May 1, 2025
a large portion of my present time is spent imagining the future. the reason for this is that i am the kind of person who enjoys being active. to be happy in the future, i am obligated to make sure that events will occur. i.e., i act in ways in the present which will benefit my future self. this is not to say that i act in perfect harmony between present and future; sometimes i find myself at the time of an event more tired than expected. given that i am usually happier having done something than languish at home, i will usually force myself to do said event anyway.
this is relevant in the context of the folk-pathology of the modern psychiatric patient. mental disorders such as anxiety, adhd, and autism (to name a few) are frames as an intrinsic element to the self which intervenes and prevents the patient from acting in a way which benefits themselves or others. imagine the excuse that adhd prevents one from getting into a routine. or that one’s anxiety prevents them from taking tests. or that one’s mismatch between their gendered perception of self and others’ of them prevents them from exiting the house. all of these can make it more difficult for the patient to complete their task; nevertheless, obligations remain.
the hours which pass by make the days of our lives and the longer one remains paralyzed by their brain, the drabber the quilt of time looks. if nothing else, there is an obligation to do what one can with all of their will and effort. any construction of the modern psyche which enables self-defeatist thinking is one which leaves the patient worse off. thus, the modern folk beliefs of mental health are likely bad for us.
it is difficult to believe that our brains are much different than those of the generations before us. i’ve talked to grandmothers with anxiety, elders with dysphoria, and so on. most of them have not been plagued with this modern defeatism. they’ve lived and continue to live their lives well, even if there is bruising and tenderness around the edges.
one retort here would be that these are the ones that survived – of course they had better outcomes. well, if you too want to live, get cracking.
another contention is that our generation is uniquely saddled with challenges (to take three sub-arguments: phones, worldwide crisis, and the economy). as for phones, you can simply not engage with them. for economic crises, many of us think that gen Z/millenials’ positions are uniquely precarious. if you think this is true, look up the term “stagflation”. and for all the other crises – the world has always been ending. every second a birth and death and war and relaxation. “how can we live in times like these?” in the same way as all others who lives in other times lived. we persist for generations.
extrapolating, we do not live in uniquely good or bad times; each time is a set of distinct factors which confer incomparable advantages on its inhabitants, and the next point in time is a path-based function. we are agents in our time period; we ought to set up conditions for improved future times (at least for our benefit).
the current defeatism i see in groups which ought to be planning for brighter futures feels to be mixed with this folk psychology. if we cannot even act in accordance with our future selves, how can we with our future society? it is much easier to imagine a diminished future self as it is a society, as the work it takes is higher.
as we must avoid the popular defeatism of folk psychology, we must do the same for our imagined futures. there are better ways to live and we must act to build them. a key word is act. i.e., not remain in the realm of imagination. i want to hear, materially, how you’re working to make the world better, not how you’re building “psychological constructs for embodiment”. things like that are important. they’re also mainly for the self, not society.
over the past year i’ve gravitated toward those doing actual work, whether that be food not bombs, volunteering, writing, campaigning, etc. versus those who are mainly in their heads. if you cannot act in your own interest, how can i expect you to act in the interest of a larger group? and if you can’t imagine a better future for yourself (and execute that), why should i trust society in your hands?