Back in the 1920s they successfully treated anorexia with insulin, recognizing that it was a metabolic disorder and not a psychological one. But then along came the psychologists and they needed a reason to exist.
I’d wager that 95%+ of these problems are to do with the absolute shit diet that is consumed in the West, full of sugar, glyphosate/pesticides/chemicals, seed oils, fake coloring, and fake genetically modified crap, for a short list. Throw in some SSRIs and ADHD drugs from the age of six, and you can end civilization faster than you can say Hannibal.
I’m so sorry you’ve been through so much that this is your mindset. There are many many good men who are to what you describe. I will be praying for peace for you. No, this is not a “thoughts and prayers “ random comment. I mean that I will pray, for you. 🥲
You're on time out for a week. If you behave like this again you're banned for good. Read the damn article before you start screaming at people in my comments, and actually, just don't scream at people in my comments. Act like a civilized human being.
Man, all kinds of absolute insanity at work this week and I totally missed this whole tiff. Real life is where we all live and yet some people get their panties all in a wad over someone’s opinion on the internet lol I don’t understand why people can’t manage to be civil, but it reiterates my point that nutrition and mental health stability are tightly linked.
Farming was a metabolic disaster that took generations to get some adaptation to so it was less disastrous (and the adaptation wears off as you age). The processed food diet is also a metabolic disaster. Including for mental health. https://brainenergy.com/
From the abstract of the paper about the metabolic effects of a farming diet: “Skeletal analyses of human remains from early agricultural centers throughout the world indicate that this revolution significantly affected overall human health. This paper will address some of the drastic effects of this transition as evidenced by craniofacial changes related to masticatory function, declines in oral health, increased spread of pathogens, infectious disease, and zoonoses, as well as a variety of ailments which have been linked to nutritional deficiencies and increased physical stress on the human body.”
Adding testosterone to bodies not designed for it in a population with an extremely high rate of psychological co-morbidities: what could go wrong with that?
Studies done in Sweden found a possible link between SSRIs and uninhibited negative behaviors. Such as if one has a tendency to anger or drink or IDK, their inhibition is removed or their say...anger issues get out of control.
I read about it on the U.S. health resource. Someone mentioned it and I looked it up. The U.S. hasn't done studies on it, but they reported about it being done in Sweden and an abstract. Very intriguing.
SSRIs are a big money maker. The people making a fortune at the top don’t care what happens due to the side effects. Suicide, school shootings, self destructive behavior, broken families- they don’t care. They love money more than they love their fellow man.
SSRIs cause “flat effect” where one feels no empathy and dis-associative feelings, which could lend itself towards mental instability you see in some of these people. These side effects persist long after the drugs are ceased to be taken - IF one can even manage to get off them.
Trying to find the ultimate root cause is like nailing jello to the wall. Humans are complex creatures, there are always multiple variables, which you cannot control for, but I believe that environmental exposures (food and drugs) are causing mental instability in the general population, which in turn has caused a cascading failure in society.
Yeah I read that somewhere once and was floored. I don’t know why they don’t pursue that as a line of treatment now, except that in this degenerate age, wallowing in one’s misery is considered ideal.
Or how bad their airlines are. That's another big one. If you've never traveled outside the US you have no idea how much the monopolistic airlines are fu*(#(@ you at the airport. I've flown bargain flights in India, Vietnam and Indonesia that were FAR nicer than Delta or United.
Zinnia, amazing work! I have a 17 year old daughter and I’m trying to help her navigate these times. We have had a couple rough times but my husband and I keep loving her and she’s turning into a lovely young lady/ almost a woman! The posting of sexy photos, sneaking out with a stranger at night, I feel so blessed she’s still alive and thriving. I feel like having a strong father figure in her life that loves her unconditionally is something so many girls don’t have. It’s vital to a woman’s development of healthy male friendships. I didn’t have that and I can see and feel the difference in her. Please keep writing! Your insight into the “why” of trans- and transgender is so so important, I definitely learned something today I never may have understood.
I can totally relate to your comment. I didn't have any real stable role models growing up, especially male role models. I grew up to be pretty but very self-conscious about it and had great difficulty navigating when boys were attracted to me. I wanted the attention but once I had it, didn't know thing one about what to do next. It was very painful and I pushed people away instead of facing the fear of rejection. So, l learned a lot from this article. I'm 71 now and am married but if I had to be single again and younger, even though I would have more confidence due to life experience, it would still be an unsure path full of confusing obstacles in dealing with my own feminity.
An interesting perspective/insight on the issue at hand. I've a daughter who is beautiful (objectively so, not just parental predjudice) who is completely asexual and surrounds herself with young people who are either going through a "transition" or are considering such. Of both genders. This helps immensely in trying to understand where the source of this may originate. She is 21 so that water may already be under the bridge but this was helpful. At least in providing a different perspective on what we, as parents, have been trying to understand. Our son (24) didn't have a similar experience through these years. Same house, same (ish) access to social media etc. Different result. Thought provoking to be sure.
