Social exclusion fuels extremism in young men
neurosciencenews.com
neurosciencenews.com
And I did notice a few things:
- I have nothing to lose anymore
- I suddenly have a lot of free time to devote my energy to
- My mental state is slightly unstable
- I am in a shitty mood
I am not religious and do not know much about extreme views (I only know a bit about Buddhism) but I can imagine that extremist religious or ideological views would hyper charge the 4 things I talked about.
On another note, if this study would state that these people would become workaholics then I would also believe that. I feel it is the opposite side of the same coin.
Humans are relatively unique in:
1. Language
2. Tool use (thanks to being land-dwellers, two legged, and having opposable thumbs)
3. Having a prefrontal cortex that allows us to inhibit any other instinct we have
Other animals have this as well to some degree or another, even all 3 of them. These 3 things combined allow us to sometimes escape our primal nature. But I wonder whether we're alone in that: how about dolphins, elephants and other animals of that sort?
Obvious example: hangry people.
I think social exclusion is another case where people's base needs aren't being met.
Our animal reality constrains the ways in which we can behave, but says nothing about how we ought to behave within that realm of possibility.
I mean yeah it makes you really valuable in certain situations but it also makes your daily life hell.
Can you name a few uniquely or predominantly masculine traits which would NOT be called toxic masculinity by someone prominent?
Some (generally recognized as) non-toxic stereotypically masculine traits include having confidence, a can-do attitude, being protective, trying to be helpful, being intellectual, being silly, leading people towards common goals. Even anger in moderation is not inherently toxic (we all feel it). These things can all be terrible in excess, of course, so I think sometimes people fairly call an excess of these things toxic (even if the trait itself is great in moderation). It's also bad if you are only allowed to embody a specific set of traits and behaviors; clearly men should not be limited to these traits (though the societal pressures to conform to traits like these are strong and are often what are referred to as "toxic masculinity" in reasonable discourse). Likewise, women should clearly be seen as equally capable of possessing these stereotypically masculine traits.
I think a lot of the use of "toxic masculinity" is in reference to the fact that men are often strongly discouraged, explicitly and implicitly, from doing things that are seen as non-masculine. This causes behavior that's harmful to oneself and others, like taking out all your emotions as anger, or feeling like violence is the most powerful and respected way to make an impact. In more benign forms, it can come from an excess of an otherwise good trait, like going from confident to cocky. Many people will use the term vaguely/badly, but I think the usage I just described is useful.
I think the most important point is that "toxic masculinity" (in its useful and precise form) is very different from saying "men are toxic". It's closer to "men face toxic pressure due to people's gender expectations that cause them to suffer and sometimes hurt others as well". It's about the societal pressure to conform to a narrow and inadequate spectrum of behaviors. It's like men are expected to span a 3D emotional space with only 1 emotional "basis vector" since the other 2 are effeminate. The 1 basis vector is not itself "toxic"; it's the denial of the other 2 vectors.
I do think "toxic masculinity" is very different from a phrase like "violent blacks" because it specifies a behavioral trait/set of cultural mores (masculinity) over which people have a significant degree of control versus an intrinsic trait (like maleness or blackness) over which people have no control whatsoever. There's also not much of a history of men being violently repressed or disenfranchised purely for being men, so the potential antagonistic aspects of a phrase like "toxic masculinity" are not instantly amplified by association/context in the same way as your other examples. Also, "toxic" is not tied to a specific harmful stereotype; this leaves one open to dissect which aspects of stereotypical masculinity are toxic, rather than concluding a priori that men are "violent" or "neurotic" like in the other two examples. I think "toxic feminity" could similarly, in good faith, be used constructively in ways that "neurotic femininity" cannot.
That said, the fact that a good number of people use "toxic masculinity" in a vague and unproductively confrontational way has given it a bad connotation to many; this sort of usage is certainly enabled by the brevity of the term. I think a lot of people (I suspect the majority) don't make the distinctions I made in my previous comment, and it undermines their efforts to use the term or concept of "toxic masculinity" in a truly helpful way. I've seen many examples of this: right-aligned people trying to discredit feminists as misandrist; feminists unempathetically erasing these distinctions; angry people in Twitter comment sections complaining about toxic masculinity; people who actually know better lazily using it as jargon on public forums where it can be misinterpreted (I'm sometimes guilty of this); and so on.
The term is also problematic in its omitted connotations; one of these omitted connotations is the interconnectedness of traditional feminine gender roles with toxic masculine traits. Many people ignore how these roles interact with and reinforce each other.
