of activities structured by adults.
The thing with boys not growing up is really something! In most cases I know of, it is a matter of the young men not demonstrating any ambition to live independently, combined with the parents fostering their dependency. A family I know recently attended their son's college graduation ceremony. The university president reportedly gave a little speech about how kids might "need more time" to become independent, due to disruptions of their education caused by COVID. He told the audience of parents that "30 is the new age of adulthood" in U.S. culture, so parents shouldn't worry if their kids moved back in with them after graduation. I expressed shock and disapproval about this, which elicited indignant anger from the young man's parents. They told me that they thought the university was being "very appropriate" and "supportive" and they welcomed his remarks.
To continue Dallas Willard's metaphor, I think the university president is one of those folks encouraging upside-down-but-close-to-the-ground-kids to try to go higher. I don't doubt his intentions, but I also don't see it ending well.
30?? Good lord! That's almost middle aged! My 20s were about adventure and ambition, and my 30s have been about competence, stability, and mentoring - I think if I'd missed that developmental window for my 20s, I wouldn't have gotten it back.
"My 20s were about adventure and ambition, and my 30s have been about competence, stability, and mentoring - I think if I'd missed that developmental window for my 20s, I wouldn't have gotten it back."--well put!
Yeah, 30 used to be over the hill with respect to getting married and starting a family. Then the date, for guys especially, got pushed out to 30. Now 30 is when the kids should start thinking about getting their own places, but they can still be on the car insurance.
The Pritzkers, corrupt Democrats, pharma oligarchs/billionaires, are funding the trans child mutilation cult.
Most postmodern relativism got stuck in a developmental/evolutionary dead end, and any metacognitive capacity that was developed was severely warped by toxic ideology, typically supported by counterculture trust fund kids. They didn’t transcend “capitalism”, on the contrary.
I’ve been trying to find any rigorous evidence that SEL or emotion check-ins in schools actually improve outcomes. I’d love to present it to our school district. I don’t like how much my daughter is subjected to emotion-ruminating. I opt her out of all school surveys.
But I’d love to know the reason they implemented SEL, what evidence did they use to justify it!?!
SEL and other “woke” adjacent schemes like CRT are exempt from mathematical reality and objective factual evidence because they are a quasi religion, a cult, a subjective-emotive narrative concocted by postmodernists and neomarxists driving “cultural revolution”.
In their naked forms, such as the Claudine Gay case, the lies, plagiarism, bad data, abuses of power, incompetence and use of manipulative rhetorical bs such as victim narratives, are obviously the result of sociopathic and narcissistic personality traits/disorders.
There are some deep academic papers that use less polemic language to make the above case, such as Tabia Lee’s work as a DEI admin and faculty, and some other California Community college faculty that have explained why DEI is flawed. That material is usually related to formal appeals that have been made about the corruption and abuses in education administration.
The basic fact is that SEL/DEI and other “woke” schemes are ILLIBERAL, irrational and full of lies and bad data. Critics and reformers are frequently attacked, usually viciously (Roland Fryer). These are cultural revolutionaries that won’t stop because their narratives are shitty and their data is bad.
In the case of CRT, the insanity of the multi/cultural revolution goes so far as to propose that rational, systematic thinking using objective facts and evidence is itself a core feature of “white patriarchy” and oppression.
The father of “woke” identity politics, Herbert Marcuse, specifically advocated for the use of political oppression, intolerance, ILLIBERALISM, to advance the (“woke”) cultural revolution.
We now see explicit “woke” lies and ILLIBERALISM in government regime propaganda and totalitarian attempts to destroy free speech in the USA, Canada and the EU, all of which is glorified by the “woke” “left” bot and troll armies on social media.
The origins of the problem have been explained in various ways, such as historian Christopher Lasch’s 1990s statement that the cultural revolutionary’s postmodern “belief” that “reality is a social construct”. (See NS Lyons substack article on the Canadian truckers protest).
