One of the most valuable things my brief stint in Christianity gave me– along with some interesting stories, a fairly impressive knowledge of the historical and linguistic context of New Testament references to homosexuality, and the concept that I could, conceivably, perhaps not be the worst person since Hitler– was the concept of scrupulosity.
Some people, perhaps most people, have lax consciences– that is, they tend to believe that they didn’t do anything wrong when, in fact, they did. However, many people, particularly but not solely people with OCD or anxiety disorders, have scrupulous consciences: they believe that they’ve done wrong things all the time, even when they haven’t; they are afraid that something is wrong, even when it isn’t; they believe, for silly reasons, that something is sinful when it isn’t.
I am an incredibly scrupulous person. Many of my readers are also very scrupulous people; in particular, I think a lot of my anti-social-justice readers are anti-social-justice because when they tried to be pro-social-justice they landed in really awful scrupulosity spirals. So I figured I would provide some advice about how to deal with moral claims as a scrupulous person. I will be talking about this primarily in a social-justice context, because that’s the ideology I’m most familiar with (exciting flings with Christianity aside), but I believe similar principles can apply to many ideologies.
Scrupulosity is bad. It is really easy to fall into the trap of “oh, my scrupulosity is the only thing that is making me be a good person.” This is not true. In my experience, when I am trying to obey arbitrary rules that my brain makes up to hurt me, I am less kind, empathetic, and hard-working than I would be otherwise. It isn’t even good on a social justice level: a lot of times, scrupulous people wind up obeying the rules rather than actually engaging with the marginalized people they’re interacting with, many of whom don’t agree with or are even harmed by the rules. And think about it: even if you stop hating yourself, you’ll still prefer that people not be hurt and want to help them be happy. Your morality will still be there if you stop hating yourself. I promise.
Stick to literal meanings. A lot of times, scrupulous people tend to take things to extremes. We read someone saying “it scares me when men follow me around on deserted streets at midnight” and conclude that we should not leave the house after 9 pm because what if we scare someone? We read “I don’t like it when people are only interested in my fat and not me as a person” and conclude that it’s morally wrong to be attracted to fat people at all. Instead, you should look at what each sentence actually means, and not go into what it could possibly conceivably mean in some alternate universe. If the person seems amenable to conversation, you can ask for clarification or examples.
What if it doesn’t seem to mean anything? Well…
Avoid vague or unbounded moral injunctions. If a statement does not provide a concrete set of actions to do (for instance, “deconstruct gender”), ignore it. If a statement does not include a reasonable stopping point (for instance, “question your sexual attractions”), ignore it. If it does both (“check your privilege”), definitely ignore it. You should treat them as equivalent to someone going BZZT BZZT BZZZZZZZZZT I AM SIGNALLING THAT I AM A GOOD SOCIAL JUSTICEY PERSON. This is true even though a lot of times “check your privilege” is, in fact, a meaningful statement in context. Whether or not it is a meaningful statement, you will not be able to interpret it as such.
Stay away from venting people. A lot of times, when people are angry, they do not exactly have much in the way of ‘nuance.’ I myself have occasionally said things along the lines of “why are cis people even allowed?” This does not mean I actually want to not allow cis people (for one thing, I love my cis friends and partners too much); it means I’m frustrated and upset. However, when I see a frustrated trans woman going “why are assigned-female-at-birth trans people even allowed”, my brain is like “OH GOD I’M HORRIBLE I SHOULD BE DEAD.” I am sure said trans woman does not mean that, any more than I seriously meant that cis people should be banned; she is just frustrated about the transmisogyny of many assigned-female-at-birth trans people. But that doesn’t change the effect on me. She has a right to vent, I have a right to stay far away from her venting.
Know your triggers. There are some ideas I am completely incapable of engaging with in a reasonable way. They dig in to the weak points in my psyche and no matter how good-faith I try to be my brain’s instant response is “oh god I am BAD I am BAD and deserve to be DEAD” and it is no good for anyone. The solution is that, when those ideas come up, I ignore them. It’s okay. No one can fully consider every idea that exists in the depth which it deserves. “This idea makes me feel scrupulous” is an excellent reason to stick it on the bottom of your respectful-engagement stack.
