Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#81

Post by eneifert » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 8:10 AM UTC

With response to "The 1916 book The Institutional Care of the Insane of the United States and Canada reports" paragraph. Schizophrenia is by no means easy to diagnose and there is a lot of debate over when someone is or isn't Schizophrenic. I have known two people (one a family member) that some would call Schizophrenic and after many years I'm still not sure if that is a fair diagnosis or not. I think it might be a bit much to expect a society with little social expectations to evaluate this well.

In our society we suspect people to have mental illnesses but it takes years to get a good diagnoses and sometimes they never get a clear one.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#82

Post by harryjo » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 8:21 AM UTC

Mz wrote: post #44

mtdewcmu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's doubtful that schizophrenia is all nurture, but it seems conceivable that coercive circumstances could aggravate a case of schizophrenia, taking a subclinical case and making it floridly symptomatic. Coercion could possibly tip the scales into psychosis.

From what I gather, it is not unusual for schizophrenics to be hospitalized, get better, be sent home to their effed up family and promptly get worse again. My life experience strongly biases me towards believing that how it gets handled absolutely makes a difference ("it" = any mental health issue).

It's also not unusual for schizophrenics to be hospitalized, get worse, get over-medicated and locked up.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#83

Post by Animats » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 8:26 AM UTC

jerf wrote: post #9

onetwotree wrote: post #7

Stress and alienation/isolation have been directly implicated in depression, anxiety disorders, and addiction. Perhaps these sometimes result from what might be described as coercion, but I think that to characterize, for example, the problem of parents who physically abuse their children as one of coercion misses the point. Coercion is a catch all, and in many cases coercion does not result in stress, trauma, etc. T…

"when did basing arguments on the notion of the noble savage come back in style?" When did it leave?

It left when more people started traveling and meeting other cultures.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#84

Post by dsfsdfd » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 8:56 AM UTC

andrei_says_ wrote: post #31

FreedomToCreate wrote: post #4

The evidence he supplies doesn't actually prove the coercion is the cause. There is no scientific data presented, just speculative statistics and linkages to possible causes. The neurobiologist D.F Swaab wrote a book called "We are our brains" that talks about the issues outlined in this article and provides scientific proof to show how various illnesses like schizophrenia can come about. Many of these illnesses have…

> as guiding them down a path that has been generally beneficial for the majority, like going to school. Possibly unpopular opinion: school is not negotiable for children and so there's no guiding. It's pure coercion. Also, there's no popular alternative to school so that we can compare enough data and prove that school is beneficial. Unschooling exists and seems to healthier, efficient and beneficial compared to sch…

I tentatively agree with you. Although I am a parent and my child will be going to school - I do feel that the rail road that takes you from childhood to productive adult under the tutelage of the state is fundamentally a coercive one. It indoctrinates children to accept authority unconditionally and sets them up to be good little employees when they grow older - accepting the authority of their superiors without question. But this is the reality of the world we live in, change will be slow and at the end of the day we are all beholden to something, our existence as physical entities makes us subject to the laws of the universe. We all must eat, until we have a choice about this, we are merely choosing our master.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#85

Post by dsfsdfd » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 9:01 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #75

andrei_says_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as guiding them down a path that has been generally beneficial for the majority, like going to school. Possibly unpopular opinion: school is not negotiable for children and so there's no guiding. It's pure coercion. Also, there's no popular alternative to school so that we can compare enough data and prove that school is beneficial. Unschooling exists and seems to healthier, efficient and beneficial compared to sch…

Efficient?

Absolutely. I have a comp sci degree, I was able to obtain first class results by learning intensively for an average of two months before each set of exams (having not attended any lectures at all). I also went from a D grade in maths GCSE to an A* with a months work.

I am not that smart - it's just that standard schooling is terribly inefficient. And if you ask me, it's inefficient in this respect because it's not really about learning. It's about keeping kids somewhere while their parents go to work - so that more value can be extracted from the working population. Oh and also about teaching the children to be good little employees.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#86

Post by nightspirit » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 9:15 AM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #79

andrei_says_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as guiding them down a path that has been generally beneficial for the majority, like going to school. Possibly unpopular opinion: school is not negotiable for children and so there's no guiding. It's pure coercion. Also, there's no popular alternative to school so that we can compare enough data and prove that school is beneficial. Unschooling exists and seems to healthier, efficient and beneficial compared to sch…

