How Bad Are Things? (2015)

> The town where I practice psychiatry is mostly white and mostly wealthy. That doesn’t save it.

Ethnicity and wealth are physical things. Happiness is an emotion you feel. They are related only insofar as one depends on physical things for happiness. This is a spiritual issue really (not to be confused with religion or any sort of belief) and this is something that our (otherwise very successful) modern way of life is very much neglecting.

In my experience this is very true upon simply becoming the kind of person who is open to listening to others. The vast majority of people you've run into have had huge difficulties in life, or are affected by people close to them who have huge difficulties in their lives.

People tell me I'm a wonderful listener due to my lack of judgement on their problems (more than once, people, including my therapist, tell me I'd make a great therapist), but really I've internalized the idea that everyone is living a life less than what they hoped their life would be to various extents and that there is also a near infinite combination of ways to achieve this effect such that no one can be dismissed for their misery in any respect without also dismissing the "legitimate" misery of a wide swath of people.

When I come across people who are willing to dismiss others' concerns, either by dismissing them as oversensitive, or dismissing them as evil, I wonder if they've internalized this logic too. And if they have, what their experiences are to cause them to conclude that dismissal is the reasonable choice.

Pop-psychology actually seems pretty common among hackers and founders.

I appreciated the article - being I'm a coder with a psych minor, and like the article points out - there's lots of way for people to be different, and there's good odds that a lot of types will be in any particular circle.