That's definitely a significant factor. I suspect the lack of butter, fish, eggs, and red meat and the vital nutrition they provide has contributed to the rise in "trans" youth. That and ... grooming via social media.
T. Paine, I agree that diet, nutrition and exercise are essential and assist in mental health well being (MHW). However, MHW also requires root causes. Auditing interruptions in standard early childhood development and evolving belief systems; what people believe about the world, themselves and others is critical as well. Flushing out and challenging false perceptions is paramount to soul care. I completely agree the APA has become a deeply political toxic wasteland. They forgot about the patients and see them as ideological lab rats - really terrible!!! New policies and DSM V diagnoses are evidence of this.
I see you’re a psychiatric resident. Do you really want to help your patients? If you do, please investigate the metabolic link to psychiatric problems. Ketosis cures a lot of brain issues. There’s all kinds of research on it. It’s not profitable tho. So you can help people, or you can be a shill for the pharmaceutical companies.
I'm well aware of the connections being drawn between metabolic issues and psychiatric issues, and I'm familiar with the work being done with ketogenic diets for serious mental illness. Yes I have read the keto golden boy Chris Palmer. I absolutely agree that diet, exercise, and derailments of the physical body have causal power in mental health issues. I'm also aware of the long history in psychiatry of how frequently people like to reduce complex issues to certain totalizing levels of explanation and think that in working at this level they can offer a panacea. The one thing a history of psychiatry shows is that there are no panaceas, and that these problems are stubbornly resistant to reductionism.
10 years ago the keto lobby was offering it as a cure for cancer narrowly citing the Warburg effect; it can be useful as an adjunct in some cases, but it also accelerates many cancers, and has no effect in many others.
I've worked with many patients with anorexia, and etiology is heterogenous. It is a mistake to think that the explanation is so simple and the answer will be so simple. The refutation is in the proposal: if the problem is ubiquitous environmental exposure, then why are we all not anorexic? The obvious: there are a lot of factors at play.
I'm not aware of any research regarding 1920's insulin treatment for anorexia. My guess would be that there is mistaking of the cachexia of individuals with type 1 diabetes, or latent autoimmune diabetes of adults (LADA), or what insulin was used for in psychiatric patients in the 1920's - inducing a seizure for shock therapy.
Really well done, original, beautifully written and a window into a reality I had no idea about. I have a 32 year old daughter caught in a career trap. Hopefully she will get out of it before it's too late. I also have a 34 year old son I tried to steer away from porn at age 13. That didn't go too well either, but at least he married and has had one kid, so far. Parents need to refuse their kids all screens. But some 2-3 year-olds among extended family are already addicted. Oh well. It's all coming down soon, in chaos and madness. Best wishes.. from a new Zinnia subscriber.
You can tell the difference in gen z already. Yes, some of us Gen X parents managed to do their jobs. Very few though. Most grew up in the online world depicted so beautifully in this essay.
We've done a very good job keeping our kids away from the screens, but it seeps in through the culture and the school. My son, 8 now, never has had and never will have an iPad or a smartphone, but his school friends very much do. And you can tell. They are obsessed with these games, Minecraft and fortnite and all the rest.
The school is the worst, they mandate use of these Google tablets. I found out that the kids spend part of their days playing computer games on these stupid things during school hours. Not surreptitiously, but directed and approved!
My boy is top of class in both reading and math. We don't do anything special. We just read all the time. He sees me reading, newspapers and books. We do math homework together. All run of the mill normies stuff when I was young, but now it marks him out as a borderline savant.
So true. Bullying wouldn't exist if it weren't for public school. I also notice that it is the schools, and only the schools, that have measles, chickenpox, lice, etc. Other concentrations of human beings in our society never seem to have these problems.
Stick children in prison-like environments, marvel that they consistently fall into prison-like behaviors and cause prison-like problems, conclude that the problem is you need a bigger budget for more administrative staff. The hamster wheel we've been on for 100 years now.
If you have a small town of like 50 people (like in the pioneer days) there is no meaningful difference between a "public" school and a "private" school, one in the same.
I'm a substitute teacher and hate the way iPad/Chromebook classroom. It's a lazy way to teach and it creates tension in the class. The other day I was subbing first grade. They have 20 minutes of choice time at the end of the day. The teacher gave me specific details about what their choices could be. She has 7 iPads in the classroom so not enough for each kid, but they weren't listed as a choice. When I told the children this, they got angry. First at me. Then two boys ran over and took one even though I said they couldn't. Then a girl did it. The class erupted into madness. They'd actually been so kind and earnest the rest of the day. Such a personality change in one moment. All for an iPad. That is addiction.
“Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.”
How women might “come to terms” with their oft frustrated carnal desires for beauty and power is through the worship of something higher. Something that won’t destroy them, and instead, will feed their souls. The same goes for men, of course.
the first few songs i wrote were on this subject. i wrote them from a male and a female perspective......the incorrectness of identifying too much with the body and not the inner being, in conduct and expression. "self assurance based on physicality" is a very sad state of affairs, and empty , super limiting and false. leaves out the virtues you have cultivated, the talents you have nurtured, and the relationships you have built. the very depth of your soul.
