mh & capitalism, lgbtq
It sort of reminds me of the discomfort I have always had in LGBTQ spaces where people feel the need to intensely insist that queerness is destiny, which I attribute to fear: Fear that, if some aspect of queerness, however small, were a choice or a result of environment, the fight for queer rights would suffer a legitimacy crisis as a result.
mh & capitalism
So it's strange to me that people on Twitter are misrepresenting that line of thinking as just another example of neurotypical people doing that thing where they say "actually, the symptoms of [insert diagnosis] apply to everyone so your condition isn't real."
mh & capitalism
I always thought it was self-evident that a large portion of mental illnesses are detrimental largely because of the inflexibility and cruelty of capitalism.
Nobody in their right mind thinks that ADHD, for example, would magically disappear in a socialist system, but it would probably be a lot better for those who have it if we had an economic system that didn't require 60 hours of on-demand focus each week to remain housed.
I would certainly like that.
connecting this to thought
Between this and that 22-year-old who just decided to make a company on a whim and less than a year later was contracted by the city of Philadelphia to vaccinate thousands (https://whyy.org/articles/philly-fighting-covid-kicked-out-of-city-vaccine-program-after-sudden-switch-to-for-profit/)
* breath *
I'm getting more and more certain that the world would work just as good/bad, perhaps even better, if the so-called 'capitalist meritocracy' job placement system was replaced with picking names out of a hat randomly.
blatant tech-ableism that should be obvious to anyone but apparently not-so
Why can't I use this website with a keyboard.
* finds a button called accessibility mode *
Silly me to expect this website to work without me specifically telling it to work.
* links can be highlighted, but the enter key cannot be used to follow them *
uspol rant hot-take
The scientific method is not a good way of obtaining knowledge because the people who do it are Ph.D.s and therefore smart good people with good opinions who "know what they're talking about".
It is a good way of obtaining knowledge because it is iterative, open, & because reproducibility is the final word. At least, that's what I was taught in school.
I don't know if I had an actual point to make, but I think I'll stop talking now
uspol rant hot-take
But what I ~think~ I saw happen is this:
The institutions that control the science made an executive decision to not recommend mask wearing. They didn't have anything to go on (and they later admitted this, saying it was justified because "Science is iterative!"), but because they are the Gatekeepers of the Academy (of medicine, in this specific example), their opinions gained the legitimacy of actual scientific consensus, despite none actually existing.
uspol rant hot-take
It's not always a bad impulse. Obviously anthropogenic climate change is a foregone conclusion. That is "Real!" and if people don't think it is "Real!" they're simply wrong.
But I also remember that mask wearing was "Not Science!" until sometime mid-last-March, until the time at which it became "Science, Real!" at the end of March.
Were major faults found in earlier studies done on the control of respiratory droplets? I have no idea, actually.
uspol rant hot-take
When the scientific method becomes a psuedo-religion by way of the culture war --
"Believe in Science!", "Science is Real!" on rainbow-flag-adorned yard signs are the liberal version of "Jesus Saves!" highway billboards
-- the actual process & content of scientific inquiry becomes irrelevant just like the content of the Bible became irrelevant.
How the bible was taught & framed was the decision of the clergy. Likewise, I don't read review journals or subscribe to Nature.
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