Something making you scrupulous doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Once you’ve internalized that scrupulosity is a bad thing, it’s easy to backlash against the ideologies that make you feel scrupulous: to go from “actually, hitting on women is not morally wrong” to “…and the feminists are evil bastards for trying to convince me of that.” Social justice is, I believe, right about a lot of problems in the world. This point is particularly true if you aren’t aware of how your brain is distorting literal meanings: it’s very plausible that the Evil Bastard Feminists do not exist anywhere outside your cranium, and your engagement with Evil Bastard Feminists is not an engagement with actual feminists’ actual beliefs.
Some people will want to take advantage of you. Sometimes it feels like scrupulous people are waving a giant sign saying HEY, JERKS, OVER HERE. If you have a bias towards believing you’re evil, there are many people who will be happy to take advantage of that. So: if someone thinks that you should do whatever they want or you are a Bad Person, they are a bad person and you should not listen to them. If someone thinks that you are a bad person for having honest and good-faith opinions, they are a bad person and you should not listen to them. (This does not mean it is always appropriate to bring up your honest and good-faith opinions– for instance, if someone has asked you to stop talking to them, or if the conversation is about a totally unrelated topic. But it is correct to have them.) If you think those things are true, you should not listen to that person, whether they are true or not, because you are clearly not in a state to engage in rational discussion.
Your mental health matters. You have a right not to be suicidal. You have a right to like yourself. You have a right to live your life. As the saying goes, put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. You will be much more capable of doing good if you don’t feel like shit all the time, because people who feel like shit all the time are generally not very good at things. And your pain matters just as much as anyone else’s does– even if they’re marginalized on a particular axis and you’re not.
You should still engage with criticism. This does not mean “you should agree with criticism.” It is possible to engage with criticism in good faith, seriously consider the evidence, and conclude that the person is wrong and you behaved appropriately. In fact, that’s necessary to be a moral human being! But as long as an idea is something that you are capable of handling, your scrupulosity does not mean you have a Get Out Of Criticism Free Card. It means that you have to take extra effort to make sure you’re listening to what people actually say, and not to what your self-hate is saying.
Thing of Things 
Do you have any advice on how much this stuff generalizes to people who don’t have mental illnesses that are distorting their thought patterns? I’d like to follow much of this advice, it would make it much easier to deal with social justice stuff, but I’m not part of the population it’s directed at and following all of it would seem to give me way too much license to do things that are wrong.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I did my best to give advice that would not lead people to do things that were wrong.
LikeLike
I’m particularly thinking of “avoid vague or unbounded moral injunctions”. If I don’t ever have to listen to anybody who makes a moral claim that they can’t precisely articulate the limits of…well, that seems like it could really easily go wrong.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I have this very strange moral anxiety disorder that seems similar to scrupolosity, but not exactly the same. I have long accepted that I am morally imperfect, and made my peace with that. I know will never do as much good as I possibly can, and I do not hate myself for it. I am also extremely resistant to feeling guilt over sinful thoughts, when I was religious I rarely felt guilty for any thoughts I had, and I have also never had any respect for accusations that my thoughts are secretly racist and sexist.
What has caused me incredible anxiety are questions of what the right thing to do is in the abstract. Even though I know I will never be morally good or perfect, and that’s okay, I have a desperate need to understand what moral goodness means to me. I get very anxious if I feel I don’t understand something, or if I am exposed to a moral argument in favor of values I find abhorrent and cannot find a flaw in it right away. I cannot focus on anything else until I’ve given the problem some thought.
The worst time this has ever afflicted me was dealing with the Repugnant Conclusion problem in utilitarianism. It literally kept me up nights, made me sick to my stomach, and gave me headaches. Eventually I worked through the problem and realized that one of the alternatives (the so-called Sadistic Conclusion) was actually a totally reasonable conclusion that pretty much everyone implicitly agrees with. My anxiety went away for the most part.
I still have anxiety attacks about weird moral problems occasionally, but they never last as long as that one. Sometimes I spend a day fretting about the moral implications of multiple copies of myself, or parallel universes, or something like that. But I usually return to my normal happy self much fast.
I’m not sure I entirely hate this anxiety disorder either. The sheer terror it inspired in me really pushed me to study moral philosophy, and develop a fairly deep understanding of it really fast. One of the proudest moments I’ve ever had in my life was when I explained my views on the Sadistic Conclusion to Stuart Armstrong on Less Wrong and he liked them and expanded them into a full-length post. Sometimes it seems like the months of upset stomaches were worth it.
