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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."
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.
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.
In all seriousness, there seems to be correlation between intelligence and tendency for depression.
It could be that being a hacker and being depressed are just two end products of being smarter than the average bear.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
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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As a former art student, I used to see the same thing in the halls of art school. Students were very creative, full of self-inflated egos ready to do the next big thing. The problem was, we all had our own reality distortion field. Another problem: lots of depression going on, resulting in poor people-relationships. Now that I've been out of school for nearly a decade, the artists who "make it" aren't necessarily the most talented, but are the ones who can relate to people and gallery owners. In other words, there's a salesmanship aspect to their pitch - some people call it charisma. I don't mean that in a bad way, but they've come to understand other people's emotions and some are even married. I didn't become a big shot artist but I have an office job.
Artists get this reputation of being lovers or some crap like that, but trust me, we don't retain relationships. On a final note, I don' t consider wannabe geeks or emo/ hipster kids to be 'artists' in my above commentary, but I think they have different issues to work out.
Actually it makes perfect sense. The more intelligence, the sooner a person will come to realize basic facts about the world, such as:
1. It is filled with injustice all around. Some of it can be fixed, most of it can not be fixed.
2. Most of what can be fixed will never actually be fixed, due to reasons such as status-quo and conflicts of interest, corruption, bribes, lobbying and differing ideologies.
3. Society has become so huge and complex that it is impossible for a single individual to effect meaningful change in a lot of issues, unless one becomes a professional politician, in which case, go back to point number two. Never mind that most intellectuals are not suited to this role due to the different skill-sets required (mainly social ones instead of analytical) The alternatives are extremes like blowing yourself or other people up, or more mildly, DDOSing the organisation that sparked your ire, or protesting by camping on the street. Either one is more likely to harm your cause than help it as people will either call you a 'terrorist', 'immature script-kiddie' or (soon to be) 'homeless bum who should be working instead of protesting'. Thus the hacker individually is powerless.
This comment turned out longer than I thought it would.