I would like closure, but I'll take honesty
freddiedeboer.substack.com
I would like closure, but I'll take honesty
1–10 of 211 posts
Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty
#2Context:
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9kt9dj/fred...
Background for people who don't know what this is about like me:
> DeBoer is a blogger of what I would call the “dissident Left.” I would describe him as a committed socialist who is also a committed civil libertarian and has often had sharp critiques of the Left as well as the Right. He’s on the SlateStarCodex blog roll and he often pops up as a point of discussion (or even as a commenter in the replies) on SSC.
> About a year ago (after the accusations) he announced he was leaving writing for a while, as we discussed on this subreddit.
> Finally, Malcom Harris, the man he falsely accused, has responded here.
Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty
#3Of course, my brain read the word in the headline as "Clojure", and so I was expecting "Honesty" to be the name of a new Lisp dialect. I think I need to get out more...
Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty
#4I feel profound empathy here. Having been on both sides of this situation, it’s just really complicated. You can forgive a person but really once you’ve seen them in manic psychosis you will never fully trust them or their judgment ever again. There are a lot of contradictory emotions at work and they’re all valid.
It’s kind of a shit lot in life, but you get good at making new friends. Eventually you can get it under control enough to build a life that works. But it’s a messy process to get there.
Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty
#5Of course, my brain read the word in the headline as "Clojure", and so I was expecting "Honesty" to be the name of a new Lisp dialect. I think I need to get out more...
Same here. My first thought was: another post about someone who tried Clojure and at some point realized it was not apt for their project so now decided to criticize it in an article.
Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty
#6I feel profound empathy here. Having been on both sides of this situation, it’s just really complicated . You can forgive a person but really once you’ve seen them in manic psychosis you will never fully trust them or their judgment ever again. There are a lot of contradictory emotions at work and they’re all valid. It’s kind of a shit lot in life, but you get good at making new friends. Eventually you can get it und…
All true, but the problem seems to be people who don't know him are screwing him over and preventing him from making new friends so to speak.
Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty
#7> But in fact I had not intended to cancel Harris; I hadn’t intended anything at all. I would have attacked him, physically, had he been present, over a pure delusion, which I say with shame I can’t put into words. But I was not thinking that I would hurt his reputation. I was not thinking of cause and effect in any conventional way. I was not in a mental state where I was capable of understanding long-term consequences. Once again, I will be accused of saying that I bear no responsibility for what happened, but that’s not what I’m saying or have ever said. I am saying that it is a lie to say that I had a particular outcome in mind because I was operating under the antilogic of psychosis. I know because I’m me and I was there. I’m sorry if this is inconvenient for your efforts to develop simplistic moral readings about what happened, but I assure you my psychotic disorder is harder on me than it is on you. Forgive me if I’m angry, but it is incredible the number of people who believe that their understanding of neurology and psychiatry and psychology is so complete that they can decide unilaterally for the human race that “mental illness doesn’t do that.” You can make whatever moral judgments about me you like. You have no idea what was happening in my brain and no right to speak as if you do.
Social media are clearly magnifying the negative consequences of mental health issues. The problems the author describes are compounded by the fact that many other people know what happened.
What I'm curious about, though, is the opposite. To what extent are social media increasing the severity of mental health issues themselves? I can imagine a kind of positive feedback loop, with social media triggering aspects of an illness, and acting out through social media amplifying the damage caused.
Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty
#8Freddie DeBoer on Hacker News, that's nice. Found out about him after frequenting /r/stupidpol/, one of the few sub-reddits that still has genuine left-wing discussions focused on the actual material condition of the working classes (even though they're getting rarer and rarer lately).
Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty
#9I expected some great insights about "Clojure" the language.
Re: I would like closure, but I'll take honesty
#10I feel profound empathy here. Having been on both sides of this situation, it’s just really complicated . You can forgive a person but really once you’ve seen them in manic psychosis you will never fully trust them or their judgment ever again. There are a lot of contradictory emotions at work and they’re all valid. It’s kind of a shit lot in life, but you get good at making new friends. Eventually you can get it und…
All true, but the problem seems to be people who don't know him are screwing him over and preventing him from making new friends so to speak.
Yeah, I’m really glad I wasn’t a public figure when I was going through that. But his career as a public figure is likely over due to the trust issue. It sucks, but sometimes you can’t be anything you want.