Clearly that is the problem. We have lost our connection with the divine. "All we like sheep have gone astray, each to his own way." We are sheep without a shepherd. No wonder we have problems.
My daughter is 24 and a 6'2" broad-shouldered professional athlete, who thank God, has a wicked sense of humor about her continuing singlehood -- "I'll die alone!" she says.
Meanwhile, my 26-year-old son can't seem to find any women who aren't terrified of real-life interactions with men.
All three of my kids grew up without TV in the house or cell phones until high school, and now they're like unicorns. Capable, kind, socially adept... and lonely.
What the hell is going to happen to this generation, and the one following it??
Glad you enjoyed the article! Feminism has had the effect of making the sexes terrified of each other; men are afraid of accidentally being creepy and objectified, and many women interpret any advance outside the context of a dating app as a threat. The result? Social collapse
Traditional societies had specially dedicated institutions and rituals for when and how to approach potential spouses that were significantly more functional than the current dating app scene.
Those institutions and rituals were also in place to matriculate children into men and women in advance of marriage.
The patriarchy existed to safeguard those things from nature's way of escaping into its base directives. We killed the patriarchy in the pursuit of equality, of fairness, and the great leveling of society.
But we could not kill our nature. So we get base instincts not just kept in check and sublimated toward pro-social and pro-civic behaviors, but inverted as virtues that are ultimately dyscivic and destructive.
I have been around numerous GenX friends and peers with teen and earl 20's children. Exactly none of them are encouraging behaviors, cultivating values, exemplifying virtues, and supporting social structures that solve toward early marriage and family formation.
Even the ones with the tenuously "successful" marriages seem to not want their daughters to follow their path. Even with the cold headwind of reality signaling the coming storm of the failed progressive experiment.
All of them, however, are encouraging their children to pursue the zero-sum, defect-defect, adversarial and self-interested ad-hoc relationships rooted in material want and comforts. They literally say out loud that they want their kids to experience life, get an "education", travel, work, "date" a lot of people, etc. Marriage is simply not a priority.
This is a revealed preference time and again. Same as when I was a single man and refused to enter the Great Swipening. This is also how I have made millions selling "I love my fur-grand-babies" bumper stickers.
The rest is just give your kids a smart phone, reap the whirlwind. You wouldn't want them to be "weird" now would you?
The grown ups need to get back in the room. Literally. Set up a dinner at home, get the kids together. Johnny won’t get TikTok shamed for a lame approach or accused of rape and Sally won’t get raped.
You can get a glimpse of amongst the Orthodox Jewish and the Amish. I am an only child was raised in the 70's and 80's (when that was rare) and pretty much left to my own devices and was lucky that something dreadful didn't happen to me as a young woman.
She/her/they/him (whatever she identifies with, covering my bases here in case) has been quite antagonistic throughout the comments, going as far a suggesting that Zinnia the author is a man in disguise.
I see it as a prime example of the troubled mindset that this very same article tried to explain… there’s a lot of hate, angst, fear, lostness in this; both towards the self and the opposite gender.
This article has opened my understanding in ways that I can’t describe on something I had no clue about. Suffice to say, I don’t feel annoyance nor upsetting ticks at this types of “obtuse” responses.
And to be clear, she isn’t being obtuse in the traditional sense, she is likely defending herself from a perceived threat.
Glad you raised this too often ignored aspect of these stresses in the romantic prospects of young people like your son and daughter. I posted this on Zinnia's own new 'Stack: "Something that gets very little attention in journalism about romantic and sexual pair bonding is the huge difference between the fortunes of what one might term the More and the Less Desired of each sex. Most sex-relations journalism is always framed in terms of a generic species called ‘Women’ and a generic species called ‘Men’; as if the perceived asymmetries under discussion are entirely ones BETWEEN the sexes...... The huge intra-sexual differences between the experiences of pretty women and ‘plain’ ones; and between confident ‘alpha’ males and ‘betas’ – this never gets considered."https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired
It’s the same 10% of ‘players’ screwing (and also screwing over 😂) the same 90% of the women (at least once) (and also done if those women know fully well what they’re volunteering for 😂).
But don’t expect a roomful of these Strong & Independent women to raise their hands in public and admit “Me too!” 🤣🤣🤣
It’s the same 10% & 90% in GenZ, who are the third-generation products of 1960’s-style 2nd-wave “feminism” as it was for us GenX’er 1st-generation products of the continuing Battle of the Sexes.
What’s different today isn’t simply technology; Civilized Man had no problem finding bad ideas before social media 😂.
No, what’s different is that we’re three generations deep into 2nd-wave feminism. In my day, we were only one generation into socioeconomic dysfunction.
In retrospect, GenX got off light. Especially the sweet ‘n’ sensitive intellectual boys like me. I eventually learned to play the Dating Game like the 10% for whom it comes naturally, but instead of chewing through the 90% like a pack of gum, I used my newfound power for Good (instead of for Evil 😂). I married an anti-feminist Oriental girl, and I’ve been made happy by her virtue & by my own virtue 👍🙂 and at my suggestion in 2014 we moved the family back to her native Tokyo metro region.
