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This interview really spoke to me. It may seem evident (or, perhaps not) wherever we go, that the better people communicate the better they have the ability to cope with problems. Incidentally, we can share how we don't understand or how an incident made us feel. Then we might feel less alone and more able through the help (or, simply understanding!) of another.
"Adbusters editor Kalle Lasn interviews Ethan Watters, author of "Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche".
KL: There seems to be a massive increase in anxieties, mood disorders and depression. Are we in the middle of an epidemic of mental illness?
EW: Absolutely.
KL: So what is the root cause of this epidemic?
EW: If I had to put my money on one idea then it would be the American notion of the egocentric mind-- the idea that you are the captain of your own destiny and that you should be able to chart your own path and find your own destiny fundamentally without the need for others. I think that this idea in the West-- and in America in particular-- has led to a great deal of insecurity and a general loading of our psychopathology. I think that the human animal is much more of a group animal than the American idea of the mind suggests it to be.
["Psychopathology: the study of psychological and behavioral dysfunction occurring in mental disorder or in social disorganization" -Merriam-Webster]
And of course the ever expanding mental health profession is willing to take that insecurity and give it any number of different labels. It was anxiety in the 1960s and '70s, in the '80s and '90s it was depression, and who knows what it's going to be in the next generation. I do think that especially for women, the quickly changing roles have caused a lot of stress. Modernization, breakdown of kinship and community ties have all led to an increase in the general loading of our psychopathology.
KL: So, in a sense you are saying that instead of pills we need more connection.
EW: Yes. Absolutely. I think that human beings cannot feel at ease mentally if they are disconnected from their sense of a role within a group. I think that the human mind is deeply permeable to the goals and expectations of the people around us, and if we don't pay attention to that, if we think of ourselves as the captains of our own destiny, always able to pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps, then we are likely to experience that sort of postmodern insecurity that leads us to a certain form of American hyper-introspection-- always looking inward."
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The reason for the epidemic of mental disroders is simple - that the rate of change of everything we relate to is higher than the human brain has evolved to process.
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For some it's simpler than it is for others.
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I read an interesting book called Future Shock about that very topic - the exponential rate of change, and our human inability to evolve organically as quickly as that change necessitates. Dude wrote it in the 70's before he even knew about tamagotchies or facetime.
but anyway I think it's bullshit, humans are great, fabulous, at adapting. Watch a baby search for youtube videos on an ipad, they have no trouble. And as we grow we adapt to what's around, and then we adapt less and less and get older and more obsolete and finally get phased out of a rapid society we find boring anyhow and die, and that's well and good.
the problem, if there is really a problem, is more likely to be boredom and a feeling of uselessness as more and more menial tasks are taken off our hands, and not everybody finds that they have the necessary imagination or inclination to amuse themselves by means of their own creativity. funny enough, overwork and that sense of futility are probably competing to destroy our modern brains more than any lack of connection with our communities.
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When we have a greater sense of community do things not often feel less futile?
I agree, Viva, that overwork may destroy our ability to process the world (outside of a job). But I suppose that depends on the nature of the work.
Last edited by Orioneye (17-10-12 08:09:08)
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Also I wonder with that future shock theory by what measure does exponential change become inorganic? I've also heard of theories that suggest that this notion of the constant forward trajectory of rapid progress (which permeates our concept of the industrial revolution leading into the information age) is actually deceptive because history shows us that these sorts of ages are always preceded by lengths of time with very little progress. So I guess with that in mind you could suggest that as soon as we hit our information dark age our brains will have time to catch up and we'll all be happier but it still sorta seems too abstract a concept to me.
And if I believed there was an epidemic I'd probably blame our sedentary lifestyles. Google will find you much science that makes the link between team sports (I use the word sports because that's the most common way these days to go about performing goal orientated physical activity with other people, but building a house or a garden would have the same effects) and mental health benefits. I'm pretty sure I'd be raving mad if I didn't chase a ball around a court four times a week with like minded people and a common goal. So I guess it's a combination of the chemical stuff that happens in our brains and bodies and the community stuff that happens in our social consciousness.
I kinda doubt that there is more mental health problems in modern times but rather more diagnosis and awareness of mental health issues.
Who can say that feelings of futility aren't just an organic part of the human condition, and maybe they serve an evolutionary function. I know it's a cliche but many of the people who were able the shape the way we understand, feel, see the world in the most beautiful and meaningful of ways stuck their heads in ovens, filled their bodies with poisons or a bullet, etc. I believe the consequences of my own personal notion of futility will greatly benefit the evolutionary progress of the human species when my genes die with me!
