I agree that I think it’s mostly unhealthy but I worry that when I say things like this, I am speaking from a place of privilege. Like it’s easy enough for me to form human relationships given that I have many interests and so at least one of my interests will usually intersect with another person’s, but I think about girls who may have seriously crippling anxiety so that the only time they can leave the house is to see their therapist, or people who may have so many tics and behavioural quirks that it’s genuinely hard for them to be in public without feeling so deeply self-conscious that it makes something as simple as ‘where to put your hands’ feel like the most cognitively loaded task.
And in those cases I think it would be really hard to form human connection, and I feel somewhat elitist taking a position of if you can’t experience those connections with humans, then you shouldn’t get to have them at all. This is a really big debate for myself internally, how to think about the cost-benefit analysis here.
I think the “somewhat unhealthy” frame deals with this nicely. For example, one time I got very sick and my throat was so sore that I stopped eating because it hurt too much. After some testing I found that the only thing in the house I could eat without wanting to die was ice cream, so I spent two days eating nothing but ice cream. I knew this was somewhat unhealthy, but it was also much healthier than spending two days eating nothing, so I’m pretty satisfied with the decision. I am also satisfied with the subsequent decision to stop eating ice cream as soon as I could stand to, which I might not have done if I didn’t know it was unhealthy (the all ice cream diet is delicious).
It is quite easy to say that things are bad without saying that people shouldn’t get to have them.
I agree that I think it’s mostly unhealthy but I worry that when I say things like this, I am speaking from a place of privilege. Like it’s easy enough for me to form human relationships given that I have many interests and so at least one of my interests will usually intersect with another person’s, but I think about girls who may have seriously crippling anxiety so that the only time they can leave the house is to see their therapist, or people who may have so many tics and behavioural quirks that it’s genuinely hard for them to be in public without feeling so deeply self-conscious that it makes something as simple as ‘where to put your hands’ feel like the most cognitively loaded task.
And in those cases I think it would be really hard to form human connection, and I feel somewhat elitist taking a position of if you can’t experience those connections with humans, then you shouldn’t get to have them at all. This is a really big debate for myself internally, how to think about the cost-benefit analysis here.
I think the “somewhat unhealthy” frame deals with this nicely. For example, one time I got very sick and my throat was so sore that I stopped eating because it hurt too much. After some testing I found that the only thing in the house I could eat without wanting to die was ice cream, so I spent two days eating nothing but ice cream. I knew this was somewhat unhealthy, but it was also much healthier than spending two days eating nothing, so I’m pretty satisfied with the decision. I am also satisfied with the subsequent decision to stop eating ice cream as soon as I could stand to, which I might not have done if I didn’t know it was unhealthy (the all ice cream diet is delicious).
It is quite easy to say that things are bad without saying that people shouldn’t get to have them.