How bad are things?

But is this really the only way? In AA we like to emphasize that there's no such thing as "hitting rock bottom". That is, even if you haven't lost everything, you can have the foresight to stop drinking and get your shit together, and recognize the necessity of changing yourself.

That said, most people, myself included, have to hit quite a few rock bottoms before we get the point.

Remaining in dysfunctional relationships because they can't bear to be alone.

Continuing to work a job which they're losing money on because its their identity.

Crippling debt, and its associated stress, accrued paying for things they hope will make the happy.

(In the US at least) medical bills.

All of those could easily have equal, or even more, negative effects on someone's life than an addiction, particularly an addiction they're able to support financially.

There's an experience I had several times when I was growing up and going through school, where I would ask someone for advice and they'd give me some well-reasoned, thoughtful answer, then the advice turned out to be unhelpful. This happened often when I talked to academic advisers. I realized afterwards that my academic advisers were giving me exactly the kind of advice that would have suited them when they were my age, and since I was a different person with different goals, a different background, and different circumstances, their advice was simply ill-suited.

The thing that really struck me, however, is the realization that they truly believed in the advice they gave me, and that they had grounds to believe in it. It wasn't "bad advice" per se, but they talked to hundreds of students every year and couldn't take the time to understand what my goals were. And I realized that I was going along a nontraditional path, I had nontraditional goals, I was deliberately nonconformist, and therefore academic advisers (as extremely conformist individuals, in general) were the least reliable source of advice for me.

I've started recognizing the pattern more and more. Someone will give advice, and they'll be earnest and honest, but it just doesn't apply to everybody. I had a teacher who thought "happiness" was a fool's dream. I met a recovered addict who had a sure-fire plan, with five steps, to beat addiction and improve your life. He wanted to tell everyone that MDMA would ruin your chances for ever living a happy life. I met a divorcé with some advice which women to avoid, or how to treat them. It was advice that he needed, years ago, but I didn't. Same thing over and over again, people claiming to know what would make other people happy. (Or replace "happy" with adjective of your choice.)

And I suppose I am repeating the pattern, right here. "You have to learn to recognize what advice applies to you and what advice doesn't, because you're smart, and there are a great many mistakes you won't make, even though there are many you will."

But that's the advice that I needed, fifteen years ago, it's not the advice you need. And maybe this story won't resonate with you at all, because you thought it was obvious all along. That's the lesson.

Bingo. Balance is the keyword.

Nice response overall to parent comment. But I felt, they also had a valid perspective. How many people you meet, who would analyze it in as much detail like yourself?

It is true that often peoples' problems can be lessened, if not fixed, by making some corrections. I agree with you in that, its foolish/naive to be very open about our problems to everybody. But, I thought, the parent was implying a pretence of "normal". In several situations a good and trusted friend may be able to advise and can be as helpful as a shrink.

I somewhat agree with your thoughts on money and other things like intelligence, beauty, health etc. If we try to think from a perspective of someone who does not have and never going to have one or more of these positives. In such scenarios when they hear, it doesn't matter. It makes them not lose too much of heart. It gives them a new paradigm to work with, one in which they are never going to have certain things.

A disabled person has to transcend their disability, at some level. So calling it all a lie is shallow/surface thinking, when some lies might help us achieve some larger truth.

edit: typo

I think my comment might have come off as being sort of condescending to people who are unwilling to talk about their problems for fear of judgement, like if only they would just do that everything would be OK!

Of course that's not the case! When you reveal your problems to someone, they often jump to blaming you, judging you, and so on. I meant that people recognize that I've dealt with that a lot, and that I won't blame them or judge them. Sometimes I can offer them some practical advice, but often that's just condescending, so I just express sympathy.

As for circumstances, I firmly believe that it's possible, albeit difficult, to be happy under any circumstances. This doesn't mean that you're not allowed to seek better circumstances, but I've always found that I'm best at improving my external circumstances when I'm feeling OK internally.

Finally, my one liner "guide to happiness" was meant to be suggestive of broad principles, not "this is exactly what you need to do to be happy!". I should have made this clearer. Balance is an extraordinarily important part of it! People have thought and written about this basically forever -- in fact it's the original, and in my opinion, the only legitimate question in philosophy. It's also the whole point of religion. So to think that one can sum it up in a few platitudes is more than a little bit silly.

Exactly. I remember reading a book by a couple painting a pretty picture about how freeing oneself from all desire (material, emotional) solves all the problems you may have. I got fallen in to this cheap advice back when I was suffering from unreturned love and tried to preach it as well, but retrospectively, it didn't actually work. It is only the passage of time and other events of life that may result in something like decrease of pain and moving on with life. But I guess this kind of advice (freeing oneself from desire, embracing religion) still has some value in the worst cases where the person is willing to believe anything just to stop the suffering. It gives an illusion of a solution and that helps a little bit.

> I'm unsure of what "privatizing public spaces for socialization" is supposed to mean, or why it would be bad.

I think they were referring to the movement away from communal spaces and communally owned spaces, especially ones which contribute to socialization/enculturation. Things like parks, libraries, schools, which are for people and of people, but which increasingly are not by people.

