Comment by theoh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by theoh | Hacker News Reader

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It's OK to distinguish between healthy and diseased specimens of any organic phenomenon, thinking included. e.g. Trump is a toxic narcissist, etc.

I can't really take this article seriously as a comment on literature because it uses ugly language like "attitudinal" and "outright funny". Articles in The Guardian usually reflect a particular part of English society that is highly privileged, politically centrist and conformist, and not as smart as it thinks it is. Those attributes probably also characterize the UK audience for literary fiction. It's annoying and smug, and I guess maybe saying that is ugly itself.

Surely we should sometimes try to diagnose in good faith where thinking goes wrong. Most people have encountered toxic personalities who they have needed to exclude from their life, for example. You might claim that toxicity is always relational, that it takes two. But there is such a thing as pathology when it comes to personality and mental health. To call something toxic is to call out a pathology for having a seriously negative impact on other people, whether those other people are themselves healthy or not.

> Most people have encountered toxic personalities who they have needed to exclude from their life, for example.

I don’t think that is very common at all. There are people we get along with better but active exclusion is extremely rare. This modern trend of throwing away people we don’t like is very unhealthy and not what a community is about.

You've been lucky, evidently. The idea that everyone is fundamentally OK, and that we just have to get along — well, in some cases, the effort that takes is just unsustainable.

Maybe you're saying that you think there's no such thing as an abusive relationship. Maybe you think that whole concept is a modern invention. How likely do you think that really is?

The common usage of the term “toxic person” these days is they post things on Facebook I disagree with. Not that they physically assault someone. Going straight to abuse is pure hyperbole.

Consider the origin of this thread - an idea was toxic not an action.

The thinking and expression of the thoughts were deemed to be toxic by another commentary. In other words, the behaviour.

Abusive interactions don't necessarily or even usually involve physical violence. The fact that you don't seem to appreciate that reinforces my impression that you've never really had to deal with this stuff. It's hyperbole to assume that when I said "abusive relationship" I meant physical violence.

I'm in my 40s and I wouldn't have understood this stuff at 20. I'm also, as a victim of mental illness, someone who has in some ways been discarded by society. So I'm inclined to trust my perception that there is genuine suffering out there caused by toxic thinking and toxic ideas. "Toxic Psychiatry", for example, is the title of a book. You seem content to justify the way things are and minimize negative social phenomena. All I can say is that for a significant number of people, that kind of talk rings false, because their experience shows how empty it is.

Which gets to the crux of the matter. Mere thinking and expression is sufficient for a label of toxicity with you. This goes against the fundamental values of liberalism and the enlightenment.

I fear we are regressing to a new dark age.

I hear you, but I think what's happening, in terms of psychological insight, is that millennials have more insight than earlier generations. They are also more likely to have narcissistic traits. The vigorous conversation about these issues (which involves the notion of toxicity) could be seen as a growing pain.

There are probably some walks of life (e.g. fine art) where unbelievably bad behaviour, narcissism, sociopathy etc. have always been prevalent. Now we're seeing awareness of those traits across the whole of society. "Toxic" may be a bad word to use; it's better to be more precise, within the constraints of what we know about personality. It's good to consider every interaction as the product of its constituent personalities, not the "fault" of one party.

But it's not an emergency if the word toxic is over-applied to mildly dysfunctional behaviour. Have you heard about global warming?

I fail to see this as progress or the bright light at the end of the tunnel. Shielding oneself from uncomfortable ideas and writing people off wholesale has repeated time and again throughout history. It always ends in tyranny and oppression.

We found the tools to break this cycle in the enlightenment. This has led to the largest expansion of freedom and prosperity in world history.

Now I fear we are about to throw it all away. By your logic I should label you “toxic” for promoting this. But that fundamentally goes against these values I hold dear.

I don't know exactly where you are coming from, politically (or religiously). But I believe that phenomena like narcissism constitute poorly understood pathologies of personality, and to be able to see them for what they are, clearly, is a kind of progress, whether it's science or not.

The Enlightenment wasn't the last word in intellectual progress. Neoliberal capitalism hasn't decreased inequality in the last 30 years—it has increased it.

I think you might be projecting a bit when you talk about "shielding oneself from uncomfortable ideas". If you think the Enlightenment/classical liberalism is the last word in "thought", maybe that's what you are doing, too.

A lot of PhD students apply Foucault (to take one example) in frivolous, non-constructive, self-absorbed ways. But Foucault wasn't some crazy guy, he was part of the establishment, trying to sharpen our understanding of the dynamics of power and intellectual life. A lot of his contemporary academic followers certainly don't identify with the progress of Western culture. They could be called "wreckers", but it's hard to say that with a straight face while Trump is in the White House.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there will always be maladjusted kids, freaks, weirdos, and attention seekers. It might feel to you like they are taking over the show these days, because everyone seems to be frivolously labelling everyone else as toxic, like some retro high school clique drama of teenage girls gossiping on the landline.

But even if widely implemented, their exclusionary attitudes won't stick if they don't work in practice. The mass of "normative", i.e. "healthy" people tends to plough through in the long run, for better or worse.

Millennial culture contains a big dose of self-righteousness, but a lot of fashion and trendiness too. The judgemental side of it will surely blow over, if you want to see things that way. We can only hope that the heightened awareness of psychology will stick.

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