I sense this is coming about because of an cultural emphasis on empathy and validation rather than resilience and mindfulness.
Personally, I group empathy, resilience and mindfulness under the umbrella of compassion, as I do recognition and acknowledgment. You can take all of those things and use them in an unhealthy way, but I don't think you can call them the same thing anymore if you do that.
I really do appreciate people being more authentic with their feelings and their vulnerability. It might not resonate with me when they do, but I'm not supposed to be a vessel for their shit, I can just recognise they have it and it's there. Same as I've got my own. And we're all dealing with something. I can also set a boundary and say I'm not in a place to go deep, but I hear ya; I don't have to open up to this all the time.
This has little to do with a privileged elite, I'm sure the privileged elite would rather you continue to suppress these things because it stops you talking about what makes you unhappy, and if you stop talking about that then maybe you don't start organising to change things. Meanwhile, there are plenty of societies outside of our Western bubble that happily engage at this deeper level instead of balking at it, or bottling up.
or "correct" meaning "you are behaving as society expects you to behave in this situation" ?
This may be harmful to that individual in the long run, so we should be careful about how often and how much we validate such feelings.
All too often do we conflate validation with the latter.
This reaction is generally unhelpful for the listener, as it basically asserts that (a) the listeners feelings don't exist / are not important or (b) that the listener is feeling the wrong emotions.
Validating emotion is "Yes, I understand why you feel that, having <thing> happen to <you/me> would certainly make someone feel <emotion> " e.g. "Yeah, when your friend criticized your cooking I bet that made you feel bad."
After validating the emotion (to create empathy, to create a safe space for conversation, and emphasize that you care about the person), you can then (optionally) suggest a different (more positive) thought e.g. "Perhaps your friend only meant to say that they love using melted butter on their own pasta, and was not trying to say that the pasta was dry." or supply context e.g. "Alice has been having a rough time at work the last few weeks, that might have been why she was short with you."
So validation of emotion is used to create acceptance ("we accept that emotion currently exists and is a reasonable feeling to have in that context") and to create a safe space for talking about emotions in general and the situation in which they arose. (It is especially useful when teaching children about emotions and teaching them to look at a situation objectively.)
Invalid emotions could exist, but usually an over-the-top emotion (and the actions that you take because of that) normally seem to occur because either (a) some sort of miscommunication occurred ("I thought we were talking about X") or that some sort of important context was missing ("You know, Bob lost his job last week, there's a reason he didn't come to the party, and it wasn't to slight you.")
While I can see where analogy of "make invalid states unrepresentable" is coming from, but I feel that how we talk about them can get in the way of changing them. "Emotional invalidation" is a good search term to find phrases that shut down opportunities for change.
I feel like you can swap 'validation' with 'confirmation' and these responses will make more sense. "I see you're struggling with something," vs. "I agree, this is the problem."
edit: In fact, aaron-santos in a sibling post has a more succinct explanation, in terms of correctness.
it's not the large things that
send a man to a
madhouse...
no, it's the continuing series of _small_ tragedies
that send a man to the madhouse...
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left...
the dread of life
is that huge swarm of trivial shit
that can kill quicker than cancer
and which is always there--
[list of trivial shit]
with each broken shoelace
one of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.
I think it's largely a subjective concept and we all take different meaning from it, but I developed some of this thinking after reading The Compassionate Mind.[1]
Why would or should social interactions change? I temporarily changed my behavior to help limit the spread of covid. But now that vaccines are doing there thing, I'm going back to my old activities.
Some people did some introspection and realized they were caught up in societies bull shit. They should be able to discuss that, instead we have internet tough guys talking about how they think we're babying mental illness or think people who are just expressing them selves are mentally weak and we need to just get back to work, that's how the world is. Except we just has a year and a half where that wasn't the case. In some ways the world was actually easier to deal with.
I read the article, but I will admit it doesn't really "make sense" to me. If I don't like something I don't do it or I try and change it, so it becomes something that doesn't bother me. If you don't want to be involved in certain social settings then don't go. I don't get why "Society" needs to change because some people prefer not to be around people. Its perfectly fine that you prefer less social interaction but many people are the complete opposite and that's also okay.
Maybe you had some perfect life before covid where you had a 100% control over your life and you could tell people to fuck off and not have repercussions, but most people don't and they're stuck compromising. So in someway the interruption was welcome. Now some people are demanding everything goes back to how it was, some people don't want that. So they write articles on the internet about it. Its not really hard to get, just have some empathy.
