It's probably also been a long time since you've encountered another bizarre trend then, the glorification and celebration of certain behavioral/personality disorders. There are quizzes you can take to find out if you have any number of new disorders, and accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers who will write folksy celebrations…
It's probably also been a long time since you've encountered another bizarre trend then, the glorification and celebration of certain behavioral/personality disorders. There are quizzes you can take to find out if you have any number of new disorders, and accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers who will write folksy celebrations of having ADHD, NPD, or any other newly identified (created?) disorder.
I think this is very much related. Gender dysphoria absolutely occurs (as I mentioned in a previous essay, I spent a lot of my adolescence feeling like I was not really a male and that life would be better if I were a woman). The idea now is that the only way to resolve those feelings is to transition, just like the idea that the only way to deal with personality disorders (such as NPD) is to embrace it as a permanent condition.
On the matter of sex and nature, I find this to be my experience as well (sex is a more basic and natural thing the closer to the land you are) but also it's much vaster out here, too. The women in this village are all the strong, can-kick-your-ass sort, all big boned in that medieval peasant way. They look more like urban "butch lesbians" than the stereotype of women. However, their femininity is hardly up for debate by anyone (they'd rip a person apart for trying to suggest they weren't 'real women,') but at the same time many of their characteristics are not considered "feminine" in the cities.
I think that's the key here. Cities (and social media is really a new kind of urbanisation) tend to categorize human experiences of sex into highly limited and refined versions (the typical "model" on any woman's fashion mag), which leaves little room for the sort of women who are the default of the countryside. Such women know how many ways there are to be a woman, while the urban current now is that if you do not conform to the official models, you must therefore actually be a man instead.
I am old enough to remember lefty activists saying that ADHD was a made up diagnosis to medicate children who refused to acquiesce to being cogs in the school machine.
Now you have a whole generation of adults checking out ADHD and going "yes, that's me, I also struggle with being a good cog in the machine" and off they go asking for medication.
I understand it, but I find it extremely depressing. It's blindingly obvious that our increasingly short attention spams are a direct result of technology, and it seems like one is supposed to ignore this elephant in the room and pretend everything in our culture is fine, if only we could all get better at being cogs...
It's probably also been a long time since you've encountered another bizarre trend then, the glorification and celebration of certain behavioral/personality disorders. There are quizzes you can take to find out if you have any number of new disorders, and accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers who will write folksy celebrations of having ADHD, NPD, or any other newly identified (created?) disorder.
I think this is very much related. Gender dysphoria absolutely occurs (as I mentioned in a previous essay, I spent a lot of my adolescence feeling like I was not really a male and that life would be better if I were a woman). The idea now is that the only way to resolve those feelings is to transition, just like the idea that the only way to deal with personality disorders (such as NPD) is to embrace it as a permanent condition.
On the matter of sex and nature, I find this to be my experience as well (sex is a more basic and natural thing the closer to the land you are) but also it's much vaster out here, too. The women in this village are all the strong, can-kick-your-ass sort, all big boned in that medieval peasant way. They look more like urban "butch lesbians" than the stereotype of women. However, their femininity is hardly up for debate by anyone (they'd rip a person apart for trying to suggest they weren't 'real women,') but at the same time many of their characteristics are not considered "feminine" in the cities.
I think that's the key here. Cities (and social media is really a new kind of urbanisation) tend to categorize human experiences of sex into highly limited and refined versions (the typical "model" on any woman's fashion mag), which leaves little room for the sort of women who are the default of the countryside. Such women know how many ways there are to be a woman, while the urban current now is that if you do not conform to the official models, you must therefore actually be a man instead.
I am old enough to remember lefty activists saying that ADHD was a made up diagnosis to medicate children who refused to acquiesce to being cogs in the school machine.
Now you have a whole generation of adults checking out ADHD and going "yes, that's me, I also struggle with being a good cog in the machine" and off they go asking for medication.
I understand it, but I find it extremely depressing. It's blindingly obvious that our increasingly short attention spams are a direct result of technology, and it seems like one is supposed to ignore this elephant in the room and pretend everything in our culture is fine, if only we could all get better at being cogs...
I noticed my own ability to focus is reduced when I spend too much time using technology. And it also comes back when I spend time away from it.
It seems such an obvious connection, yet to even mention this is to be accused of "shaming" people...