I also made a throwaway account to make a comment here. I also said the article was well written. I am an HN regular, but didn't want my medical problem tied to my HN account name.
Is it that odd that we might have polar opposite views on the article? Or that having a somewhat similar experience to the author, that I might view the article differently than you do?
Really well written, especially considering the author's plight.
Regarding this bit:
>The day of the accident I had been working on a project to improve how homeless people are placed into shelters. I say out loud, “I don’t care about homeless people” to see how it feels. It doesn’t ring true; I do care about homeless people. I just don’t feel like working.
I wonder if that's directly to do with the brain damage or not. I survived a particularly rough "you're gonna die" type cancer. And I have similar issues with depression, motivation, procrastination, and so on. Which I know sounds counter-intuitive. I survived, and the physical aftermath isn't really bad. So I should be grateful versus depressed, right? I have tried a variety of depression meds over the 5 years that have passed. I really can't tell if any of them work. I suppose partly because I'm not despondent really...just mostly unmotivated. None of them changed that.
Anyhow, just to say that near-death experiences, even without physical damage to the brain, seem to have mental consequences.
The book "Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging" discusses similar dynamics with returning combat troops, and others that have lived through war or extreme challenging scenarios. The surprising finding is it's not the memory of the event that causes PTSD/depression, but returning to "normal" modern, atomized and isolated life of relative peace and stability.. and losing the excitement, adrenaline/thrill of events arguably humans have been adapted to thrive in: challenges and struggles, especially alongside a group of people facing same challenge together. Many people have been polled as being happier in for example war time London facing bombing raids, death and destruction, than peacetime after WW2. It's a good read.
I imagine it's different for different people. I survived an event that m doctor at the time warned me there was very little chance of surviving. After working through all of the stages of loss over my future, I managed to come out the other side of my health issues with less impact than expected.
Now it's almost like I've made peace with my death, and don't much care about anything anymore. The only way I can rationalize what my brain's done is it's accepted a world without me, and is OK with that. It's odd, you'd think someone that survives a traumatic event would be overjoyed. I'm just "meh" most of the time now.
Is it that odd that we might have polar opposite views on the article? Or that having a somewhat similar experience to the author, that I might view the article differently than you do?