A number of heterodox scholars have described how the emergence of globalism, the disintegration of the modern nation state system, the hegemonic position of a corrupt professional-managerial classes (the New Clerisy) and unaccountable global elites and media-tech oligarchs, the increasingly meaningless left-vs-right narrative have created a vast opportunity for social parasites and predators to exploit the FRAGILITY of existing form of awareness and failing social institutions.
There is an unholy alliance of global finance, digital capitalism and the deep state that is engaged in an INVERTED CLASS WAR on the working classes.
SEL/DEI and other woke nonsense sees itself as being immune to any scrutiny or opposition by those that disagree with the postmodern, neomarxist cultural revolution or the oligarchs that want to use it to justify their imposition of Neo-Feudalism on the traditional working classes, small property owners, manufacturing capitalism, and populists.
The historical “left” has a peculiar strand in it of anti-modern romanticism (Rousseau) that was based on the disdain of medieval intellectuals and artists for the expanding urban commoner classes as river and sea trade expanded (Hanseatic League, German Free cities after the 1300s).
In other words, the same anti-middle class attitudes held by medieval intellectuals serving aristocracy and ecclesiastic elites, fearing competition from literate merchants, has always existed in anti-reformation and anti-enlightenment ideology, and was just recycled by the more insane and radical left. The radical left’s goal was to return to a peasant civilization of a commoner class of earthy spiritual purity, uncontaminated by the filthy business practices of middle class capitalists.
Leftist revolutionaries have always tried to hide their faux religious cult beliefs behind lies and deception.
I agree with a lot of this. But I'm skeptical that all CRT/DEI folks are acting in bad faith or lying. I think some definitely are (ex. Saira Rao) but I've also known some IRL who are sincere in their belief that CRT/DEI will make the world a better place.
1. [a minority] sociopaths that rise to power by manipulating and exploiting:
2. [a majority] relatively innocent, ignorant dupes that are frequently bullied by #1
Nassim Taleb captured the underlying psychosocial dynamics in his description of the "Dictatorship of the Intolerant Minority".
That dysfunctional scheme has exceptions, actual internal critics and reformers on the "left". They are usually marginalized or attacked.
Read Orwell's account of being on the "left" in the Spanish Civil War, he was ultimately almost assassinated by a Stalinist assassin squad, but narrowly escaped. The radical/extremist "left" is always involved in internal power squabbles, infighting and back stabbing.
A suicidal leftist that eventually killed himself explained the problem (the prevalence of evil and depravity in utopian thinking) at a deeper level:
www. notonyourteam. co. uk /p/the-deep-appeal-of-marxism
excerpt:
Not science, not scholarship
We see again and again what I’ve come to call “the Hegel mode” emerge within activist scholarship, a combination Hegel both pioneered and exemplified. Scientific illiteracy, prophetic pretensions, power worship, and obscurity creating a patina of profundity.
The scientific illiteracy enables rejection of inconvenient constraints. The prophetic pretensions generate a highly motivating sense of future ownership. The power worship goes with a belief one knows the proper direction of history. The patina of profundity from obscure language puffs up intellectual pretensions, provides a coordinating language for believers, and protects adherents from error-revealing dangers of clarity.
Hegelianism, Marxism, French post-structuralism, Gender Theory, Queer Theory, Gender Identity Theory: varieties of the pattern keeps emerging. All four characteristics should be intellectually disabling in isolation, and the combination utterly so. But, on the contrary—and as Hegel himself exemplified—the Hegel mode has proven repeatedly to be a path to academic success.
I agree that there are many in Gen Z who are very functional. And I think a huge step in the right direction would be for Boomers and Gen Xers to get out of their way.
Long term SSRI "addiction" is reportedly a cause of brain degeneration/dysfunction.
That is one of the reasons why the elite, college educated professional-managerial classes are out of touch with reality, having diminished cognitive (and meta-cognitive) function.
