"Sad Radicals" article

[kesstrel]

I thought this was a really intriguing analysis, from the inside, of the damaging effects of the kind of woke radical bubble TRAs, for example, appear to live in, although it is not about them specifically.

Unfortunately, toxicity in radical communities is not a bug. It is a feature. The ideology and norms of radicalism have evolved to produce toxic, paranoid, depressed subjects. What follows is a picture of what happens in communities that are passionately, sincerely, radically woke, as seen from the perspective of an apostate.

quillette.com/2018/12/11/sad-radicals/

There are some really interesting comments, especially the one about the SJW movement being an inverted form of CBT.

''SJW’s encourage many of the things CBT is designed to fix: catastrophising, negatively assuming the motives and thoughts of others about you, convincing yourself that your feelings are a perfect reflection of reality and assuming that all personal problems are always a result of issues outside yourself rather than within…

This results in the intensification of one’s persecution complex and narcissism.''

The comments about inverted CBT were well outlined by Haidt in his recent Policy Exchange discussion:

I liked the conclusion:

without truth to orient justice, seekers of justice will crash and crash again into reality, and will craft increasingly nightmarish and paranoid ideological analyses

That a good article

Morality and politics are intertwined in this system so that good politics become indicative of good morality. we see this in the left at the moment- being ‘of the left’ is seen as being good in and of itself, and being of the right bad - with no thought to whether ones actions or policies are good. Or bad.

with no thought to whether ones actions or policies are good. Or bad.

Or even left.

Political extremists have been violent before, neonazis beat up immigrants and anarchists set fire on parking cars.

Nowadays, though, it seems that "leftists" don't feel a need to do class analysis, and "feminists" gladly make themselves accomplices or at the very least give silent approval to men beating up women.

Not only do they not care about good and bad, they don't care about the very definition of the words they call themselves.

Not really convinced by this, but clearly he hung out with a bunch of wankers in the US. However the hymn to liberal capitakism as the best of all pissible worlds strikes me as naive, and anyway, is the very same liberal capitalism that seems to really have it in its interests to forward the gender reformulations that are causing feminists so much angst. I think as some sort of ultra-flexibilisation of the self and as part of a general erosion of the place of care, and welfare, typucally associated with women.

However the hymn to liberal capitakism as the best of all pissible worlds strikes me as naive, and anyway, is the very same liberal capitalism that seems to really have it in its interests to forward the gender reformulations that are causing feminists so much angst.

Yeah, he seems to have hung out with a bunch of wankers, but the comment on radicalism being an inverted form of CBT ... I think he's gone too far in the other direction and become too attached to positive thinking.

Sometimes, other people have bad motives even without you assuming them. Lots of mental health issues ARE caused by material reality. And so on.

I was in therapy for social anxiety, and my therapist thankfully didn't ask me to pretend that other people can't be assholes.
She just encouraged me to ask myself whether I myself would think less of other people for the faux-pas I was so deadly afraid of committing.

That sort of strategy works quite fine if you fear that people will be mean to you for no good reason whatsoever. Because that sort of fear tends to be irrational.

It does not, however, negate the fact that some people have materialistic motivations to oppress others.