Metablog

“Darwin”, of DarwinCatholic, (h/t Gene Expression) writes here about a Business Week piece on the ethics of selective abortion using genetic screening for various disorders.

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This comment thread at unfogged was what sparked my musings about the absence of psychology in blogging, and its further development has given me an idea about why there’s a lack. I think it’s because for really helpful advice to be taken and given, you have to have a good, close relationship with the person or people you’re asking advice from. And because of the chicken-egg problem, a blog focusing on personal advice won’t be able to garner the trust and familiarity needed to take off. Plus, many blogs act as strong demographic selectors on their commenters, and people in similar life situations and of similar intellectual proclivities are going to be able to give better advice to each other than people with less in common. A more narrowly focused, non-ideological blog certainly wouldn’t do that as strongly. And the idea of the Unfogged post, of encouraging commenters, even regular ones, to post with a different pseudonym whenever they want to contribute an anecdote or ask a question that they don’t want associated with their main pseud for some reason, is a good one. People have already occasionally done this at Unfogged (and do it at other blogs, I’m sure,) but the practice was rare enough to not rise to the status of convention, and thus there was a small barrier that held back a considerable number people from asking advice over the months. (”Over the months”—heh, it’s internet time nowadays, baby!)

One reason I hate being smart is that psychotherapy doesn’t really work out all that great for me, for two reasons:

1. I’m so good at rationalizing things that I can convince my therapist.
2. I already have such elaborate theories of what’s wrong with me that I can’t really present myself in a way that the therapist can form their own considered opinion. They hear my theory first and end up agreeing with me.

I could probably get better advice if I weren’t so articulate.

As you can see, I’ve not been really adding much content here recently. I feel bad about it, because I like writing, when I’m up to it. And I do want to have more readers and commenters. Part of the problem is that I’m divided on whether to make this blog a personal blog. I’m not sure that I want that kind of community. And then part is I’ve done diaries, and I’m sort of sick of them. But I think that, maybe, I could give these personal posts some wider appeal. So I’m going to give it a try. And anyway, there’s no point in not doing it when I’m not in a state to write about anything else.

So, I’ve been feeling lackluster. Not up to thinking hard about much of anything, let alone commenting on other blogs or writing. Pretty depressed. About two months ago I got a DVR and started watching TV again (because I can’t stand to watch live TV) and starting watching probably three or four hours a day. I think that might have caused some of this. I unhooked the thing a week ago, and haven’t really been feeling any better. My sleep in the last two weeks has been abominable, starting with going downtown one saturday night (getting in at 3 AM). I hadn’t ever done that before, and don’t plan to again. My sleep hasn’t recovered its precariously balanced state since then.

I’m feeling very dissatisfied with my emotional state. Going home to see my dysfunctional family for Thanksgiving started me thinking about the issues they gave me. I decided that it’s far past time for me to start dating—I’ve never dated anyone seriously, and I’m almost a virgin—so I started trying to work through OKCupid again to find someone. I’ve been one one date through there, but haven’t managed yet to get another. I’ve been able to strike up several conversations, but I botched one of them, and the others haven’t lead anywhere, and aren’t looking promising. Three of the people whose profiles that I liked the most (one of which was amazingly similar to mine) didn’t respond at all.

Through this process, I’ve discovered what my main emotional shortcoming is: the thing that’s been bothering me for years about myself, and which I think I’ve just been able to put into words in the past several days. That shortcoming is that I don’t feel affection for other people. In fact, I don’t really feel anything for other people. I don’t feel compassion or empathy either. I’m interested in other people, sure, and sexually I’m pretty normal, if kinky. But I’m afraid to show that interest. Afraid ask people to talk about themselves. Not afraid to talk to them, even about myself (witness this blog), but afraid to start conversations, and to ask questions. I’m afraid of doing anything that presumes that the other person has a reciprocal interest in me, personally. (That includes calling them on the phone and IMing them.) Now that I write that out, I can see that it looks like a manifestation of low self-esteem. And who would have ever guessed that was my problem? I should do a post on how the Lake Wobegon bias is the foundation of human well-being, and how realism is cynicism, and what that implies about happiness in someone who doesn’t want to be self-delusional. How do you improve your self esteem without being unrealistic?

And how did people evolve the ability to have poor self-esteem in the first place? Does it have something to do with a pack mentality?

Something I’ve been wondering recently about the internet. Where are the good psychology blogs? No, not this kind of psychology blog—I mean the kind of theraputic psychology with psychoanalysis behavioral therapy and “tell me about your mother”. There’s plenty of pablum out there. And there are plenty of people who occasionally or even regularly blog about sometimes intensely personal issues. But where are the expert or amateur counselor-bloggers? It seems like everything on the internet of this nature is just big, poorly designed ads for some service or workshop or book or 8-cassette-series-with-free-workbook-for-only-49-95. It’s all shit. And yeah, there’s a a few good things, like eMedicine, but it’s not really the same thing as concrete advice, you know? I’m just surprised at the lack of quality that abounds. It either indicates that I really don’t know where to look, or that psychological counselling is a profession that is really low on brainpower. Or maybe that no one really knows what they’re doing?