The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community • Hacker News Board

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#351

Post by mensetmanusman » Fri, Aug 02, 2024, 7:29 PM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #180

vegadw wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What frustrates me is that, it seems (Read as: the following is just my vibe) that the majority of 3rd places left are religious in nature, but I, personally, don't want to be religious or raise children that are. There are some options, of course, but they're limited and often of poor quality, at least locally. Libraries are trying to adapt to fill this gap, and maker spaces spring up but most don't have funding to…

The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal replacement is puzzling to me. I am no fan of religion having grown up in an exceedingly religious environment. But it was always completely obvious to me even as a child that the primary purpose of religion was to form local communities and have others with shared values to rely on. We seem to be doing it w…

Knowing that the US will never, in my lifetime, be high trust like it is in Japan at the moment means we have to focus on the seeds for helping push it towards that after we die.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#352

Post by dbrueck » Fri, Aug 02, 2024, 7:29 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #256

2snakes wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certain elements that are not true. But other ones are true. There are many ways to alleviate suffering.

God is not true, at least not the sense that any religion claims (God as an abstraction and a meme is as real as any other, as real as Harry Potter or Slenderman) Claims of absolute moral right or authority derived from divine right are not true. Claims made by the religious that belief in God is a prerequisite to morality, community or cultural identity are not true. Claims made by religious teachings about the natu…

This is stating as fact several things that have not and cannot be proven by tools such as the scientific method. Seems ironic, given the subject matter. :)

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#353

Post by mensetmanusman » Fri, Aug 02, 2024, 7:31 PM UTC

nineplay wrote: post #243

phil21 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal replacement is puzzling to me. I am no fan of religion having grown up in an exceedingly religious environment. But it was always completely obvious to me even as a child that the primary purpose of religion was to form local communities and have others with shared values to rely on. We seem to be doing it w…

I understand what you mean, I grew up in a church with a youth group and group friends which I valued. However I also grew up with constant anxiety about sin and hell. It still gets back to me when my insomnia is bad. So churches and church membership aren't necessarily a net-positive. I too wish there was some sort of community my family could belong to. But I'm not taking my kids to church anytime soon.

Not all religious societies are like that. Doing it properly looks more like exercise towards a higher good than fear of failure.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#354

Post by krapp » Fri, Aug 02, 2024, 7:31 PM UTC

ToValueFunfetti wrote: post #314

krapp wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God is not true, at least not the sense that any religion claims (God as an abstraction and a meme is as real as any other, as real as Harry Potter or Slenderman) Claims of absolute moral right or authority derived from divine right are not true. Claims made by the religious that belief in God is a prerequisite to morality, community or cultural identity are not true. Claims made by religious teachings about the natu…

God is not a testable hypothesis. There is no empirical way to conclude God does not exist except by assuming that anything that cannot be tested does not exist. Such an assumption also rules out morality, as there is no empirical basis for that either. Assuming you're utilitarian, you're working off of the untestable belief that making people happier has some property called 'goodness', and that there is some inhere…

Faith in something doesn't need presuppose faith in anything supernatural.

And theists have no empirical basis for their morality either, because faith by definition is belief in the absence of such evidence. People just believe what they believe. I prefer to be fed rather than starve, I prefer peace to suffering, I prefer liberty to slavery. I'm a social being capable of empathy and extending my beliefs about myself to include my expectations for others. I prefer others be fed, rather than starve. I prefer others have peace rather than suffer. I prefer others have liberty rather than slavery. I believe human life has value because I value my own life, and therefore value the lives of others.

What do I need to have faith in, here, other than nature and mortality?

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#355

Post by racional » Fri, Aug 02, 2024, 7:33 PM UTC

Wytwwww wrote: post #312

Balgair wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd hope that going back to being the Arsenal of Democracy for Ukraine (and maybe Taiwan or South Korea if things go bad) would've tied the US together, but man I was wrong there. I mean, it's not like we need to be rolling out a B-29 every minute or an aircraft carrier a week to defeat Russia there. Just cleaning out some of the stock from the 80's held them off for months. Logistically, the war in Ukraine just is…

At a certain point (probably to a large extent already) Ukraine will simply run out of manpower. Demographically it was in a very poor state to begin with to such a degree they had to keep the MINIMUM age of conscription at 27 and lowered it to 25 a few months ago. There were only ~2.6 million men aged 15 to 30 and another 3 million in their 30s back in 2022. Around 0.6-0.8 million Ukrainian men have left the country…

So how long do you think Ukraine can hold out if we extrapolate the casualties rates from the last 12-24 months or so?

I wouldn't know because I don't have their numbers, and unlike you, I don't trust my offhand estimates.