I also dunno about this lack of community. I know people who have access to community, who have community throwing love and connection their way every day but still they suffer from extreme anxiety and depression, usually just like one their parents and grandparents did. Maybe you could say this community is distorted or inadequate and that's where much of the problem lies and I would agree a little but again by what measure can we say a community is inadequate? By using the word epidemic I feel like it becomes situated within a historical context and this problematises the interview for me as I think it suggests that feelings of futility or a lack of mental ease are an abberation or evolutionary mistake or something. Something that can be fixed.
Tis very complex I say. Tis. Oh and I'm pretty overworked at the moment so it's very possible that I be processing the world all wrong and shit. But I'm off to play team sports SO EVERYTHING IS FINE. No really. Better than crack.
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Orioneye I think you have an excellent point and it's especially interesting in relation to the future which is where my head seems to live most of the time If we take the rate of current progress to it's conclusion. Where machines have taken the mundane work and then the not so mundane and then the highly skilled and intellectual, humans are only left with friendships and a community of friendships.
That half those friends may be people who exist as software isn't important http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NojQCAHQ4z4&feature=plcp
but what is important for our mental health is the company of others we like and that includes pets. So they don't have to be human but I think a person who is modelled human but exists as software would be so much better at mentoring and heart to heart problem chats because they'd be able to do many of them at the same time and gain the wisdom of someone very very old and more.
So in summary, we can get depressed if we fail at things that are humanly possible where others succeed, but nobody gets depressed because they can't out run a car, we just get in the car and let it take us somewhere, and that's the metaphor for the future when competing at anything isn't humanly possible and we're left with friendships.
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(Self made tycoon and independant financial advisor to the stars)
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Ima keep this short and sweet, however I think I'm of a similar mind to AvenFrey. I doubt that there is a higher prevalence of mental illness now than there was previously; rather that it is more easily diagnosed both medically and online thanks to webmd and google.
And as much as I hate to admit it, I think the interwebs can be dangerous and isolating at times. I still maintain that gaming and forums/chatrooms do count as social interaction, but really who hasn't spent a mindless evening googling lolcats and 'dicks drawn on Herald Sun' instead of perhaps making some sort of connection with a human or other creature of significance. It eventually becomes a lot easier to maintain those habits than to face the world and the bucketloads of anxiety/frustration/criticism that entails. END
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Oh I am loving this convo.
When we have a greater sense of community do things not often feel less futile?
Nah. If we don't have time to spend with our families, communities, and other loved ones, or to spend impressing them/gaming for approval etc, community is just another tool in our lives we use to stress ourselves out. I should really catch up with so-and-so, it's been ages, Tim wants me to help him move, Joan wants help with her taxes, I have too many tomatoes, I should can them to give to my friends, I want to go dancing with Marsha but I haven't had a minute to myself in 3 weeks, I should take time to tie up my husband, I should spend more time with the bebes, the cat needs watering, my plants need feeding. There's an ooooool barn-raising at the mill. Julie's girlscout troop is having a bake sale.
And on and on, more stress. When people are consistently stressed, regardless of the reason, eventually everything seems futile. When you're always tired, how can you truly enjoy your community? After all, a big part of community is helping each other, and being needed only gives us warm fuzzies when we have time to breathe, observe, and relax in between bouts of effort.
Also I wonder with that future shock theory by what measure does exponential change become inorganic?
It's not a metaphorical concept but quite literal. The book anyway talks about the way machines process information more and more quickly and that word, exponential, is really important to describe that effect. Human brain may become faster and better over time, long periods of evolutionary time, but the squishy organic nature of 'em means that they'll never be as efficient as a computer (unless maybe we get really really big) and that the rate of change will be gradual, occurring over generations as opposed to more and more rapidly as we learn to use computers to compute the production of other computers which we can use to computer... etc etc.
It's awesomely interesting how this 'age of information' or what have you is different in terms of human historical and biological development than the ones which came before - change is speeding up due to modern computing, there's no question of that, but it seems too that areas of dynamic change are more spread out rather than concentrated in specific areas of intellectual activity. It's democratic, this new intellectual evolution, and therefore much more difficult to pinpoint what's happening in the moment.
I'm so glad we're not dying soon/I hope we're not dying too soon, because I am really excited to see what happens over the next few decades, and as we gain the clarity of time, to look back over our recent history.
Also I disagree with the book that we can't take da rate of change (jah bless), I think we can certainly manage the handling of information as reported to us by our lowly machine minions. For they... they cannot love...
I kinda doubt that there is more mental health problems in modern times but rather more diagnosis and awareness of mental health issues.
