Silver lining to the psychiatry cloud - reduced human population good for the planet

[whatisbrain]

This may only cheer up forum members who are concerned about the environment, and may be a downer for everyone else.

 

It recently crossed my mind that if one cares about non-human creatures and the environment, it may be logical to welcome psychiatry's role in shortening people's lifespans and wrecking some people's reproductive systems, slowing down human population growth a bit.

 

Sounds dark, but when I am facing the frustration of seeing my best friends' children or my own mother start their way on the prescription path to an early grave, thinking of it as a possible gain for the planet calms me down a bit. Even helps when grieving my own physical and cognitive deterioration.

[canaanstongue01]

this is gross. it is very possible to be pro-human and pro-environment. our world is messed up because of the same promethean march toward “progress” that lead to things like ssri’s in the first place—a belief that nature is something to be conquered and mastered. i don’t really come on this site or the internet in general to argue, but wow… being pro-depopulation is a new one for me. 

[ChessieCat]

1 hour ago, whatisbrain said:

This may only cheer up forum members who are concerned about the environment, and may be a downer for everyone else.

 

It recently crossed my mind that if one cares about non-human creatures and the environment, it may be logical to welcome psychiatry's role in shortening people's lifespans and wrecking some people's reproductive systems, slowing down human population growth a bit.

 

Sounds dark, but when I am facing the frustration of seeing my best friends' children or my own mother start their way on the prescription path to an early grave, thinking of it as a possible gain for the planet calms me down a bit. Even helps when grieving my own physical and cognitive deterioration.

 

 

If it was your partner, parents, children who died or were directly affected because of this I think you would look at this very differently.

[hypnagogue]

As much as my brain likes to opine that the world might be a better place if I personally did not exist in it, I think the problems we're seeing--everything from the destruction of the environment to the (mis)treatment of "individual" mental health issues--are systemic and wouldn't be solved just by having fewer people around. No source on hand atm but I've seen studies about how the planet could sustain the current human population easily if resources were more equitably and sustainably managed and not being hoarded/misused by corporations for a profit. I'd imagine that most of us feel pretty powerless at the mercy of a socioeconomic system that views everything, including people, as disposable resources whose only value is in being exploited by and for capital. So many of my friends and loved ones barely have what they need to get by, materially and otherwise, but their anxiety and despair are pathologized, isolated, and seen as a personality defect rather than understood as a natural response to hostile circumstances. Society is cruel and sick, and while I don't doubt that mental health care as it exists now has, however imperfectly, helped some people some of the time, it's not capable of addressing the issues that are making people miserable in the first place.

[MermaidsCantCry]

On 5/2/2022 at 3:20 PM, ChessieCat said:

 

 

If it was your partner, parents, children who died or were directly affected because of this I think you would look at this very differently.

OP literally said it was his family...
why are you a mod if you're unable to detach from your own emotional reactions enough to even reply to what was actually said and not your emotional interpretation of what was said?

as a mod you should have deleted the message calling OP gross, not jumping on the dogpile

I can see this is not a safe forum to be in and i regret giving it my attention.
 

[whatisbrain]

Thanks for your support, MermaidsCantCry, and in fact your careful reading did catch the fact that psychiatric drugging was and is happening to my close family members, namely my mother and her brother, so I when I referred to a "silver lining", it was part of me trying to cope with my inability to protect my own mom and uncle. In any case, I did not feel personally attacked - I knew most people would not find my "silver lining" appealing, but I hoped at least a few might find it a little bit useful in their own coping toolbox. Since then, a lot of new information has come to my attention, and I have mostly stopped caring about the effect of population growth on the environment.

[whatisbrain]

Oh, when I thanked MermaidsCantCry for their support, I didn't mean to agree with their statement adressed to ChessieCat

 

"as a mod you should have deleted the message calling OP gross"

 

I think free speech would definitely be incompatible with mods deleting a statement in that fashion.

 

Also, ChessieCat is both a mod and a member who is entitled to their opinions and reactions, although one way to try to differentiate those roles is how Steve McCrea at madinamerica.com mentions when he posts whether he is acting in a member role or in his role as a mod.

 

In fact, the task of moderating a similarly themed mailing list or forum was one of the ideas proposed by my supervisor at a different website, in her list of proposals as to how I could contribute my volunteer time to their organization. Here is our exchange:

 

MY SUPERVISOR WROTE:

 

We have a neglected underdeveloped area: there is nobody to manage or moderate discussion lists. We used to boast many but that was when we had <REDACTED> as Executive Director who worked 50-60 hour days.

Since he left, we have not enjoyed even a single robust discussion list in some time for lack of one or two individuals to moderate such a list so if you enjoy facilitating or engaging people in discussions, sometimes on controversial topics, this may be a good fit.

We own quite a few domains and websites, (I could send you a comprehensive list) many of these accounts have unused tools, such as the ability to launch a discussion list using our domain and add/remove anyone we see fit. We could also use an existing list.

With a little promotion, if we breathed life back into at least one discussion list or created a new one such as <REDACTED> (the list could be based on a geographic range in alignment with your gift for languages or it could be a discussion group for activism or peer support or ECT or anything). If the topic was universal enough for the majority of our supporters, we could even use inclusion on the discussion list as a 'membership benefit' something that we used to do but the practice fell by the wayside due to low staffing. Moderating a discussion list successfully and effectively is a big commitment of time and effort.

 

MY (WHATISBRAIN'S) ANSWER:

 

Since I only look at a screen for an hour or two a day, I probably can't keep up with offensive comments, and also this kind of moderation is usually something that makes people angry at the list or at the social network. I would probably err on the side of allowing all comments, short of ones that had a concrete plan for criminal violence, or some comment that opened <REDACTED> up to legal liability. That means I would not feel the need to censor things like Holocaust denial, jokes about rape, or personal addresses of a doctor or judge that someone might dislike. Overall, I would say that when people on the internet disagree, this type of moderation task in general is one that is the biggest challenge for even very wealthy and well-staffed organizations, such as Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and complaint resolution departments at Uber, AirBnB, Yelp reviews, and Google reviews.