> I don't get why "Society" needs to change
And this isn't just about socialization. People, at least Americans, are uncomfortable with the idea of doing nothing. The protestant work ethic has been shoved down our throats. Its immoral to not work, or if you are working to not be at your most efficient. Covid turned this upside down, it was finally OK to be lazy, to do nothing, and not keep the capitalist wheel of buying and consuming turning. Its been ok to "steal time" from your employer or be on unemployment. This maybe isnt a radical idea to say, but to experience it and see it worked for a lot of people is changing their world view. We can do nothing, we don't need to run at 100%, the world won't collapse and I'm not immoral for it. That is a societal change.
Society wasn't created in a vacuum to create a way of life you feel most accustomed to, that then becomes immutable. It changes all the time. and you don't notice it until it's too late because it happens so gradually.
So it will now. Society could shift to accommodating these other people and you wouldn't notice it, because you already do the thing it is shifting towards, which is maintaining better boundaries for yourself.
But yesterday, for example, I was at the gas station buying a pop and two kids were right up next to me while their mom waited behind me in line. If I had lifted my elbow, I would have caught one of them in the face. I don't hate kids, but I have a personal bubble and that was respected over the last year. I'm really not excited to go back to having strangers brushing up against my hips and sides again. It's not the end of the world, but it unsettles me and I don't feel like a foot or two of space in a store is really that much to ask.
If you think this year was simply "adult responsibilities" getting to people, you may be the one with empathy issues (if not a bucketload more).
But this behavior was never rational risk-reduction; it was always a result of the incredible fear-programming. Granted if you're making a point that trauma isn't always rational and can be induced unnecessarily by external sources I'm with you there.
I would really like to see less navelgazing about the emotional trauma of the Zoom class (not talking about you but the whole "elite" socioeconomic class in general - software engineers, management consultants, etc etc), and more recognition of the harms of suspension of elective surgeries (here in CA all elective surgeries were suspended statewide for a month despite a surplus of ICU beds and despite the fact that even if ICU beds were at capacity not every elective surgery warranted being cancelled), of having a parent or grandparent dying alone because the hospital wouldn't let you in the same room as them, of even the "little" things like cancelled dental checkups, missed allergy shots, missed pediatric appointments etc
By the way, I do feel the need to mention this because it's not recognized enough: the closer someone is to death (as are most of the people at genuine risk of COVID-19), the higher the relative cost of spending a year of avoiding physical contact with loved ones. If your parent has only an expected value of 2 years left then they could easily spend 75% of that being deprived of social interaction and physical contact from loved ones. That's no small thing.
Let's say there's a 1/1000 chance in infection of the parent if the [adult] child is actively infected during a brief outdoor hug. The chance of the child being currently infected depends on the current base rate but for the napkin's sake let's put it at 1/10. (As an aside, in actuality while there is evidence of pre-symptomatic transmission for SARS-CoV-2 the overwhelming evidence shows that asymptomatic transmission doesn't occur so just a heuristic of "am I actively sick or not" gets you good risk management anyway but let's avoid that for now)
Now let's say that the chance of the parent dying or having a seriously bad outcome given SARS-CoV-2 infection is 1/10.
That brings us to (1/1000) * (1/10) * (1/10) = 1 death per 100,000 of these hug-events. If we stick with my earlier example of someone with 2 years of life expectancy, that would factor out to (365*2*24*60)/(10^5) = 10.512 minutes "lost" per hug, if we assume that hugging someone doesn't have any positive effects on their physical wellbeing whatsoever.
We've based our whole society around everyone just being expected to be fundamentally financially insecure. The difference between upper-middle class and poor is how much junk I can buy, it doesn't make me any less insecure about all the big expenses that are required for me to live and work -- my pantry, my rent, my car, my health. I grew up poor and I thought having money would make it better. That when people say they don't have to worry about money they meant it. But what it really meant for me was you stop having to worry about small day-to-day expenses but I stil have the sword of damocles over my head for the big stuff.
Empathy is a good thing and understanding that outside of the really really rich we're all in a similar situation is a good thing.
I’m just working on emigrating to a country with a better social safety net. I’d rather pay more in taxes (though tbh it’s about the same) and not have to worry anymore.
I am glad to hear it!
> have realized how precarious it still is. I can weather small car emergencies but when it comes to medical bills, that’s a different story.
Would you mind elaborating a bit about your situation especially regarding health insurance? It seems like healthcare varies so much based on what health insurance one has.
Could you expand on that? It sounds like you and your partner work full-time. Do you and/or your partner get medical insurance through work? Do you get disability insurance? Do you have an emergency fund?
Maybe I am reading too much into 'remarkably better off financially'. I would like to see where you are coming from but I am having trouble.
"This" meaning reading articles about mental health, or "this" meaning people experiencing mental health?
