A Deep Dive into The Link Between Social Movements and Mental Health

in #psychology6 years ago

In early days it was hard to get a platform to speak your mind. I'm not necessarily saying that it was scarce. With the absence of mobile communication devices, people gathered more. But when they gathered you had to get permission and stand up against a crowd and voice your opinions. This wasn't a very good spot for more introverted savant types with low social skills, they could write. But the publishing faced much scrutiny. Even speaking in front of a public had to be done with a firm grasp of points.

Things have changed greatly and now anybody can voice an opinion on the go on a smartphone. They are armed with spell checking and they don't have to face the crowd they are talking to and the crowd is massive. Nobody have to be like this anymore:

Or this:

Or even this:

A speech, a raised voice isn't a bad thing. It isn't even a good thing. You can't call it neutral either. Just as water takes the shape of the container, the speech itself takes the form of the message it spreads. A message that is spread by a human has that human's mind at its source. I came a cross a certain forum post made by an active member of the site. I won't reveal any personal details because this isn't about a specific person. This is about a specific phenomenon.


Well, I've had anxiety all my life. I don't remember a time when I didn't feel anxious about every single thing. Here are some things that I have to deal with (almost) daily:

  • I have zero self-confidence. I feel like the worst person in the world.
  • I am the quietest person I've ever seen. It's not that I don't have anything to say, it's just that I can't.
  • I hate confrontation. My reaction to aggressiveness is to get the hell out of there. And usually cry right after. Being a guy, I've been attacked (verbally, of course) several times for not wanting to fight and not being aggressive.
  • Needless to say, my relationships don't tend to go really well. I feel like I'm a drag to the other person instead of a partner.
  • Loud/outgoing people make me very nervous.
  • I need to have a bottle of water at any time. My mouth gets dry very easily and if I don't have a source of water close to me I get really nervous.
  • I can't stand doing nothing. I have to be doing something at any time or I go crazy.
  • Being amidst a crowd for too long is extremely exhausting, mentally and physically.
  • Breathing is a weird thing. Sometimes it's all fine, but sometimes I feel like I'm out of air and start to breathe as if had just run a marathon.
  • I don't have a sleep routine. I find it very hard to fall asleep.
  • I can't remember the last time I slept for 8 hours straight. Every night I wake up at least 2 or 3 times.
  • Every time I enter a different place I have to check if there are any spiders on the walls or ceiling (yeah I also have arachnophobia).
  • There are times when I get really, really sad for no reason at all.
  • If I am weird or say something stupid to someone, I'll keep thinking and being ashamed of that for the rest of my days, even if it's a really small thing.
  • And the worst thing: I know that's all bs. I can think rationally and get to the conclusion that I have no reason to feel that way. But I just can't help it. I just have to deal with those feelings, I guess.

Overall, it's really, really exhausting. It's tiring to have to deal with this stuff, it wears me out. It's like being tired after a long day of work but never being able to get some rest. And then going to another long day of work the next day, and then the next one, and every single day.


Based on his posts, this individual is a moderate/soft-SJW who is young and doesn't seem to have any expertise in any subject. In forum posts this person isn't shy or anxious about voicing opinions and making judgement (many of them had logical fallacies or they were simply wrong or even unintelligent/uneducated - based on what I saw)

I don't spend a much time interacting with people and avoid discussing anything except entertainment when I actually do come across people in real life. I love and enjoy solitude and philosophical introspection. But more indirect contact I have with these "Bastions of progress", more they seem insecure or broken from the inside.

Many of them are likely to have above quotes symptoms in life. It's like getting a flu. But if a person is perpetually in that condition, then we have to assume some serious condition. When your body is unhealthy, you are likely to get sick often and stay stick longer. I'm not a certified professional. But unhealthy minds with bad memetics leading to mental illnesses seems like a pretty reasonable thing to expect.

Aren't We Seeing Something Similar?

Masses bought into this surveillance state through the promise of security at a critical moment of a terrorist attack (which was already warned about - although I don't remember any of the intelligence reports mentioning using a plane). A person may face some bad tie in his/her life just as a community would face a terrorist attack. Now what does Marxists and SJWs promise? Free stuff, freedom from responsibility, representation, affirmative action, a community to band together, promise of prosperity and most importantly, a sense of self-worth.

Self Worth is The Best Thing To Sell To A Person Who isn't Feeling at His/Her Best

"A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life"

"The untalented are more at ease in a society that gives them valid alibis for not achieving than in one where opportunities are abundant. In an affluent society, the alienated who clamor for power are largely untalented people who cannot make use of the unprecedented opportunities for self-realization, and cannot escape the confrontation with an ineffectual self."

“Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.”

"The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness."

“A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.”

“Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.”

All quotes are from Eric Hoffer who I consider to be the Greatest American Philosopher that nobody talks about. It's wise to consider a wise man's words. The ideologies of a movement can tell what kind of people will be available to be recruited. It's easy to recruit a Libertarian or Anarcho-Capitalist to promote blockchain and cryptocurrency on social media. It'll be near impossible to recruit terrorist bombers out of Buddhist or Jain groups.

If a movement is fundamentally broken, then it would need to pluck its supporters out of broken/troubled people. Curiously enough, I came across this interesting video:

Then I also came across these finding delivered by a biased commentator:

It could be that "Liberals "express their happiness more and they are still less happy than "Conservatives" who doesn't go out of their way to indicate happiness. I can't confirm these claims as I lack experience in the matters. Being a millennial myself, I can say that my generation tends to be "Lit AF" than more stoic and reserved like Kate Beckinsale or Victoria Beckham (both are better comedians than most comedians ever would be) One thing I've also noticed among my generation is the unhealthy obsession with happiness (to be more accurate, the "Lit AF" social media happiness) draining all their energy.

Happiness is Like Understanding - You Can't Borrow It

If you simply picked up some words instead of understanding he meaning, you are guaranteed to mess up sooner or later. If all you have is a idea of happiness and Utopia taken random people's ideas on the internet, it only means that you yourself has no idea about what truly makes you happy. A person passing through a dark night may eventually come across light and goodness. But if you willingly stray away for temporary boosts of self-worth, you are only going to get yourself more lost which will then again make you more receptive to propaganda and destructive but "Happy Looking" ideologies. I'll let a Anime Character from Soul Eater that offered many comic relief scenes drop something that make sense.

How did you learn of the reality that you speak of? The entire world is governed by the reasoning of dirty-minded adults. We're able to obscure reality according to our obsessions. We're never actually shown what reality is. In this case, the reality that you speak of is a half-baked nonsense that has been altered. Trying to conform this bullshit reality into the one you want is like trying to join two pieces of a puzzle that do not fit.

  • Franken Stein
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