Destigmatization and Social Engineering
Added 2025-06-27 18:00:08 +0000 UTCThoughts?
Comments
I should engage with the destigmatization primary topic, but I need to call out the "virtuous self-deception" first. This is such an important thing to notice. My daughter is special needs, and "pretending" that she is doing better than she is actually helps. The more positive that we are, the more we engage with her at a level that is actually beyond her ability, the better the outcomes. If we believe that she is more capable than she is, and act on that belief, it has a real beneficial effect. Similar effects can happen with our own mental and physical health. You can know logically that we are all bags of neurochemistry that have mental and physical health problems that we had no part in acquiring and may require pharma to fix. This is a stone cold fact. But if we believe that we can change anyway, if we choose the path of hope, it has a real effect. Fake it till you make it can quite literally work. This reminds me of part of the William James "Will to Believe" speech (thanks to erudite for that one) where he talks about how a person who thinks that all people are awful will treat them in a paranoid and cold way, which they will react badly to, and then prove the person right. But if the person treats everyone like they are not awful, they find magically that people are the opposite - they are kind and warm. The belief causes an effect in the world that is not imaginary. If you don't think you are capable of getting better or doing more - you may be holding yourself back. But this also feels wildly cruel to tell someone who is suffering. Not honoring their pain feels very wrong. There is a balance here. But believing you can change yourself is so powerful. I don't know. Ok I am going to think on the destigmatization topic more and post if I have thoughts, but I wanted to get these down before they floated away.
pol
2025-06-29 03:26:28 +0000 UTCone factor might be the extent to which the group is actually directly suffering and to what degree: left handed people are usually not affected much from using the other hand but for mental health 'significant impairment' is part of a lot of psychiatric diagnoses. black people are facing serious unique issues now (-> BLM) whereas the no kings protest was more about abstract future downstream effects of government decisions than badly suffering in the now
predicate
2025-06-27 19:03:11 +0000 UTC
