Racism

[Clinamenic]

Where neuroticism would, in my opinion, correlate with critical self-reflection, even if this sort of reflection does ultimately make one a better person by the standards of their peers. Something of a hero's journey to be had here, becoming stronger as a result of this self-tempering, provided one is able to open themselves up well enough.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Reminds me of something I heard, it might have been during the first lockdown but it could have been before that, about young people suffering a "lack of access to mental health resources" or somesuch, and it made me think, fuck, whatever happened to friends? I mean I'm not knocking the benefits of counsellors and therapists per se, but there was something about the phrasing, that combination of therapy-speak with the, I guess, neoliberal outlook of everyone being a client, which is to say a consumer, that really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

A friend of mine who used to work for a London borough in the housing office, trying to sort out accommodation for people who were homeless or were about to be, who referred to them as 'clients' - not through his own choice, that was the official terminology. Always struck me as weird. I think it's much the same in @WashYourHands's line of work - is that right?

Edit: could just as easily have been 'facilities', which might be even worse than 'resources'.

 

[Mr. Tea]

This also ties into a salient theory that I remember @poetix sharing here, which as I recall associated neuroticism with liberals and paranoia with conservatives, almost like a dualistic model of anxiety. I'm extrapolating here, but the paranoia would be an externalization, anxiously overthinking the world around you, and neuroticism would be more of an internalization, anxiously overthinking oneself.

Poetix made a matrix with neuroticism/paranoia as one binary axis, and based/cucked as the other. EG cucked would be, say, an overwillingness to wear a mask, and based would be an underwillingness, a refusal to concede one's "liberties" anymore than absolutely necessary.

If I can interject here, I coined the 'cucked/based' axis:

A proposal:

The most appropriate ideological axis for the present day is no longer left-right, market-statist or liberal-authoritarian, but cucked-based.

(but I think you're right that Poetix extended it into a 2-D matrix)

Then Rudey told me off for polluting Dissensus with vulgar Americanisms.

 

[Clinamenic]

Reminds me of something I heard, it might have been during the first lockdown but it could have been before that, about young people suffering a "lack of access to mental health resources" or somesuch, and it made me think, fuck, whatever happened to friends? I mean I'm not knocking the benefits of counsellors and therapists per se, but there was something about the phrasing, that combination of therapy-speak with the, I guess, neoliberal outlook of everyone being a client, which is to say a consumer, that really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

A friend of mine who used to work for a London borough in the housing office, trying to sort out accommodation for people who were homeless or were about to be, who referred to them as 'clients' - not through his own choice, that was the official terminology. Always struck me as weird. I think it's much the same in @WashYourHands's line of work - is that right?

Yeah maybe my instinct is off here, but I think of this stuck-in-ones-own-headedness as a calling card of neuroticism, which I do think lockdown has exacerbated in most people. It can make it harder to empathize, as if one's own house is too disorderly to really invest much attention in how other people are doing.

 

[Clinamenic]

If I can interject here, I coined the 'cucked/based' axis:



Then Rudey told me off for polluting Dissensus with vulgar Americanisms.

Ah, so then poetix must have just added the neurotic/paranoid bit. Anyway, I think it's very apt, and seemingly allows deeper insight into the main cultural divisions in countries like America.

As I understand it, Trump's big appeal is that he's based, he usually refuses to give an inch to the opposition, IE the ongoing insistence that the election was rigged. To capitulate here, to reckon with reality, is to become less based. To a certain extent, whatever he is advocating is almost secondary to the fact that he is so based in his advocacy of it.

 

[version]

A friend of mine who used to work for a London borough in the housing office, trying to sort out accommodation for people who were homeless or were about to be, who referred to them as 'clients' - not through his own choice, that was the official terminology. Always struck me as weird.

I can't help feeling it's explicitly designed to remove the urgency from the situation, e.g. weapons shipments becoming 'lethal aid'.