I did wish I had a way to prevent the anxiety from triggering more often, and to push it away when it’s inconvenient.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I get that too sometimes. It feels like staring into a moral abyss and seeing nought but nihilism (of a certain kind) at the bottom.
LikeLike
I find that at times, embracing (ethical) nihilsm takes a lot of stuff off my plate. In the past that troubled me, because “how am I to live then”? But I’ve come to appreciate it as a tool to not worry as much.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Brain:
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh but the SJ discourse is literally the only thing I’m good at in the world, I am providing some very tiny amount of social value; if I ever excuse myself for scrupulosity reasons, this will make me *completely* worthless.”
😦
LikeLike
” Eventually I worked through the problem and realized that one of the alternatives (the so-called Sadistic Conclusion) was actually a totally reasonable conclusion that pretty much everyone implicitly agrees with.”
100% agree. Idk why it has such a mean name.
LikeLiked by 2 people
“…a fairly impressive knowledge of the historical and linguistic context of New Testament references to homosexuality…”
It’s best to let the reader decide whether to be impressed.
LikeLike
What’s wrong with being impressed with one’s own mastery of something, especially compared to one’s previous lack of such mastery?
LikeLiked by 5 people
I’ve always considered being impressed with oneself a fairly obnoxious trait
LikeLike
I’ve always considered confessions of one’s knowledge of obscure facts a fairly charming behaviour, especially in the form of playful “boasting”.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I am not seriously expecting people to be impressed by my poor choice of hobbies, unless by “wow, Ozy, do you literally have nothing better to do with your life.”
LikeLike
“Stick to literal meanings. ”
I think there’s a related problem where even the literal meaning is too broad, and where people try to stick to a ridiculously broad literal meaning either because they are scrupulous–or because sticking to the literal meaning is the only way to be safe.
If someone tells you they don’t want you to do X, it may be that they actually want some people to do X, but they also want to be able to selectively enforce this by telling other people “see, I *told* you not to do X. Can’t you listen?”
LikeLiked by 1 person
There are times where I feel a broad proclamation is necessary, even if I don’t think it’s 100% right. Fine tuning your moral system can be hard, and I don’t always trust myself to a) find the line properly, and b) properly articulate that. As such, I feel it’s safer with a broad proclamation, and to simply judge on a case by case basis where it looks like there might be an edge case.
The obvious issue is such broad proclamations can be abused in the other direction, so I have to weigh that against the possibility of my narrow proclamation being abused.
LikeLike
That’s a legitimate concern. I know I sometimes scare people, especially women (unintentionally — I’m 6’4″ and 200lbs), and I do my best not to, well, loom. No doubt I would scare fewer people over the course of my lifetime if I never left the house after 9 PM, but that would be a grossly unfair sacrifice of my personal freedom; I wouldn’t allow someone else to force that restriction on me (or my equally tall father), so why force it on myself? The error of the person who concludes “I shouldn’t leave the house at night” is not being overly literal, it’s inappropriately under-weighting their own rights and preferences.
A lot of the scrupulosity issues you describe strike me as misdirected self-negation, which is certainly common in both Christianity and social-justice circles.
LikeLiked by 10 people
The real problem is unquestioning dedication to what one views as “being good” – rather than saying “They call it ‘good’, but should I do it, and if so, why?”, there is instead some framework or idea cluster that that is adhered to without examination of its core. Sometimes there’s investigation of the fringes – is this action within “good” or not? – but not the examination of why one should care about “good” in the first place.
The skies won’t fall and Zeus won’t strike you down if you do the wrong thing. The extent to which you care about right and wrong – and the specifics of those concepts – must come from within you. And then it’s possible (and probable) that something you determine to be right for you to do may be wrong according to Christianity, SJ norms, utilitarianism, etc. So much the worse for those external moralities.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Accepting that everything that is ‘moral’ and ‘right’ and ‘should be done’ is a human construct was the most freeing thing I ever did (which is what I think you’re suggesting).
It was also one of the hardest things as the concept of an absolute/infallible standard of what ‘should’ be done was so engrained in my thinking that I needed considerable stints in nihilism/solipsism to get it out.