And one of the primary motivating factors - no exaggeration here - was that we don’t want our sons to have to look for a wife on the USA Dating Scene 😔
God help the Western dating scene. I’d like to say that today’s Western dilemma is the End Result of three generations of feminist sexuality run amok, but I don’t think it’s the End yet, very unfortunately.
mine are lonely too.....i just hope he find a nice amish girl or a rodeo princess, or farm girl, something......because the ones so far.....are very suicidal and manipulative.....
Hi Mary! I also raised my two sons without TV and no smartphones or computers or gaming systems of their own till they had jobs and driver's licenses. I see a huge difference between them and their peers. My 24 yo son has found a solid girlfriend, but my eldest at 26 is finding it hard to interact with women his age. I keep telling him to date older, like 40 😉.
serious advice but if you throw a corset on your daughter, it could correct her hip-shoulder ratios. I've seen people change their body shapes even in adulthood; it's far from impossible.
Ask yourself why so many women avoid men and interacing with them, including men like your son. What led them to that conclusion? What do you think they've been through?
Men are the problem. And yet the moid who wrote this simply couldn't figure it out. What a genius.
More face to face interaction with boys would go a way in reducing this Zoomer girl anxiety. All of these perceptions are more accurately notions - within the head. Believe it or not Zoomer girl, men generally aren’t focused on your every perceived “flaw”. It’s been a while but from memory boobs were boobs when I was a young man - big, small, misshapen- all good ... cos boobs! I don’t imagine that has changed overly. It’s a scary time for both sexes - in hindsight you always wish you could have told your younger self not to worry so damn much about what the rest of the world thinks about you and to just concentrate on becoming a “good” person, defined by your own inner compass. This cliché obviously is unhelpful to those going through it. One can’t help but wonder if less time online isn’t at least a partial salve? Great article.
haha! I was mostly generalizing how women think about their bodies. I would agree that face to face interaction with men would solve the problem, unfortunately zoomer men have been castrated by MeToo and refuse to make moves on women unless it's on a dating app. Glad you liked the article!
I did. You write very well with deep insight. I am not in a position to comment too deeply on this phenomenon. I just turned 50. Suffice to say it’s a pickle of a problem. I know what you’re saying though - I was talking to a young woman in a bar once, much younger than myself. I was talking to her - that’s it. I wasn’t trying to pick her up. We were just having a friendly chat and some young guy came over to me to tell me to stop talking to her. Naturally I told him my thoughts concerning his concerns, in somewhat colourful language. The castration that men now experience in approaching women is the topic of another article entirely. But I still think the answer lies somewhere in less online time and more real life interactions. Bring back the barn dance! Okay ... I’m not that old.
Yeah I was blindsided by that one. Seriously dude? She’s half my age! The irony being of course he probably felt incapable of approaching her himself, despite being in her demographic.
Back in the 1920s they successfully treated anorexia with insulin, recognizing that it was a metabolic disorder and not a psychological one. But then along came the psychologists and they needed a reason to exist.
I’d wager that 95%+ of these problems are to do with the absolute shit diet that is consumed in the West, full of sugar, glyphosate/pesticides/chemicals, seed oils, fake coloring, and fake genetically modified crap, for a short list. Throw in some SSRIs and ADHD drugs from the age of six, and you can end civilization faster than you can say Hannibal.
That's fascinating and quite plausible. A lot of psychological problems are just bad diet.
Or other environmental factors, for sure
For the most part, I do focus on men.
The author of the essay is a woman.
Which you'd have known if you knew how to read.
Feminism is cancer. I just wanted to be a wife and mother. This was considered to be a toxic thing to say. It’s sickening.
Nope, not a troll. Not a male either. I didn’t ask if you wanted me to pray for you, it’s just what I do. So, pay me no mind, but people do care.
I’m so sorry you’ve been through so much that this is your mindset. There are many many good men who are to what you describe. I will be praying for peace for you. No, this is not a “thoughts and prayers “ random comment. I mean that I will pray, for you. 🥲
You're on time out for a week. If you behave like this again you're banned for good. Read the damn article before you start screaming at people in my comments, and actually, just don't scream at people in my comments. Act like a civilized human being.
Why just a week?
Man, all kinds of absolute insanity at work this week and I totally missed this whole tiff. Real life is where we all live and yet some people get their panties all in a wad over someone’s opinion on the internet lol I don’t understand why people can’t manage to be civil, but it reiterates my point that nutrition and mental health stability are tightly linked.
This essay was written by a woman, Kat
Farming was a metabolic disaster that took generations to get some adaptation to so it was less disastrous (and the adaptation wears off as you age). The processed food diet is also a metabolic disaster. Including for mental health. https://brainenergy.com/
BS
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nebanthro/187/
From the abstract of the paper about the metabolic effects of a farming diet: “Skeletal analyses of human remains from early agricultural centers throughout the world indicate that this revolution significantly affected overall human health. This paper will address some of the drastic effects of this transition as evidenced by craniofacial changes related to masticatory function, declines in oral health, increased spread of pathogens, infectious disease, and zoonoses, as well as a variety of ailments which have been linked to nutritional deficiencies and increased physical stress on the human body.”
