#probably doesn't help that everyone on tumblr has adhd like talk about ways to traumatize the desire for mastery

[the-fallen-blue]

there’s something curious (read: depressing) about the way that people here talk about the idea of being good at stuff. or, more specifically, about being good at hobbies, particularly creative hobbies that are also professions.

like there’s that post that goes around now and then about not being good at painting(?) and not wanting to be, because it’s leisure. or the way that Concrit Discourse frames concrit as rude not because it’s unsolicited, but because it’s inherently out of place; this is an environment for fun, and the quest to improve is at best a totally unrelated desire, and at worst an outright enemy of fun which cannot coexist with it. the short jargony version would be tumblr tends to frame “mastery” and “enjoyment” as fundamentally oppositional. “mastery” is an unnatural demand by capitalism, and it must be partitioned away from “enjoyment,” much of which comes from release from the stress of trying to do things “well.”

which is, psychologically speaking, the complete and utter opposite of how it’s supposed to work. mastery is actually a basic psychological need! humans really want to feel like we’re good at stuff that matters! like, you don’t have to be a card shark to enjoy playing hearts with your friends, mastery isn’t a requisite for enjoyment, but it should be a source of it. we are designed so that the things that are good for us - nutrition, homeostasis, socialization, being good at important things - feel good when we do them. And generally hobbies, a source of good feelings, are important to us; we would expect mastery to not just comfortably coexist with them, but to actively enhance them. “we want to improve our skill at the things we care about” should be almost a tautology.

if it isn’t? if “trying to do things well” is stressful? if it feels like oppression, a demand made by a known source of harm? people talk a lot about the psychological damage of our socioeconomic system - the shame and anxiety of financial insecurity, the impact of wealth inequality on social structures and our ability to have the bonds or developmental assistance we need - but this means the damage is even more profound and comprehensive than even that. because if we have this system where “mastery = monetary worth = misery” (and thus its corollary, “ineptitude = leisure = frivolity”), if we have taken a necessary source of self-esteem and turned it into a goddamn trauma trigger, then not only are we robbing people of their mental health, we’re co-opting and weaponizing against them those very tools they need to get it back.

#probably doesn't help that everyone on tumblr has adhd like talk about ways to traumatize the desire for mastery #a neurotypical person is already fucked by the conflation of the healthy 'do -your- best in order to validate yourself' #with the warped 'do -my- version of best or i will declare you without value' #but throw in the insane feeling of knowing that -either one of those- versions of best -should- be attainable but you can't #you just fucking can't and you have no idea why #how could 'try to improve' ever -not- become utterly agonizing