There’s another side to this coin: the exultation of and obsession with trauma. There is an unstated and unnamed assumption in modern American culture: that you have experienced trauma, and more importantly that trauma is what has constructed your personality.
This view has _some_ merit, but has been taken in uncritically as a fundamental assumption of life. Forcing yourself to imagine traumas, or constantly revisit legitimate traumas is deeply unhealthy. There was a time when no one could talk about their psychological issues, but now the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction: we has been discussing our trauma to a greater and greater degree for the past 30 years, but mental health outcomes are only getting worse. I’m undecided if this is casual, but there is no evidence it’s _helping_.
>There is an unstated and unnamed assumption in modern American culture: that you have experienced trauma, and more importantly that trauma is what has constructed your personality
This is not "American culture", it's American leftism. Almost no conservative American thinks like that. And it's dying out by itself because American liberals aren't having enough children and views/values are partially heritable.
> The USA is the land of trauma, multifaceted and pervasive, and
telling people to touch grass or go to their local bar won't stop it
nor heal the damage.
You might find something resonates in this essay [0]
I don't think it's unique to US America. It's well documented via
writers like de Toqueville and Putnam, but the same phenomena are
there in the UK, in Australia, and elsewhere.
Technology lets us see ourselves, and we are quite sickened by how
we treat one another.
everdrive|1 year ago
This view has _some_ merit, but has been taken in uncritically as a fundamental assumption of life. Forcing yourself to imagine traumas, or constantly revisit legitimate traumas is deeply unhealthy. There was a time when no one could talk about their psychological issues, but now the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction: we has been discussing our trauma to a greater and greater degree for the past 30 years, but mental health outcomes are only getting worse. I’m undecided if this is casual, but there is no evidence it’s _helping_.
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
logicchains|1 year ago
This is not "American culture", it's American leftism. Almost no conservative American thinks like that. And it's dying out by itself because American liberals aren't having enough children and views/values are partially heritable.
nonrandomstring|1 year ago
You might find something resonates in this essay [0]
I don't think it's unique to US America. It's well documented via writers like de Toqueville and Putnam, but the same phenomena are there in the UK, in Australia, and elsewhere.
Technology lets us see ourselves, and we are quite sickened by how we treat one another.
[0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/radical-disbelief-and-its-ca...