Is that why males keep snapping and shooting up schools?
Don't forget FTMs.
Adding testosterone to bodies not designed for it in a population with an extremely high rate of psychological co-morbidities: what could go wrong with that?
Studies done in Sweden found a possible link between SSRIs and uninhibited negative behaviors. Such as if one has a tendency to anger or drink or IDK, their inhibition is removed or their say...anger issues get out of control.
I read about it on the U.S. health resource. Someone mentioned it and I looked it up. The U.S. hasn't done studies on it, but they reported about it being done in Sweden and an abstract. Very intriguing.
SSRIs are a big money maker. The people making a fortune at the top don’t care what happens due to the side effects. Suicide, school shootings, self destructive behavior, broken families- they don’t care. They love money more than they love their fellow man.
No, that’s SSRI-induced.
Did not know that, daaamn
Also, troonacy IMO has biological origins, the part of the brain that maps the body is fucked, and that’s why more autists troon out
Just a theory but one that makes more sense than the “wrong body” silliness they like to say causes it
SSRIs cause “flat effect” where one feels no empathy and dis-associative feelings, which could lend itself towards mental instability you see in some of these people. These side effects persist long after the drugs are ceased to be taken - IF one can even manage to get off them.
Trying to find the ultimate root cause is like nailing jello to the wall. Humans are complex creatures, there are always multiple variables, which you cannot control for, but I believe that environmental exposures (food and drugs) are causing mental instability in the general population, which in turn has caused a cascading failure in society.
I meant the part about insulin curing anorexia actually, should have been specific. I know SSRIs are evil.
Yeah I read that somewhere once and was floored. I don’t know why they don’t pursue that as a line of treatment now, except that in this degenerate age, wallowing in one’s misery is considered ideal.
Move to Asia. The diet here is better as well.
Asian food is great, yes.
Indeed. Idk where in Asia you live, but I'm in SEA and eat like a king. Healthy food, freshly prepared
North Americans have no concept of how bad their diet actually is.
Or how bad their airlines are. That's another big one. If you've never traveled outside the US you have no idea how much the monopolistic airlines are fu*(#(@ you at the airport. I've flown bargain flights in India, Vietnam and Indonesia that were FAR nicer than Delta or United.
To say nothing of the airports themselves 😬
The Libyans are having a laugh at our infrastructure :D
I’ve flown in and out of Baghdad International Airport. It was much cleaner and better maintained than Newark.
Asiana for the win. Real food on real flatware using real utensils. This was 10+ years ago but heaven in the skies.
Plus hot Korean skywaitresses.
Zinnia, amazing work! I have a 17 year old daughter and I’m trying to help her navigate these times. We have had a couple rough times but my husband and I keep loving her and she’s turning into a lovely young lady/ almost a woman! The posting of sexy photos, sneaking out with a stranger at night, I feel so blessed she’s still alive and thriving. I feel like having a strong father figure in her life that loves her unconditionally is something so many girls don’t have. It’s vital to a woman’s development of healthy male friendships. I didn’t have that and I can see and feel the difference in her. Please keep writing! Your insight into the “why” of trans- and transgender is so so important, I definitely learned something today I never may have understood.
I can totally relate to your comment. I didn't have any real stable role models growing up, especially male role models. I grew up to be pretty but very self-conscious about it and had great difficulty navigating when boys were attracted to me. I wanted the attention but once I had it, didn't know thing one about what to do next. It was very painful and I pushed people away instead of facing the fear of rejection. So, l learned a lot from this article. I'm 71 now and am married but if I had to be single again and younger, even though I would have more confidence due to life experience, it would still be an unsure path full of confusing obstacles in dealing with my own feminity.
Men are the source of the problem.
Your daughter is not the problem. John is the problem.
No, you are the problem.
Nobody said her daughter was the problem...
An interesting perspective/insight on the issue at hand. I've a daughter who is beautiful (objectively so, not just parental predjudice) who is completely asexual and surrounds herself with young people who are either going through a "transition" or are considering such. Of both genders. This helps immensely in trying to understand where the source of this may originate. She is 21 so that water may already be under the bridge but this was helpful. At least in providing a different perspective on what we, as parents, have been trying to understand. Our son (24) didn't have a similar experience through these years. Same house, same (ish) access to social media etc. Different result. Thought provoking to be sure.
Well, sons and daughters do behave differently.
That's definitely a significant factor. I suspect the lack of butter, fish, eggs, and red meat and the vital nutrition they provide has contributed to the rise in "trans" youth. That and ... grooming via social media.
T. Paine, I agree that diet, nutrition and exercise are essential and assist in mental health well being (MHW). However, MHW also requires root causes. Auditing interruptions in standard early childhood development and evolving belief systems; what people believe about the world, themselves and others is critical as well. Flushing out and challenging false perceptions is paramount to soul care. I completely agree the APA has become a deeply political toxic wasteland. They forgot about the patients and see them as ideological lab rats - really terrible!!! New policies and DSM V diagnoses are evidence of this.