LikeLike
Something that helped me overcome those difficulties is that I mostly lack an intuition that a lot of other people have, which is that in order for something to be “moral” it has to be intrinsically compelling on some level. I’ve never had this feeling, it makes sense to me to say that one can believe something is wrong, but not care (I later learned that my position is called “motivational externalism”). This resulted in me finding some nihilist discourse baffling, since I saw no validity in the argument “universally compelling arguments don’t exist, therefore morality doesn’t exist.”
What this means in practice is that I can believe on some level that morality is objective and absolute, but also believe I don’t have to obey it all the time, without logically contradicting myself. I can know intellectually what is technically right or wrong without having to exhaust myself doing it all the time.
LikeLike
Not just that it’s a human construct (because utilitarians and SJers would tend to agree with that), but also that you’re free to reject human-constructed morality as you are to reject morality that isn’t claimed to be human-constructed.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ghatanathoah:
That’s one way out of it, but I prefer holding the motivatingness of morality constant and varying the content. You should always be moral, but what that entails varies with whom you are.
But the main thing to grasp is that moral internalism and the common understanding of the content of morality are incompatible.
LikeLike
Scrupulosity can easily become a form of egotism. you get wrapped up in whether or not you are a good person, and that leads you to a transactionalism of ethical behavior – “I did X; am I now good? Was it good enough?”
This is why Paul condemns “works of the law” and argues against expecting any reward for doing good. It all just feeds the ego. http://therawness.com/shame-is-immature/
LikeLike
“Did you know that because you’re scrupulous you are a BAD PERSON?” seems like an extraordinarily bad way to go about helping scrupulous people. Do you also tell social phobics that everyone hates people who seem anxious about social interaction, and depressed people that they should be miserable about being sad so much?
LikeLiked by 8 people
““Did you know that because you’re scrupulous you are a BAD PERSON?” seems like an extraordinarily bad way to go about helping scrupulous people.”
It sounds that way only if you identify yourself with that scrupulosity. If you do, and it sounds that way, then I would avoid saying it that way to you.
If on the other hand you say “Scrupulosity feeds the ego, and tour ego lies to you and says it’s the real you – but that’s a lie; the real you is beyond your ego.” – and you can accept this, that’s different.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I was going to say something else:
““Did you know that because you’re scrupulous you are a BAD PERSON?” seems like an extraordinarily bad way to go about helping scrupulous people.”
You spent time with Christianity, so then you know that from a Christian perspective neither good not bad behavior, neither scrupulosity or amorality, make you a good or bad person. We are not bad because or if we do bad things, no the problem goes deeper – we are born addicts, addicted to our egos and the false sense of self and importance it feeds us. If something reinforces that, it’s destructive. Bad person? You’re the victim of your own delusion! That’s all.
BTW, calling it ‘bad” or “good” – do you remember when the young man approached Jesus and greeted him “Good teacher!” and Jesus called him out and told him he was in no position to call anyone good. See also the Eden myth where the problem starts when humans eat the fruit of the tree *of the knowledge of good and evil*. Moral judgmentalism is an exercise of power.
LikeLike
“You spent time with Christianity, so then you know that from a Christian perspective neither good not bad behavior, neither scrupulosity or amorality, make you a good or bad person.”
I spent 24 years in Christianity and nobody ever said things like this to me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
” do you remember when the young man approached Jesus and greeted him “Good teacher!” and Jesus called him out and told him he was in no position to call anyone good.” Jesus actually responded “nobody is good but God alone” which I was under the impression is generally intepreted as Scriptural Proof Of The Divinity Of Jesus.
LikeLiked by 3 people
>>>>BTW, calling it ‘bad” or “good” – do you remember when the young man approached Jesus and greeted him “Good teacher!” and Jesus called him out and told him he was in no position to call anyone good. See also the Eden myth where the problem starts when humans eat the fruit of the tree *of the knowledge of good and evil*. Moral judgmentalism is an exercise of power.
When I was younger I understood “Only God can judge us” to mean “only God is smart enough and knowledgeable enough to make perfectly accurate moral judgments.” But now I wonder if that isn’t what it means. Maybe it means that it is literally bad to make moral judgements unless you are God, regardless of the content of those judgements.
This leads to the conclusion that if someone makes a moral judgement, and gets the same answer that God does, they have still done something bad. This seems crazy to me, but maybe it doesn’t to other people.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“I spent 24 years in Christianity and nobody ever said things like this to me.”
They should have, but you could have just read the Epistles. Paul goes on and on, in his incoherent way, about the subject forever, when he condemns “works of the Law” and anyone counting on “their won righteousness.”
