Toxicity

This tidbit from a thought-provoking, if frustrating, article in the New Yorker about cutting family ties got me thinking:

The problem with calling someone “toxic,” Karl Pillemer, the Cornell sociologist, told me, is that “it’s completely in the eye of the beholder.” No one self-identifies as toxic. “It’s a label applied to someone by someone who is angry at the other person.” The term also forecloses the possibility of bridging the divide. “If you consider a family tie toxic, then there’s no reason anymore to try to work on it or to consider the other person as a human being,” he said.

That’s the problem with arcs that offer no redemption. You can work with, move past, and even go beyond things like rude, saying hurtful things, being inconsiderate.

Our social media narratives remove complexity and nuance, but real life is all about living with contradictions and complexity.

In “Rules of Estrangement,” Coleman devotes a chapter to the prevalence of psychotherapy—subhead: “My Therapist Says You’re a Narcissist”—and concludes that “therapists’ perspectives often uncritically reflect the biases, vogues, and fads of the culture in which we live.” In a culture that values independence, in other words, a therapist might advise a clean break.

And hence pop culture nudges people to extreme, simplistic solutions to the complexities of life and human relationships. What I like about these sorts of long, in-depth essays is that this theme is repeatedly examined from different angles without any real attempt to say what’s the right conclusion.