Connecting the dots

"When she was young, Kate's mother pressured her away from eating unhealthily. If Kate asked for dessert, she would respond 'Are you sure about that, Kate?' and Kate would drop the issue."

It's implied that Kate's mother was a major factor in Kate's eventual development of anorexia. The authors point out that such a strict eating lifestyle must have damaged Kate's already-low self esteem (her sister and mother were thinner and prettier), and as such, may have led to her eating disorder several years down the road.

They cite a few other small, similar incidences, where Kate's appearance was called into question by people she loved. And these little events, they claim, were what contributed to her anorexia.

But I call bullshit, thanks to a little thing called confirmation bias.

Because when you've already seen the outcome, it's a hell of a lot easier to connect the dots.

This incident at age 6 was her first incidence of eating-related stress.  
Her boyfriend suggested that they go running together in the mornings, and 4 months later she started skipping meals. 
She chose to write her high school psychology paper on anorexia.

My point is, if you give me enough dots, I guarantee you I can pull something out of my ass that will connect the story from start to finish.

Who knows how many mothers have said that exact same line to their daughters; what mother doesn't want their child to eat healthily? I know my mom used to tell me that all the time.

But that sure doesn't make me, or virtually every other child in this country, anorexic.

Neither does writing a paper on anorexia serve as a precursor to the disease. If that's true, then I'm screwed. I've got cancer, Alzheimer's, and hepatitis, along with practically every nameable mental illness, coming my way.

If you know what you're looking for and you've got an entire lifetime of history to search through, it's pretty damn easy to prove whatever you please.

Depressing thoughts

The weirdest thing happened today in my seminar.

We were watching a taped interview of a patient suffering from depression, and everyone else was commenting on how seriously depressed she was. They were saying things like, "Wow, I didn't know people could think about things so coldly," or "She talks with so little emotion, it's like she's the living dead."

There was clearly the bias of knowledge (they already knew she was clinically depressed), but even still, the professor thought that their comments were fairly precise.

But eventually the circle comes around to me, and all I'm thinking is Well, shit. I thought she seemed perfectly normal.

If anything, she reminded me of myself.


I think of depressing things. But being depressed is another thing.

Rosebush

I finally got around to rereading The Little Prince, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the rosebush story stuck out to me once again.

A lot has happened in the three years since, however.

After seeing an entire wall of roses, the fox tells the Little Prince that his rose is unique because he has tamed her. He was the one who watered her, protected her from baobabs and shielded her in plastic. For that, so the fox says, she is special to him and unique to all the world.

But then I started to wonder: what's stopping him from taming any other rose? What if not one, but two roses had miraculously appeared on his planet?

Hell, what's stopping him from taming all of the roses in that rosebush?

Because if he really wanted to, the Little Prince could have just gone ahead and installed a sprinkler system. He could have just as easily killed off baobabs for the sake of one rose or two roses or twenty roses, and as ridiculously stupid as it sounds, he could have just built a bigger plastic dome.

There really isn't anything intrinsically different about one rose to the next, and the Little Prince is well aware of that; the only difference is that she just happened to be the one he tamed first.

Then again, nearly everything is a matter of chance.

I still don't think that anybody is truly unique to all the world, like the fox suggested; there are far too many people on this planet for that to be true. Somewhere, somehow, you can find someone else similar enough to take your place in society.

With that said, there is a distinction between being unique to all the world and being unique to a certain time and place.

It's safe to say that the rose magically appearing on his planet was nothing more than random chance; any other rose could have landed there and the Little Prince wouldn't have known the difference.

That's the thing, though; it was by chance that it just so happened to be her.

And it just so happened that he was there to take care of her.

It's for this reason that I no longer think life becomes any less meaningful or precious once you accept that nobody is unique. If anything, the true beauty of it is the fact that out of all of the infinite possibilities, you happened to meet the people that you met.

The people you meet may not be special.

But it doesn't make them any less important.

Suicide

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.  All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards."

I like to tell myself that I've resolved this question for myself, but who knows if it will all just crumble in my sobbing face.

Character building exercise

I don't believe that man is inherently good. We only become good when we realize just how fucking terrible it is to deal with those who aren't.

It isn't out of decency or compassion that we build character.

It's out of pain.