I want to document a short happening of mine in the psychology subreddit of Reddit.
As almost all things psychology, this place is no exception in perpetuating mystified pseudo-science around behavior, in inventing hundreds of explanatory fictions and more generally serving the capitalist system by diverting attention from material conditions and reframing problems in terms of internal states, personal responsibility and individualised coping. Of course, to avoid taking part in reactionary name calling, we must see all human behavior from it’s proper cultural context. No other than Marvin Harris can help us:
One might very well wonder how cultural idealism, which is devoid of retrodictive or predictive principles, has been selected for and become dominant in anthropology and other social sciences. The answer may be quite simple: The majority of American social scientists are paid to prove that human behavior at both the psychological and cultural level is primarily a result of will or chance. Convinced that there are no nomothetic principles to be found, they don’t bother to look for them—and hence are never in any great danger of finding any.
Marvin Harris (1986) – Cultural Materialism and Behavior Analysis:
This behavior—to continue to speculate—has been selected for because in our own particular form of hierarchical state society, the hungry, unemployed, and otherwise frustrated and unfulfilled majority are expected to blame their losses on wrong attitudes, bad values, weak wills, and lousy luck, rather than on the Alice-in-Wonderland design of the sociocultural system which governs their lives.
Common Problems and Radical Solutions (p. 45)
Now, the misdemeanour that caused the shadow ban, was my comment to the following post: Hi all! If you don’t know me, my names Ava, I’m a PhD student in mental health neuroscience. I make weekly science videos and this week I looked at research based tips on how to reduce sadness/depression during Covid and general life. I hope some of you find it useful 🙂 The video linked is not very helpful and is basically telling people “think about it more”. The comment read:
What this channel only does well is demonstrating the absolutely pathetic state of modern psychology – filled with vague psychologisations and hopeless statements about the brain and neurotransmitters. Only looking inside people further perpetuates the myth that “you can do it”, “bad things happen to everybody” without ever advocating to actually address the unfavorable (material) conditions for some more than others.
Does anyone have a guarantee for a good life? Absolutely – the wealthy, the ones (white collars) having the luxury to work from home.
Allegedly the video gives tips to reduce sadness, but speaking about achievements at 10:00, studies about genes related to serotonin and dopamine are cited. How is this supposed to help anyone?
Unfortunately, we as a culture are still some way from disposing idealism, “inner agents” and moving on to actually proper thinking about human behavior à la Cultural Materialism of Marvin Harris and Radical Behaviorism of B.F. Skinner.
Radical Behaviorist Leftist (2021-01-15)
Admittedly, the comment being bileful, the psychology subreddit employs a very ironic way of punishment – the shadow ban. I know it is a shadow ban because other users cannot see my comments in other psychology posts as well. With the psychology subreddit being a place of positivity, mindfulness, open communication, one could say that shadow banning instead of outright banning and providing no message to the user is at least manipulative. Almost 80 years with sound behavioral science (since B.F. Skinner’s Science and Human Behavior), one realises that cultural and political forces are still stronger than the inevitable spread of the scientific view of human behavior.
Radical behaviorist leftist 