I suggest reading "The tragic story of Karen Carpenter, one of the greatest vocalists of all time"
https://www.smoothradio.com/artists/carpenters/karen-carpenter-death-story-solo-album-husband/
Quite intriguing
This is a really terrible take, discouraging how many people are liking this.
I see you’re a psychiatric resident. Do you really want to help your patients? If you do, please investigate the metabolic link to psychiatric problems. Ketosis cures a lot of brain issues. There’s all kinds of research on it. It’s not profitable tho. So you can help people, or you can be a shill for the pharmaceutical companies.
I'm well aware of the connections being drawn between metabolic issues and psychiatric issues, and I'm familiar with the work being done with ketogenic diets for serious mental illness. Yes I have read the keto golden boy Chris Palmer. I absolutely agree that diet, exercise, and derailments of the physical body have causal power in mental health issues. I'm also aware of the long history in psychiatry of how frequently people like to reduce complex issues to certain totalizing levels of explanation and think that in working at this level they can offer a panacea. The one thing a history of psychiatry shows is that there are no panaceas, and that these problems are stubbornly resistant to reductionism.
10 years ago the keto lobby was offering it as a cure for cancer narrowly citing the Warburg effect; it can be useful as an adjunct in some cases, but it also accelerates many cancers, and has no effect in many others.
I've worked with many patients with anorexia, and etiology is heterogenous. It is a mistake to think that the explanation is so simple and the answer will be so simple. The refutation is in the proposal: if the problem is ubiquitous environmental exposure, then why are we all not anorexic? The obvious: there are a lot of factors at play.
I'm not aware of any research regarding 1920's insulin treatment for anorexia. My guess would be that there is mistaking of the cachexia of individuals with type 1 diabetes, or latent autoimmune diabetes of adults (LADA), or what insulin was used for in psychiatric patients in the 1920's - inducing a seizure for shock therapy.
Would you like to explain why you think it’s a terrible take, or are you just going to resort to logical fallacies like most people nowadays?
No. Drugs are not the answer- especially insulin. Glyphosate is safe. I bet your anti chemical religion came from the 70’s
Yeah Agent Orange is safe too. That’s what they told my dad when he was in Vietnam.
If you believe that glyphosate is safe, I have a bridge for sale in Oklahoma with a beautiful beach front view.
lol! mine was a response to childhood abuse, and rape s teen. and what she said.
Really well done, original, beautifully written and a window into a reality I had no idea about. I have a 32 year old daughter caught in a career trap. Hopefully she will get out of it before it's too late. I also have a 34 year old son I tried to steer away from porn at age 13. That didn't go too well either, but at least he married and has had one kid, so far. Parents need to refuse their kids all screens. But some 2-3 year-olds among extended family are already addicted. Oh well. It's all coming down soon, in chaos and madness. Best wishes.. from a new Zinnia subscriber.
In the future there will be two species: screenheads and the kids whose parents kept the screens away and their offspring to read.
You can tell the difference in gen z already. Yes, some of us Gen X parents managed to do their jobs. Very few though. Most grew up in the online world depicted so beautifully in this essay.
glad you liked the article!
Thank you for the article. It is heartbreaking in so many ways.
Seems the old way of "you shall not commit adultry" was a far easier path. It didn't deny nature, just provided rails in dealing with it.
Keep writing.
It’s brilliant and wickedly insightful (from a father of four girls). Thank you.
We've done a very good job keeping our kids away from the screens, but it seeps in through the culture and the school. My son, 8 now, never has had and never will have an iPad or a smartphone, but his school friends very much do. And you can tell. They are obsessed with these games, Minecraft and fortnite and all the rest.
The school is the worst, they mandate use of these Google tablets. I found out that the kids spend part of their days playing computer games on these stupid things during school hours. Not surreptitiously, but directed and approved!
My boy is top of class in both reading and math. We don't do anything special. We just read all the time. He sees me reading, newspapers and books. We do math homework together. All run of the mill normies stuff when I was young, but now it marks him out as a borderline savant.
The schools mandating the use of tablets is a form of child abuse.
Schools are a form of child abuse.
☝️
So true. Bullying wouldn't exist if it weren't for public school. I also notice that it is the schools, and only the schools, that have measles, chickenpox, lice, etc. Other concentrations of human beings in our society never seem to have these problems.
Stick children in prison-like environments, marvel that they consistently fall into prison-like behaviors and cause prison-like problems, conclude that the problem is you need a bigger budget for more administrative staff. The hamster wheel we've been on for 100 years now.
No wonder the 20th century was so bad.
Public schools could work better with smaller classes, but they never will while egalitarianism reigns.
If you have a small town of like 50 people (like in the pioneer days) there is no meaningful difference between a "public" school and a "private" school, one in the same.
Homeschool, for your kid's sake.
