You Don’t Really Get What “Mental Illness” Means – The Killing of Walter Wallace

Among the litany of ignorant and inflammatory comments I’ve been finding on YouTube in response to the recent killing of Walter Wallace by Philadelphia police – the same tired-out claims I’ve seen time and again – something that stuck out to me today is this: don’t pretend you know what mental illnesses are, or that you know anything about their implications.

“I know he had mental illness… BUT…”

“So what if he had mental illness, you still can’t…”

Look, dingwipe. You’re lying to yourself and everyone else if you think you believe that mental illnesses actually exist. Why? Because the very concept of mental illness has huge ramifications for how we as a society view free will, hold people accountable for their actions, and grant people special care and consideration. And you’re not considering any of this. Frankly, it scares you. Believing in the existence of mental illnesses means you can’t assume anything about how someone is going to behave just by looking at them. It means you can’t just tell someone to “suck it up” or “cut it out” and expect them to behave prosocially. It means some people don’t have as much control over their actions as you think they should… and perhaps, neither do you. Hell, maybe we ALL deserve more consideration. But you can’t accept that. Your identity depends on your ability to cope with a lack of consideration from others. You need this story that people do bad things because they’re greedy and vain. The world is so much simpler that way. You can crank someone’s hardships up to eleven, but they’re still equally required to pull through.

After all, we suffer equally, don’t we…?

Anyone who complains just doesn’t want to put in the effort and expects everyone else to cover their asses, isn’t that right?

I get that you’re not going to change, not from this. Not from me. I only ask that you stop pretending that you’re on our side when you enter a debate about social justice for people of color and people with disabilities. You’re agreeing that people can have mental illnesses so you don’t look bad. You’re lampshading. Mental illness means that you will not be capable of responding to situations the way most people can. And as for the claim that having mental illness doesn’t give you a pass to misbehave in society… you’re right. In our society, no, it doesn’t. You are expected to carry yourself the same as everyone else.

Maybe there’s something wrong with that. Maybe that’s something we should change.

What’s ultimately terrifying about mental illness is that we fail to acknowledge it.

Why I Wish I Could Shake Using Male Pronouns

The biggest incentive I have to stop gendering men is that I do not want to invite the opportunity for people to gender me as a man any more than they already do. To illustrate, in the situation I had at Target, these nice women associates teamed up to help me locate a backrest pillow. After a male associate informed one of these ladies over walkie-talkie that there was just a rather fluffy looking one, the lady stuttered for a moment and after regaining her composure pressed the associate to look for something else, claiming that the customer she was helping (me) was a male and that the item in question might be too “um… feminine”. After the initial shock I tried being nice and I leaned it and clapped my hands down and said: “that’s okay, it’s fine, it doesn’t matter to me, I’ll look at it”. This woman was what… trying to protect my shattered male ego? This is a more innocuous example; experiences with men have been far worse. If I stop people from gendering me, it’s not about “you need to get my pronoun right so I feel recognized” – it’s consequential in how you are going to treat me in a conversation. If you gender me as a man, you are almost certain to treat me differently. You’ll assume all sorts of things about me, like that I respect authority or traditionalism or nice suits or stocks or mechanics. You’ll tone down your emotional intelligence and assume I don’t want to receive affection or concern. You’ll have expectations of me to perform in a leadership role that I can’t fulfill, or worse, be emotionally stable, which is probably never going to happen.

COVID Pan…demonium – The Real Way It’s Messing With Our Lives

I was going to post about my grievances toward China and the United States on how their infrastructures have enabled the spread of COVID and failed to accommodate people who are at risk. But I realized today that the biggest threat we face is actually from shitty human behavior. I am socially and germ-averse, so initially I was quite sympathetic to the shutdown of modern life as we know it. I don’t like crowds and I’ve wanted people to wash their hands properly for years. At long last, state and local governments have stepped in and made coping with going to work less ambiguous. And it’s only fair, given that the workplaces and schools and public transportation we have today are ill equipped to handle the spread of dangerous viruses. But unfortunately, while the rate of severe complications from SARS-CoV2 is low for most people, the fact is that the hoarding behaviors we’re seeing all around us are putting many more people’s livelihoods at risk. I’m talking about the elderly, children, the poor, and the disabled. Human greed and fear will now negatively impact more lives than any virus ever could.

