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Rejection Therapy (2011)
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Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)
#12Using strangers as unwitting tools in your own psychological therapy without their consent seems super sketchy to me.
It's sketchy if you frame it in such an awful, uncharitable way. Behold:
Talking about the weather = using strangers as unwitting tools in your compulsive need for social interaction.
How about rejection therapy = "Harmlessly interacting with other humans to overcome your trauma, so you can become a more productive member of society"?
Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)
#13Using strangers as unwitting tools in your own psychological therapy without their consent seems super sketchy to me.
My psychologist suggested I partake in 1 act of kindness every day, doesn't matter if in favor of a loved one or a stranger. This was to help me deal with some mental problems I had. Following this advice in multiple occasions I actively helped people on the streets, be it by helping them put the groceries in their cars or by taking something that fell off their pockets. I would say this helped me immensely, would yo…
It gets complicated, doesn't it? I mean, in your example, you're doing things that help people, vs. the author creating social pressure to do unreasonable things, but in either case, you're both still pulling people out of their comfort zone without their consent. The way society works vs. community makes all of these things ethically difficult. Communities get built when people step out of their comfort zones and help each other, but society only works because at some point people mind their own business and let people go about their day.
So I think it's a delicate balancing act, and there's no easy test for whether it's good or bad. I think holistically it can come down to what kind of energy you're putting into your environment, and whether it's positive or negative.
Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)
#14Using strangers as unwitting tools in your own psychological therapy without their consent seems super sketchy to me.
Thank you for your comment. I came here to say roughly the same thing. Yes, in a way we are always using others as means to an end. But to make this interpretation true, I have to really push the boundaries of what I mean by using others, by mean, and by end. However, let us try to think this from a different perspective. How about what others in this _experiment_ felt? How would you feel if someone came out of nowhe…
> But you're also training yourself to be indifferent to the feelings of others.
Obsessive focus on the feelings and opinions of others (self consciousness) is at the root of many people's social anxiety.
Complete indifference makes you a pyschopath but there's such a thing as being too concerned about other people's feelings.
Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)
#15Using strangers as unwitting tools in your own psychological therapy without their consent seems super sketchy to me.
I feel like I use strangers as unwitting tools in my own psychological therapy all the time, but yes here it's sketchy because rejecting someone (the intended response) is an unpleasant activity.
Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)
#16Similar to what the famous psychologist Albert Ellis did:
"As an adolescent, Albert was extremely shy around ladies. At age 19, he started showing signs of thinking like a cognitive-behavioral therapist by forcing himself to talk to about 100 women in the Bronx Botanical Gardens within a period of one month. This helped him get rid of his fear of rejection by women."[1]
"He found 130 women sitting alone that month on park benches. He sat next to all of them, whereupon 30 got up and walked away. He spoke to the remaining 100 — for the first time in his life — about the birds and the bees, the flowers, books, whatever came to mind.
Al later said, "If Fred Skinner, who was then teaching at Indiana University, had known about my exploits, he would have thought I would have got extinguished, because of the 100 women I made one date — and she didn't show up!
"But I prepared myself philosophically, even then, by seeing that nobody took out a stiletto and cut my balls off, nobody vomited and ran away, nobody called the cops. I had 100 pleasant conversations and with the second 100 I got good and made a few dates." [2]
"Nobody took out a stiletto and cut my balls off" -- I've always loved that expression.
[1] https://totallyhistory.com/albert-ellis/ [2] http://www.rebtnetwork.org/ask/may06.html
Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for your comment. I came here to say roughly the same thing. Yes, in a way we are always using others as means to an end. But to make this interpretation true, I have to really push the boundaries of what I mean by using others, by mean, and by end. However, let us try to think this from a different perspective. How about what others in this _experiment_ felt? How would you feel if someone came out of nowhe…
> But you're also training yourself to be indifferent to the feelings of others. Obsessive focus on the feelings and opinions of others (self consciousness) is at the root of many people's social anxiety. Complete indifference makes you a pyschopath but there's such a thing as being too concerned about other people's feelings.
Empathy is not being obsessive with the feelings of others. Others are as real people as you are. If you go that way, thinking of what others feel instead of empathizing with what they're experiencing, this immediately becomes an abstraction and you fail to realize the humanity, or lack of, in this.
Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)
#18This is a tragedy of the commons scenario that will ultimately lead to people being less friendly. Right now it's assumed that if someone comes up to ask you for something, they have a good reason.
Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But you're also training yourself to be indifferent to the feelings of others. Obsessive focus on the feelings and opinions of others (self consciousness) is at the root of many people's social anxiety. Complete indifference makes you a pyschopath but there's such a thing as being too concerned about other people's feelings.
Empathy is not being obsessive with the feelings of others. Others are as real people as you are. If you go that way, thinking of what others feel instead of empathizing with what they're experiencing, this immediately becomes an abstraction and you fail to realize the humanity, or lack of, in this.
It's not a binary. Becoming more indifferent to other people is necessary for the kind of people who go through this sort of therapy.
To open your mouth and speak to another person is to risk offending them. There are people who are so afraid of that possibility that they never speak. In that case, less empathy/more indifference is good.
Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)
#20Using strangers as unwitting tools in your own psychological therapy without their consent seems super sketchy to me.
Asking favors vs just interacting with people feels potentially sketchy to me, but on the whole, I think strangers in-person would be well off interacting with each other more these days, not less.
I've always liked how Terry Pratchett put it: “Individuals aren't naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are...well...human beings.”