I'm a substitute teacher and hate the way iPad/Chromebook classroom. It's a lazy way to teach and it creates tension in the class. The other day I was subbing first grade. They have 20 minutes of choice time at the end of the day. The teacher gave me specific details about what their choices could be. She has 7 iPads in the classroom so not enough for each kid, but they weren't listed as a choice. When I told the children this, they got angry. First at me. Then two boys ran over and took one even though I said they couldn't. Then a girl did it. The class erupted into madness. They'd actually been so kind and earnest the rest of the day. Such a personality change in one moment. All for an iPad. That is addiction.
I’m reminded of a David Foster Wallace quote:
“Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.”
How women might “come to terms” with their oft frustrated carnal desires for beauty and power is through the worship of something higher. Something that won’t destroy them, and instead, will feed their souls. The same goes for men, of course.
the first few songs i wrote were on this subject. i wrote them from a male and a female perspective......the incorrectness of identifying too much with the body and not the inner being, in conduct and expression. "self assurance based on physicality" is a very sad state of affairs, and empty , super limiting and false. leaves out the virtues you have cultivated, the talents you have nurtured, and the relationships you have built. the very depth of your soul.
Clearly that is the problem. We have lost our connection with the divine. "All we like sheep have gone astray, each to his own way." We are sheep without a shepherd. No wonder we have problems.
So well-written and highly affecting, zinnia!
My daughter is 24 and a 6'2" broad-shouldered professional athlete, who thank God, has a wicked sense of humor about her continuing singlehood -- "I'll die alone!" she says.
Meanwhile, my 26-year-old son can't seem to find any women who aren't terrified of real-life interactions with men.
All three of my kids grew up without TV in the house or cell phones until high school, and now they're like unicorns. Capable, kind, socially adept... and lonely.
What the hell is going to happen to this generation, and the one following it??
Glad you enjoyed the article! Feminism has had the effect of making the sexes terrified of each other; men are afraid of accidentally being creepy and objectified, and many women interpret any advance outside the context of a dating app as a threat. The result? Social collapse
Traditional societies had specially dedicated institutions and rituals for when and how to approach potential spouses that were significantly more functional than the current dating app scene.
Those institutions and rituals were also in place to matriculate children into men and women in advance of marriage.
The patriarchy existed to safeguard those things from nature's way of escaping into its base directives. We killed the patriarchy in the pursuit of equality, of fairness, and the great leveling of society.
But we could not kill our nature. So we get base instincts not just kept in check and sublimated toward pro-social and pro-civic behaviors, but inverted as virtues that are ultimately dyscivic and destructive.
I have been around numerous GenX friends and peers with teen and earl 20's children. Exactly none of them are encouraging behaviors, cultivating values, exemplifying virtues, and supporting social structures that solve toward early marriage and family formation.
Even the ones with the tenuously "successful" marriages seem to not want their daughters to follow their path. Even with the cold headwind of reality signaling the coming storm of the failed progressive experiment.
All of them, however, are encouraging their children to pursue the zero-sum, defect-defect, adversarial and self-interested ad-hoc relationships rooted in material want and comforts. They literally say out loud that they want their kids to experience life, get an "education", travel, work, "date" a lot of people, etc. Marriage is simply not a priority.
This is a revealed preference time and again. Same as when I was a single man and refused to enter the Great Swipening. This is also how I have made millions selling "I love my fur-grand-babies" bumper stickers.
The rest is just give your kids a smart phone, reap the whirlwind. You wouldn't want them to be "weird" now would you?
What is wrong with experiencing life?
+++
The grown ups need to get back in the room. Literally. Set up a dinner at home, get the kids together. Johnny won’t get TikTok shamed for a lame approach or accused of rape and Sally won’t get raped.
You can get a glimpse of amongst the Orthodox Jewish and the Amish. I am an only child was raised in the 70's and 80's (when that was rare) and pretty much left to my own devices and was lucky that something dreadful didn't happen to me as a young woman.
And the traditional Catholics: https://www.fisheaters.com/domesticchurch.html
Whoever wins your daughter will breed a race of heroes.
I'm biased, naturally, but I tend to agree 😂
Women aren't prizes to be won, pig.
Thanks for proving my point. Shut up and leave us alone.
Did you ever hear the phrase “win their heart?” or are you being intentionally obtuse?
She is being obtuse, and obnoxious. Feminism is an inherently glass half-empty ideology.
She/her/they/him (whatever she identifies with, covering my bases here in case) has been quite antagonistic throughout the comments, going as far a suggesting that Zinnia the author is a man in disguise.
I see it as a prime example of the troubled mindset that this very same article tried to explain… there’s a lot of hate, angst, fear, lostness in this; both towards the self and the opposite gender.
This article has opened my understanding in ways that I can’t describe on something I had no clue about. Suffice to say, I don’t feel annoyance nor upsetting ticks at this types of “obtuse” responses.
And to be clear, she isn’t being obtuse in the traditional sense, she is likely defending herself from a perceived threat.
Prizes are valuable and are highly sought after and she just said she’s not a prize. Maybe she’s right, I dunno...I don’t know her.🤷♂️
She has a sick twisted mind full of propaganda. Obviously watches way too much television.
