Dec 15 PM

 Tired. Little sleep. Out to go to therapy. What's that you say ? A little stabilisation. A little capability. And then you immediately go full to the wall taking the piss and overdoing it massively ? So clever. Much smart. The epitome of wisdom.

Thank you.

I prodded the car a little this morning. Running on no sleep. It complained about engine malfunction again. The ODB tool showed no problems. No codes. Nothing to look at here guvnor. How wonderfully useful. Fucking cars. So very 20th century bullshit design. In any case. After a small parking move. And a while. The car has given up complaining and now thinks everything is just fine. Having made a few observations and prodding tests. I have come to the conclusion it's either an iffy wheel sensor. Or the electronics are aging out with maybe some trace corrosion or dry joints. One of the smoking guns was not even turning the engine over. Just ignition on. And it said. Engine malfunction. That rules out a whole bunch of stuff.

New laptop is on its way. I no longer much care what I have for work. I'm not exactly busting ass anymore, not withstanding the last 24 hours. 32gb memory is about the only thing I half care about. Typically I like my dev laptops to be monsters. Because typically I push them hard. But these days. That's no longer true. Gone are the days of me having a dozen instances of visual studio open at once, along with a couple of databases, and a slew of remote desktops connected. It's easy to do. If you get asked questions about say, 3 different clients. Which isn't even uncommon. And then each of those clients has a full stack. UI. Service layer. Business logic. In house libraries. SQL. You can have 4 instances of Visual Studio open, 1 sql manager of some kind, be that heidi, ssms, or whatever, and then also probably a few remote desktops open, one to the front end server(s)/vms/balancers, one to the database / services server(s), another to test server and yada. Multiply by 3. Easy peasy. And then throw in Firefox, Chrome and Edge open at once. Because you know. Testing that reported fuckery.

Needless to say this brings puny laptops to their knees wheezing. We were only meant for emails and watching youtube....

So with the fixing of shitty laptop and car perhaps anxiety issues are getting resolved.

Today in therapy we covered a few things. How suicidal I was last week. How ill. That Dr GPT might have given me the tiniest capability to fight fires instead of just sitting there burning to death with ill health. Small. But useful. We talked about work and Andy a little, watching that transform from considerate and caring, to sudden anxiety ball, you must save me, you must do, otherwise we are all doooomed. How that is his pathology. I understand its roots. The shape of the current day trauma that powers it. And the consequences. We talked about my sister. And her saying about being free of my mom once she had died. And about my apparent sensitivity to somethings. I told the shrink of my overload, over stimulation on the return from London when I was ill. How paralysing and overwhelming it was. The shrink got it. Over sensitised. Common in neurodivergent types. Too much. Everything just overloads. I said it was the first time I got a real clear indication of oh, I have some interesting sensitivities going on there, which had always been there, but typically I masked really well. More. Neurodivergent bullshittery.

And then. We got into something of a proper fence about labels.

My sisters quiet revelations only serve to underscore the elephant in the room. Indepedently. Without prompt. Without bias. There is something very wrong going on in the past. Present.

The shrink asked how I feel about it. Sad. But also. It is yet another nail in the coffin. Another shoe drop. Another. Fuck. Moment. It changes it.

Changes it how.

It moves it from the contemplative to the realised. You have gathered all the data, tested it, prodded it, the conclusions and inescapable results are in. And now. You're in a consequences place.

That's very much what you do isn't it. Fixing all the problems. You track down all the bits of information and work through the problem. But. When you've solved the problem. There is no longer any space there to exist. Then you're somewhere else.

Sure. Dealing with it. You have your solution. Now. What do you do with it. What are the consequences.

But I said. I am still unsure about the labelling of it all. Neglect. Abuse. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that's wrong. I am not condoning any of it.

You have an abundance of evidence at this point. The shrink shifted into their adamant stance once again. Very clear. Unacceptable. Repeat after me. Unacceptable. You have an abundance of evidence. But you are still resisting it.

I get it I said. I understand. But. But ! There is also a thing there of being aware of how things change. It is always the conceit of the contemporary that it has the almighty moral authority. That it knows everything. Is right. And everything that came before was wrong and shit. No matter what contemporary period you pick. Always a sneer. The lesson then is, not that the contemporary is right. But that it shifts over time. And in 25 years time, no doubt people will look back on today and once again sneer at how wrong this time period was. And how very right that future contemporary is. And on. Ad nauseum.

So when you label it abuse and I am not saying you aren't wrong. Because. From that modern lens. You are right. But when you label it like that. How much of that is judging the past. And I couldn't quite remember the correct wording for this quote, but this was what it was "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there" - L P Hartley.

The shrink shifted to a scientific angle. We have done the studies. We know the damage in development, in brains that X does. So when we say a thing is abuse it's backed by a scientific finding.

Yes. Again. I am not denying the reality of it. The grounding. But. When you label a thing, you box it into a definition. And. There are some ugly uncomfortable truths in here about our nature. About whether we need a certain amount of neglect and abuse in order to develop an understanding of good and bad, learning how to deal with terrible things, and building resilience. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying we should beat children so that they learn what beating is like. But. I maybe a certain amount of mistreatment is wired into our biology. You can take a purist view that it should never happen, but is that what 150,000 years of evolutionary development have been like, or was there always a punch around the back of the head going on. In the way I said. People pine for 100% leisure time. But. The truth is. It's no good for you. You need a certain element of being aggravated about having to go to work. About a shitty thing. Because it cues up the rest of it to understand better from worse, and appreciate when you do have a good thing. Which goes back to Aristotle and people cannot live in idleness, and repeated across the ages in different forms.

