ChocolateMoose123
New member
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2008
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- Instinctual Variant
- sx/sp
9/11 was a major turning point for sure. I was a year out of high school when it happened, and I still remember the striking cultural differences before and after. I remember the dominant social value among young adults before that was experience. A type of existentialism inherited from their hippie parents in which danger was simply an aside to be taken for granted. What was often mistaken for apathy in my generation was simply a pleasant willingness to just like go with it, for the sake of participating in a palpable way in all of the curious wonders and beauties of being alive. At our social core we craved the novel and the artistic and it fueled a type of spiritual hunger that I think helped move the economy on a fundamental level through curiosity innovation pursuit and celebration, even if the nuts and bolts of it were coming apart. After 9/11 that core spirit dissolved, and without that engine the vehicle of our falling-apart economy pretty much coasted to a stop.
9/11 sparked a fear that had a snowball effect on everything. An obsession with physical safety decayed into an obsession with emotional safety. I overheard a couple of teenagers talking in a restaurant about how difficult it must be for a transgendered person to experience body dysmorphia, and all I could think of while I was listening to them was... what the hell? When did teenagers start giving a fig about that kind of thing? What happened to being assholes and doing drugs and trespassing into hot tubs in the middle of the night?
This super meta-analysis of everything that just leaves little room for acting outside of checking off all the boxes on the "what-if" relativism morality list backfires more than not. Sooner or later, you will be a hypocrite or you will stall out in efforts for perfection.
Fine and good to have empathy but empathy without educated and direct experience with subject matter can form misguided notions that feel correct, but don't translate accurately. A good example are those trigger warnings. They were formed to prevent those with PTSD to avoid traumatic flashbacks. A well intentioned action but misguided due to not actually realizing how PTSD triggers work. Did those warnings help people? Maybe those with extreme sensitivities. Who knows but it wouldn't do anything for those suffering with PTSD because most don't even know what triggers them (it's why it is tied to agoraphobia, hello) and if they do, they already are great at avoiding those things.
Anyway. Yeah. Take a deep breath, be kind to people but take care of your own pressing burdens before placing anothers on your back. Even better - make sure it isn't an imagined one. I do see that as being connected to the anxiety-paralysis I stated before.