Glad you raised this too often ignored aspect of these stresses in the romantic prospects of young people like your son and daughter. I posted this on Zinnia's own new 'Stack: "Something that gets very little attention in journalism about romantic and sexual pair bonding is the huge difference between the fortunes of what one might term the More and the Less Desired of each sex. Most sex-relations journalism is always framed in terms of a generic species called ‘Women’ and a generic species called ‘Men’; as if the perceived asymmetries under discussion are entirely ones BETWEEN the sexes...... The huge intra-sexual differences between the experiences of pretty women and ‘plain’ ones; and between confident ‘alpha’ males and ‘betas’ – this never gets considered."https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired
It’s the same 10% of ‘players’ screwing (and also screwing over 😂) the same 90% of the women (at least once) (and also done if those women know fully well what they’re volunteering for 😂).
But don’t expect a roomful of these Strong & Independent women to raise their hands in public and admit “Me too!” 🤣🤣🤣
It’s the same 10% & 90% in GenZ, who are the third-generation products of 1960’s-style 2nd-wave “feminism” as it was for us GenX’er 1st-generation products of the continuing Battle of the Sexes.
What’s different today isn’t simply technology; Civilized Man had no problem finding bad ideas before social media 😂.
No, what’s different is that we’re three generations deep into 2nd-wave feminism. In my day, we were only one generation into socioeconomic dysfunction.
In retrospect, GenX got off light. Especially the sweet ‘n’ sensitive intellectual boys like me. I eventually learned to play the Dating Game like the 10% for whom it comes naturally, but instead of chewing through the 90% like a pack of gum, I used my newfound power for Good (instead of for Evil 😂). I married an anti-feminist Oriental girl, and I’ve been made happy by her virtue & by my own virtue 👍🙂 and at my suggestion in 2014 we moved the family back to her native Tokyo metro region.
And one of the primary motivating factors - no exaggeration here - was that we don’t want our sons to have to look for a wife on the USA Dating Scene 😔
God help the Western dating scene. I’d like to say that today’s Western dilemma is the End Result of three generations of feminist sexuality run amok, but I don’t think it’s the End yet, very unfortunately.
Thanks,
Gerald
“done if” = “some of,” spell checked.
mine are lonely too.....i just hope he find a nice amish girl or a rodeo princess, or farm girl, something......because the ones so far.....are very suicidal and manipulative.....
Hi Mary! I also raised my two sons without TV and no smartphones or computers or gaming systems of their own till they had jobs and driver's licenses. I see a huge difference between them and their peers. My 24 yo son has found a solid girlfriend, but my eldest at 26 is finding it hard to interact with women his age. I keep telling him to date older, like 40 😉.
😂
serious advice but if you throw a corset on your daughter, it could correct her hip-shoulder ratios. I've seen people change their body shapes even in adulthood; it's far from impossible.
how tall are your kids?
Ask yourself why so many women avoid men and interacing with them, including men like your son. What led them to that conclusion? What do you think they've been through?
Men are the problem. And yet the moid who wrote this simply couldn't figure it out. What a genius.
Men being raised by single mothers is the problem. There I fixed it for you.
Men & women raised by single mothers, if you don’t mind me interjecting here. Plus, here’s her starter house cat & electric wine cellar 😂
More face to face interaction with boys would go a way in reducing this Zoomer girl anxiety. All of these perceptions are more accurately notions - within the head. Believe it or not Zoomer girl, men generally aren’t focused on your every perceived “flaw”. It’s been a while but from memory boobs were boobs when I was a young man - big, small, misshapen- all good ... cos boobs! I don’t imagine that has changed overly. It’s a scary time for both sexes - in hindsight you always wish you could have told your younger self not to worry so damn much about what the rest of the world thinks about you and to just concentrate on becoming a “good” person, defined by your own inner compass. This cliché obviously is unhelpful to those going through it. One can’t help but wonder if less time online isn’t at least a partial salve? Great article.
haha! I was mostly generalizing how women think about their bodies. I would agree that face to face interaction with men would solve the problem, unfortunately zoomer men have been castrated by MeToo and refuse to make moves on women unless it's on a dating app. Glad you liked the article!
I did. You write very well with deep insight. I am not in a position to comment too deeply on this phenomenon. I just turned 50. Suffice to say it’s a pickle of a problem. I know what you’re saying though - I was talking to a young woman in a bar once, much younger than myself. I was talking to her - that’s it. I wasn’t trying to pick her up. We were just having a friendly chat and some young guy came over to me to tell me to stop talking to her. Naturally I told him my thoughts concerning his concerns, in somewhat colourful language. The castration that men now experience in approaching women is the topic of another article entirely. But I still think the answer lies somewhere in less online time and more real life interactions. Bring back the barn dance! Okay ... I’m not that old.
Getting cockblocked by a Chevalier Blanc in a bar when you're not even trying to pick up is peak 2020s.
Yeah I was blindsided by that one. Seriously dude? She’s half my age! The irony being of course he probably felt incapable of approaching her himself, despite being in her demographic.