When I say that excessive wealth causes mental illness, I’m not trying to pathologize or make some sort of poetic statement, I’m being very literal. You begin to lose touch with reality when you don’t have to rely on other people for survival in any way. - ThreadSky

emilydwarfield.bsky.social • 16 days ago

When I say that excessive wealth causes mental illness, I’m not trying to pathologize or make some sort of poetic statement, I’m being very literal. You begin to lose touch with reality when you don’t have to rely on other people for survival in any way.

Reposted from Dr. Émile P. Torres

Silicon Valley is run by people who genuinely think the world as we know it is going to end in the next few decades. Many also WANT this to happen: they WANT the biological world to be replaced by a new digital world. They WANT "posthumans" to take the place of humans. A 🧵:

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gabbklein.bsky.social•16 days ago

I think part of what keeps ALL of us from becoming some type of monster are simply the continual constraints of interdependence and available resources. Like, if we COULD be worse people with no consequences -- we probably would be.
https://bsky.app/profile/gabbklein.bsky.social/post/3lpewepvlnk2u

emilydwarfield.bsky.social•16 days ago

Literally though! And not just worse people but certifiably insane. Like I’m pretty sure this is why solitary confinement is a form of torture— your mental health degrades rapidly without regular interpersonal interaction.

gabbklein.bsky.social•16 days ago

So much of the proper functioning of our body-minds depends on the input we get. No language exposure? We won't learn to talk. No microbial exposure? Our immune system won't learn how to protect us. It makes perfect sense to me that no limits or consequences would cause us to go haywire.

daysnotlived.dftba.social•16 days ago

y'all are cooking in this thread fr

emilydwarfield.bsky.social•16 days ago

Not to say that the trauma of poverty can’t also awaken your worst impulses or erode your mental health. It’s just that it happens in a different way.

emilydwarfield.bsky.social•16 days ago

I think about this probably like once a month, but there’s a scene in the show Pose where Electra, noted misanthrope who also happens to be a Black trans survival sex worker, is talking to a wealthy client, and remarks how lucky he is that he can choose to be alone.

emilydwarfield.bsky.social•16 days ago

And to an extent, like, she’s absolutely right, but you also consider who her character would be if she were able to make that same choice and could tell all the girls to fuck off, and it’s like “Oh. It’s good you have people in some way, actually.”

dumb.baby•16 days ago

many people will interact with others as little as possible if given the choice but it is actually very good for us, individually and as a society

emilydwarfield.bsky.social•16 days ago

Imagine having no one in your life who cares about you enough to tell you to shut the fuck up. You’ve decided you can afford not to love, and then you wake up and you’re Elon Musk. Just as grim as the trauma of poverty imho, albeit in a very different way. And yet far more of a choice.

emilydwarfield.bsky.social•16 days ago

Practicing gratitude can feel obnoxious when you’re in a particularly bad place, but this is truly one thing the rest of us can always be thankful for: someone will tell us to shut the fuck up, and if we don’t want to listen, we’ll experience consequences for that instead of turning into Sam Altman

emilydwarfield.bsky.social•16 days ago

You see this to a degree w people who have more reasonable levels of wealth, even if they do still have real human connection. They forget how the world works, bc they’re just never forced to think about it. They’re not just “out of touch” with the common man but with the most common shared reality

raccoonmoose.bsky.social•16 days ago

This has happened to my sister, who works for BigLaw in DC. She’s used to a certain level of convenience around her and she is baffled when it doesn’t exist. No sis you can’t get an Uber in Grand Rapids at 2 am, everyone is asleep because it’s the Midwest

emilydwarfield.bsky.social•16 days ago

Now when I meet a rich person with no self-awareness about how they come off to working class folks, I want to be like, “You just dropped a mention of your personal chef into a conversation with no other commentary. Are you ok? Do you need a welfare check?”

wasteof.technology•16 days ago

Classics from the archives

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