I don't know how to express this correctly, but the "I'm not allowed to be happy" sentiment seems to nearly always coexist with a sort of dehumanizing pity toward the victims of violence? A sort of "I'm not allowed to be happy because they are never happy" that pre-supposes their lives to be non-stop one-dimensional misery. Which, idk, even under the most horrific of circumstances, people are still people.
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in reply to @alyaza's post:
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i mean. i think this is a good post, and i agree with the broad point here, that self-destruction does no good for anybody and you do need to be able to disengage from this stuff and allow your mind to breathe and rest, but like. man at what point does individual mental wellness cease to even be a useful framework to deal with this stuff
being inconsolately upset and furious when faced with genocide, fascism and ecological collapse doesn't sound like a mental disorder it sounds like an incredibly natural human reaction to those circumstances. i see reports of youth mental health crises skyrocketing or transphobes posting disingenuous statistics about trans suicide rates, and. yeah i fuckin wonder why, sherlocks. another mass shooter story crosses the timeline and the framing is all about how we need mental wellness checks for firearm purchases and not the hours a day of fascist propaganda he was mainlining
there are diseases chronic and otherwise that have gastrointestinal stress as a symptom, but if everyone at a party is vomiting blood i think we move from the realm of gastrointestinal health awareness into the realm of "did someone spike the fucking punch bowl"
idk. not to sound like an anti-psychology quack but at some point it seems like these frameworks just start breaking down. i like being alive and i'd love to live long enough to see a revolution, but the it seems that the most likely outcome for my life at this point is being gunned down by fascist paramilitaries sometime in the next decade or so, so it's difficult to feel like making life goals of any sort is relevant. is there a pill or something i can take for that. will my insurance cover proletarian revolution
i don't think you've quite parsed the point that this is trying to make: it is reasonable to be upset about genocide, about ecological collapse, yes. the problem is when that makes you unable to function. you are not helping yourself or anyone else to collapse into self-defeated "i don't know what to do and i am feeling suicidal" (self-immolation is suicide, politically motivated or elsewise).
it is important to be engaged with reality, yes, and reality is often full of horrible things, yes. but it's also important to recognise that even the people suffering from horrific violence on them are still trying to live their life. they want a better future, but they're still trying to live and enjoy life in the now. and that's very important!
at the end of the day, if you can't think of a space between "freedom in the revolution" & "dying to fascists" in your future, then you need to find reasons to be willing to live through whatever comes next. Because life will keep going. If people can make beautiful things in the horrors of literally any historical tragedy, if they can find excuses to smile and be happy, then you have to believe that you and everyone else can too
in reply to @DiscoDeerDiary's post:
I feel like there's something of a vicious cycle there, even – when i'm already having trouble seeing my own life as worth living, it makes it that much harder to see the lives of people worse-off than me as worth living, which reinforces the guilt around my sense of privilege, which ...
I slammed into this from dealing with OCD and also being friends with a "I'm a better anarchist than you" sort in uni. I have since put a lot of time and energy into no longer having the impulse to destroy my wellbeing for the sake of not coming off as a heartless counter-revolutionary.
Oh god I know that kind of anarchist. No hierarchies except for the one that puts me above you.
This is a person who seems to be so thoroughly entrenched in drowning in misery. At a certain point, the thought stops counting, and the actions take precedence. Things like: their partner having to handle this, with someone who does not see this as a negative thing. what sounds like alienation of their friends because they think to themselves they do not relate to them, now. The ideation of martyrism, in general. Its all bleh.
Now, whether this is more self inflicted, or a simple inability to stop consuming media, idk. the latter is sort of happening to everyone -- all bad topics are blared and reinforced with the seeming hope to get everyone to start acting like this, it feels like.
But you are right that they need an intervention. The problem is, they have to accept it, and if they've got this sort of misery martyr complex, that might just make them double down, on everything.