Relatedly, I’m not keen on the framing of this as “a phenomenon that can adversely affect communities”.
Imagine an article that begins “This is an attempt to describe a phenomenon that can adversely affect communities. Sometimes some of the cells in a person’s body will start dividing uncontrollably and refusing to die. This can make them very sick and require a lot of expensive treatment, and typically they die anyway. It can cost a community a hell of a lot of money.”
That wouldn’t be incorrect but, to me, it would feel somehow indecent, as if the primary thing that’s bad about someone getting an incurable cancer is the cost to other people.
And it seems to me that there’s something similar about writing as if the primary thing that’s bad about some people being persistently wretched in ways that don’t improve much when others try to help them is the cost to those other people.
And then the label you attach to these persistently wretched people—“misery pit”—is one that on the face of it clearly describes an inanimate thing rather than a person. (At one point there’s even a contrast between “non-misery-pit humans” and “misery pits”; note no “humans” in the latter.)
Again, none of this is exactly incorrect. If some people in your community are unfixably miserable, that is indeed bad for the community. It may be helpful: perhaps “keep away from unfixably miserable people”, which is implicitly the recommendation here, is the best advice that can actually be given. But, still, something about it feels indecent to me, as if there ought to be another way of expressing the thing that gives the same advice but doesn’t quite so insistently dehumanize the people it’s talking about.
Relatedly, I’m not keen on the framing of this as “a phenomenon that can adversely affect communities”.
Imagine an article that begins “This is an attempt to describe a phenomenon that can adversely affect communities. Sometimes some of the cells in a person’s body will start dividing uncontrollably and refusing to die. This can make them very sick and require a lot of expensive treatment, and typically they die anyway. It can cost a community a hell of a lot of money.”
That wouldn’t be incorrect but, to me, it would feel somehow indecent, as if the primary thing that’s bad about someone getting an incurable cancer is the cost to other people.
And it seems to me that there’s something similar about writing as if the primary thing that’s bad about some people being persistently wretched in ways that don’t improve much when others try to help them is the cost to those other people.
And then the label you attach to these persistently wretched people—“misery pit”—is one that on the face of it clearly describes an inanimate thing rather than a person. (At one point there’s even a contrast between “non-misery-pit humans” and “misery pits”; note no “humans” in the latter.)
Again, none of this is exactly incorrect. If some people in your community are unfixably miserable, that is indeed bad for the community. It may be helpful: perhaps “keep away from unfixably miserable people”, which is implicitly the recommendation here, is the best advice that can actually be given. But, still, something about it feels indecent to me, as if there ought to be another way of expressing the thing that gives the same advice but doesn’t quite so insistently dehumanize the people it’s talking about.