09.29 | avoiding the pit of learned helplessness
In a time of destruction, create something: a poem, a parade, a community, a school, a vow, a moral principle; one peaceful moment.
– Maxine Hong Kingston
✉️ letter #9
Something that's stuck with me recently is the concept of "learned helplessness."
The term was first coined in the late-60s after psychologists who were conducting research on animal behavior found that, when animals have tried multiple times to avoid bad outcomes without succeeding, they stop trying.
Dogs who learned they couldn't escape a shock would no longer try to escape the shock, even when it became possible to do so by jumping over a barrier. Rats who learned they couldn't get to cheese would no longer even try to get the cheese, even if it was right in front of them.
This has been observed in people too. When a person experiences a stressful situation repeatedly, they begin to believe they are unable to control or change the situation, and so they don't try - even when opportunities for change become available.
This bleak outlook has, not surprisingly, been associated with various mental health problems - depression, anxiety, loneliness, phobias...
Children with traumatic backgrounds tend to carry feelings of learned helplessness into their schooling and adult lives - they are passive, have low self esteem, and don't know how to ask for help or do much other than give up.
Many workforces are terrifyingly good at inspiring learned helplessness in their employees. The buzzword around China has been "Involution," loosely defined as when extra input & effort leads to less and less returns on output. Employees who are burnt out and sick of running on an increasingly sticky treadmill have chosen instead to "lie flat" - stop trying, attempt to stop caring.
Chillingly, the CIA was found to have attempted to use "learned helplessness" as a torture method during the Bush era. Psychologists in charge of the post-9/11 interrogation program, who were fans of the original 1960s psychologists who had led those dog shock experiments, theorized that inducing a state of learned helplessness "could encourage a detainee to cooperate and provide information." That's super dark.
And it's especially heinous since it flies directly in the face of what the 1960s researchers were then trying to do: figure out the tools to fight this malady. In fact, the lead researcher, Martin Seligman, worked for the next two decades on how to apply a specific learning he'd found in the dogs to help people.
His team had found that if they started the experiment by teaching the dogs there WAS a way to avoid shocks, they would keep working to avoid them, even in times where shocks were unavoidable. The Resilient Doggo mantra boiled down to this: "It doesn't hurt to keep trying to get away."
Perhaps that resilience, what Seligman called "learned optimism," could be taught to humans. After all, one great thing about being human, Seligman and his team felt, was that humans could ask WHY something was making them feel helpless.
And somewhere along the way, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) was born.
I won't get too deep this time into that, or examining "Positive Psychology" in general. Much like the CIA's cooption of "learned helplessness" - that research has been corrupted by late stage capitalism into some completely toothless batch of inspirational quotes on sunsets etc. and would require an even longer breakdown of what's science versus sludge for me to personally feel like I've written something I can be proud of on it.
But I still find parts of Seligman's missives on positivity, optimism, resilience etc. useful... Probably because - at least according to this quiz on the internet that purports to be Martin Seligman's Learned Optimism Test (the original one seems to no longer be up on Stanford servers) - my thoughts tend to lean towards pessimism.
And I know I've personally needed the reminder recently that when a situation feels untenable... it doesn't hurt to keep trying to get away.
And I've personally found that most times, the energy you find to get away is generated from the side projects you did all for yourself. Things like this newsletter, or the Youtube channel. Incidentally, I kinda sorta restarted the Youtube channel around fall of last year and talked about this exact point around minute 3:40.
The six months have been a bit of a rough go, and so I haven't been as consistent as I'd like to be on my own creative pursuits, but I am creating something. And that has helped.
🌱 the ethical ideas newsreel
- The New York Picture Library luckily has decided to keep its archives open for browsing by the public. Curbed had a beautiful write up prior to this turnaround about how creativity comes from the spontaneous connection to new ideas, which is why being able to browse for things is so important.
- Everything you needed to know about what Australia's actually bringing to the table on climate change in a fun, conversational package. Did you know that it is 55th in the world by population, but in the Top 15 of production of greenhouse gasses?
- Won't somebody think of the children! Well, it's a little too late apparently because today's youth will be facing UNMATCHED climate extremes compared to previous generations. Yikes.
- This is a deep and introspective look into the nature of political writing by Osita Nwanevu from the Columbia Journalism Review, and it's great:
We political writers are fond of telling ourselves that our readers matter more than most—they often include policymakers, base voters, and political activists uniquely placed to effect political change. But how reliably has that really made a difference?
But we can do better. Writers ought to be given the time, space, and opportunity to say not the first, second, or even third thing to come to mind, but maybe the fourth—a chance to write at an angle or with prose that challenges or surprises. If persuasive writing has any real independent power at all, we’ll likely find it in larger arguments with larger stakes: work from writers who break the rhythms of our most intractable debates by slowing down to gather context from historical material, scholarship, and, yes, reporting.
🎵 song of my week
Back when I used to pay deeper attention to the Chinese indie music scene (the aughts), Hedgehog was one of my favorite acts to catch. So it was pretty exciting to find out they're still making music, and that music is good!
This song, whose title translates to "21st Century, While We're Still Young" is an anthemic pop ballad that's made my day a little brighter.
✨enjoying: one final piece of pop culture fun
Okay, I don't know if I've admitted it yet on this platform, but I'm a bit of an anime nerd. I'm especially drawn to very well-illustrated slice of life dramas, and there's been a bit of a dearth in that in the anime production camp over the last year or so. Or at least I thought.
Turns out this had flown under my radar while I was busy watching lots of isekai crap (we are being completely inundated with isekai - anime specifically about people who accidentally get transported to fantasy worlds and are massively overpowered there - crap these days).
Fena Pirate Princess spans an 18th century world where a girl who has been tasked with finding "Eden" is protected by samurai pirates. Really, they're more like ninjas considering how much time they spend suddenly blinking into existence in places. But yes. Historical costumes. Pirates. Ninjas. Stunning animation. And a tight script filled with tender quiet moments and fleshed out characters to boot!
You can watch it on Adult Swim or Crunchyroll.
Did you enjoy it?
Stalk me on Social Media