And a for instance. When a minor is involved in crime on behalf of an adult at this is labelled abuse - and to be clear it is - but what if that's your culture. Learning to be a pickpocket. Whatever. Is part of your cultural norm.

We talked and agreed that cultural norms varied widely. And it can often be the case just moving someone geographically without changing anything else can cause a number of cultural issues about what is accepted as ok. 

Most of which the shrink accepted. 

But. Forget the labels the shrink said. Don't attach those. Ignore everything else. When you spoke about your brother coerced into stealing as a kid. You seemed to be saying that he took harm from that. 

Yes. 100%. Without doubt. It has left a mark.

So the point is, the shrink said, that labels aside, it's whether something is inflicting damage. In the moment. From a subjective point of view of the person experiencing those things. Are they being hurt. Is it causing lasting damage ?

Yes. I see your point. It is.

I said that this also had clear precedent today. My friend encounters a lot of young women as his staff. And the casual misandry that is spoken out loud without fear, without shame, without thinking there is anything wrong with labelling all men as stupid, useless and not to be trusted. Not as a joke. As a casual serious point. It was evidence of that conceit of the contemporary, we are the moral authority, we have it all solved, everything before is shit. And they fail to see that the meta. The meta fucking behaviour of always ragging on some group or other. Whether it's sexism. Or racism. Or classism. Or any kind of sweeping judgement made on a grouping is Not Good. And back to the witch burning. The inquisitorial glee of hunting down the sinners. People love burning witches. It's just what you call a witch that changes. Once upon a time it was clever opinionated or weird women. Or homosexuals. Or Indians. Now it's often guys.

Which isn't to say I disagree with any modern sensibility. The road to hell being paved with good intentions. I see the good intentions. But they have falled to the same lazy hateful branding. They have become the monsters that they hunted, Nietszche style.

The modern world I think is out of balance I said. It has lost context and nuance. It doesn't understand. And we are again in an era where zeal is triumphing over reason.

But you very much get the nuance the shrink said.

Yes. Of course. It's obvious. "Obvious". I get it. There are many times where something is obvious to me, and I look around a room - this is easy right. And no one gets it. It used to be a constant source of frustration. It still is a source of frustration. And I used to think. I am not smart. I am just an average dude. And if I can get it. And you can't. You must be absolutely stupid. I am not clever.

Yes said the shrink. You can't be clever. That cannot be.

I was mocking myself here. I do get it.

It's not obvious to everyone said the shrink.

I know.

I know that things are obvious when you have the solution. That too is something of a frustration. I have often taught people where eventually they dismiss it and say, well yes, that was obvious. Of course. But 24 hours prior to that. They didn't know. Were stuck. In a good way, it's a good thing. It means I can teach effectively and reduce those mountains down into speed bumps to the point where people think it's suddenly obvious. Good. That's the point. But it's also frustrating.

That they don't see the transitional journey.

Yes. The immediately forget what it was to be ignorant.

But. Back to the main point. You can see the blind spot the current contemporary age has. Once again. Moral superiority. Zeal. Hubris. It cannot see it's own flaws through the fog of its own magnificent reflection. Belief with no doubt. That everything is solved. And right. And this is it.

There is little doubt in my mind I said. That in 25 years time people will look back to this contemporary and do exactly the same thing. Ugh. What were they thinking. So backwards. So stupid. And probably, again, be blind to their own hypocrisies. 

And thus.

When we forcefully label something neglect. Abuse. There is a shiver there. Of whether you are looking back on the past. That foreign country. And in a purist viewpoint. Condemning those before you. In that same errorful way.

But. Again. Do not mistake me. This isn't some easy slip of social zeitgeist. There is harm being done. That doesn't go away. The labels - and their lazy connotations however. More muddy. But also still. I don't disagree with them. There is just. A word of caution about them.

We kinda left it there.

No sessions now until January.

The shrink asked if I was ok. Ok with a big gap. And that, if I liked, I could send her an email. If I needed to talk. That she wouldn't respond. But she would acknowledge. And table it for future sessions.

An effort not to feel abandoned I think. But also very human. Still here. Still listening. Not on your own.

I am ok with that. I don't have a problem with it. But as ever. I appreciate how mindful the shrink is about things. They are kind. And careful.

They wished me a good break. And hoped I could rest. And do somethings I liked.

I gave a short sharp derisive laugh.

That's no good ? the shrink queried.

No, I appreciate the sentiment. Thank you. I appreciate the words. It's. The reality. That is darkly ironic. But I thank you.

I hope you have a restful period, and get what you need I said. And that you find the happy within your life.

Good words the shrink said.

And we left it there. Until next year. 

One last thing for today.

It is something that formed a few days ago. It is this.

Where intelligence fails, belief takes over.

It is, I think, an almost universal measure you can apply to much if not all of what humans do.

In longer terms. When people exceed their capability to understand, learn, think about. They replace it with belief, and the irrational, and nonsense, and it becomes a thing in itself. At best gentle and harmless. And at worst a monster of abuse and pain, in the name of invented nonsense.

It is simply. The expression of human limit. The ceiling of someones capability for thought. And what happens when it is exceeded. Out of bounds. 

I am exhausted. No shit.

I am going to sleep.