Ahh this is such a chicken and egg. Are people happier when they are repressed, when they can't tweet about their abusive boyfriend, when their daughters die at 14 of dysentery, when they work such backbreaking hours of labor that there's no time to reflect between sleep and breakfast? Are people happier when they go from house to car to work to car to drivethru to house to television and repeat? Are people happy when they sit in a quiet field with their work-made muscles and eat a hunk of cheese in the afternoon? Are people happy when they take their babies to yoga class and drink lattes on a sunday morning?
In our developed middleclassness, we are always so tired, never fatigued beyond thought. We are always so busy, and rarely actually doing anything. We have more time to whine, so we make things up to whine about, but we also have been told that our feelings matter, that it's good to express them, ok to cry, great to feel passionate, important to change your life if, upon looking deep within yourself, you decide you're not happy. We are on an emotional and intellectual journey, having worked out how not to spend entire lifetimes on just feeding these body-things we've got.
I don't think people are "more unhappy" than "ever before" whatever that means. The world is what you make of it. I would say humans are and always have been about 50/50, the will to improve vs. the will to destroy self. Which is what makes us so damn interesting.
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aven frey wrote:Also I wonder with that future shock theory by what measure does exponential change become inorganic?
It's not a metaphorical concept but quite literal. The book anyway talks about the way machines process information more and more quickly and that word, exponential, is really important to describe that effect. Human brain may become faster and better over time, long periods of evolutionary time, but the squishy organic nature of 'em means that they'll never be as efficient as a computer (unless maybe we get really really big) and that the rate of change will be gradual, occurring over generations as opposed to more and more rapidly as we learn to use computers to compute the production of other computers which we can use to computer... etc etc.
I would say this theory suffers from cartesian dualism, now that was quite the epidemic. So what I don't buy is the comparative measure of our brains and machines as being a valid way to suggest what is organic and what is not. That machines and bodies and trees and ideas and sciences are somehow separate in the temporal grand scheme of evolution and or progress.
And something we have forgotten to mention here is god. And death. If our brains grow large and we love more and we play team sports and everyone is safe, full of nutrients and warm will that make us more at peace with the constant horror of our impending disintegration? Cue Veronica.
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Oh Aven, I like you so much.
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Maybe if we brainwash ourselves to forget pain and death we won't be so sad anymore. Like dogs, they don't know they're going to die, so they're happy. My lavender plant is pretty happy too, disintegration is second nature. It's second nature to us, too - so why are we so afraid? We are so very good at dying.
I'm reading a book at the moment about a woman trapped in a mental hospital, and she has this link with the future so she goes and visits the future all the time, where they live in huts and farm and happily attend each others' deaths, and everyone is grown in labs but then raised by 3 mothers, some of which are male, and everyone couples and works and picks caterpillars off zucchini plants and talks to a communicator on their wrist and the men can lactate if they wanna and nanothings make self-repairing fences and people decide which flavor of cultural identity they like, going to live in villages that are harlem-black or native american or ashkenazi jew, regardless of the color of their skin. And the universal pronoun is 'per' and no one is fat.
the woman from now rebels against their hippie rainbow kingdom future because there's no pain, no blood, no misery to turn people into real adults. But as soon as those folks at the mental hospital start doing the mind-control experiment stuff (as promised on the back cover), she should come around.
I'll keep you guys posted.
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And I'm back....
1st off, I don't intend on dying (or at least I choose to leave that possibility in the back of my mind so that I don't have to face it).....
Oh man I have no idea here because I am in about a million different minds on this topic depending on what state I'm in. Happy, sad, melancholic, hopeful, anxious, peaceful.
I think that some of these feelings are really a pain in the ass, and now that we're living quite a comfy lifestyle, kinda redundant. Anxiety and depression for example. Both glitches of the mind that once had some useful purpose. However now I don't need to be on edge to outrun a sabre tooth tiger attack. And well depression...fuck that, I have no good reason for it. It's just a jerk.
Can't we just go the way of Brave New World and pick our emotions with a pill? Why is it considered a dystopian tale? I think choosing to be forever happy sounds glorious no matter what way it comes about. So I guess that's the main thing I wait for (besides robot legs and more life extension solutions) because right now I think that mental illness is there, equal parts nature and nurture, but I can't control the entirety of society so happy pills sound good.
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Also.... The Matrix...Why the hell did they leave?
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our lowly machine minions. For they... they cannot love...
I have a strong hunch they should be able to. My strong hunch is that a simulated person is a real person. Unless this universe is in some way a simulation http://www.transcend.ws/?p=3020 with a part of us residing in another realm.
