• “YoU kNoW tHoSe PiLlS aRe BaD fOr YoU!”

    Cool. Next best option is me being unable to function and longing for death while my brain craves any type of happiness, forcing me to engage in potentially harmful and unhealthy habits to get any hit of happy chemicals that my brain struggles to make naturally.

    I’ll keep taking the pills, thanks.

    • But the pills are bad for you!

      Well, maybe not you specifically, but they are not to be taken willy-nilly. They often have quite severe side effects, withdrawal syndromes, and, in some cases, long lasting or even permanent damage. Second opinion is not optional, given how trigger happy some of the doctors are to just send you home with a prescription for the hardest hitting shit they have available. Take that from someone who had multiple first-hand experiences of all of the above.

      I’d say, IF there is an option to alleviate symptoms and find a place in society without meds, it’s definitely a much better option. If not, well, sure, go for it, no third option here. The hardest part is actually figuring out on which side of it you are.

    • ADHD? I’m postulating a theory as of recent, that people with ADHD, who take meds for ADHD are dependent on them, similar to addiction, but the side effect here is actually being productive, in a shitty society.

      I’m not sure the totality of it, or what the general implications are, but it’s an interesting thought. So far, everytime i’ve mentioned this theory to someone with ADHD, i’ve been yelled at, so uh. Surely that’s worth something?

      • I’m postulating a theory as of recent, that people with ADHD, who take meds for ADHD are dependent on them, similar to addiction

        Dependence ≠ addiction.

        Diabetics do not have an insulin addiction.

        The folks who have scolded you are not doing so baselessly.

        When you have chemical deficiencies that affect your brain, people seem much more outspoken about giving their opinion about your affliction. I’ve heard folks saying “don’t do chemo!! These people are just trying to scam you and get your money while killing you!! Maybe you should cut out all that processed food?” Hoo boy. Just… don’t.

        Compound that with folks using our already stigmatized & shortage-prone medication for fun, and it gets worse for us.

        I love finally being in control of my thoughts and finally feeling normal and able to actually pursue the things I want. But I think the desire to be in control of your functions is… pretty sane. I don’t miss the chaos that was my constantly hopscotching thoughts & unwilling body.

        I don’t miss the suffering. I’m addicted to “not suffering”, probably.

        • Dependence ≠ addiction.

          I said similar to addiction, as a means of describing the mechanism underlying it, please try not to lie outright.

          Diabetics who take insulin, are not addicted to it, that is true. Much like drinking water because you will literally fucking die otherwise, does not make you addicted.

          However, taking meds for something like ADHD, doesn’t outright prevent you from dying, merely functioning better in society. A similar thing can be argued for things like depression, although depression is much more complicated, especially when you get into fields with SZPD and it’s related disorders, where everything stops making any sense, so it’s hard to say there.

          I know they haven’t scolded me baselessly, that’s why i preface everything i say very explicitly with “this is just a theory, this is just something im thinking of, i know why people do this, i understand why people are attached to these things” I am very explicitly explaining myself most of time.

          When you have chemical deficiencies that affect your brain, people seem much more outspoken about giving their opinion about your affliction. I’ve heard folks saying “don’t do chemo!! These people are just trying to scam you and get your money while killing you!! Maybe you should cut out all that processed food?” Hoo boy. Just… don’t.

          yeah, that’s definitely an interesting one, you’ll notice i never said anything explicitly other than my persona opinion though. I never mentioned that you or anybody else was wrong or bad for taking medication, merely that there was something interesting i’ve noticed.

          The medication issues are compounded primarily by doctors, and the previous opioid crisis we had. This is a very real effect of people being overly dependent on things like medication, and a very real concern that i have. Whether it’s founded is not trivial to say, but i feel like it’s a very genuine concern.

          I love finally being in control of my thoughts and finally feeling normal and able to actually pursue the things I want. But I think the desire to be in control of your functions is… pretty sane. I don’t miss the chaos that was my constantly hopscotching thoughts & unwilling body.

          that makes sense, im just worried that there are potentially negative implications to this, notably opioid crisis type beat problems. It seems like a rather dangerous game to be playing IMO, i suppose that’s the reason it’s prescribed, and highly regulated, though im not a massive fan of authority myself. Especially if it determines my functionality on a regular basis.

          I don’t miss the suffering. I’m addicted to “not suffering”, probably.

          I actually really like the way this is phrased.

  • Option 1 is something we haven’t been able to figure out since agriculture went mainstream thousands of years ago despite the average person desiring it for the entire period of time. Option 2 helps some people deal with this system the way it is right now when it would be excessively difficult otherwise. Maybe Option 2 won’t be as important once this system collapses, maybe it will become more important. It would be nice if we could eventually figure out Option 1, but Option 2 is helping a lot of people right now. In fact, there are plenty of people who wouldn’t be able to work toward Option 1 without that aid of Option 2 regardless that the cause and solution to the problems addressed by Option 2 are only relevant to this system we live in now.

    • I think you fell right into the trap of modern capitalist realism claiming that we live in the “best of all possible worlds” despite of how horrible it actually is. You don’t have to go back to pre-agrarian times to find societies which were vastly better to live in. I recommend reading The Dawn of Everything to update your understanding of relatively recent history.

      • This is interesting to bring up because I’m coming from about as opposite a point of view as I can. Capitalism contains in itself the seeds of its own destruction which is as clear today as it was in the nineteenth century. It inevitably trends toward the centralization of power and the most any government has ever been able to do about that is slow it down or reverse it temporarily. For the last few decades the global nature of capital has made it a supernational force which is above regulation, even determining who is allowed into government at all throughout much of the world. Either Capitalism will end when the winners close the door behind them and some kind of neo-feudalism on a world scale will happen or the infrastructure supporting Capitalism will collapse prior to that point. Capitalist Realism is absurd unless one has been conditioned to assume it as self-evidently the best possible system which can exist and actively dismiss any criticism of any kind of economy at all.