People have had mental health issues forever. People have openly talked about them only in the past few years, when social media gave the whole world an outlet to talk about whatever they want with (usually) no real-world consequences(exceptions exist, obviously).
I mean, when I was in college it wasn't quite as open so I didn't go around telling people that I sometimes daydream of walking in front of traffic. When I was working my first office job I didn't let many people know that I had panic attacks sitting at my desk for essentially no good reason.
I'm glad I personally found out how to improve my mental state, but it's crazy to me to suggest that having a cultural emphasis on empathy and acceptance is causing people to experience mental health issues. That seems backwards to me.
"I was such an obedient shut in, and now that it's okay with the government and there's an experimental vaccine in me, I'm going back out."
It's signaling your virtue. It's saying aren't I a good citizen for listening to the _science_. Isn't it great that I locked myself up because I care about you.
When someone posts a picture of a salad I don't suggest they're signalling their dietary virtue. When someone posts a picture of them hanging out with their friends I don't suggest they're signalling their virtue of being popular. Sometimes people post about things and it's fine to just ignore them and move on if it doesn't appeal to you.
https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/may/29/facebook-whis...
It's easy to fall into a trap of thinking negatively of everyone on the other side. Particularly when it's hard to even have a conversation like this one.
The original statement while likely not humble bragging or what not, does at least immediately announce what side you're on. If a conservative or libertarian did the same, they'd probably be chastised.
Try to be more compassionate of others and assume better intent.
Again, that's a fair point and I will do so, but that's completely missing how people on my side of things are being driven to this.
I can't say something like "I had covid so I'm not getting the vaccine." on Facebook without having an algorithm shadow ban my post.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/may/29/facebook-wh...
I can't post my opinions here without being madly downvoted. I post legitimate evidence of the censure of my opinions and am downvoted.
Youtube removes any videos critical of the Government's handling of COVID, and state governments gives beer and ice cream to people willing to take an experimental vaccine.
This post will be downvoted into oblivion. When people on my side can't have a conversation with people on the other side, how are we supposed to maintain positive outlooks?
What tribe am I in? Am I republican? Christian? Anti-science? Anti-vax?
I'm actually neither of those. What tribalism are you assuming of me?
Could it be that I just have some contrarian viewpoints and have noticed those systemically squashed over the last year and a half.
> ... your inability to see good in others ... is what is leading to your feelings of social censure?
This idea completely washes over the very real fact that tech Cos and the Government are censoring alternative opinion.
Sure, fair as well. It's under emergency use authorization--not technically experimental.
Experimental may be strong, but it at least somewhat aptly describes a vaccine that uses a novel technology that still does not yet have FDA approval.
> pure, unadulterated conspiracy nonsense
My use of experimental seems a bit logical to me, but I understand if you disagree. That said, your dismissal is quite shallow and leads me to believe you're unwilling to have a real discussion on the topic as my opinion is just `unadulterated conspiracy nonsense`.
I believe more speech is the solution to bad speech. If you disagree with me please engage in an honest non-dismissive manner and we'll both become more informed even if you're right, you'll at least understand why I'm misinformed.
(1) I believe both Moderna and Pfizer are in the process of seeking full FDA approval for their mRNA vaccines. Assuming they succeed, is it safe to say your opinion of the vaccines will change accordingly to a less-contrarian view?
(2) My understanding (and you can correct me if I'm wrong) is that your view is one looking to protect against tail risk, which can be summarized with the following statement: 'Absence of evidence of risk is not sufficient'. In other words, you want sufficient evidence that mRNA vaccines are safe, rather than accepting an EUA based on demonstrated effectiveness and lack of known risk[0].
My question is whether you're willing to reconsider the above statement as the absence of evidence of risk continues in the face of overwhelming distribution of the vaccine? For example, J&J was paused after just 8 million doses. Pfizer and Moderna are an order of magnitude higher on doses (on the order of about 100 million doses). Even if we're modelling against the risk of a side-effect that takes many months, or even somehow years, on average to materialize, on a bell curve many many vaccine recipients would already have materialized the side effects. (IE if materializing under 3 months is a 5 sigma event, we would have had enough adverse effects materializing to halt the use of the vaccines, similar to how J&J was halted after something like 6 or 8 observed blood clottings)
Furthermore, my understanding is that FDA approval is based on having 6 months of phase 3 clinical trial safety data (and EUA based on 2 months of the same). The number of people enrolled in phase 3 clinical trials of mRNA vaccines is so few compared to the total number of vaccines (I think 40,000 in pfizer phase 3 trials), it is absurd to consider that new issues could show up in phase 3 trials that had not already demonstrated en masse in the hundreds of MILLIONS of doses given out in the public. It's statistically impossible.
