Mental Wealth • Hacker News Board

Re: Mental Wealth

#231

Post by christiansakai » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 4:45 AM UTC

ifokiedoke wrote: post #219

christiansakai wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born in Asia and grew up there, so sorry I am not fully qualified to answer this, nor do I understand. I did grew up as a racial minority and experienced racial and religious persecution. I can comment on those, but regarding default-white, default-male, default-affluent, I have no comments. Maybe my fellow countrymen/women can vouch. So, go back to the original topic. The topic is about you wanting to keep you…

Just want to say that I really appreciated this thoughtful response about tradeoffs. I had a common knee-jerk reaction to your initial post: "Well how convenient, someone who's not in an oppressed group is advising keeping out of politics, which is essentially encouraging the status quo". It is indeed true, that when you choose to fight the status quo (which there are many valid reasons to do), it makes it much more…

No problem. I appreciate the response.

Re: Mental Wealth

#232

Post by ShroudedNight » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 5:35 AM UTC

Enginerrrd wrote: post #153

resiros wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although exercising and eating well are very important for our well being, they're not enough. The most fundamental thing is having the right mindset: Some beliefs are so destructive that no amount of exercise will alleviate their effect. For instance, some people are what I call blamers. They believe that their misery is because of life, others, society... They refuse to accept what life has given them (whether thei…

You say that, but I've actually seen people with that exact mindset start to make progress when I've helped them keep a consistent workout schedule and designed an appropriate training regimen for them. All of a sudden, they're 3 months in and they feel good, their body doesn't hurt anymore, they're stronger, they look better, their cardiovascular fitness has noticeably improved, and they realized that THEY did that.…

> ...when I've helped them keep a consistent workout schedule and designed an appropriate training regimen for them.

This is a significant, non-scalable investment of time and effort in the well-being of another. It wouldn't surprise me if such experiences were in extremely short supply in those people's lives. From my experience, there's a significant chunk of the population for which this sort of investment is a required component for their on-going sense of self-worth.

I'm not sure why, but my experience is that tech culture is particularly prone to an almost axiomatic rejection of this aspect of human interaction and well-being, and often exhibits significant prejudice towards those for whom this external requirement for well-being manifests.

Re: Mental Wealth

#233

Post by britr » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 5:49 AM UTC

lxeiqr wrote: post #216

christiansakai wrote: post #142

For myself. This is what I've been doing and working for me. From the outside, generally, stay away or just observe from far away: - People who post political/religious/racial comments every 5 mins or so on social media, whether their view aligns with yours or not - People who are too passionate about one thing - People who don't keep their identity small in public, be it digital or real life - People who have black…

Apart from the "People who are too passionate about one thing" part, I can 100% agree with you. Over the past few years I've changed from a rather sad person obsessed over topics others would find barely relevant (kids, don't do /g/) to a person that's rather satisfied with his own life. I still care about these previously mentioned topics, but it's not something that'd make me throw insults at someone if they didn't…

"Throwing insults to anyone who disagrees" and being too passionate about one thing are not necessarily correlated. I can imagine someone being extremely passionate and still respectful.

Re: Mental Wealth

#234

Post by jjeaff » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 6:20 AM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #126

pjc50 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why was this large open pool of gasoline not on fire last week? All that happened was someone lit a cigarette"

People have lit many cigarettes for quite a while but nobody seemed to care until a certain one.

The final spark was one that has no excuse and was essentially a public lynching in broad daylight while onlookers openly recorded and pleaded for it to stop.

There are few things more loaded with terrible, horrifying historical imagery in America than a white police officer lynching a black man.

And I promise you, the significance of this horrific imagery was not lost on a single black American.

Re: Mental Wealth

#235

Post by antepodius » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 6:22 AM UTC

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #43

onion2k wrote: post #33

I find articles like this one where 100% of the onus for coping with mental health problems is put on the individual quite annoying. There's nothing in the article about getting help from other people, or how to cope with problems that you can't fix easily. It's kind of a toxic attitude because it makes others believe people with mental health issues just aren't trying hard enough and completely ignores individual ci…

Spot on: telling people to "sleep better" is good advice - in isolation. Telling people to do that when they are struggling with big social problems (unemployment, poor access to education, discrimination...) or already existing mental issues is very harsh.

Really? I'd think if you're poor and uneducated, and you have bad sleep habits, you could benefit from the advice to sleep better a lot more (relatively) than someone better off.

Re: Mental Wealth

#236

Post by antepodius » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 6:28 AM UTC

falseprofit wrote: post #201

jungletime wrote: post #102

Improving access to nature would go a long way to improve city dwellers sense of mental health and well being. Especially making it easier for owning a cottage. 1) I live in Canada, a giant country. But camping is super expensive, $50/night camping. Its unaffordable for any length of time. And many provincial parks sell out. 2) Buying a small piece of land and hand building a tiny cottage is basically outlawed in Ont…

People aren't rioting because they're bored and cooped up. They're protesting extrajudicial killings.

You think being cooped up isn't part of the motivation?

Re: Mental Wealth

#237

Post by throwaway9482 » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 6:40 AM UTC

christiansakai wrote: post #142

For myself. This is what I've been doing and working for me. From the outside, generally, stay away or just observe from far away: - People who post political/religious/racial comments every 5 mins or so on social media, whether their view aligns with yours or not - People who are too passionate about one thing - People who don't keep their identity small in public, be it digital or real life - People who have black…

I couldn’t tell you grew up in Asia based on that

Re: Mental Wealth

#238

Post by antepodius » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 6:41 AM UTC

s1t5 wrote: post #45

> my experience has taught me that there are five foundations towards a concept I will call ‘mental wealth’ — sleep, diet, exercise, stress management, and exogenous compounds (anything from coffee to alcohol to prescription medication). I think these are accurate but a glaring omission is the overarching element of "how good is your life". You can take care of your physiology (and you should) but that won't get you…

It's easier to get friends/a partner, or negotiate for promotion/a raise, or do what you have to to get a better job when you're not fat, sleep-deprived, and spending all you free time on reddit/tumblr/4chan whining about trump/men/women.

Re: Mental Wealth

#239

Post by antepodius » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 6:47 AM UTC

axegon_ wrote: post #17

Genuine question: how would someone define "mental health" or be able to determine if someone is mentally healthy? Even for myself, I really have no clue whether I'm mentally healthy or not.

How do you define physical health? In a sense, nobody is really healthy. We're all afflicted with a long-term progressive wasting disease that has 100% mortality (so far).

You can say 'healthy' is just a good-enough arbitrary cut-off. For mental health, no glaring neuroses, you usually feel good or neutral about yourself, no suicidal ideation, basically just if none of the markers people've said are unhealthy show up.

Re: Mental Wealth

#240

Post by antepodius » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 6:55 AM UTC

glutamate wrote: post #14

andi999 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree fully, except you shouldnt work for social and environmental justice, but social and environmental improvement instead.

What is the difference, to you? To me, working for improvement can too easily become redirected towards self-aggrandisement. I did this, I accomplished this. Working for justice implies that laws and rights, natural or human-made, are being denied and broken.

It just seems like if you rally under the flag of justice, meaning to improve the condition of the world, you also attract people who are interested in retribution and punishment (another element of justice).

Lots of middle-class activists for justice, for example, don't actually seem like most of the poor very much (understandable: the poor are a basket of useful idiot deplorables). They're more motivated by their hatred for the rich, and punishing someone is still justice, even if that won't actually improve the material conditions of the poor (which isn't that big a problem, because some of them are trump voters and we still have to punish them).