Things that are not in the DSM
Jul. 21st, 2021 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutOrthorexia is not in the DSM. Wikipedia has an article about it; it’s a pretty interesting frame and one I’ve been thinking about on occasion over the years since I first heard about it.
In the course of poking around at thrifting and whether there was any kind of significant trend there or not (there does seem to be a trend, so I guess this is Gen-Z’s vintage moment, and it’s called Re-Commerce or Cottagecore or whatever) (and wow, the ZPG crowd is strong in this one!), I got to wondering if there was a sustainable fashion version of Orthorexia. I wasn’t sure what to call it, and it won’t ever be in the DSM, but it’s exactly what you would expect it to be be: OCD symptoms run through Today’s Frame.
https://www.everydayhealth.com/emotional-health/0818/ecorexia-are-you-obsessed-with-being-eco-friendly.aspx
That isn’t just about fashion choices, tho. Also, that comment about birdbath water is a real health risk.
In general, I would argue that if you are rooting around in someone else’s garbage, and you are not looking for something you accidentally dropped in there, or something to prosecute, extort, blackmail or scandal them for, you should go see a therapist and get that fixed. Exceptions for people who are actually processing waste and recycling streams for research or commercial purposes, obviously! And you can do research independently.
I’m a big fan of people living their values. On the other hand, I also recognize that I could be happily living my values and trying to run someone else’s life. So there really do have to be some boundaries. We have various institutions and organizations to help us implement things that we can’t do individually, and they reflect our shared values. Also, super awesome — again, do need to have some boundaries!
Lots of voluntary organizations are places where we experiment with new ways of doing things, and new ways of valuing how we do things, before we start scaling those up and making them mandatory. And many, many, many experiments don’t work out super well, have effects that are opposite of what we intended, etc. Voluntary organizations are kinda by their nature … voluntary. They can’t require other people to do things (generally!). This creates a look-for-the-lost-keys-under-the-streetlight impulse, even if you know you dropped them somewhere in the dark shadows.
It feels really good to look at what we do in terms of source reduction and recycling and reuse and so forth and believe that we are making meaningful steps towards mitigating very real problems that we are creating with our climate / ecosphere. This is probably optimistic, and we would likely be better off redirecting (some of) that energy to sponsor less-voluntaristic solutions that actually will make a difference.
In the course of poking around at thrifting and whether there was any kind of significant trend there or not (there does seem to be a trend, so I guess this is Gen-Z’s vintage moment, and it’s called Re-Commerce or Cottagecore or whatever) (and wow, the ZPG crowd is strong in this one!), I got to wondering if there was a sustainable fashion version of Orthorexia. I wasn’t sure what to call it, and it won’t ever be in the DSM, but it’s exactly what you would expect it to be be: OCD symptoms run through Today’s Frame.
https://www.everydayhealth.com/emotional-health/0818/ecorexia-are-you-obsessed-with-being-eco-friendly.aspx
That isn’t just about fashion choices, tho. Also, that comment about birdbath water is a real health risk.
In general, I would argue that if you are rooting around in someone else’s garbage, and you are not looking for something you accidentally dropped in there, or something to prosecute, extort, blackmail or scandal them for, you should go see a therapist and get that fixed. Exceptions for people who are actually processing waste and recycling streams for research or commercial purposes, obviously! And you can do research independently.
I’m a big fan of people living their values. On the other hand, I also recognize that I could be happily living my values and trying to run someone else’s life. So there really do have to be some boundaries. We have various institutions and organizations to help us implement things that we can’t do individually, and they reflect our shared values. Also, super awesome — again, do need to have some boundaries!
Lots of voluntary organizations are places where we experiment with new ways of doing things, and new ways of valuing how we do things, before we start scaling those up and making them mandatory. And many, many, many experiments don’t work out super well, have effects that are opposite of what we intended, etc. Voluntary organizations are kinda by their nature … voluntary. They can’t require other people to do things (generally!). This creates a look-for-the-lost-keys-under-the-streetlight impulse, even if you know you dropped them somewhere in the dark shadows.
It feels really good to look at what we do in terms of source reduction and recycling and reuse and so forth and believe that we are making meaningful steps towards mitigating very real problems that we are creating with our climate / ecosphere. This is probably optimistic, and we would likely be better off redirecting (some of) that energy to sponsor less-voluntaristic solutions that actually will make a difference.