It would be helpful to hear a lot more about the Gen Z kids who are functional, meeting developmental milestones on time, doing something besides playing with digital devices, behaving respectfully towards each other and towards older people, and not engaging in cheating, stealing and destroying property.
Nope, they will just keep bullying critics, making up lies and gaslighting everyone to cover up their incompetence and mental dysfunctions.
There are anti:-woke people in generation x-y-z, they typically get stabbed in the back by the woke crazies who have gotten into power if they criticize anything woke. See Nassim Taleb’s description of the “Dictatorship of Intolerant Minorities “.
I think it's basically unhealthy to pay too much attention to one's own mental state.
I had a cousin who became schizophrenic in her late teens or so, and the few times we spoke after that, her only topic of conversation was her mood. Not her sickness, but how she was feeling this week, today, right now. Never a word about interests, aspirations, goals. It just seemed incredibly wrong.
She fancied herself an artist; she had a little talent but in any art endeavor, it's only the most talented who get jobs. Three times she went away to college, only to call her parents in tears and ask them to come get her. She died a few weeks ago, we had not spoken in thirty years or more.
I also think matters of identity are not real. Anyone who is having a rough time because of "dealing with his gender identity" needs a good hearty slap in the face. This is a search for a gang to conform with. Nobody ever talked about this garbage before 20 years ago. "Gender identity."
I'm sorry to hear that. I agree that we shouldn't pay too much attention to our mental state; a certain amount of emotional repression is healthy.
I share your concerns about gender identity, but I'm not sure that folks who identify as a different gender are looking a "gang to conform with." I think they're just looking for meaning and connection. They're looking in the wrong place, but maybe instead of a slap in the face we could help them start looking in the right place (ex. religion, IRL friends, etc).
The psychiatric industry makes big profits from dysfunctional “woke” ideology. A Danish study found 47% comorbidity with suicidal ideation and other mental illnesses for gender dysphoric people. It is tragic that dysfunctional politics, such as billionaires that fund the trans child mutilation cult, makes it unlikely that their mental illnesses will treated effectively and competently.
People in these studies should all be evaluated for low self esteem, sense of worthlessness, lack of confidence, and similar variables. Negative self-evaluation is likely to be an underlying variable and potential cause of many problems reported by Gen Z and by people who reject their own bodies. Even narcissism has components of low self esteem, but narcissistic people generally will not admit it because it makes them feel weak to acknowledge that they have low self-esteem.
> A concerning 42 percent of Gen Zers have been diagnosed with a mental health condition, and an astounding 60 percent take medication to manage their mental health.
Wait, wait, wait... where's that other 18% getting their meds from?
Bad Therapy is a great book, but the authors of this piece appear to be a gaggle of 'life coaches' who are of course not experts nor studied on this matter, and sadly they miss what's central. SEL - Social and Emotional Learning - is the brainchild of Paolo Freire, a Brazilian Marxist revolutionary and political philosopher. The entire point of SEL is to 'conscientize' the children subjected to it, which means to raise a 'social consciousness' in children. This is how they make them Marxists young, and SEL is the 'gateway drug' in education to Marxism. The idea is 30 years old already.
Simple question: Why don't these authors and many others spewing on this subject know this? Fyi, it gets scant attention even in Shrier's book. Be very wary of the newly minted 'heterodox' and self-anointed 'truth tellers' who have fled the Left (after being hacks for decades when many other people somehow knew better). Many have still not delved deeply into the sins and crimes and ideas of their former lives, and mostly still don't understand how the Left arrived at the point where they had to leave. They think, roughly, 'that everything was fine until Trump and then the Left went crazy' or something along those lines. They do not understand that we are at the tail end of 100 years of Marxist subversion efforts that subverted them most of all. Nobody who is subverted likes to believe they have been subverted...
Accordingly, be very careful who you listen to during this time. Many 'heterodox voices' are still confused and ignorant, even as they pose as seers to the rest of us.