        I have not read the referenced book, so I’ll address the general idea I got from the wikipedia summary. It is absolutely true that there have been models for settled society which were vastly superior in terms of average quality of life than anything based on European Feudalism, including Capitalism. There are clear examples from history and existing today (The Zapatista movement is a favorite of mine). The issue is that these cultures don’t exist in a vacuum and can only exist for as long as they don’t have to contend with an amount of violence which threatens to supersede their sovereignty, and collecting the volence to wield themselves undermines the pro-social nature of their own society. The power of global capital has been wielded with impunity for the last few centuries directly undermining many of the pro-social societies. Many of these societies collapsed not because they failed their people but because they failed to defend them. If they had changed fundamentally to repel violence, they would have lost their society in doing so anyway. In 2024 technology and the centralization of wealth to a few places on the planet has made it possible for a few people to run a global empire, and everyone on earth must deal with this reality in some way. Either they conform to it or resist it, but they must deal with it. I don’t like the nature of the system that we live in but as long as it is possible to inflict the will of power using violence and there are people around who are willing to believe that people wielding power like this are legitimate, we will continue to have this problem.

        I’m not even arguing that this scale of violence is natural. Like agriculture itself, it developed gradually by complete accident. For most of human history the level of violence one needed to prepare for was vastly different in different parts of the world, allowing for many of these societies to flourish without worry. In 2024 everyone is vulnerable to capital. After capitalism, we could have a socialist system we developed intentionally which hopefully covers all the important variables this time but most likely our intentions will meet with millions to billions of people testing the new system in all kinds of ways the designers could never have predicted. We could also simply have warlordism, as there would still be plenty game theory types feeling obligated to take everything they can get before they get overrun by not growing fast enough from the myriad others thinking exactly the same thing. My preferred end to history is a series of autonomous communities run democratically with no violence whatsoever, but we have a lot of development to do as a species before we can settle into that.

        •  poVoq   ( @poVoq@slrpnk.net ) OP
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          3 months ago

          You might not have realized it yourself, but you again failed to truly imagine that a better world than capitalism is possible. In your own words it’s either neo-feudalism or warlords. Imagining that changing this is only possible through evolutionary change of the entire species is transhumanist territory, and I hope I don’t have to lay out the negative implications of that.

          I think you should look at the actually defining characteristic of humanity, which is culture and being able to reinvent itself through it. Culture doesn’t need huge species wide developments to happen, but it does need imagination of real possible alternatives.

          • Thanks for the opportunity for some positive clarifications. Neo-feudalism or warlordism is the inevitable fate of capitalism if nothing is done. I support that something can indeed be done if we are prepared to implement socialist systems. I only mean to say that whatever form these systems take is going to be highly compromised compared to the form they may eventually take with further development, especially considering that defense must be a consideration immediately post-capitalism. When I say “development” regarding people I certainly don’t mean in any way biological or eugenic. I am talking about the building of our collective wisdom which is our true human strength. Optimally, everyone will understand why it’s a bad idea to use violence for selfish ends and for that reason would choose to abstain because what can be yielded through pro-social means will be universally understood as obviously better for all. I think this is something to be taught and learned by all people rather than something we might evolve somehow to believe.

            I already think that humans killing humans is unnatural since every I account I’ve read indicates there is a massive mental cost to doing this, the alternative being to depersonalize or dehumanise which is a different cost to mental and social health. I think the main reason violence is happening now at such a scale is because of the momentum of the kind of societies established in Europe whose successors today today can project their violence on a scale never before seen. Without this specific cultural force and knowing that it’s possible for such a cultural force to be built, I think we will have a much better idea as to how to avoid it and why we shouldn’t have things like nobility, race, or allow any disproportionate power anywhere. Hopefully we get rid of the concept of hierarchy altogether and live more naturally. I think all this is possible for humans to do but I can’t be sure of the path or the timeline.

            •  poVoq   ( @poVoq@slrpnk.net ) OP
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              Well, I think you are getting there 😊 But believing that you can educate people into pro-social means is a classic mistake that Marxists and related socialists often make. Culture is not so much about what you are taught but rather the social substrate we find ourselves in, often without realizing the effect it has on us.

              • Glad we’re on the same page. I’m even using the phrases “taught” and “learned” very generally. We have obviously not yet figured out how to successfully impart these pro-social values universally. Pending the utopian future, I’ll be ok with the early form of a system most of us want to work and are prepared to work on in the absence of hegemons and class distinctions.

  •  EatATaco   ( @EatATaco@lemm.ee ) 
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    33 months ago

    Buddha figured this out thousands of years ago: desire and suffering are part of the human existence. It has nothing to do with the nature of society, but the nature of being human. This time isn’t unique, and there is no form of society that would fix this for you.

    The fix comes from within yourself. If, of course, you aren’t suffering from some legit chemical imbalance that needs to be corrected by drugs.

  • I was here at a point. I still struggle but acceptance of Christ has been an indescribably edifying and healing force. There is a way other than prideful hedonism, cynicism and nihilism. Virtue and beauty can scarcely be found in the modern world but both of these things can be found in abundance in Christ. Make no mistake – I and every Christian you’ve ever met fails to live up to the standard set before us but similarly to a recovering alcoholic or drug addict the earnest Christian takes it one day at a time with the sincere hope to arc ever closer to Christ. It is a difficult but beautiful struggle.