Other people can't "make you do things." What other people can do is *make you suffer*. They can promote hypotheses to your attention, and the right stimuli in the right order *can* tie you in a knot of trying to believe two contradictory things at once.
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There's a (false, IMO) belief you might call "descriptive authoritarianism" -- the theory that people *can* make other people do things, that instantaneous obedience or direct manipulation is possible.
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There's also a (probably false?) belief you might call "descriptive individualism" -- the theory that other people, or external circumstances, can't have *any* effect on your mind that you can't undo, in one motion, "at will".
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What external circumstances can do is *insert a thing in your awareness*. "I am hearing the phrase 'You should do X.'" You don't get to choose this, I think; it's thrust upon you. Which means that contradictions can be inserted into your "workspace" of awareness.
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You can *resolve* contradictions; if you successfully explain away, make sense of, resolve, the temporary contradiction, you can stop suffering. But you may or may not actually do this. Other people can cause you suffering; you may or may not know how to remove it.
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To tie back to the previous thread on trauma; certain flawed/suboptimal/irrational/etc patterns of thought and behavior are *not inevitable* -- it is false that they are a necessary part of the human condition -- but also, IMO, *not instantly resolvable upon request.*
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You can't just ask someone "stop being fucked up, please", I think. They *literally can't.* Not as in, "it is impossible for anyone not to be fucked up", but "it is impossible for this person to snap out of it instantly just because you asked."
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There has to be a *map* of what it would look like to "function well" -- not just at the macro level of "what does a virtuous person look like throughout their life" but "what would being in a good mood look like for me right now".
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It's not that the fucked-up person literally doesn't ever have the capacity to reason, be calm, reflect, etc. But saying the words "be reasonable!" is *not the correct spell to invoke sanity*.
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I have very rough intuitions about what the invoking spell actually might be, but I have the sense that it's kind of like the "sensory trick" or like entrainment in Parkinson's? In a motor disorder you can "forget how" to do a motion, but can be "reminded how" with a prompt.
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You can get back into a sane and well resourced state by getting "off the ground" or getting a "boost" by doing it in a context where it's easier, or by social imitation of someone doing it. It can be easier to sidle in "accidentally" than to try head-on. etc.
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Is this "coddling"? Meh. Maybe. If you think "not coddling" (i.e. JUST demanding reasonableness directly) works, I'm curious to hear either anecdotes or data about this.
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If a person won't "be reasonable" when asked, they either actually, at the attention-reward-function level, don't want to be reasonable (which I tentatively believe isn't a real possibility, but who knows) or they don't have a currently available path/map to being reasonable.
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