I am an adherent of Stoic thinking. This is what is needed for kids. I will be writing a blog post about this.
Stoicism is the basis of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. Which proposes similar mental exercises to antifragility. I don't think this is original with me, but current psychological interventions, as described, are the opposite of CBT/Stoic advice.
"I don't think this is original with me, but current psychological interventions, as described, are the opposite of CBT/Stoic advice."--IIRC Jon Haidt and Greg Lukianoff coined this idea in The Coddling of the American Mind.
Thanks! Surprisingly recent.
I think Stoicism is essential to teach kids.
I've never been overly fond of "counselors," which I regard as about a half of a click removed from witchdoctors. The entire industry is, and has always been, rife with charlatans and self-interested megalomaniacs. Want bad advice? Go find professional counseling.
I've seen (and, unfortunately, been a client of) a lot of bad therapists who took a then-sick person and made them sicker. But I've also seen a lot of good therapists. I don't think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.
YMMV! 😀
Very true!
Therapists encourage dependency and lack of agency. They encourage an attitude of illness. Every problem is a mental illness.
This is the recipe for failure.
I think many do for sure. But there are still good counselors out there (it's a big industry, after all). If you're curious, I'd recommend looking up Jonathan Shedler, Seerut Chawla, and Camilo Ortiz; as well as therapists who follow and agree with them.
I notice this kind of behavior in my pampered, affluent college town. Kids here have every privilege, but some fraction of them - mostly boys- seem to never really grow up and develop any drive of their own. They stay in this town, eventually move into their parent's house when they die, and never seem to live up to their full potential - working part time, no kids. They'll be in their 30s but give off the impression of being in their teens. I wonder how much of this is from overparenting - they're constantly in this protective bubble of activities structured by adults.
The thing with boys not growing up is really something! In most cases I know of, it is a matter of the young men not demonstrating any ambition to live independently, combined with the parents fostering their dependency. A family I know recently attended their son's college graduation ceremony. The university president reportedly gave a little speech about how kids might "need more time" to become independent, due to disruptions of their education caused by COVID. He told the audience of parents that "30 is the new age of adulthood" in U.S. culture, so parents shouldn't worry if their kids moved back in with them after graduation. I expressed shock and disapproval about this, which elicited indignant anger from the young man's parents. They told me that they thought the university was being "very appropriate" and "supportive" and they welcomed his remarks.
To continue Dallas Willard's metaphor, I think the university president is one of those folks encouraging upside-down-but-close-to-the-ground-kids to try to go higher. I don't doubt his intentions, but I also don't see it ending well.
30?? Good lord! That's almost middle aged! My 20s were about adventure and ambition, and my 30s have been about competence, stability, and mentoring - I think if I'd missed that developmental window for my 20s, I wouldn't have gotten it back.
"My 20s were about adventure and ambition, and my 30s have been about competence, stability, and mentoring - I think if I'd missed that developmental window for my 20s, I wouldn't have gotten it back."--well put!
Yeah, 30 used to be over the hill with respect to getting married and starting a family. Then the date, for guys especially, got pushed out to 30. Now 30 is when the kids should start thinking about getting their own places, but they can still be on the car insurance.
There's a big difference between the ideas of listening, monitoring, advising, mentoring and counseling.
Everyone occasionally needs someone to shut up and listen.
In a situation where you presume breaking rules may occur then monitoring is in order.
When I want advice about a topic I ask for it.
When I want examples of how to think about a series of decisions I may want a mentor.
When I'm in a bad situation I may want a counselor.
Unless there is a history of rule breaking with mojitoring, all the rest should only be available if asked for.
In my experience the most valuable is undirected, unrecorded listening. A friendly non-judgemental ear is wonderful.
Somehow everything is monitoring (presumption of cheating) and unwanted advice or counseling, rather than simple listening.
Agreed.
The Pritzkers, corrupt Democrats, pharma oligarchs/billionaires, are funding the trans child mutilation cult.
