[This is the last blog post I wrote in 2015, but I never published it until today. I'm going to be reviving all my blogs and perhaps adding a few new ones to them.]
I saw mildly disturbing data in the page-view tracker today, so I'm going to start off with a friendly reminder that this blog's existence is merely a technicality... I make no endeavor to say anything worth reading, and instead spend most of my time here making plans that I fail to follow through upon.
Why? Well, for one thing making plans carries most of the fun associated with accomplishing them, and it's a whole lot easier. For another, they always feel more realistic before I start working on them than they do afterwards... and for yet another, they're really easy to write about, and sometimes I think that I'm better off writing anything than writing nothing, even if for all intents and purposes anything is nothing.
Today, I'm reflecting on the underlying premise of this blog and leaning towards the conclusion that my general approach is ill-conceived. I wanted what I write here to be (in principal) publicly associated with me because I felt like taking that approach would motivate me more than keeping my work private or anonymous. In reality, having my thoughts publicly associated with me scares me much more than it motivates me. In real life, I filter a lot of what I say based on my audience. I'm able to occupy a lot of different roles and personas that fit neatly into polite society. The curated view of myself I present to the world omits most of what I'm not comfortable having most people know about me.
It's really hard for me to think of any perspective that I'd want to share with everyone. A huge percentage of what to talk about falls into the category of either "things I would be completely comfortable letting everybody except a few of my relatives know about me" and "things I would feel completely comfortable letting everybody except possibly my employer know about me." So for example, I've had issues with anger and depression in my life that color a lot of my view of the world, and even had one psychotic episode. I'm not ashamed of these things, and I'm comfortable talking about them. I think that they're things that people need to talk about more than they do. And I also know that they're fairly common experiences. However, they're still things that I would prefer that my boss would never know about me and certainly things that I would want someone to find out about me if they were doing a quick search of the internet to decide whether or not to offer me a job (Assuming that at some point in the future I am seeking jobs again -- it's still on my mind because I just finished. I'm beyond excited about my knew position and can't wait to get started with it, so I'm not expecting to look again any time in the next few years. I've actually been holding out posting until the background check was completed in part because I didn't want to say anything online that might make them change their minds.)
In some ways, it shouldn't matter. I've accomplished everything I've done in life despite these issues. There is an argument to be made to say that, under the circumstances, my resume is more impressive than it would be if I had achieved identical things while in a better mental state (and correspondingly less impressive than it would be if I had achieved identical things while in a worse mental state). This is especially true given that my emotional issues have been consistently improving over the past fifteen years. (I was once a deranged ten-year-old.) If I had been as happy when I was in college as I am today, I would have done a lot better while I was there.
On the other hand, almost everybody I know from college is a whole lot more responsible today than they were a few years ago. Most of them would have done a whole lot better if they were as responsible in college as they are today. I feel like the evidence in favor of extrapolating a monotonic trend in changes in people's responsibility over time is a lot more reliable than extrapolating a monotonic trend from people's changes in emotional health over time. So who would you rather hire, someone who was too busy partying when she was in school to achieve her full potential, but who has now grown more responsible. Or someone who was too depressed/angry in school to achieve his full potential (or to party for that matter) but who has since made progress in dealing with those issues? Assuming they both seem equally responsible/qualified/capable/stable and whatever else they need to be today, which one would you rather trust with additional responsibility given their histories?
When you're dealing with people who are generally competent, you can assume that things are trending in the right direction for all of them, at least the things that are more or less in their control when viewed on a long enough time scale. So you take whatever was their biggest personal weakness five, ten years ago -- an actual limiting weakness (not just one of those "it would be nice to be more well-rounded" sort of weakness which are the kinds of weaknesses people typically claim to have when they are not claiming to have "you could call it a weakness but you could also call it a strength" kind of weakness) -- you should be able to pretty safely assume it has gotten a lot better. So the real question remaining has to do with chance of acute catastrophic relapse. In practice, the amount of stigma associated with the weakness is also going to be considered. I don't think emotional issues score well on either of these tests. One of which, at least, is relevant.
My real fear isn't just that people who are in a position to give or withhold responsibility from me would find out about my sub-optimal past and choose not to trust me as much as they would have otherwise. My real fear is that they might be correct to do so.
Struggling with depression is an actual weakness, and it has no redeeming virtues associated with it, and it actually makes you worse at pretty much whatever you would want to do (unless want you would want to do is better-identify with and understand other people who struggle with depression, which still doesn't add any value to the group in any broader context but does arguably produce some in-group value). Similarly, being irresponsible is an actual weakness without redeeming qualities associated with it, and it likewise makes you worse at pretty much anything you would ever want to do. In certain contexts, I would like to be treated as though I had a history of being more emotionally healthy than I have actually been, but I can't think of any reason for why people "should" treat me that way. (I don't consider legal reasons to be a valid reason in this context, because I don't see any reason that a law should mandate that people do what they otherwise should not do if the law did not exist. [My views on how the law ought to work don't have anything to natural law -- a concept which I consider an absurdity -- but for the purpose of understanding what I mean in context, "natural law completely trumps actual law" is a pretty good first-order approximation of my views. It's technically incorrect, but then so are all approximations.])
So the next thing to consider, if I'm going to continue in this line of reasoning, is the meta-question of how talking about this experience relates to having this experience, and whether it would be reasonable for somebody to make similar judgments about me based on the fact that I talk about dealing with depression as they would if they were somehow able to make those judgments through some form of divination. I think these things are quite a bit different, but still not so different to reverse the ordering of reasonable judgments. There are five cases to consider. 1) It is somehow possible to know that somebody in particular is perfectly healthy mentally and emotionally and has been for his whole life. 2) The past and present status of somebody's mental and emotional health is unknown. 3) By somebody's own claims, she is perfectly healthy mentally and emotionally and has been so for her whole life. 4) By somebody's own admission, he currently has or has previously had some emotional issues. And 5) It is somehow known that somebody has or has had problems in the past, but this person does not admit to them publicly, at least. (We aren't presuming that they would lie if asked; and we aren't presuming that they would tell the truth if asked either.)
1) is clearly the best case.
5) is clearly the worst.
The relative order of 2), 3), and 4) is a little bit complex, and it's hard to tell how you should handle them. 2) is essentially a superposition of 1) and 5). Since most people are mostly healthy (I think), you should treat people in this category as though they are probably in group 1), but as though there's a risk of them being in group 5).
3) is weird. There's an element of "the woman doth protest too much" to it, that's probably more closely associated with self-delusion than it is with mental health.