> After all, a private property owner may extend nonpossessory or usufructory rights to usage of their land, which would make it perfectly viable for social gatherings without being necessarily more exclusionary than a commons or public ownership.

There's a difference between being a tenant on someone else's charity land and being a member of a community, and although I don't really have the expertise, time, or space to go into it, I imagine it involves a sense of belonging and ownership and community, that sort of thing.

> The promotion of the nuclear family model is an organic result of prosperity, which enables its existence to thrive.

This is true, and we've seen people moving back in with their parents on graduation now that the economy is weaker. This being true doesn't preclude there being a narrative that might eg take ideals like Independence and Self-Determination and turn them into a social impetus to form weaker bonds with extended family. I personally think it has a lot to do with our physical mobility increasing faster than our ability to maintain meaningful connections long-distance, but who knows.

> Same with beauty standards.

This has been problematic for generations and there's a lot of literature out there. I think that waving away the effects of image crafting on the psyche of young and impressionable folks in pursuit of profit is wrong of you, and you should consider re-evaluating this stance.

> I also fail to see how "promoting exotic vacations and recreational activities" is bad.

I mostly agree, except in the sense that people are maybe being sold a bad cure for an ailment they might not have had, spending money they don't have, perpetuating the problems that caused them to want to escape in the first place. Again, just for example.

For the last sentence, here's my interpretation: Markets are flawed because the actors in them are not rational or well-informed (which is often an axiom of whatever model one chooses to use), and because the actions available to them are dictated by those currently on top[1]. I think OP was referring to the way that boiling human interaction down to market interactions - trusting the Market to be a true and somehow just proxy for Everything - is causing problems; that is, trusting markets (alone) to meet human needs is failing.

Hope this helps.

1. For instance, violence or overt threats of violence in pursuit of gain is considered to be taboo in markets (that I know of), since those who have goods or the means to produce them generally want to keep that relative power over those who do not. We see alternative, or extra-market action in eg ecoterrorism, where someone whose needs or desires are not being met, and who have no in-market recourse, resort to destruction in order to reduce profitability of hummers or whatever.

I don't see any marketers out there enticing more people into the arms of schizophrenia, food stamps, or prison sentences.

But I also think that you go too far exculpating them.

To say "all of these things are democratic, they reflect the will of the people", is a very naive comment.

Tobacco is a good example of a need that was just created.

Or in the news not so long ago:

Coca-Cola 'spends millions on research to prove that fizzy drinks don't make you fat' ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandcon... )

We could find so many examples as you need.

How about plain old cold water? Is a Cola much better at quenching thirst than plain cold water?

EDIT for clarity: The point is, the first question is not "Will they reach for a coke or pepsi", but "Will they reach for a bottle of cold water or a cola", then only the question of choosing between pepsi or coke comes.

So you first need to convince people that you should drink a cola when you are thirsty. This is where the "evil" part comes from.

I don't know what proportion is right, but I strongly suspect the near-100% private/government ownership of resources we see today is not optimal.

Really?

His counterpoint to you, which I would say has some traction, would likely be that those thinkpiece writers are deploying constructs like "privilege" as a way to discredit the very real struggle of people in groups that don't fall under the accepted rubric of privileged and oppressed, for the very reason that their issues' existence is either ignored or defined out of the category of "systemic oppression."

Most everyone is "in favor of being empathic to everyone's humanity and not discrediting anyone's struggle," but as humans everyone seems to have a hard time putting that principle into practice.

[1] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AppealToWorseProb... [2] http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=641605

You cannot possibly know the level of anyone's suffering except yourself. How do you know how much people are struggling in or out of America? How do you know people outside America suffer more? How do you compare suffering? You don't. You can't. Even if you did, it wouldn't matter. You're comparing problems as if they were numbers. They're not. They're not comparable. What hurts one person a lot may not hurt another very much and vice-versa. Postulating a thing you cannot possibly know is where you're wrong. Not to mention belittling the problems of millions of Americans by subjecting them to your random judgement.

You acknowledge that Americans have actual, real problems. What is your plan for after Americans stop complaining about their problems? What does that achieve? What happens next? Why is that a desirable future state that you want to encourage?

- You have a broken arm

- Somewhere else in the world, someone has stage IV pancreatic cancer

- Therefore your broken arm should be of no concern even to you

The flaw should be intuitively obvious, especially to anyone who's ever had a broken arm. But hey, you actually concede you're a robot in your HN profile, your hyperalloy combat chassis is no doubt proof against such mishaps, and why should anyone expect you to understand or care what humans feel?

He got attached to some of his patients, tried to help them outside his practice. A handful of these people became part of his (and now mine) family's social circle. A woman on SDI became a nanny, a former factory worker is now our handy-man, another guy he put up in an apartment he was rehabbing and still lives there. At some point, some dude lived in my in-laws basement (my wife just shrugged that off, it apparently happened every few years).

I cringe when I look back on how I thought about psychiatry earlier. I thought it was rich people just going to complain about how sad they felt instead of just sucking it up.

Life is a struggle, for everybody. We have no idea how bad it is indeed. And now, psychiatry to me seems like a terribly lonely profession.

Perhaps another way of putting this is that confirmation of hope is a pretty powerful antidote to prior pain.