Most postmodern relativism got stuck in a developmental/evolutionary dead end, and any metacognitive capacity that was developed was severely warped by toxic ideology, typically supported by counterculture trust fund kids. They didn’t transcend “capitalism”, on the contrary.
www.meaningness.com/meaningness-history
I’ve been trying to find any rigorous evidence that SEL or emotion check-ins in schools actually improve outcomes. I’d love to present it to our school district. I don’t like how much my daughter is subjected to emotion-ruminating. I opt her out of all school surveys.
But I’d love to know the reason they implemented SEL, what evidence did they use to justify it!?!
That's a really good question. I don't know.
SEL and other “woke” adjacent schemes like CRT are exempt from mathematical reality and objective factual evidence because they are a quasi religion, a cult, a subjective-emotive narrative concocted by postmodernists and neomarxists driving “cultural revolution”.
In their naked forms, such as the Claudine Gay case, the lies, plagiarism, bad data, abuses of power, incompetence and use of manipulative rhetorical bs such as victim narratives, are obviously the result of sociopathic and narcissistic personality traits/disorders.
There are some deep academic papers that use less polemic language to make the above case, such as Tabia Lee’s work as a DEI admin and faculty, and some other California Community college faculty that have explained why DEI is flawed. That material is usually related to formal appeals that have been made about the corruption and abuses in education administration.
The basic fact is that SEL/DEI and other “woke” schemes are ILLIBERAL, irrational and full of lies and bad data. Critics and reformers are frequently attacked, usually viciously (Roland Fryer). These are cultural revolutionaries that won’t stop because their narratives are shitty and their data is bad.
In the case of CRT, the insanity of the multi/cultural revolution goes so far as to propose that rational, systematic thinking using objective facts and evidence is itself a core feature of “white patriarchy” and oppression.
The father of “woke” identity politics, Herbert Marcuse, specifically advocated for the use of political oppression, intolerance, ILLIBERALISM, to advance the (“woke”) cultural revolution.
We now see explicit “woke” lies and ILLIBERALISM in government regime propaganda and totalitarian attempts to destroy free speech in the USA, Canada and the EU, all of which is glorified by the “woke” “left” bot and troll armies on social media.
The origins of the problem have been explained in various ways, such as historian Christopher Lasch’s 1990s statement that the cultural revolutionary’s postmodern “belief” that “reality is a social construct”. (See NS Lyons substack article on the Canadian truckers protest).
A number of heterodox scholars have described how the emergence of globalism, the disintegration of the modern nation state system, the hegemonic position of a corrupt professional-managerial classes (the New Clerisy) and unaccountable global elites and media-tech oligarchs, the increasingly meaningless left-vs-right narrative have created a vast opportunity for social parasites and predators to exploit the FRAGILITY of existing form of awareness and failing social institutions.
There is an unholy alliance of global finance, digital capitalism and the deep state that is engaged in an INVERTED CLASS WAR on the working classes.
SEL/DEI and other woke nonsense sees itself as being immune to any scrutiny or opposition by those that disagree with the postmodern, neomarxist cultural revolution or the oligarchs that want to use it to justify their imposition of Neo-Feudalism on the traditional working classes, small property owners, manufacturing capitalism, and populists.
The historical “left” has a peculiar strand in it of anti-modern romanticism (Rousseau) that was based on the disdain of medieval intellectuals and artists for the expanding urban commoner classes as river and sea trade expanded (Hanseatic League, German Free cities after the 1300s).
In other words, the same anti-middle class attitudes held by medieval intellectuals serving aristocracy and ecclesiastic elites, fearing competition from literate merchants, has always existed in anti-reformation and anti-enlightenment ideology, and was just recycled by the more insane and radical left. The radical left’s goal was to return to a peasant civilization of a commoner class of earthy spiritual purity, uncontaminated by the filthy business practices of middle class capitalists.
