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Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

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540 points drankl | 1 comments | 06 Jul 25 22:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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hresvelgr ◴[07 Jul 25 00:47 UTC] No.44485587[source]▶
The lovable aphorisms we had for people with character quirks were largely from our original support systems. What no one is talking about is the reason therapy-talk has become so pervasive is because all those support systems: family, friends, and local communities (religious or otherwise), have all degraded so severely for most that therapy is the only option for reaching out and getting help.
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theusus ◴[07 Jul 25 02:36 UTC] No.44486232[source]▶
> is because all those support systems: family, friends, and local communities (religious or otherwise), have all degraded so severely.

I disagree! There was never a good support system at all. We used to just man up and live with it. Now that stress is reaching it's new heights. We can't cope with it.

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jazzyjackson ◴[07 Jul 25 02:58 UTC] No.44486333[source]▶
I'm very curious as to how you come to the conclusion that 'stress' has increased. I don't suppose it's that the world is more stressful, WWII, cold war, a thousand famines throughout history, what makes us so stressed that we can't cope in some way that we used to be able to cope?
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mcdeltat ◴[07 Jul 25 03:47 UTC] No.44486572[source]▶
I have wondered - but have no evidence either way - if the stress we encounter nowadays differs to stress of the past. At some point very long ago most of us were stressing about things like food, water, surviving the night. Now most of us are stressing about things like work pressure, debt, global disasters. I wonder if the nature of the stressors have changed from immediate and acute to increasingly abstract and chronic? And potentially, if the quality of life profile is different in the two cases due to different coping mechanisms?

Very anecdotal which makes me think this: immediate physical stressors like exercise are uncomfortable but I get through them fine. Chronic stressors like climate change are totally ruining my quality of life.

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1. jazzyjackson ◴[07 Jul 25 14:50 UTC] No.44490980[source]▶
chronically worrying about climate change is no different than chronically worrying about death. it's simple, stone age, existential fear.

ancient men and women coped with existential fear by either embracing that everything is a cycle, or inventing some semblance of immortality by raising children or believing in life after death.

I guess I have no stress about climate change because it seems very normal to me that society and biosystems occasionally collapse. The stress comes from thinking there's something that can be done to stop it, and feeling that you're unable to achieve it. Maybe that's me throwing my hands up and accepting death instead of trying to stave it off, I just want to throw out there that the stress is self imposed, not environmental.