1. Ingroup bias

People tend to evaluate their own group more favorably. When someone from the majority does something admirable, it reinforces a positive collective identity. When they do something wrong, it’s often treated as an individual failing rather than something representative.

2. The “ultimate attribution error”

This extends the more familiar fundamental attribution error. We tend to:

• Attribute good actions by our group to character (“We are good people”).

• Attribute bad actions by our group to circumstances.

• Attribute bad actions by outgroups to character (“They are like that”).

• Attribute good actions by outgroups to luck or exception.

This preserves a positive moral image of “us” while essentializing “them.”

3. Selective labeling

As you note, when a minority member does something good, their minority identity may be downplayed (“one of us”). When they do something bad, that identity may be emphasized. Media framing often reflects this asymmetry.

4. Moral distancing and denial of complicity

You also point to a deeper issue: the tendency to treat wrongdoing as emerging from isolated individuals, rather than from social, historical, or structural conditions. This framing:

• Protects collective self-image.

• Avoids confronting systemic causes.

• Places moral burden solely on those with the least power to redefine the narrative.

By treating “bad” as if it occurs in a vacuum, societies can avoid examining how institutions, norms, or historical forces contribute to outcomes.

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Your reflection ultimately pushes toward a more consistent principle moral accountability and moral potential must be distributed evenly. That means resisting both demonization and romanticization—and acknowledging shared responsibility where appropriate.

 

 Plants are constantly doing cellular respiration, day and night. In respiration, they:

• Use oxygen (O₂)

• Break down sugars (like glucose)

• Release carbon dioxide (CO₂)

• Produce usable energy (ATP)

At the same time, when light is available, they also perform photosynthesis, which:

• Uses carbon dioxide (CO₂)

• Uses water and light energy

• Produces sugars

• Releases oxygen (O₂)

What happens during the day?

• Photosynthesis is active (because there’s light).

• Cellular respiration is also happening.

• Usually, photosynthesis happens faster than respiration.

• Net effect: The plant takes in CO₂ and releases O₂.

What happens at night?

• No light → photosynthesis stops.

• Cellular respiration continues.

• Net effect: The plant takes in O₂ and releases CO₂.

So plants don’t “switch” between processes — respiration is always on, but photosynthesis only runs when light is available.

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Desert Plants and Nighttime Gas Exchange 🌵

Some desert plants use a special adaptation called CAM photosynthesis (Crassulacean Acid Metabolism).

Examples include:

• Saguaro cactus

• Aloe vera

• Pineapple

These plants:

• Open their stomata (tiny pores, sometimes called “mouths”) at night

• Take in CO₂ when it’s cooler and more humid

• Store that CO₂ in a temporary chemical form

• Close stomata during the hot day to prevent water loss

• Use the stored CO₂ for photosynthesis during daylight

This dramatically reduces dehydration in hot, dry climates.

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The beautiful part is that plants are balancing two opposite chemical processes at once — building sugars and breaking them down — depending on energy availability and environmental conditions.

It’s like a carefully timed metabolic dance between light, water, temperature, and survival.

“Hysterical symptoms such as mutism, sensory loss, or motor paralysis were treated with electric shocks. Patients were excoriated for their laziness and cowardice. Those who exhibited the “hideous enemy of negativism” were threatened with court martial. In one case, Yealland reported treating a mute patient by strapping him into a chair and applying electric shocks to his throat. The treatment went on without respite for hours, until the patient finally spoke. As the shocks were applied, Yealland exhorted the patient to “remember, you must behave as the hero I expect you to be. . . . A man who has gone through so many battles should have better control of himself.”

This passage describes the methods of Dr. Lewis Yealland, a Canadian-born neurologist who practiced at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic in London during World War I. 

Based on your prompt and supporting details:

• The Treatment: Yealland utilized "faradization" (electric shocks) to treat "hysterical" symptoms such as mutism, functional blindness, and paralysis, arguing that these were caused by a lack of discipline rather than war trauma.
• The Specific Case: In his 1918 book Hysterical Disorders of Warfare, Yealland described treating a mute soldier by strapping him into a chair, inserting a mouth gag, and applying electrodes to his throat while telling him "you must behave as becomes the hero I expect you to be... A man who has gone through so many battles should have better control of himself".
• The Goal: Yealland aimed to force soldiers back into the trenches as quickly as possible by making their symptoms "a dreary and unprofitable business" often threatening them with court-martial if they showed "negativism" (resistance to treatment).

This passage vividly illustrates one of the darkest chapters in the history of traumatic stress: the treatment of "Shell Shock" (now recognized as PTSD) during World War I. The methods described, particularly those of Lewis Yealland, represent a "disciplinary" approach to mental health that prioritized military efficiency over patient empathy.

Here is a breakdown of the context and the medical philosophy behind these harrowing practices.

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The "Disciplinary" Model

During WWI, the British military was overwhelmed by soldiers exhibiting "hysterical" symptoms—physical ailments like blindness, paralysis, or mutism that had no apparent physical cause. Because the military needed men back at the front, doctors like Yealland employed Faradism (the application of electric currents).