1st off, I don't intend on dying (or at least I choose to leave that possibility in the back of my mind so that I don't have to face it).....
Don't worry you don't have to, that will be all taken care of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whk-Bj53 … playnext=1
And something we have forgotten to mention here is god. And death. If our brains grow large and we love more and we play team sports and everyone is safe, full of nutrients and warm will that make us more at peace with the constant horror of our impending disintegration?
I don't think so. I think happiness works like this. If we have a toothache, when it stops we feel really good. But we're only back where we were before we had a toothache and we didn't feel particularly good then. I think it's a mistake to try and be happy all the time because I think happiness is the reward part of our survival mechanism. and my strong hunch is that happiness being intermittent, reduces in direct proportion to the amount of intermittent discomfort and pain we remove.
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Last edited by blissed (18-10-12 13:14:09)
(Self made tycoon and independant financial advisor to the stars)
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I think we can certainly manage the handling of information as reported to us by our lowly machine minions. For they... they cannot love...
At the moment no, but that is why we have these two websites.
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Oh Aven, I like you so much.
Is this because I got Veronica to talk about robot legs? Pretty smooth eh!
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I think that some of these feelings are really a pain in the ass, and now that we're living quite a comfy lifestyle, kinda redundant. Anxiety and depression for example. Both glitches of the mind that once had some useful purpose. However now I don't need to be on edge to outrun a sabre tooth tiger attack. And well depression...fuck that, I have no good reason for it. It's just a jerk.
I'm a fan of Peter Singers theory of evolution and altruism
http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/20020302.htm
and I wonder if depression is in some way linked to empathy and then maybe if we are indeed becoming less selfish individuals through the process of natural selection we're also becoming sadder too.
An interesting aside as you mentioned comfy lifestyle, one of the reasons the Bonobos got all matriarchal on their society was that they were living in a time of abundance so didn't need to have alpha Bonobos around to protect them from sabre tooth tigers etc.
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and I wonder if depression is in some way linked to empathy and then maybe if we are indeed becoming less selfish individuals through the process of natural selection we're also becoming sadder too.
I've been wondering similarly but wasn't to sure what that connection is entirely, just that there is one. To be honest I wonder how much less selfish we actually have become and how much is just for show. With menial stuff sure, but with anything that counts self preservation is still alive and well, just disguised.
And yes robot legs must be mentioned in all discussions. It's a very important thing. I just noticed the other day that Blackmilk have robot leg leggings. Gonna have to get onto that....for now anyway
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EW: If I had to put my money on one idea then it would be the American notion of the egocentric mind-- the idea that you are the captain of your own destiny and that you should be able to chart your own path and find your own destiny fundamentally without the need for others.
This is really how I feel about my own depression, a constant stuggle to carve out a future for myself. Be stong, independent, be able to do it all myself and have no regrets. So of course when those regrets and insecurities creep up on you, you feel like you've failed; that you've made all the wrong decisions and you'll never find your way to [insert ONE end goal - as if there weren't many possible trajectories for your life].
Another thing is I feel as though my options are limited, I feel confined and trapped in the 'destiny' I'm trying so hard to carve out for myself.
"To be sure, you are not familiar with that dungeon cell that was called the little-ease in the Middle Ages. More often than not, one was forgotten there for life. That cell was distinguished from others by ingenious dimensions. It was not high enough to stand up in nor yet wide enough to lie down in. One had to take on an awkward manner and live on the diagonal; sleep was a collapse, and waking a squatting ... Every day through the unchanging constraint that stiffened his body, the condemned man learned that he was guilty and that innocence consists in streching joyously ... God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow-men suffice, aided by ourselves. You were speaking of the Last Judgement. Allow me to laugh respectfully. I shall wait resolutely, for I have known what is worse, the judgement of men." - Albert Camus "The Fall"
In short, we restrict, judge and suffocate ourselves with a little help from our friends and essentially that's what causes our distress. No epidemic. But I also believe that everyone's depression/anxiety is different and that there is no 'end all' of explanations for its existence. Nevertheless, I think if we weren't so hard on ourselves and eachother re: finding ones 'purpose' - as if life was so easy, perhaps the severity of this 'modern malaise' would lessen. I think this search for 'purpose' IS rooted in egocentrisism fueled by the emphasis on the 'individual' and that doesn't go away even if you do find an idyllic 'community'.