LikeLike
@queenshulamit: You were Catholic, right? Ginkgo is almost certainly coming at this from a Protestant, sola gratia, sola fide perspective. He’s pretty well-supported by the Bible[1], which makes his position obviously correct if one is working from the Protestant starting point of sola scriptura.
@Ginkgo: Reminder: Catholics do not believe in any of the five solae.
[1] Apart from, perhaps, the Epistle of James.
LikeLike
I was explicitly told that I hated myself because I was arrogant and this… really didn’t help.
Becoming arrogant helped. I am a massive egotist these days and I am much much nicer to non-me people into the bargain.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I don’t mean this to sound harsh, but I feel like there’s a problem of credulousness on top of scrupulosity in some of these cases.
I have the scrupulosity issue with respect to charitable giving; pretty much every time I spend any money on myself, I feel horrible about it.
On the other hand, Scott Aaronson–like reactions to social justice are totally mystifying to me. If a belief seems specifically structured to make me feel horrible about myself no matter what I do, I’m likely to conclude that the problem is with the belief, not me. Social justice-inspired self-hatred seems to require a failure to perform a basic (forgive the term) sanity check. Thus, credulousness.
LikeLiked by 8 people
“If a belief seems specifically structured to make me feel horrible about myself no matter what I do, I’m likely to conclude that the problem is with the belief, not me.”
Or, you know, one’s understanding of the prescribed belief.
I get the sense that some in the rationalist community tend to overestimate the completeness of their priors, if that makes any sense.
We get faced with ideas and communications that we misunderstand or only partially comprehend all the time. But how often do we think, “Hold on, this makes no sense, do I actually have all of my facts correct?”
LikeLiked by 3 people
Oh, yay, a scrupulosity post! Unsurprisingly, I have substantial disagreements. Mostly with the “stick to literal meanings” part.
IME, it is precisely sticking to literal meanings that causes a lot of the problem. Yes, you should stick to literal meanings insofaras that means not “building a fence around the law”, but that’s hardly the only case that comes up. In a lot of cases, the “scrupulous conclusion”, the taking things to extremes, is not some additional fence built around the law, but simply a justified inference or deduction from the literal meaning of what you were told.
(Note that it’s not necessarily from what you were told alone; it may require combining it with various principles that you consider basic but weren’t stated by the person, or it may require combining multiple sources.)
This is because, to be blunt, lots of people don’t have a clue how to take things literally. They don’t notice the literal meaning of what they are saying, they notice what they intended and they notice the meaning of what they are saying filtered through common sense. They certainly don’t notice non-obvious consequences of what they are saying. And if you try to argue with them you will get nowhere.
(Imagine having an argument over what it means to “know” something (assuming for now that this is a meaningful question) with people who act the way I’m used to seeing SJers act. Forget about Gettier’s examples; most people wouldn’t even get as far as “justified true belief” in the first place, they’d probably stop at “true belief” or “justified belief”. If you tried to present a counterexample, they’d just reply “That’s not what I meant by ‘true’, geez!” or “That obviously isn’t really justified.” And trying to point out non-obvious consequences will frequently not get you a response pointing out the flaw in your argument, but a simple “That’s not what I said, geez!” — as if there were no such thing as a non-trivial inference or deduction.)
Now, OK, to a large extent you’ve already addressed this with your “Avoid unbounded moral injunctions”! And maybe that really is the answer. What worries me about this is that it’s potentially too broad. If you go wading into this stuff, you’re rarely going to find a truly bounded moral injunction; people just don’t bother to put bounds on, because they honestly do not notice that they are necessary, or consider them to be implicit. I’d like some bounded moral injunctions to follow, but where are they?
I’m going to suggest what might be an alternative and what might be an addition, which is, use a wrapper. (Is this the right word? Not sure this is the right word.) The people you’re listening to are implicitly using a wrapper; the best solution is to do the same, then maybe you’ll get something like their intended message. Of course, using the same wrapper as them is impossible unless you have all their common sense; but perhaps we can at least extract some commonalities, which, if not accurate, might at least be useful. One of these might be automatically placing bounds — “Usually”, “In situations I am familiar with”, “Among people I am familiar with”, etc. This helps solve the boundedness problem. That said, I’m not so comfortable with this one because it’s really hard to know just where the bounds should be; this is actually a serious problem. It’s one of the things you try to talk about and get an idea of and then get called a horrible person for. (I mean, not here, the people here are considerably better! 🙂 ) I don’t really know where to place them. Still, knowing that there are at least implicit bounds might be helpful, and hopefully knowing that you can start to get a feel for it.