P.S.: Has South Park taught us nothing? Fear and distrust often leads to more people making erratic, reckless decisions and causing more problems than the thing we’re actually afraid of.

Despite the facade of abundance when we go into supermarkets, there is a process that keeps goods in stock seemingly all of the time. When I went into my local market I was taken aback by all the empty gaps in the shelves, and I also experienced this sinking fear. It’s abnormal. There’s always stuff, so if I don’t see any, does that mean there will ever be more stuff? I understand the impulse. The systems in place exist in part by concealing all its complicated workings and giving consumers the impression of dependability and regularity. But this means we’re all largely ignorant to the forces that shape our world, and when systems experience a disturbance, we have no choice but to reckon with the truly mutable nature of these working parts and the aims of their design. … My point is, there WILL be more toilet paper, everyone.

P.S.S.: I’m going to post some resources for COVID-19 as they come up.

My thanks to Cheddar for this informative video about hand washing. I was surprised to learn this.

The Consequences of Negative Fat Representation

When I was doing research on the presence of fat cartoon characters on television, I came upon a few news articles that discussed a 2015 study out of the University of Colorado. The articles warn about the study’s findings that kids who see cartoon characters with a “rounder” shape are more likely to make unhealthy food choices afterward, unless they are first reminded about healthy behaviors. I immediately became worried about an implication that fat characters had ought to NOT be visible on TV, so as to not prime kids into eating poorly. I think it is very important to have better fat representation in the media, especially for kids. The researchers wrote that there is already evidence that children form negative stereotypes about fat people by the age of 3, and by 8 years old they think fat people are “lazy” and “less healthy”.

I think it’s not completely clear that seeing fat stereotypes “cause” kids to eat more or eat unhealthily, or if it’s really that seeing fat characters LETS them NOT police their own eating. From what I’ve read in the study itself there is no mention of this possibility, but I think it’s important. Because in a way I think that’s not a bad thing, and if anything, what might contribute to a “letting loose” mentality is the constant admonishment for eating “bad” foods that kids are exposed to. Researchers have found that part of the reason diets don’t work for most people is that denying yourself foods you think are bad for you makes you crave them even more. So I think we should hold off on blaming depictions of fat characters indulging themselves.

I hope that people don’t refrain from portraying positive and diverse fat characters in the media because A) the only reason kids and adults hold negative stereotypes about fat people is because the media historically shows fat people as overindulgent, lazy, fearful, etc. and B) you’re NOT going to get kids to make more healthy food choices by erasing fat people from the media; they’ll just think only thin people eat healthy and that there’s no place for fat people who eat healthy, that both these things can’t be true simultaneously.

Is It More Natural to Distance Yourself From Feelings, or Live In Them?

I’m doing some initial work in cognitive behavioral therapy. I’ve been tasked with starting to notice automatic thoughts and reflect on them. It reminds me of a concept in Eastern philosophy called third… something (someone help me out here): basically, that you should learn to not just react to an event, but take a step back and analyze your initial reaction, and then evaluate that feeling and make a choice.

One of my primary motivations for delving into this is to examine the self. Are my emotions me? Is it more “authentic” to trust my feelings to make decisions? BigThink has a good video on this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3-dxHavRe8 – So many of our initial impressions of new things that happen to us come from learned patterns of thought that were by chance and out of our control. They hardly constitute a truthful representation of reality. So then why are we so defensive of these feelings?

I remember seeing a video explaining how in society we are not given tools to understand how to pilot our brains. We assume they work just fine on their own. What I wonder is, is it natural for humans to balance automatic thinking with a culture of self-regulatory habits and teachings – a skill many of us have forgotten, a missing piece – or is this a relatively new step in human evolution, a step toward ailing the inherent suffering that comes with learned patterns of behavior from childhood?