I think it’s often hard to tell whether something is a psychological problem for an individual or instead a cultural problem with the group. Past social progress can be framed as “society used to think certain individuals had a psychological problem, but then it turned out that the society’s rules/norms/culture was the problem”. It currently seems to me that a lot of what people view as “psychological problems” are actually an individual’s way of saying “something about the culture I find myself in doesn’t seem right”. I read this post as kinda ignoring this whole issue and making it seem like it’s obvious whose problem it is, which I think avoids the hard core of these situations.
I agree with you that there are situations where the issue comes from a cultural norm rather than psychological problems. That’s one reason for the last part of this post, where we point out to generally positive and productive norms that try to avoid these cultural problems and make it possible to discuss them. (One of the issue I see in my own life with cultural norms is that they are way harder to discuss when in addition psychological problems compound them and make them feel sore and emotional). But you might be right that it’s worth highlighting more.
In a more meta point, my model is that we have moved from societies where almost everything is considered ″people’s fault” to societies where almost everything is considered “society’s fault”. And it strikes me that this is an overcorrection, and that actually many issues in day to day life and groups are just people’s problem (here drawing from my experience of realizing in many situations that I was the problem, and in other — less common — that the norms were the problem.)
I think it’s often hard to tell whether something is a psychological problem for an individual or instead a cultural problem with the group. Past social progress can be framed as “society used to think certain individuals had a psychological problem, but then it turned out that the society’s rules/norms/culture was the problem”. It currently seems to me that a lot of what people view as “psychological problems” are actually an individual’s way of saying “something about the culture I find myself in doesn’t seem right”. I read this post as kinda ignoring this whole issue and making it seem like it’s obvious whose problem it is, which I think avoids the hard core of these situations.
Thanks for the comment!
I agree with you that there are situations where the issue comes from a cultural norm rather than psychological problems. That’s one reason for the last part of this post, where we point out to generally positive and productive norms that try to avoid these cultural problems and make it possible to discuss them. (One of the issue I see in my own life with cultural norms is that they are way harder to discuss when in addition psychological problems compound them and make them feel sore and emotional). But you might be right that it’s worth highlighting more.
In a more meta point, my model is that we have moved from societies where almost everything is considered ″people’s fault” to societies where almost everything is considered “society’s fault”. And it strikes me that this is an overcorrection, and that actually many issues in day to day life and groups are just people’s problem (here drawing from my experience of realizing in many situations that I was the problem, and in other — less common — that the norms were the problem.)
I think I agree with everything in your comment. Seems like there was less disagreement here than I initially thought. Moving on… :)