Leftist revolutionaries have always tried to hide their faux religious cult beliefs behind lies and deception.
I agree with a lot of this. But I'm skeptical that all CRT/DEI folks are acting in bad faith or lying. I think some definitely are (ex. Saira Rao) but I've also known some IRL who are sincere in their belief that CRT/DEI will make the world a better place.
What do you think?
The "left" is mostly made up of two groups:
1. [a minority] sociopaths that rise to power by manipulating and exploiting:
2. [a majority] relatively innocent, ignorant dupes that are frequently bullied by #1
Nassim Taleb captured the underlying psychosocial dynamics in his description of the "Dictatorship of the Intolerant Minority".
That dysfunctional scheme has exceptions, actual internal critics and reformers on the "left". They are usually marginalized or attacked.
Read Orwell's account of being on the "left" in the Spanish Civil War, he was ultimately almost assassinated by a Stalinist assassin squad, but narrowly escaped. The radical/extremist "left" is always involved in internal power squabbles, infighting and back stabbing.
A suicidal leftist that eventually killed himself explained the problem (the prevalence of evil and depravity in utopian thinking) at a deeper level:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle/
also see this high quality, conservative scholarly analysis:
deep dive into the social science of dysfunctional, socially pathological leftism:
www.notonyourteam.co.uk/p/equalitarianism-is-morally-and-socially
[Helen Dale and Warby of Oz]
https://www.notonyourteam.co.uk/p/the-deep-appeal-of-marxism
www. notonyourteam. co. uk /p/the-deep-appeal-of-marxism
excerpt:
Not science, not scholarship
We see again and again what I’ve come to call “the Hegel mode” emerge within activist scholarship, a combination Hegel both pioneered and exemplified. Scientific illiteracy, prophetic pretensions, power worship, and obscurity creating a patina of profundity.
The scientific illiteracy enables rejection of inconvenient constraints. The prophetic pretensions generate a highly motivating sense of future ownership. The power worship goes with a belief one knows the proper direction of history. The patina of profundity from obscure language puffs up intellectual pretensions, provides a coordinating language for believers, and protects adherents from error-revealing dangers of clarity.
Hegelianism, Marxism, French post-structuralism, Gender Theory, Queer Theory, Gender Identity Theory: varieties of the pattern keeps emerging. All four characteristics should be intellectually disabling in isolation, and the combination utterly so. But, on the contrary—and as Hegel himself exemplified—the Hegel mode has proven repeatedly to be a path to academic success.
There is much doom just in the way this article is presented.
It focus on the part of gen z that has problems. There are many in gen z that are very functional.
I predict that gen z will sort itself out. Especially if the boomers and Xers can get out of the way.
There are plenty of millenials and gen zers that are very functional and can lead others to be productive.
This article presents like doomscrolling.
Thanks for commenting !
I agree that there are many in Gen Z who are very functional. And I think a huge step in the right direction would be for Boomers and Gen Xers to get out of their way.
But I also see some concerning trends. What do you make of the fact that 60 percent of Gen Z are on medication to help manage their mental health? Source: https://www.psychiatrist.com/news/survey-42-of-gen-z-diagnosed-with-a-mental-health-condition/
Long term SSRI "addiction" is reportedly a cause of brain degeneration/dysfunction.
That is one of the reasons why the elite, college educated professional-managerial classes are out of touch with reality, having diminished cognitive (and meta-cognitive) function.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-challenge-of-going-off-psychiatric-drugs
American Chronicles
April 8, 2019
The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs
Millions of Americans have taken antidepressants for many years. What happens when it’s time to stop?
By Rachel Aviv
April 1, 2019
...
It would be helpful to hear a lot more about the Gen Z kids who are functional, meeting developmental milestones on time, doing something besides playing with digital devices, behaving respectfully towards each other and towards older people, and not engaging in cheating, stealing and destroying property.
Nope, they will just keep bullying critics, making up lies and gaslighting everyone to cover up their incompetence and mental dysfunctions.