With that in mind, I would suggest that waiting until FDA full approval is basically pointless; if you're worried about side effects that take decades on average, the FDA won't be able to save you from that, and if you're worried about side effects that take months on average, we would already know about it from the hundreds of millions of willing volunteers.
[0] Lack of known risk: the J&J vaccine was halted and investigated immediately when there was a potential blood clotting issue. No such potential risks have yet been uncovered with Pfizer and Moderna, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
I believe my views will be contrarian as long as I live under a large government. The biggest issue for me though is being told to obey without being convinced. The more persecuted I feel, the more I have a desire to backlash. When Alex Jones was de-platformed I was like, huh, guy's crazy, so why would they want to remove him. He's a joke, not a real threat right? Then suddenly Youtube included a CDC banner on its home page and started removing content that was at all critical of the CDC's authority. I then started finding more and more evidence of control that frankly scares me.
So, yeah I would maybe be a bit more measured if it was FDA approved, but at this point the degree of cooperation between tech/media/government on this messaging has me actually terrified.
Regarding (2), yes I would like proof of absence of harm--which is what I believe you're asking. Unfortunately, I do want that over the long term. I see the point you're making, but for my age group, I'm just as safe to get COVID itself and self isolate while I have it (which I did inadvertently). From all evidence, having had COVID is better than the vaccines themselves, but that's not at all considered when people are requiring a card to eat at a restaurant or go to a gym.
@helen___keller IDK if there's a thread depth limit or something, but it's been 15mins and I still can't reply, so I'm writing here.
In my area, there are limitations at gyms such that you cannot workout without a mask unless you've got a vaccine card. Restaurants just require a mask unless you've been vaccinated--thought I've not seen them check. I personally don't try to skate around the requirement (lie). I just wear the mask. I admit, that's not the same as not allowing admission, but I've only seen these sort of restrictions pick up, but not back down. As such, I am afraid further restrictions for un-vaccinated are coming.
I'm jealous that you don't have the restrictions in your area, and we are looking at moving.
I understand how you feel, although I don't personally relate. I'd urge you to consider that whatever truth exists in the world is independent of your government. There are countries with more free and less free governments, places with vaccine passport systems and places where vaccines are basically nonexistent. The truth of whether mRNA vaccines are safe and effective is the same in all of these places.
> the degree of cooperation between tech/media/government on this messaging has me actually terrified
Again, this is understandable, but at the end of the day this is just, for lack of a better phrase, how the world works. It's capitalism, basically. Tech/media control the vast vast majority of marketing. Government wanted to do marketing to make people more confident in the vaccine or encourage people to wear masks or whatever. Obviously the marketing was not effective on you.
But at the end of the day the truth of whether these things were effective, useful, or needed is completely orthogonal to the fact that government got buddy with tech/media to promote them.
> that's not at all considered when people are requiring a card to eat at a restaurant or go to a gym
Is this happening for you? Just wondering. Where I am, pandemic rules are gone entirely except for requiring masks on public transit and in medical settings.
The reason I didn't assume good faith, and still don't, is that you described people who stayed indoors for a year as "obedient shut-ins" and attributed their behavior to them being on the "government control side of things." And now you're complaining about how you cannot post anything without getting downvoted and are trying to turn the tables by pretending to be someone who just wants to have an honest conversation.
In terms of whether these kinds of posts are virtue signalling or not, what wouldn't be virtue signalling in your mind? Just not saying anything? I'm not a huge social media user myself, but more extroverted people seem to enjoy posting what's happening in their lives. COVID and its various consequences certainly falls into that category.
Absolutely, but on a Venn diagram, it's a very large crossover.
> what wouldn't be virtue signaling in your mind? Just not saying anything?
These criticisms are completely valid. What I'm saying is it's easy to start seeing people as enemies when your views are actively stifled by tech Cos, downvoted into oblivion for being at all contrarian to general consensus on COVID, and the Government not only pays for vaccines, but runs lotteries for vaccinated people.
I agree that reading into comments too much is a bad thing, but this is what people on the other side of things are doing--particularly since they are basically disallowed from voicing theirs.
It appears at least that your perception of others as being for increased government control, a property you infer about them rather than how they describe themselves, has meant you haven't had to think carefully about the merits of lockdowns, emergency FDA approval for novel vaccines, or other measures seen in the past year. They're suspicious machinations of the government therefore we can reject them out of hand, evidently.
It takes a lot of thinking to get from a simple statement of fact (or relief) to what you're suggesting, which is loaded with assumptions to an incredible degree.
