This one is really amazing, because for a very long time “narcissist” was used casually by people who probably didn’t know it was a clinical disorder. Then, r*dditors specifically made sure everyone knew it was a clinical term and now everyone is a psychologist whenever someone does something bad in an interpersonal relationship / disagrees with them online.

There’s a whole ass cottage industry of people making videos explaining how to survive narcissists. It’s ridiculous. Is someone abusing you? The abuser must be a narcissist! Do they not fit the normal symptoms of NPD? Then they’re clearly a covert narcissist!

Sounds like that someone could be judging for allism as well.

I mean

That whole quote about good people always being beautiful no matter how they look physically, because the goodness shines thru or whatever. I hate it. Pure lookism.

Using words like “s*upid” also often have this very misantropic undertone that translates so easily to fascism which I’ve become more and more aware of.

I was watching a driving related video yesterday and YT recommended some compilation videos under it with headers like “S*upid people in cars” and similar with even worse words that are used in the same way. And I found out I want nothing to do with that anymore.

It has an air of superiority to it, the people watching them and laughing at others get to imagine they are better than those [insert slur] people. It’s a tool of othering through and through and very normalized.

Once we start to unlearn it, it only then becomes clear how normalized it really is. And it is a form of supremacist thinking.

Unfortunately psychiatry has very much been a tool of oppression and the mainstream use of words that come from this system of othering are manifestations of the othering being fully mainstream.

It very easily leads to eugenics. If the person is doing something bad because they are mentally ill, and there is no other reason, then only getting rid of the mentally ill can fix society.

Same, i switched to using “wild” instead

I think AA has completely ruined treatment for alcohol use disorder. I mean for god’s sake we call it “alcoholism” because of them which sounds like an ideology

You said much the same as I did but in better wording. Agreed, these PPB radical centrists on hexbear really changed me

Did I get the word “wild” from this site? Ive been wondering why I started saying it so much

As an addict this sounds a lot like addiction. My addiction is a disease I didn’t choose and it makes me hurt people but that doesn’t mean not hurting people anymore isn’t completely on me and I’m to blame if it keeps happening

I’d look at material reasons as the reason some have an inability to feel solidarity for others. Individualism, competition culture, pathriarcy, racism, imperialism etc. are the ideological structures that uphold capitalism. There are countless ways the superstructure pits people against each other and alienates them from each other. There have been studies on how difficult it is to organize a workplace in the US for example and the reason is speculated to be individualism and competition culture. Not some inherent trait in people who live in the US.

What is an isn’t a pathology should imo be defined as something that would exist in a person regardless of society, the conditions we all live in. A lot of things now framed as “mental deficiency” would probably not exist, at least not as they currently do. Empathy would probably look pretty different. The difference in how different cultures view psychosis is an example of this, in Western culture a mind like this is framed as deficient.

I would also be careful with a word like deficiency in the first place, because it frames a difference as something broken, wrong or abnormal. Framing some as deficient in any way is a logic of capitalism, it translates to an inability to be exploited by the capitalist and therefore as expendable.

Even bad is a loaded word and inevitably moralist so this is a difficult discussion to have. I’d just think about how a lot of the norms and understandings of good or “normal” we have exist purely to uphold capitalism and liberalism. Psychiatry and as a result psychology were historically used to control the deviant Others. They still often are.

This is why I’d be cautious of pathologizing “bad” or “lack of empathy” because this easily turns against for example autistic comrades who show empathy in a different way. Or against minorities who refuse to show normative liberal performative empathy when a ghoul dies.

To summarize my incoherent thoughts, I don’t think we should attempt to explain bad behaviour with the same tools that the ruling class uses to do that, aka by pathologizing them. Because that would be like claiming that some just don’t have empathy as a trait instead of understanding that we live in a society of deep alienation and individualism.

No, I used to say I thought the problem with reactionaries was a lack of empathy, but then the tankiest most based and sweetest comrade I knew told me that I’m just wrong. He said doesn’t have empathy either, but he doesn’t need empathy to know that everyone deserves to be taken care of and to have strong Communist ideals. I apologized for being wrong, and learned an interesting lesson.

It got me thinking, and I realized that accusing fascists of lacking empathy is barking up the wrong tree anyway. “Oh, they don’t care about the victims of their wars because they lack empathy” well then why do they feel sad when they see a stray dog? They’re just racists who consider brown people to be beneath animals. That’s not a lack of empathy, that’s racism.

Being incapable of empathy is indeed a disability, but most people aren’t incapable of empathy, they just shut themselves off from it.