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540 points drankl | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.408s | source
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_benton ◴[] No.44485177[source]
Fascinating article. It's think the author's experiences are fairly context-dependant, with where you live, the political leanings of your social circle, your online community etc. But I have noticed an increase in the pathologizing of normal human behaviours and traits. Maybe not all character flaws should be fixed.
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rtpg ◴[] No.44485461[source]
I think "normal" is the tough part.

I dislike the "you don't have adhd, you live in capitalism" meme in general, but there is a big difficulty in knowing how much you might be overloading yourself, trying to get to an unattainable normal because your actual material conditions are not normal.

If you're working 60 hour weeks for most people there's not much saving you from having a very messy life! But your peers might all also be in that environment, and you will see people who navigate that somewhat successfully.

Of course you could be working much less and simply "be lazy" and suffer downstream of that. You might be two mindset changes away from being a lot less stressed.

Or you might have a medical condition that makes certain things harder! Or you might not.

At the end of the day there are medical conditions that exist and are fairly scientifically proven to exist in some form and have treatment. And plenty of people who spend time saying that stuff doesn't exist, so there's vocal pushback against that which rubs some people the wrong way.

But there's also just human introspection (which is part of how we grow). The new thing is that this introspection often happens more in the open, a lot of times with the whole world watching.

Even 20 years ago you might talk with other people around the world but it would at least be in more closed spaces.

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Gigachad ◴[] No.44485510[source]
To some extent I think it’s valid though. The inability to want to sit in a chair and reorganise spreadsheets for 8 hours straight isn’t a disability, it’s a natural response of your brain telling you that this activity sucks and you should get up and move.

Combined with the change in society where most active jobs are being replaced with sitting down at a computer.

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rtpg ◴[] No.44485549[source]
This isn't really my original point but the reason I dislike the "you don't have ADHD you have capitalism" meme is that ADHD's intentionality symptoms isn't about attention but about self control[0]

So if you "really actually" have ADHD[0], that isn't just manifesting in not getting work done, it's manifesting in saying things before speaking, issues with addiction, issues with self-management leading to hygiene issues etc.

Loads of social effects that go beyond "don't want to work".

Me having a job or not isn't what's causing me to insult a friend by snapping back at them in a way that I _know_ is wrong. It's not causing lasting damage to social relationships because of my behavior. Capitalism isn't causing that.

And hey, meds help my management of those things. Even if I had all the money in the world these are things I would like to continue managing.

Bit of a glib opinion, though.

[0]: Not a doctor, etc.

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1. 8note ◴[] No.44486275[source]
the idea of "its capitalisms fault" is that capitalism is responsible for placing these "self control" constraints on people.

capitalism is the thing making too much choice, and to many choices over time.

capitalism set the context for you snapping at your friend, where you are doing work you dont want to to avoid being homeless, while they are doing different work and you feel like its unfair that their work is different from yours.

if you werent fighting your friend to pay off some capitalist to pay them the most rent, you wouldnt be snapping at them

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2. rtpg ◴[] No.44486437[source]
> if you werent fighting your friend to pay off some capitalist to pay them the most rent, you wouldnt be snapping at them

These interactions are not in that sense, they are in the "I say some stupid unvarnished opinion first and immediately realize there was a better way of saying it" variety. It is not downstream of me being stressed out about money or work or whatever. These are things that happen when I am in a perfectly normal mood, not thinking about how to pay rent or whatever.

I have plenty of social failings that are very much unrelated to capitalism. I have also had bad social interactions downstream of money/capitalism/etc too! But that's its own thing

Maybe you subscribe to some grand unifying theory here but I don't. Social structures and norms existed before market capital, and they exist in spaces fairly separate from the economic sphere ("those don't exist!" you might say, but I believe they do exist, at least in a time-and-space limited fashion).

Subsuming all of my issues to capitalism is unsatisfying. Thinking about the texture of it all (and potentially identifying some things that really are linked to that, and become as solvable as gravity[0]) is more valuable to me. I think it's also valuable to others.

[0]: or political action or whatever