• The Goal: To make the treatment more painful or terrifying than the trauma of the trenches, effectively "forcing" the patient back into a state of physical function.

• The Logic: Doctors often viewed these symptoms as a form of "unconscious malingering" or cowardice. By framing recovery as a matter of "willpower" and "manliness," they treated psychological trauma as a moral failing.

The "Hero" Narrative

Yealland’s exhortation—“behave as the hero I expect you to be”—highlights the toxic intersection of Victorian gender roles and military necessity. By equating mental health with "control" and "heroism," patients were trapped: they could either endure the torture of the "cure" or face the shame (and potential execution) of a court-martial for cowardice.

Gemini

Reddit

I scream in my mind all the time, am I alone?

Question

My life is okay now -- not perfect, but far from the trauma that got me where my mind is now and I'm finally safe. I find myself screaming in my mind, even in calm moments that are going well. It's not all the time, but I can distinctly hear myself scream over and over again. A deep, gut wrenching scream that I can't shake or get out of my mind.

I can't afford therapy, and I really have no one to ask this to, so I'm reaching out to Reddit. Does this happen to others? I only have severe CPTSD, not any other disorders. It's not like "hearing voices in your head", it's like the normal thinking "voice in my head" that I normally have is just in there screaming. It feels so unhealthy and broken, and I feel totally alone in this.

It doesn't feel like a hallucination, because it's my screaming and I know it's not real. Does that count as a hallucination? It feels like every scream I can't let out floats around inside me until my body forces it out.

Yes I do. All the time. I wake up hearing screaming I hear it at all times of the day.

I understand my brain best in terms of fragmentation/parts and there’s a part of myself that is just absolutely screaming in there at all times and has been for years. It’s just like this dull awareness of someone screaming in my head most of the time, but sometimes it can get louder or more frantic and try to come out. Sometimes it tries to start shouting for my partner to help me, especially in the middle of the night.

I do. For me, it's mostly triggered when I'm in public. Bracing for the judgement of people maybe? But yeah it's a terror-filled screaming. I tend to try and drown it out with music that gives me confidence and I mask up to get what I need done. But no, you're not alone 🤍

No but I feel it, if it makes sense.

Thank you for sharing that. I've never heard anyone else describe this. I appreciate this.

I scream in my mind all the time.

I still live with my family, who gave me my trauma. I have a plan to move out in a year-ish but I often find myself clenching my fists supper tight and sliently screaming at the top my lungs in rage, despair and grief. We're gonna get through this. just stay the course.

I get this too. To me I see it as part of me/my brain that is still traumatized and thinks that doing X or Y is 'unsafe', and/or that it has internalized the thoughts of someone who treated me in that way for doing those things... if that makes sense?? So that part is screaming at me that I've done something wrong, because previously someone (externally) had said it is wrong or implied it...

Difficult to explain it when tired, but I hope you can vaguely understand where I'm coming from...

In a way your brain might be trying to protect you? Even if its in a way that isn't obvious at first - like getting angry and screaming at you or someone else or the world for doing something so that you won't do it again because that part thinks it's unsafe.

This is familiar to me. For me, it's deep rage at my abusers and all the overlapping dysfunctional systems that keep abuse and neglect going and going.

There's a part of me that always knew it was wrong and was shut down for calling it out and is fucking pissed about it. It's pissed that it's still going on decades later. It's pissed that people are still so dysfunctional that if you try and bring it up they'll attack you instead of facing their dysfunction.

It's angry frustration. Warning, this is what I'd like to scream: WHY WONT ANYONE WAKE THE FUCK UP AND LISTEN TO ME!!! STOP PRETENDING EVERYTHING IS FINE AND DEAL WITH THE ACTUAL DYSFUNCTION RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!! IT'S SO OBVIOUS, WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE SEEING THIS!!

I isolate bc I can't keep pretending everything is fine when it's clearly a big dysfunctional mess of normalized generational abuse and neglect being perpetuated all across the globe.

St. Francis of Assisi was known as a “nature boy” because, unlike the rest of us, he looked at a bird and thought, yes, my brother.

Francis of Assisi (1181–1226) had a radical habit of treating nature like family. He called the sun “Brother Sun,” the moon “Sister Moon,” and apparently never once rolled his eyes at a chirping sparrow. According to tradition, he even preached sermons to birds. Not metaphorically. Literally. Imagine being so spiritually committed that pigeons are part of your audience demographic.

He believed all creation reflected God’s goodness, so animals, plants, wind, fire—none of it was background scenery. It was sacred. This worldview shows up beautifully in his poem, the Canticle of the Sun, where he praises God through elements of nature. It’s basically medieval eco-poetry before “eco” was trendy.

There’s also the famous story of him taming the Wolf of Gubbio. While most people would run, Francis negotiated a peace treaty. You struggle to text someone back; he’s brokering détente with predators. Because of this deep reverence for creation, he’s now considered the patron saint of animals and ecology. 

So yes, “nature boy” fits. He wasn’t just outdoorsy. He was spiritually on a first-name basis with chlorophyll.

'The school that once rooted me has become an atmosphere that I can inhale anywhere'.

MS