There are anti:-woke people in generation x-y-z, they typically get stabbed in the back by the woke crazies who have gotten into power if they criticize anything woke. See Nassim Taleb’s description of the “Dictatorship of Intolerant Minorities “.
I think it's basically unhealthy to pay too much attention to one's own mental state.
I had a cousin who became schizophrenic in her late teens or so, and the few times we spoke after that, her only topic of conversation was her mood. Not her sickness, but how she was feeling this week, today, right now. Never a word about interests, aspirations, goals. It just seemed incredibly wrong.
She fancied herself an artist; she had a little talent but in any art endeavor, it's only the most talented who get jobs. Three times she went away to college, only to call her parents in tears and ask them to come get her. She died a few weeks ago, we had not spoken in thirty years or more.
I also think matters of identity are not real. Anyone who is having a rough time because of "dealing with his gender identity" needs a good hearty slap in the face. This is a search for a gang to conform with. Nobody ever talked about this garbage before 20 years ago. "Gender identity."
I'm sorry to hear that. I agree that we shouldn't pay too much attention to our mental state; a certain amount of emotional repression is healthy.
I share your concerns about gender identity, but I'm not sure that folks who identify as a different gender are looking a "gang to conform with." I think they're just looking for meaning and connection. They're looking in the wrong place, but maybe instead of a slap in the face we could help them start looking in the right place (ex. religion, IRL friends, etc).
What do you think?
In my youth we felt like we were part of something. The Age of Aquarius, the Counterculture, protesting the war, and of course we had our music.
Now? Social media, “influencers,” the worst music in history. No wonder.
The psychiatric industry makes big profits from dysfunctional “woke” ideology. A Danish study found 47% comorbidity with suicidal ideation and other mental illnesses for gender dysphoric people. It is tragic that dysfunctional politics, such as billionaires that fund the trans child mutilation cult, makes it unlikely that their mental illnesses will treated effectively and competently.
Agreed. It's actually a huge problem.
People in these studies should all be evaluated for low self esteem, sense of worthlessness, lack of confidence, and similar variables. Negative self-evaluation is likely to be an underlying variable and potential cause of many problems reported by Gen Z and by people who reject their own bodies. Even narcissism has components of low self esteem, but narcissistic people generally will not admit it because it makes them feel weak to acknowledge that they have low self-esteem.
This is a really good point.
“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”
> A concerning 42 percent of Gen Zers have been diagnosed with a mental health condition, and an astounding 60 percent take medication to manage their mental health.
Wait, wait, wait... where's that other 18% getting their meds from?
Bad Therapy is a great book, but the authors of this piece appear to be a gaggle of 'life coaches' who are of course not experts nor studied on this matter, and sadly they miss what's central. SEL - Social and Emotional Learning - is the brainchild of Paolo Freire, a Brazilian Marxist revolutionary and political philosopher. The entire point of SEL is to 'conscientize' the children subjected to it, which means to raise a 'social consciousness' in children. This is how they make them Marxists young, and SEL is the 'gateway drug' in education to Marxism. The idea is 30 years old already.
Simple question: Why don't these authors and many others spewing on this subject know this? Fyi, it gets scant attention even in Shrier's book. Be very wary of the newly minted 'heterodox' and self-anointed 'truth tellers' who have fled the Left (after being hacks for decades when many other people somehow knew better). Many have still not delved deeply into the sins and crimes and ideas of their former lives, and mostly still don't understand how the Left arrived at the point where they had to leave. They think, roughly, 'that everything was fine until Trump and then the Left went crazy' or something along those lines. They do not understand that we are at the tail end of 100 years of Marxist subversion efforts that subverted them most of all. Nobody who is subverted likes to believe they have been subverted...
Accordingly, be very careful who you listen to during this time. Many 'heterodox voices' are still confused and ignorant, even as they pose as seers to the rest of us.