[Swordfish12345]

The biggest problem of our modern age is the removal of agency.

We are being pathologized by pseudo-science all around us.

When people mention "willpower", everyone today is looking for a diagnosis as an excuse instead.

Some things really are as simple as articles like this.

The failing is education. People don't understand the way they have re-shaped their brains from pretty much everything spawning from the internet and tv.

[InSteady]

>When people mention "willpower", everyone today is looking for a diagnosis as an excuse instead.

>People don't understand the way they have re-shaped their brains from pretty much everything spawning from the internet and tv.

Sounds like people are looking to understand, but maybe according to you they are looking in the wrong places?

Also, who is everyone? I think a ton of Westerners and especially Americans have been conditioned into believing various convenient lies that advertisers and cultural mythology tells, along the lines of "you can have everything you want without doing hardly anything at all as long as you belong to the right groups and spend your money 'correctly.'" As I think you correctly identify, this is further exacerbated by modern tech which treats attention span as a commodity and tries (often very successfully) to hack and hijack it for the benefit of advertisers and data miners.

It seems to me the above is far more damaging to everyone's ability to execute plans involving willpower than any increasing awareness and expanding diagnostic criteria for various physical and mental health disorders.

What diagnoses are we talking about here exactly that everyone is looking for that are totally bunk and pseudo-science? Depression? ADHD? Autism? Anxiety disorders? It's true that as awareness spreads there will be more people who incorrectly think "maybe this is totally me, and it's why I haven't been able to achieve what I want..." But identifying this as the reason people don't have any willpower, I think puts the cart before the horse. People already didn't have much willpower (and also don't know how to use what they have effectively)... so they are looking for reasons for that and end up looking in the wrong places.

Also, just because something can be explained in simple terms does not mean it is simple for everyone nor that it is easy. If it is easy for you, great. You're probably lucky in more ways than you realize.

[swayvil]

Re : reshaped brains.

I think that's legit. Given the entire panorama of experience, the sights sounds, smells, feelings, thoughts, etc. People are moving into thoughtland and becoming alienated to all else. The office job, the tv, videogames, the computer, social media. All push you into living in your head. Our whole population turning into videogame characters, living inside a personal Matrix kind of thing. It's a kind of zombie apocalypse.

Re : willpower.

I think that willpower is applicable if that's your thing, but that's nobody's thing really. Most of us are just a leaf on the wind that way. What really matters is the various localized wind gusts, if you get my meaning. That's temptation. I mean, in the classic sense. Temptation sucking us in to dreams, distorting our perspective. And boy, the #1 product in our culture is temptation. Temptation by the trainload.

[Swordfish12345]

> What diagnoses are we talking about

I've only looked into depression[1] and ADHD[2].

The symptoms are real. The impairment is real. But the cause is unknown.

> Americans have been conditioned into believing various convenient lies...spend your money 'correctly.'

I think you made my argument better than I could!

ADHD = pay money for pills. Depression = pay money for pills.

There couldn't be anything easier than just spending money to make problems go away.

If someone tells you your brain is broken, why bother with willpower.

Same with institutional racism really. If the system's against you, why try.

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0

[2]: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2022.81476...