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I would like to think that everyone is getting more empathetic but I'm one of those folk that think people suck. I think everyone is an instant expert/has a voice on the net nowadays so that almost reduces how much of someone elses opinion (expertise or no) we actually absorb and consider. I think the emphasis on the individual and the egocentrism of everything (the education system, the workforce, or any environment where you need to strive to stand-out and assert yourself) does not prime one for an empathetic nature.
hollywould90@gmail.com
I have a wishlist and it's attainable for me and for you: https://amzn.com/w/1Y8QURJFXXE8J
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viva wrote:I think we can certainly manage the handling of information as reported to us by our lowly machine minions. For they... they cannot love...
At the moment no, but that is why we have these two websites.
And we have the yearly singularity (the point where machines don't need us) summit
I don't think we've become less selfish just universally literate so we can share lots of ideas about what is reasonable and anything you do to someone good or bad is on a record somewhere and culturally that effects how we treat each other. Once you coud beat your illiterate servants knowing there was no risk of any kind of spotlight shining on your actions.
Lots of people who've been in an accident or ill and expected to die but didn't, say they're just greteful for each day they're alive and though they still think about their purpose in life their anxiety over it seems to largely disapear.
Also I love robot legs, and arms http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQXvM6Am … r_embedded
I know this seems simnplistic but our intermittant periods of pain and pleasure effect our subconscious happiness battery. Too much pain depleats it and happy outcomes recharge it. If your so comfy you've removed all pain you can't charge it eiither. Fear, adrenalin and exitement and adventure and unpreddictability are all part of what makes happiness what it is. It's part of the whole. If we have just comfy TV watching stability we can have all those things vicariously through the TV but when it's turned off we're back down in a reality without them.
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Last edited by blissed (19-10-12 14:58:18)
(Self made tycoon and independant financial advisor to the stars)
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whoa nicely put hollywood...
good thread started orioneye, i had my knuckles cracking to have a shot at it, but sooo many nice ideas have come out of this thread. it's a funny thing cause i have that copy of adbusters at home, and there are lotsa of simple answers, which i'm glad to see you've all pretty much transcended already.
i will say one thing for egotism and reiterate postwork beers here, viva had that nice idea about becoming the person you dream of being, i think you manage to take a step back you pretty much are already that person, but just haven't worked out all the kinks yet (and by gosh we're all glad for that!) this can be one good point for egotism and the sense of individuality, without that self awareness of our impact on our environment and on others and ourselves, we could never learn to grow now could we?
what was the last thing viva said? oh yeah, compassion with communication. that's a dreamboat approach
"You look ridiculous if you dance
You look ridiculous if you don't dance
So you might as well dance."
- Gertrude Stein
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I read an interesting book called Future Shock about that very topic - the exponential rate of change, and our human inability to evolve organically as quickly as that change necessitates. Dude wrote it in the 70's before he even knew about tamagotchies or facetime.
but anyway I think it's bullshit, humans are great, fabulous, at adapting. Watch a baby search for youtube videos on an ipad, they have no trouble.
Searching for youtube videos on an ipad is no more challenging to the brain than a jigsaw. Don't be sidetracked by the wow factor of the technology. Humans can adapt, but only within the capacity of their physiology.
By way of analogy think about early PC's with processor speeds of 4Mhz. They could do so many different things from accounting to word processing and games, and their speed was fine when using software like Wordstar. A competent typist who knew all the control commands could probably format a document more quickly on Wordstar on an XT machine than most people could on Word 2010 on the latest PC. But when developers wrote complex programs like Word, the machines hit the wall and couldn't cope.
If you look at how evolution works and take an intuitive view, this hypothesis is self evident. Changes to human physiology take dozens to hundreds of generations. They are driven by need and don't build-in excess capacity. The change in the nature and amount of information we need to process and remember; in the number of relationships we concurrently service; in the size of the community that we compete with for everything from genes to personal achievement to employment and much more; has all been relatively slow up until the technological revolution.
We have two basic psychological needs - to feel safe, and feel valued. Both of those are undermined when your community suddenly swells from a few hundred to a few hundred million.
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We have two basic psychological needs - to feel safe, and feel valued. Both of those are undermined when your community suddenly swells from a few hundred to a few hundred million.
That's a good point and is more pertinant to the discussion about depression than computers which are a late comer to the 200 year old industrial revolution that they're an ongoing part of, and is better than the information overload thing which I think is a journalistic fallacy. Physically interacting with the world and each other takes far more brain power than accessing the validity of online information, as people who are trying to develop Ai and robots have found. I certainly don't feel overloaded, I love it, Facebook, Google, Reddit, and I can't get enough, but put me in some social situations and I am overloaded
And it's true, the problems with computers and phones are mainly physical with RSI and back problems, I think that's an area where a human inability to evolve is evident.
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Last edited by blissed (20-10-12 10:12:06)
(Self made tycoon and independant financial advisor to the stars)
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