That’s a surprising (to me) way to characterize those who were extremely cautious around COVID.
Another honest question if you don’t mind: I assume you stop at red lights (a system designed, installed and run by the government). Do you self-identify as someone who stops at red lights because you’re “pro government control”? I mean stopping no doubt interferes with your rights to travel, slows down your forward progress and lastly seems to be sold as “yes it’s an inconvenience but it protects both you and your community”.
It’s worth observing that gang members, murderers and the like most likely stop at red lights. Do they do it because they’re “pro-government control?” I posit not. It’s more likely they accept the inconvenience and they accept the temporary delay in their rights to travel because they’ve done the calculus of risk vs reward. Risk to both themselves and others. We all choose to stop because it’s the safest thing for everyone.
This paints me in a somewhat negative light--in the spirit of honesty--prior to flashing left turn signals, I often didn't. Well, I probably stopped and looked both ways, but I didn't necessarily obey. I think this is completely tangential to your point though.
I do try to be a good citizen to my neighbors and friends. I pick up garbage and keep my house clean. I live on a private road (not fancy, just not publicly maintained.), and I help maintain that.
I try to walk faster when a car is waiting for me to cross. I do things I believe help my community, but I also break rules if I disagree with them. I would argue with my parents if I believed their reasoning was lacking, and generally if I obeyed a command of theirs even though I disagreed it was from fear of retribution.
To steel man your argument, I think what you're saying is that being pro COVID vaccine isn't necessarily being pro-government control, and people are taking the vaccine purely to help others in society.
I agree, there are definitely people that fall in this category. I still believe that the overwhelming majority of people that have taken the vaccine also are happy that views like mine are censored, think the government is doing a great job promoting this vaccine and do support lockdowns. It's hard for me to separate the two opinions because such a seemingly overwhelming majority of people with one of these opinions have all of them.
I think taking the vaccine if you believe it is healthy and helps others is a good thing for you to do. That said I think blocking me from speaking against vaccine requirements, and or being able to discuss how the vaccine might be unhealthy
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/spike-proteins-covid-19-and...
Is atrocious and has no place in a free society. Yet, this is happening. Not only that, but I'm worried I'll be forced to be vaccinated to live a normal life, even though I have COVID antibodies.
From my vantage, it's difficult to remain optimistic because of what I perceive as a governmental overreach being supported by the majority of people. I legitimately feel threatened, and that makes it hard for me to be un-biased.
Edit: Just realized my link may not make sense without a bit of context. Essentially it's saying a lot of the damage done by COVID is caused by the spike protein itself. The mRNA vaccines cause your body to produce the spike protein. I'm not saying _you_ should be convinced because of this link, I'm just giving an example of why I'm skeptical.
Having said all that, did you fully read your own link? It does mention that the spike protein can cause damage to lung tissue and other things as well. But there's also these two paragraphs which seem extremely relevant, in that they directly contradict the implicit claim you're making that the spike proteins produced in reaction to the mRNA vaccine are dangerous just like the ones on the virus itself:
> The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines produce the full-length spike protein. Pfizer studied several formulations initially, but found that the full length protein vaccine had fewer side effects and was better tolerated than other vaccine candidates, so that is the one they went with. It is also likely that the full protein contains more epitopes (sites for immune activity) and therefore produces more thorough and longer lasting immunity. The proteins, however, are in a fixed state, they are unable to change their confirmation, which is necessary to bind to cells. So they function differently than spike proteins on infecting virus.
> After the Pfizer vaccine full spike proteins are expressed on the vaccinated cells for presentation to the immune system. But the vaccine-induced proteins do not appear to cause any harmful effects. This may be because the vaccine is administered in the muscle, and so muscle cells are the ones taking up the mRNA and making spike proteins. There is a vigorous immune response which neutralizes the spike proteins before they can cause any harm. This is very different from a virus replicating throughout the body.
I firmly believe getting vaccinated is a personal choice so I'm not trying to pressure you. But your concerns seem to be directly called out as unsubstantiated and not backed by evidence according to your own source.
> This may be because the vaccine is administered in the muscle, and so muscle cells are the ones taking up the mRNA and making spike proteins.
Dr. Bridle discusses how the spike proteins can leave the shoulder muscle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sis1Sddzbqk
Which was found after filing a freedom of information request with the Japanese government. Study translated into english. https://files.catbox.moe/0vwcmj.pdf
Either way, there's still no possibility for long term evidence of safety, and I have COVID antibodies from the disease itself, so why would I take the vaccine?
I guess it could also be viewed as implicitly bragging about getting the vaccine (if that's the reason they're "reentering society"), but that follows less directly imo
It is a virtue for advertisers.