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Clay Shirky On Hackers and Depression: Where's the Love?
giminy writes "Clay Shirky has a thought-provoking piece on depression in the hacker community. While hackers tend to be great at internet collaboration on software projects, we often fall short when it comes to helping each other with personal problems. The evidence is only anecdotal, but there seems to be a higher than average incidence of mental health issues among hackers and internet freedom fighters. It would be great to see this addressed by our community through some outreach and awareness programs."
It would be great to see this addressed by our community through some outreach and awareness programs.
I assume these programs would be released under the GPL, or some other open-source license?
Take these SmaxoGlythKlein brand pills so you are more normal. You want to be normal, right?
Who is this guy, and why does his opinion matter?
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
So cute when people get full of themselves and take on a title like that. Sometimes the depression is when that lofty self-perception is a kite that gets snagged in one of the trees of reality.
I suspect it's also that a lot of us became computer types after neglecting human ties to some degree, and once we get old enough we either come back and learn to deal with people, or we become increasingly lonely and unbalanced as we age. Sometimes both.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Most activist communities have a higher than normal incidence of mental health issues. Personality disorders, paranoia, anger management issues, I've seen a lot of them in various political activist groups.
Why can't I mod "-1 Idiot"?
Post anything regarding how you feel on almost anyplace on the internet, and all you'll get in return is mocking and derision.
>> It would be great to see this addressed by our community through some outreach and awareness programs.
OK, who let the social worker on Slashdot? Seriously, when has "outreach" or "awareness" ever solved anything? (Urban violence? Drug use? What?)
While the evidence he discusses may be only anecdotal, the conclusion he reaches is logical.
There are certain lifestyle and behavioural patterns common among hackers which do leave us prone to depression and other mental health issues. We do tend to spend much of our time alone, engaged in solitary and sedentary pursuits of the mind which - while we may find incredibly rewarding and cool - those around us in meat-space just don't understand.
Now add in the consideration that we tend to find ourselves on the metaphorical wild frontier of the technological world we inhabit. In a place where we are carving out the basis for the new and interesting but always having to look over our shoulders in fear that some technologically inept idiot with a bunch of lawyers with come along and either crush what we have built or steal it from us.
Added to this we, due to our lifestyles, often lack the aspects of life which are typically used to de-stress and prevent depression: good diet to provide the required thinking fuel (no, caffeine and sugar aren't enough), exercise for endorphins to let us forget the shit of the world for a bit and physically present people for company so we can put things in perspective.
Finally, consider that we have both good reason to be down about things and due to our lifestyles tend to lack the things which help prevent depression... yeah, it's not a surprising conclusion.
So, what can we all do about it?
Critical thinking is part of the problem. If you've trained your mind to see the world as it actually is, then you're less likely to have comfortable illusions to fall back on. And because other people don't like having their illusions questioned, you don't have much of a social network to fall back on either.
And then when you look for help, you find that psychiatry is bullshit just like everything else. SSRI's don't actually work except for the most severely depressed. And therapy... well when your problem is that you see the world accurately, what exactly is therapy going to do?
Even if you could stop thinking critically, is that an ethical thing to do? Most of the world's problems are due to not enough critical thinking, so if you have that skill and don't use it, you're deliberately becoming part of the problem.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
When I first read this post I thought " yes, but what can be done?". I've been a programmer for 13 years. Socially maladjusted people are all over the industry. You can't force people to take a look at themselves and go get help.
However, there is the power of the example. Look how many IT types went from being obese to slim with John Walkers "The Hacker's Diet".
What is needed for high profile ubergeeks to publish their own accounts cleaning up their mental health and perhaps providing a geeky way, a "Hacker's Diet" for mental health and social skills ( beyond the ground covered by the PUA community ).
I'm sure there are at least a few ubergeeks who had mental health issues, social adjustment issues and who overcame them. It is time to publish.
One of the things I've noticed in the 'professional developer' community is that there is a bit of Jock Culture going on.
First of all, you have a business environment that tends to favor younger, fresher talent and puts a LOT of pressure on aging developers to keep up with their younger peers, many of whom are capable of (in the very, very short run) unhealthy work practices. 80 hour work weeks and back-to-back all-nighters are doable when you're 22 years old. They're fucking painful at 30, and ruinous by 35.
And it's hard to say 'No' to them because we've just come out of a nasty recession when upper management is all too eager to lay you off in favor of younger developers eager to prove themselves.
That shit WILL give you depression, anxiety, and insomnia, and all of those kill.
Second, again with the Jock Culture, developer culture tends to be dominated by hot-headed males, many of whom are eager to replicate locker-room style pecking orders in the cube farms... and that crap just doesn't work when you're developing software.
(Ex-military guys? I'm looking at you here. I've seen you do this shit. Stop it.)
Sadly, those pecking orders are often directly related to pay. The guy who manages to wedge his way into the 'Project Lead' or 'Senior Developer' slot tends to have a few more dollars attached to them. Again, the pressure results in depression, anxiety, and insomnia which are proven killers.
Shirkey's piece spends a lot of time talking about Aaron Swartz, but Aaron was a unique case of being uniquely and unfairly persecuted by multiple 800 pound gorillas. His depression and suicide *should* have been as fucking obvious to anyone who knew him as an 18 wheeler rolling the wrong way down the freeway.
The answer to these issues is, perhaps a shade ironically, the same answer we should be looking at in regards to our sudden flareup of chronic school shooting disease:
Mental Healthcare needs to be made a priority in this nation. We need to destigmatize ADMITTING mental health issues and seeking treatment for them. Also, we need to completely ditch the notion that drugs used for treatment of mental health problems cause more harm that good.
Seriously, guys, when you're having daily panic attacks, when sleep won't come for days at a time, when the world starts showing up in black and white and more black than white... it's time to talk to a doctor. And if your doctor won't help, ditch him and find a doctor who will.
Apropos captcha: Biopsy
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Kleptomania is reduced to an illness in mental health, with no particular understanding of its origins. Obviously, we as a species would not exist were it not for the many evolutionary behaviors, including this one, that allowed us to survive. In a supreme gesture of arrogance, an overstatement of an evolutionary imperative becomes a sickness. We do not understand who we are.
Alternately: What was once an evolutionary benefit is now an evolutionary impediment because the social environment itself has evolved.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.