However I will trust the Ukrainians to know, and it seems safe to reason that the more and better arms they have -- the farther off the potential triggering of such a limit will be.

The key consideration to keep in mind here is that for Ukraine, the fight is existential -- while for Russia (as a country, apart from its leadership) it is very much optional. So the limits for what is bearable in terms of any category of loss must be weighted very differently (apart from the what the numbers might say; and assumes we even have reliable numbers, which of course we don't).

So the flip side of your question might be:

"For how many years does Russia want to keep spending 10 percent of its GDP on this little expansionist fantasy project gone horrible wrong? And how does this math change once Putin is gone, or his lights start to dim?"

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#356

Post by mensetmanusman » Fri, Aug 02, 2024, 7:33 PM UTC

pnut wrote: post #282

ryandrake wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that a lot of the "community" hole left by religion declining is being quickly filled in by politics, which itself is taking on quasi-religious attributes.

Maybe it always was one and the same.. separation of church and state in Western culture was a hard won, radical political innovation not very long ago. And Christians today are a highly motivated special interest group in the States, openly attempting to lock their social agenda into law. See also sharia law.

Separation of C/S at the time was about not instituting a state religion and protecting religious practice from the strong arm of the state (the only corporation we allow violence from).

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#357

Post by apsurd » Fri, Aug 02, 2024, 7:34 PM UTC

parpfish wrote: post #195

ativzzz wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, it's considered taboo to express a love of the USA I don't agree. Every sporting event still plays the national anthem and often has soldiers or military involvement or mentions I see US flags all the time, all over the place. There are certain forms of "love" of the USA that are more politically one-sided that may be more taboo if you live in an area where most people are on the other side.

there are a lot of people that like the national anthem and fly flags, but that's for a distinct slice of america. one tribe likes flags and overt patriotism, the other side does not. if i see a person with a flag sticker on their car, i can probably guess a lot of their unrelated political opinions

I get what you mean, and i experience the same. but it's on you/us to consciously not make that assumption. Else we're complicit in the polarization.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#358

Post by mensetmanusman » Fri, Aug 02, 2024, 7:34 PM UTC

Filligree wrote: post #203

phil21 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal replacement is puzzling to me. I am no fan of religion having grown up in an exceedingly religious environment. But it was always completely obvious to me even as a child that the primary purpose of religion was to form local communities and have others with shared values to rely on. We seem to be doing it w…

> The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal replacement is puzzling to me. > I am no fan of religion having grown up in an exceedingly religious environment. But it was always completely obvious to me even as a child that the primary purpose of religion was to form local communities and have others with shared values to rely on. It is a problem, but…

Religious pursuits of ‘why anything’ are true to the right hemisphere and false to the left hemisphere.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#359

Post by zbentley » Fri, Aug 02, 2024, 7:35 PM UTC

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #115

kelseyfrog wrote: post #82

Well, yes, we've doubled down on mediating social interactions through economic relationships. Most of the interactions adults have in their lives are with or in the framing of economic relations. Homes, are being invaded with tablets and mobile devices which bring along with them framing interactions as economic relations through ad and consumer frames. Workplaces are inherently settings of economic relations, and t…

This is both a loss in and of itself, and is also a rational response by people within this system. Everything MUST make money because everyone is FUCKING broke. People don't monetize their hobbies for fun, they do it because they're barely scraping by and the notion of spending time on things that don't make money is so beaten out of us that it feels wrong to do it. We can't go anywhere without spending money, we ca…

> I just want somewhere to go that's nice to be that doesn't demand my fucking credit card.

Libraries meet this need in many ways. But because of the dwindling number of alternatives, reductions in funding, and increases in the number of struggling community members, they're being asked to perform many more community-support functions (social services, education, technical support, shelter, bathrooms, clinics, after-primary-school socializing) for many more people than they used to. This is causing some struggles, which I hope libraries and their supporters rise to rather than writing off another critical type of third place.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#360

Post by krapp » Fri, Aug 02, 2024, 7:35 PM UTC

dbrueck wrote: post #352

krapp wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God is not true, at least not the sense that any religion claims (God as an abstraction and a meme is as real as any other, as real as Harry Potter or Slenderman) Claims of absolute moral right or authority derived from divine right are not true. Claims made by the religious that belief in God is a prerequisite to morality, community or cultural identity are not true. Claims made by religious teachings about the natu…

This is stating as fact several things that have not and cannot be proven by tools such as the scientific method. Seems ironic, given the subject matter. :)

The list of claims made by religion which have been disproved by science is innumerable, and the list of claims made by science which have been disproved by religion does not exist. But sure, let's pretend religion and science are equally valid....