"Possibly unpopular opinion: school is not negotiable for children and so there's no guiding. It's pure coercion." There are lot's of things which are non-negotiable for children. Things like brushing teeth, going to bed and washing hands after toilet. All of which have some intrinsic value beyond tradition. Coercion is the action or practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats. . There ar…

> If a child goes routinely to school I would not call this an action under coercion

I'm actually young enough to remember what school looked like and I'm sure as hell many of the kids wouldn't attend if they didn't know that they are going to be forced by their parents or the nanny state anyway.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#87

Post by jostylr » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 9:42 AM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #79

andrei_says_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as guiding them down a path that has been generally beneficial for the majority, like going to school. Possibly unpopular opinion: school is not negotiable for children and so there's no guiding. It's pure coercion. Also, there's no popular alternative to school so that we can compare enough data and prove that school is beneficial. Unschooling exists and seems to healthier, efficient and beneficial compared to sch…

"Possibly unpopular opinion: school is not negotiable for children and so there's no guiding. It's pure coercion." There are lot's of things which are non-negotiable for children. Things like brushing teeth, going to bed and washing hands after toilet. All of which have some intrinsic value beyond tradition. Coercion is the action or practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats. . There ar…

For school, it is illegal not to attend. This means in America that people with guns can forcibly detain children not in school during the school day. Police proudly do so in an attempt to defeat crime since, in their opinion, all children not under the watch of an adult are criminals. How can being threatened with gun violence by the authorities not be coercion?

They also have the power to rip a child from their parents. This is biologically a very serious threat.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#88

Post by jostylr » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 9:45 AM UTC

dsfsdfd wrote: post #84

andrei_says_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as guiding them down a path that has been generally beneficial for the majority, like going to school. Possibly unpopular opinion: school is not negotiable for children and so there's no guiding. It's pure coercion. Also, there's no popular alternative to school so that we can compare enough data and prove that school is beneficial. Unschooling exists and seems to healthier, efficient and beneficial compared to sch…

I tentatively agree with you. Although I am a parent and my child will be going to school - I do feel that the rail road that takes you from childhood to productive adult under the tutelage of the state is fundamentally a coercive one. It indoctrinates children to accept authority unconditionally and sets them up to be good little employees when they grow older - accepting the authority of their superiors without que…

It is far easier for someone who has been free and living life with eyes wide open to understand and play the game if they choose than it is for someone who has lived a life under authority to suddenly have tremendous freedom. This is why many young adults flounder in their 20s. They have never been free and suddenly they are. With no direction and no restraint learned, this can be very dangerous.

If you happen to live near a Sudbury school, I recommend checking it out for your child.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#89

Post by aninhumer » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 10:30 AM UTC

tunesmith wrote: post #35

pasquinelli wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do you mean by high-signal and low-content? i don't know about signal and content, but typically the word coercion is used to refer to forcing people to do something using violence and the threat of violence.

high-signal low-content... for example, if you say a term like "gun control" to a collection of people, and every person in the group has a clear idea of what it means, and yet the definition might be different for every person. So, the content of the term has low meaning overall, while as a signal it evokes a strong response.

So, I get what you're saying, but I don't think "signal" is a great term for that, because it comes from information theory, and there its definition more closely matches what you're calling "content".

I'm not sure what you could call emotional impact to make a similarly pithy description though.

Re: Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)

#90

Post by mercer » Fri, Jan 08, 2016, 10:44 AM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #69

jessriedel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm willing to bet that the welfare of the average schizophrenic is quite poor essentially everywhere in the world, a handful of tribes supporting them for myth-related reasons notwithstanding.

> I'm willing to bet that the welfare of the average schizophrenic is quite poor essentially everywhere in the world Actually schizophrenics in the developing world do significantly better than those in the US. That said, McKenna's models of shamanism weren't actually valid across cultures -- shamans actually played completely different roles in different societies.

My experience in a developing nation is that schizophrenics, provided they were not actively dangerous to their surroundings, were well cared for by family and their general environment. The 'village idiot' (even in the big city where I lived) - their words - was free to roam the city and generally watched out for by everyone.

Of course, the flip-side was that those with mental illnesses (or other disabilities) who had no family would generally have a miserable existence.

Edit: the equivalent I've found here in the West has been Evangelical churches. I strongly suspect some of the 'prophet' or otherwise 'specially anointed' characters to be (mildly?) schizophrenic.