The other suggestion I have in that direction is the “forgiveness wrapper”; if someone says “Don’t do X”, implicitly interpret that as “Don’t deliberately do X” or “If you find that you have done X, stop doing so, and, if appropriate, apologize”. There are times when that isn’t sufficient to make things OK, and stricter interpretations are appropriate, so again, knowing exactly what version of this wrapper to apply is still a problem; but I think that, once again, having it available, you can maybe start to get a feel for what version of it to apply. Personally, I think this problem is easier than the bounds problem; my own common sense seems more prepared to handle this one. I don’t know about other people obviously.
LikeLiked by 7 people
THIS. So. Much. This.
It amazes me, the extent to which many people are incapable of understanding the strict denotation of what they are saying, even when it’s pointed out to them. And that’s even if you don’t get called a “concern troll” for trying, since obviously everyone understands what they really meant.
Even people who are better about their own speech often, IME, seem to do this to their allies’ speech (accurately or otherwise—for every insanely rigorous literal interpretation, somewhere out there, there’s a fringe extremist who really believes it). Even on this blog, I think that a lot of the defense of feminist media criticism is not actually based on what the critics are saying, but on what their defenders would mean if they said something vaguely similar.
LikeLiked by 5 people
I have caught myself doing this. I (think I) mostly stopped by steelmanning my allies position instead. The two acts (substituting what I would prefer be said; arguing a similar, better justified position) have some strong parallels, so it wasn’t much of a change. I just let my instinct to say, “Oh, by that, they mean …” run wild, then I cut out the first bit.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, I probably should have included an explicit “see also” to Phil Goetz’s “Reason as memetic immune disorder”.
LikeLike
Somehow I read ‘stick to literal meanings’ as ‘don’t stick to literal meanings’ since it seemed obvious to me that taking stuff literally even for edge cases etc. Is the problem, instead of extending things beyond the literal.
LikeLike
Your blog is the first place I was introduced to the concept of scrupulosity, but it fits me absurdly well.
Something really clicked for me about it when I read this, although it’s about a different phenomenon: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wegner/ip.htm
“The theory of ironic processes of mental control (Wegner, 1994, 2009) holds that any intentional control of the mind introduces an operating process that directs conscious attention–focusing our minds on positive thoughts, for example, if we are hoping to improve our mood. This process is accompanied, however, by an ironic monitoring process that looks for the failure of our intention. Such monitoring can, when we are stressed or under mental load, actually promote the unwanted mental state–for example, making us sad when we want to be happy.”
I don’t think ironic processing is a perfect conceptual match for scrupulosity, because it deals specifically with mental states, but it’s a very good analogy for the overarching issue as I see it:
I want to be a good person, and the monitoring process that looks for the failure of that intention has been running on overdrive my entire life. Also that process never wants to stop running until it reaches a best-course-of-action conclusion, and for most questions there’s gray area, and when my brain hasn’t FINALSOLVED a question, it wants to run the process, forever, until it has (and any and all other unFINALSOLVED processes).
LikeLike
In an amusing twist, social justice killed my scrupulosity (I once apologized to my godmother for taking up her time when she had arranged for me to visit her) by being so over-the-top monstrous in its execution that I could no longer blame everything that was thrown at me on myself. That was a high bar to clear, but I’m better off for it, and I think the world is, too, because you’re absolutely right about scrupulous people being less productive.
LikeLiked by 5 people
In my own case, part of why it was possible was because, as I’ve mentioned earlier, there was always that little gap — I couldn’t actually conclude from their premises that everything I might do was evil, just everything I could think of; combined with the fact that there were people they endorsed, this implied that there was indeed some way of being good by their standards, I just couldn’t see what it was.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I have a weird pseudo-scrupulosity thing where every time I try to do something to be a better person or happier in the long run my brain pulls up a list of a hundred ways in which I’m trash garbage and says ” Would you you like to expend a huge amount of effort to remove this item, thus becoming exactly 1% less terrible?”
