Redemption has to be possible and very obviously a real and tangible option for bad people, or else things can only get worse for everybody involved in any dispute, including large scale political and societal disputes.
If the only options given to a bigot are āremain a bigot and be treated like a bigot, or find a way to be a better person and change your mind but still be treated like a bigot,ā they will fight violently like they are cornered, because socially speaking, they are.
Leftists are getting better at this then we have sometimes been, but we can still be better at this. I can be better at this. It is strategically advantageous and just the right thing to do that the door to redemption is made obvious and wide open.
I give you that the system is allowing illegal immigrants to vote isnāt fair, although youāll find itās those who pay taxes who are allowed more than those who donāt, but the voter ID laws passed by conservatives are, by and large, targeting black communities and black people specifically, on top of the fact that some of the requirements break the law on making voting harder to access. Course there are lots of voter ID laws that donāt target any one group but are still unnecessary, yet I donāt see you or your ilk complain about those. – Purple
the people in grenfell died because they were poor.Ā
the people in grenfell died because their landlord chose to spend money on flammable cladding because rich tenants in nearby penthouses didnāt like the ugly council building ruining their view.Ā
the people in grenfell died because their landlord chose not to spend money on a centralised fire system or sprinklers or an additional fire escape.Ā
the people in grenfell died because the tories voted against a law that would force landlords to make their buildings inhabitable and safe for their tenants.Ā
the people in grenfell died because of the privatisation of social housing.Ā
the people in grenfell burnt to death with their children in their arms because they were poor.Ā
more than a year has passed, the tory government has done basically nothing, we havenāt forgottenĀ
Tired: Autistic people are ~just like you~! We have more in common than we do differences!
Wired: Autistic people can be super weird and you might feel like you canāt relate to our experiences, but you donāt need to have things in common with someone to respect their existence.
Suicide rates are absolutely going to continue to climb in the USA as long as our concept of āMental Healthā remains separated from material conditions.
Antidepressants canāt cure poverty and alienation. They canāt cure the crushing pressure that comes with watching climate changing in real time, but feeling powerless because the government is too corrupt to care. They canāt cure the many chronic physical health conditions people go without treatment for because the US physical health system is bullshit.
Always turning toward psychiatry for an answer is a perfect example of American style individualism killing people, because the problem is always said to exist in the individualās brain chemicals, and society is always innocent.
As the famous quote goes āIt is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.ā
This post has gained a lot of traction outside of tumblr due to being reposted by several facebook groups. A large number of people subsequently read this as a criticism of all therapy or medicine within the mental health field.
I want to just state very clearly – that my criticism here is very explicitly about using psychiatry as a bandage for physical health, socio-economic stress, environmental alienation, and other fundamentally non-psychiatric problems.
Iām not saying āJoe who suffers from chronic depression, actually just needs to get some fresh air.ā
What I am saying is āFelix the pain management doctor who refuses to give medicine to patients with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, but will instead send them to psychiatry with the accusation that their pain is imaginary or caused by depression or trauma (Despite literally dislocating their bones on a daily basis) is a complete asshole.ā
Or evenā¦ āJulia the trans woman who ended up on the streetĀ after being disowned by family and friends, should not have her oppressors actions ignored in favour of a narrative in which her suffering is exclusively the result of abnormal brain chemicals or genetics. That we should recognize that suffering is a normal and healthy response to social isolation, and that holding bigotry accountable and building real support networks needs to fucking happen for society to grow.ā
Yeah I think the general summery is basically like āPeople who have safety nets to protect them telling people who OBJECTIVELY are facing impossible odds for sucess their feeling hopeless is the only problem they haveā. There is a difference between āI have no future because I am defectiveā and āI have no future because the economy is literally unsustainable and as things stand I will never be able to support myselfā for example.
Also it should be probably obvious, but even if you *do* have the version that is actual distortionā¦ how the fuck are you supposed to identify your intrusive thoughts when they are OBJECTIVELY ACCURATE on a base level and the crazy is just amplifying it.
Like if you are stuck in a state you are legtimately in real danger of something happening that could effectively destoy your life. The thing about hypervigilance is that if it is ACURATE to reality it is a coping skill not a distorted thoughts. Like as the most popular example: someone who is literally āshell shockedā in an active war zone SHOULD be assuming explosion sound = danger because it IS probably a bomb.
And that is what is the most frustrating part. Like I legitimately do have these problems, but it is mostly caused by being stuck in a traumatic enviorment I cannot escape from. So obviously my clearly wrong thoughts still have a good chunk of evidence backing them up. I can still knock them down to be less bad, but my coping skills I built up arenāt going to be able to keep up forever with the multiplied load. So as people put their heads in the sand things get worse for all of us because because god knows THEY have no coping skills.
I also get really sick of the artificial division between āsituationalā and āchemicalā depression. I get that there are many different reasons things can happen, but that particular division as a cut and dried thing has always struck me as simplistic at best and grossly and destructively misleading at worst. Especially when itās gauged based on what āworksā or ādoesnāt workā (in quotes because even that isnāt always accurately observed) for the person. As if you can just divine the cause that way. Life is complicated. Being crazy is complicated. We have precious few actual answers as to causes and a lot of bad science thatās considered accurate anyway.
I agree with what a lot of others have said though: People can be driven crazy ā many kinds of crazy, in many ways. And if you ignore that and pretend itās all basically just a set of mysterious medical problems, youāll never get at the conditions that drive many people crazy. And there are all kinds of social and economic conditions that drive large numbers of people crazy, and making it seen as universally just an individual medical problem to be solved entirely through treating it on an individual level, just completely erases whatās going on there and makes it impossible to look at or solve the larger issues.
(Obviously no matter what causes it itās everyoneās basic right to seek whatever solutions they want including medical treatment. Also everyoneās basic right to refuse. I strongly believe in choice, although I think the choice can easily become coerced, I just donāt want to give the impression Iām telling people how to handle their personal lives.)
And yes Iām using the word crazy. Iām crazy, Iām allowed, and I prefer it as a blanket term. Because it doesnāt require subscribing to any theory of why people go crazy, it doesnāt require understanding or agreeing with or fitting into any particular diagnostic category, itās a word everyone basically understands, and it feels more honest to my reality. I know not everyone likes it but nobodyās gonna all agree on terms so I use the ones I prefer, YMMV.
ā[CN: dieting]
When you become obsessed with thinness, the communication channels between your brain and body get obstructed with all kinds of static. At one time you might have had the ability to clearly hear your bodily intuition. But when we starve our bodies and our brain sends out signals that essentially say āHELLO, WE CANNOT FUNCTION PROPERLY WITHOUT ADEQUATE SUSTENANCEā we are taught not that your body is trying to keep you alive, but that it is working against us. The cycles of famine and feast coupled with shame and guilt of years of trying and failing to override our bodiesā need for regular nourishment in order to meet our need for societal acceptance play off of each other until we no longer know how to perceive the signals our bodies are sending us.ā
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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