The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Notes -
I'm aware this is on the border of CW and Wellness, so if anyone has any problems with it being here, I'll move it to the normal CW thread.
The long and the short of it is that engaging with the academic discourse on a controversial CW-related topic is really starting to exhaust me and burn me out. I'm not going to introduce what the topic here is, since this is strictly Wellness-related, but I seem to have mentally taken it upon myself to refute the opponents of mine that are involved in the field. As a layman, I've basically endeavoured to take the strongest versions of their arguments possible, and then challenge them in a rigorous, data-driven fashion. And needless to say, acquainting yourself with an entire field is not easy (note also that I'm also researching a huge amount of other related topics which the aforementioned field is just a part of).
I foresee a bunch of questions about why I'm this invested, so I'll briefly explain. Why I'm doing this is because when I look at the field, I see a very dedicated group of ideologues who are committed to promoting a certain specific view, and whose acolytes have in the past actually engaged in very unethical behaviour (e.g. targeting people's careers, harassment, bomb threats, etc) in order to shut down an opposing view. Even those who do not do this have a clear ideological commitment and have endeavoured to find reasons to explain why measures other than the ones which find results that are congenial to their worldview are invalid or that they do not "explain the full story". This has been a decades-long effort on their part at this point, and most of the talking points offered up by them have subsequently either been proven to be untrue or did not have much validity in the first place, but they continue coming up with new, novel rationalisations as to why measures which conflict with their ideology should be thrown out. Some of the things I've read have been painfully slimy - examples of the type of duplicity I've come across from the aforementioned ideologues range from preselection of the sample to outright trying to misinterpret the findings of their own research in order to publish things which are congenial to the ideology, and these "findings" have then been repeated in subsequent publications. I also suspect there's a lot of publication bias going on, though I obviously can't prove that.
These ideologues' opponents in the field, comparatively, don't seem all that invested to me. They exhibit the air and attitude of people who simply discovered results that were contrary to their initial expectations, and decided to take them at face value and defended what they considered to be good social science. However, due to how influential these ideologues are and due to the almost constant stream of papers that group churns out, it's very difficult for anyone to properly address all their claims especially considering the fear of consequences that comes with opposing them. Worse yet, they're extremely prolific in responding to any challenges of their hypotheses, and basically flood the academic discourse with self-justifying screed after self-justifying screed. Someone has to contest them, but there's just not enough people who will do that, and most people seem indifferent or outright opposed to the idea of contradicting an accepted narrative.
My involvement in this is so intensely deep at this point that I have a reputation in certain circles on Reddit (or at least I like to think I have one, hah) for being fairly well-researched in one specific area. What happens now is that I semi-regularly get private messages from multiple different users about my general areas of political interest, and usually they're either asking me to help in an argument or showing me an academic's or activist's writings and asking me to refute them. I do not blame them and this wouldn't be that bad at all in isolation, but at this point I am getting my opponents' rhetoric shoved in my face almost constantly not only by my culture war opponents, but also those who are on my side (not to mention the media and every other vehicle of political propagandising that exists).
So the exhaustion has been piling up for a while. And recently, I got a message from a user who showed me a writeup from one of said ideologues in the aforementioned field and asked if I could refute it. I took a look, and trying to follow the citation trail led really deep, and it sent me into a spiral for some reason. It isn't the worst thing I've had to address, rather this just kind of feels like the straw that broke the camel's back. It's a symbol of "No matter how much effort you put in, nothing and no one is going to change. What are you even doing this for?" And it's true. I can't think of very many people who've changed their mind because I decided to throw a bunch of data at them. Additionally, what I'm doing is basically akin to pissing in the ocean since the more ideologically-motivated crap I refute, the more seems to crop up elsewhere and the cycle starts all over again. It's an endless memetic arms race and I'm simply outnumbered on all sides. I've realised this for a long time, but it was sheer stubborn principle which prevented me from ever backing down.
That can only last so long. At this point, I find myself really wanting to put in the time to refute it yet not being able to get myself to muster up the energy. Increasingly, I'm finding myself alienated from politics because of just how demanding it can be and how mutually exclusive it seems to be with any sort of even slightly fulfilling or productive existence. You need to breathe, eat and drink politics if you're going to actually do it properly, and even then the dent you're going to make is likely going to be minimal if not completely immaterial.
I've wanted to start something for a while outside of mere participation on social media (A youtube channel? A Substack? A book?), but I resolved to do it once I had refined my perspective enough to handle any challenges thrown my way with ease. But this simply isn't the case, and will probably never be the case. Especially not for someone who holds opinions that are as fringe as I do.
TL;DR: frustration, despair, long rant about how politics becomes an awfully soul-crushing thing if you get too deeply involved and especially if your view is a contrarian one. Yes, I'm painfully aware that I need to touch grass.
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
The atheist biology teacher at my catholic school said this was his favorite prayer.
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Start a substack. Please. Perfection is the enemy of good, and you are really good.
Well, thanks. I might give it a go then.
You definitely should, especially since you have already reached the conclusion that you will never refine your perspective enough to handle any challenges with ease. What this should tell you is not only were your expectations over the top and you are good enough already, but you have been for a while.
Since you are on the verge of burnout though, I wouldn't suggest just diving in the deep end. Instead set yourself a schedule - once a week, twice a week, Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays - slightly more than you think you can handle (that's if you want to challenge yourself, if you are already happy with your output just whatever you can handle) - and if you find yourself struggling to write something, remember that you have been good enough for a while and go back through your reddit history and rework one of your posts.
Just be careful not too lean too heavily into that at the start, because your first readers are likely to have read your reddit posts already. Use a modified rule of threes there - no more than one third of your posts should be reddit reworks until you have tripled your initial readership.
Edit: reddit/TheMotte.org posts, I am going to trip over that for the rest of my life.
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I stay away from politics because I am quite incompetent as of right now and do not see it as anything beyond procrastination given that if I struggle with my own duties, I cannot understand anything that is that high level.
Hinduism has the concept of kaliyuga which means that bad things are invetible but on the other hand a good ruler has the capability to change that. The returns on reading about technocapital only exist when you have actual capital.
I do not write about politics not just because I do not want to be harassed in the future but also because I am not a political theorist. Politics is the most important thing in one's life.
I got my oneitis because that girl was the first person I ever had a conversation with who shared the same views as me, this was before I discovered twitter and became a niche e microceleb but the real chad move is to disengage and get a decent life. My family is in academia and Indian academia is intellectually bankrupt so I made up my mind at an early age to not take a job in this sector.
You can get an anon substack with a tutanota id and can remain anonymous if you can change your writing style to the point where people cannot recognise you but I myself have chosen the path that mishima chose where I think my time is better spent being "cool" for people like me and doing something.
Academics can be supremely dishonest and we saw Scott getting doxxed despite years of activism against many ideologies directly against the current climate. The best thing one can do is to be good, be anon and be genuinely happy. Academia will remain broken and the state of the world is known to everyone who reads this place. It pays you less and a heretic priest will always be burned publicly and made an example out of. These jobs like academia and journalism at least in the west compensate the lack of monetary incentives with the ability to fasten the machine.
I feel your pain given my country is even worse where the current left wing regime is termed far right despite their policies. Take a break, spend time with your family and if possible find like minded smart people irl.
The Gods both blessed and cursed us given the times we live in. We know the problems and maybe one can say we all have been given the chance of finding the answers that those before us could not find.
Nothing hurts others than genuine happiness. I never thought 5 years ago that I would be here, maybe things will be different for those who come after us. Just do not get blackpilled my friend.
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