a large, fruit-eating bat.

i was given a gift of a large lump sum of money from my grandparents today for a “congrats on getting accepted as a funded PhD fellow at a prestigious science school” thing.

i can’t also help, though, that it is also my grandfather saying “hey so don’t fuck this up like your aunt did, who also went to Purdue to pursue a PhD and then got too mentally ill disappointed us all and now we pretend she doesn’t exist, despite her living with us”

the pressure to not be crazy in my family is sometimes really unbearable considering i am all but not-crazy

“Laura, I never said anything to imply otherwise. However, I don’t think anyone should accept a ‘chronic’ condition without retaining hope for a cure. The rate of progress is too high to give up on that. 10 to 20 years down the road, we may not only know the exact causes of all these things, but be able to eliminate them readily. To be honest, the idea that something like chronic depression must be battled for life… is depressing.  I’m not depressive, and I am optimistic that cures will be found, not just for some (as with CBT), but for all. Medical science will see to that.”

— SOME ASSHOLE

TW: Ableism, slurs

youarenotyou:

thefremen:

“If you ask whether the dominant culture is so destructive because most of its members are insane, suffering from a form of complex PTSD; or whether the dominant culture is so destructive because its materialistic system of social rewards-overvaluing the acquisition of wealth and power and undervaluing relationship-leads inevitably to hatred and atrocity; or whether the physical resource requirements of cities necessitate widespread violence and destruction. The answer is yes.”

—

Derrick Jensen, Endgame (via cultureofresistance)

I suffer from complex PTSD and am neither “insane” nor destructive. The destructive people in this system do not have mental illness, nor do they suffer from any kind of “stupidity” or mental deficiency. They are highly intelligent, motivated, able people who just so happen to have hopelessly broken belief systems.

It may be easier to shrug off harmful behavior as a result of some kind of mental illness. It might make it easier knowing there is some unmistakable distinguishing trait that differentiates them from you. But the facts state otherwise. Most mentally ill people are, if anything, only harmful to themselves. It’s the “normal” ones you have to worry about. (See also: Hitler, other dictators and war criminals.)

God this stuff (original quote) really grates on my nerves. I just want to reblog to show people why I hate Jenson (well, for this shit and also primitivism because UGH, but that’s another post) and also because this is exactly what I’m talking about when I’m ranting and raving about the ableism in the radical left. It is not okay to say shit like this (and people definitely say it about Hitler and other corrupt historical figures). Capitalism, corporatism, selfishness, bigotry, violence… it is not okay to associate these things with mental illness, or to blame them on mental illness. Nor is it accurate; Jensen clearly has absolutely zero knowledge as to what complex-PTSD actually entails, and, like most people, simply associates PTSD with a general sense of being “crazy”, which, aside from totally dehumanizing the individual in question, culturally means everything from hallucinations and delusions to total irrational thinking and uncontrollable dangerous behavior. This sort of thing is drilled into us, over and over and over: the dominant culture does it and then subcultures do it as well. Let’s blame all of the pitfalls of civilization on mental illness! Let’s regard anything we dislike as a consequence of mental illness! It trivializes actual mental illness while simultaneously contributing to the widespread socialization of ableist thinking.

yeah, I used to read a lot of Derrick Jensen and I still think he has had important things to say (particularly in critiquing capitalism and abuse culture) but he fucks up so much that I really don’t like him at all anymore. I’ve also emailed him a couple times and he only responds when I am in complete agreement with him—when I brought up the very problematic things he lets be said on his forums about trans* people he ignored me completely and never responded. Ugh.

I do think civilization (especially industrial civ) is destructive and problematic, but conflating that with mental illness is unacceptable.

(Source: socialuprooting)