 

[WashYourHands]

Tea, just spent last Wednesday to today in the worst pain I’ve ever been in. If you have fentanyl administered in a British hospital, something is drastically wrong

Clients>patients innit re your q

 

[Mr. Tea]

Tea, just spent last Wednesday to today in the worst pain I’ve ever been in. If you have fentanyl administered in a British hospital, something is drastically wrong

Clients>patients innit re your q

Fucking hell mate, what on earth happened?

 

[version]

... that combination of therapy-speak with the, I guess, neoliberal outlook of everyone being a client, which is to say a consumer, that really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

That's been the gist of the negative response to that person on Twitter; that they're applying a business framework to interactions with their children.

 

[version]

Fucking hell mate, what on earth happened?

Hernia operation?

 

[Clinamenic]

That's been the gist of the negative response to that person on Twitter; that they're applying a business framework to interactions with their children.

To me, and I wonder if you'd agree, this indicates a depth of neuroticism (?) where one reduces oneself to a sort of vicious cycle of self-pity and self-righteousness, almost as if they are prone to punishing themselves for feeling sorry for themselves because they're privileged and so on. This sort of thing, in hindsight, seems virulent in the culture of woke academia.

In a way, its sort of like the ultra-based right wing contingency who still insist the election was rigged, in that both of these cases involve a sort of militantly upheld delusion that is hard to be freed from. If you try to tell the person who made that snowflakey post, or the likes thereof, that they're overthinking it, they may respond by saying that you're just reinforcing the patriarchal/toxic/etc status quo; and if you try to tell the ultra-based person that the election wasn't rigged, they'll say you're just a sheeple of the liberal MSM, etc.

The admittedly tenuous point here is that this sort of entrenched delusion I think can take hold across the political spectrum, relying on unfalsifiability as a sort of defense mechanism.

And seemingly the only ways out of it are rude awakenings / revelations, or else an operationalized schizosis.

 

[Clinamenic]

Actually what I just described there pretty much fits how I understand blue pilled and red pilled, as flavors of ideologically totalized delusion.

 

[version]

I think you can lose sight of other people when you spend too much of your time viewing them through an explicitly ideological lens, e.g. the foster parent balking at acting like a parent because they can only see putting the child first as reinforcing various power dynamics.

 

[Mr. Tea]

That's been the gist of the negative response to that person on Twitter; that they're applying a business framework to interactions with their children.

My god, those scare quotes around the word "parent" tell a story all by themselves, don't they?

 

[version]

You have to wonder why they chose to foster in the first place.

 

[you]

There's something dehumanising about it, like talking about components or objects rather than people. Someone talking about raising their kids like they're writing a paper for a think tank.

A continuation of this stuff,

Actioning a blue-skies approach outside the box

I'd like to touch base with yourselves about incentivising challenges as we go forward. But first, I want a client-oriented feedback package on exactly why this sort of management-speak is so spleen-rupturingly abhorrent to anyone who isn't a contemptible turd of a human being. Thoughts...

dissensus.com

Perhaps this is my own ageing. But am often struck by the pragmatism of those younger than me.

For example when talking about relationships there is a emphasis on definite qualities, matches, shared nameable drives and interests. With friends there seems to be a logistical facet that justifies said friendship.

This feels managerial and a long way away from what I—diagnose me at will—romantically think should be the at the root of interaction: a joy one is aware of but cannot define or reduce. The ineffable.

 

[you]

"You'll like him, he likes <musical artist> too" seems to miss the intangibility of connection in the same way "Middlemarch (Everyman's Library Classics) - purchased one month ago: Buy it again?" misses the point.

 

[version]

The rise of dating apps is no doubt a factor.

 

[you]

I've often thought this ultra reductive pragmatism would make a vividly bleak, if voice controlled, novel. But it might just read like Google marketing. Sunset used as a verb.

 

[you]

The rise of dating apps is no doubt a factor.

Absolutely. But so too is the drive for relations to be verbalised. Which happens on reality TV because characters must verbalise their thoughts for the camera in the same way Phil Mitchell must speak about his feelings (for the viewer).