Omaha Red Sox wrote:Stupid psycho-babble. People so consumed with themselves and their damn feelings. Contribute to society, you pieces of crap, and you'll feel like you belong somewhere. Man this pisses me off.
I don't think it has to do with them not contributing. After reading the article and some books on this topic, it's more about issues like control and expressing hurt. This happens amoung jr. high students around here. It spreads by word of mouth. They find out someone else tries it so they do. I can't imagine cutting myself to make myself feel better, but if you listen to the Emimen song "Stan", even he writes "Sometimes I even cut myself to see how much it bleeds. It's like adrenaline, the pain is such a sudden rush for me." They need help, but I don't think it's all touchy-feely-tree hugging stuff.
My point is, is that people are so focussed on themselves and how they feel all the time. That's psycho-babble. I understand that there are people that can realistically be considered 'depressed', but don't you think that the word is tossed around a bit much? If kids had some self-worth I would imagine they would find more constructive things to do than cut themselves.
Where do you suggest these kids find their self-worth?
Sports, art, reading, writing, work, poetry, music, fishing, etc. There are so many things that kids just don't experience, because they don't find them stimulating. They've been given a TV to sit in front of since they were born.
People shouldn't find self-worth because of the things they can or can't do. Outside factors change and can cause a lot of problems too. If a person is only valuable because of what they can do, then just as their perfomance will vary, so will their self worth. Their self worth needs to be built on more than outside activities IMO. I'm not valuable because of my job. I don't have more self-worth because I win my fantasy baseball league. I have value and purpose for other reasons and those don't ever change.
I didn't suggest those things implying that one must be successful at them. Simply doing something gives one self-worth. Being a part of something. Getting blood flowing or simply feeling a sense of accomplishment, whether you created a masterpiece or raked your yard. Pretty simple philosophy, but it worked for quite a while before kids decided they didn't need to exercise their muscles and minds.
Omaha Red Sox wrote:Stupid psycho-babble. People so consumed with themselves and their damn feelings. Contribute to society, you pieces of crap, and you'll feel like you belong somewhere. Man this pisses me off.
I don't think it has to do with them not contributing. After reading the article and some books on this topic, it's more about issues like control and expressing hurt. This happens amoung jr. high students around here. It spreads by word of mouth. They find out someone else tries it so they do. I can't imagine cutting myself to make myself feel better, but if you listen to the Emimen song "Stan", even he writes "Sometimes I even cut myself to see how much it bleeds. It's like adrenaline, the pain is such a sudden rush for me." They need help, but I don't think it's all touchy-feely-tree hugging stuff.
My point is, is that people are so focussed on themselves and how they feel all the time. That's psycho-babble. I understand that there are people that can realistically be considered 'depressed', but don't you think that the word is tossed around a bit much? If kids had some self-worth I would imagine they would find more constructive things to do than cut themselves.
Where do you suggest these kids find their self-worth?
Sports, art, reading, writing, work, poetry, music, fishing, etc. There are so many things that kids just don't experience, because they don't find them stimulating. They've been given a TV to sit in front of since they were born.
People shouldn't find self-worth because of the things they can or can't do. Outside factors change and can cause a lot of problems too. If a person is only valuable because of what they can do, then just as their perfomance will vary, so will their self worth. Their self worth needs to be built on more than outside activities IMO. I'm not valuable because of my job. I don't have more self-worth because I win my fantasy baseball league. I have value and purpose for other reasons and those don't ever change.
I didn't suggest those things implying that one must be successful at them. Simply doing something gives one self-worth. Being a part of something. Getting blood flowing or simply feeling a sense of accomplishment, whether you created a masterpiece or raked your yard. Pretty simple philosophy, but it worked for quite a while before kids decided they didn't need to exercise their muscles and minds.
Agreed. You need to get out of your head and into activity. Truthfully that is alot of the times the only thing that works. Doing something is the key. Anything, other then cutting yourself of course. Even doing chores, taking a walk, etc.. is better then nothing.
The problem is people with severe depression/anxiety can't bring themselves to do these things.
Anyways anyone with these disorders should see a Psycologist.
Omaha Red Sox wrote: I didn't suggest those things implying that one must be successful at them. Simply doing something gives one self-worth. Being a part of something. Getting blood flowing or simply feeling a sense of accomplishment, whether you created a masterpiece or raked your yard. Pretty simple philosophy, but it worked for quite a while before kids decided they didn't need to exercise their muscles and minds.
When did this change happen? We had a big problem with this kind of stuff at a high school (working class community) where I taught over 10 years ago, and there were self-abusers in my high school as well, some 20 years ago (also blue collar community).
I bet there are plenty of cases of this behavior going back many years.
I also think you are making too many generalizations. We don't know anything about the population in this study except that they are a random sampling of Ivy league students. About the only thing you can assume is that they had some degree of wealth, though that's not necessarily true, either. It's not all the 'slackers.'
It would be interesting to check the experiment by surveying students at a midwestern, land grant type of university to see if they have a similar rate of self indulgent auto-vandalism.
Admittedly it seems like students are a bit tamer these days than I recall from my experiences in the mid-80s but most of our time was spent looking for beer blasts or, as the Beastie Boys put it, another word for pirate treasure. If we got a bit down, we could get blizzoed and head to our basement full of strobelights and hit beer bottles w/ golf clubs for a while.
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by Omaha Red Sox » Tue Jun 06, 2006 5:23 pm 