LikeLiked by 3 people
This is kind of how I’m feeling right now.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I find the Starfish Story somewhat helpful when I feel like this:
Click to access Starfish%20Story.pdf
LikeLiked by 1 person
Just came to think of it: Is scrupulosity a symptom or the root cause?
As in: Does an unquestioning adherence to perceived-as-absolute standards lead to scrupulosity or is it the other way around?
Or maybe both are root causes of some kind and just go together really well…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Here is some of my own advice on avoiding scrupulosity spirals.
Avoid sj blogs that make extreme or controversial claims but never site sources and then get angry if you ask them to.
Avoid sj blogs that has endorsements of violence and hatred in the title.
Avoid sj blogs that responds to any criticisms of anything they do, including making threats of violence, as “tone policing”.
Avoid blogs where people insist that personal experience is always whats most important in knowing the facts on complex issues, especially if their using it as a reason for you to agree with their opinion.
Avoid blogs that make controversial claims but only or primarily cite other sj blogs but almost never cite quantitative data or academic research/experts. Especially if they claim that academic research isn’t necessary or less valid because academics are “privileged”.
Avoid blogs that cite sources but lie about or misrepresent what the sources say. In that case you know their lying.
Never rely on sj blogs as the sole source of information on a issue. Always fact check the information you receive. And if the majority of information you receive from a a sj blog is inaccurate or misleading avoid it.
In my opinion blogs that behave in this manner are acting in bad faith by default and are using sj as a means to manipulate people.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Bonus: All of this is excellent general advice even if you remove all instances of “sj” from the text.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Here’s my advice for advoicing scrupulosity spirals: worship Satan.
(I’m serious. I may write a post but I’m not good at blogging.)
LikeLiked by 3 people
“it’s very plausible that the Evil Bastard Feminists do not exist anywhere outside your cranium, and your engagement with Evil Bastard Feminists is not an engagement with actual feminists’ actual beliefs.”
Evil Bastard Jesus, on the other hand… 😛
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for this post. It resonated strongly with me and I think it will prove helpful to me in the future.
LikeLike
Pingback: A silly rant about James Potter | anthropolatry
Pingback: Scrupulosity | epochryphal
Pingback: Spiritual Abuse: some highlights | epochryphal
Pingback: Generalized Shame Disorder | Thing of Things
Pingback: Scrupulosity, Objectification, and Trans Obsession, Part 1: In Defense of Chasers – The Reconstructionist
I realize I’m over 3 years late to the party, but I wanted to thank you for this post. I recently triggered a major OCD spike in my brain…and I had no idea I had OCD. I thought I had my diagnoses figured out, but now I have a NEW diagnosis and little knowledge.
Specifically, I want to thank you because I’m having a super hard time finding SJ-related OCD (“pure-o?” “scrupulosity?” I’m still new to this, sorry) things online. I’m terrified that if I go to a white specialist, I’ll be let “off the hook,” and if I go to a specialist of color, I’ll be confirmed awful and hurt myself (and hurt them by exposing them to my awful presence!). I’ve been deep in Tumblr SJ culture since 2013 and find SJ important, but it seems like my ambient anxiety about myself has finally collapsed the roof of my brain. I want to get better, but I’m terrified of not being accountable. I’m at a place where I’m PRETTY sure I’m being ridiculous, but there’s a small chunk of my brain that’s like “nope!! this is reality.”
I’m going to keep trying to read your blog, but do you know of anyone else who talks about this? I’m completely disinterested in people who have decided everyone’s just an evil SJW trying to control their brain, but I’d love to read stuff from…conscious? compassionate and thoughtful-toward-others? people who struggle with this. It’s scary to learn I have OCD, but it’s been scarier being unable to find much about my particular “thing.” Thank you so much.
(p.s. If this is triggering/too graphic/too “much,” I sincerely apologize. I don’t know what level of sharing/”reassurance-seeking” is excessive or detrimental, and I’ve read “don’t look up info about OCD,” but how can I not when it’s brand new and I need to learn and maybe not feel like a freak?)
LikeLike
Hey afraid, I empathise so much with what you’re saying although I haven’t experienced your situation in all its specifics. (Lesson one in recovery: this is possible!) I’m about 6 months late for YOUR comment, but just want to say if you want to talk to someone who deals with the same feelings I’m here. I’m leaving my blog address here, it has links to various ways you can contact me if you want to.
LikeLike
Pingback: Effective Altruism: an outsider perspective