For example, where I live (NYC), it's unclear what type of masculinity is desirable to straight women. Most straight women I know are having a hard time finding guys they want to date because they've been trained to be attracted to some traits of toxic masculinity. But since they live in NYC in 2019, they also have learned recently to be wary of those same traits. Most of them are aware of this weird cognitive dissonance, but they can't figure out how to resolve it. Many of the straight men I know genuinely want to avoid toxic stereotypical behavior, and they're concerned about things like coming on strong/harassing women, but because many of the women they want to date still expect men to do more of the pursuing, it's ambiguous how precisely they should behave to make their dates feel desired but not cornered.
There are many less benign examples; I've seen plenty of women who mock boys and men for being too emotional, too prissy, too pretty, or too physically weak. It's not just men who define manhood in an overly-restrictive way. And these same women have to deal with the negative aspects of feminine gender conditioning. It's a cyclical thing, and I think the only healthy way I've seen to deal with it is to think of everybody as both perpetrator and victim. You can use "toxic masculinity" as a shorthand for the component of this approach related to masculine stereotypes, or you can use it in a divisive way that is unhelpful.
The fundamental issue is that "toxic masculinity" is non-technical jargon; it has a highly compressed meaning, but without a technical framework to limit its interpretation, it's also prone to heavy semantic drift through vagueness, malice, laziness, or stupidity. I think that someone choosing an alternative to "toxic masculinity" will have to deal with jargon's fundamental tradeoff between brevity and specificity. I won't be surprised if such an improved term (or at least and attempt at such) comes about at some point, as often happens with non-technical jargon, but picking such a term effectively is a deep problem rooted in the weakness and strength of natural language's inherent vagueness.
Yeah, almost like its masculinity, but toxic?
Thinking in terms of “female traits” that are taken to an extreme. That kind of thinking itself says women should be afraid to give in too much into “their nature”, because it’s just a societal construct where they are encouraged to be, say, irrational, catty, moody, whatever. (They have to question who they act and “be more logical like men” — a social conservative like Jesse Peterson would still advocate that today.)
(And frankly I believe that ADD is the new Hysteria, but for kids.)
Does that sound like a productive way to conduct public discourse and discuss issues among adults?
Some companies have experimented with it in a big way. Here is the Result: https://onenewsnow.com/business/2019/08/02/gillette-cut-by-8...
Contrast with toxic masculinity, which focuses on external, societal pressures which force/encourage men to behave in ways that are harmful to themselves and others, rejecting the idea that men are "just like that".
(As for ADD being the hysteria being the new hysteria, I can totally see the resemblance)
Also, the website for your source is run by a fundamentalist, anti-LGBT hate group [1], so you might want to consider picking a different one.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Family_Association
Yeah, ADD is the new hysteria in my opinion, although you can also split hairs and say it’s different because kids really DO bounce around and have more energy, vs saying all women have anxiety or whatever. It’s close enough, in my mind, to discuss the general attitude by analogy.
Whether it’s something intrinsic to the person, or something that society makes them do, is an interesting question. But every time I object, it is because is framed in words that evoke the former, that something is “inherent” in kids and women and men, such as “masculinity”, and it can go too far.
That is not so much a critique of society, at least because of the choice of words, as say if we said:
Schools are the reason more kids experience ADD (sit down and shut up for 10 hours a day, learn to work for corporations)
Conditions women were kept in were the reason for their anxiety (eg yellow wallpaper short story)
How society uses men to do physically demanding and risky jobs / go to war / make the first move leads them to act the way they act.
Instead, it says “boys were taught masculine trait X, and that leads to wife battering” but that’s a short hop skip and jump from that to “it leads to sexist behavior” to “it leads to microaggressions” and “it leads to unwanted advances in the form of a compliment or asking someone out who you barely know based on their beauty alone”. In short, it can be weaponized to further eliminate what has until now been considered “normal masculine” behavior, because gender dymorphism does actually exist, etc. So many men are threatened and many women feel also that “all the real men” have disappeared. But really, it’s because of all the uncertainty about whether traditional gender roles (I’m talking about a man making the first move or holding open a door or planning a date, say) are desirable or not.
Anyway, I just feel when it comes to ADD, Autism, Depression, Hysteria, Toxic Masculinity etc. I’d rather focus 90% of my efforts on what society is doing NOW, and not use words like “bitchy woman” or “toxic masculinity” and excuse it by saying you’re just talking about what was done to boys in the past, because a lot of time the solutions lie in the present. And society can make it a LOT easier for people without putting them in these situations NOW. With changing society, NOT just medicating or doing psychiatric interventions.
Obese? Consider what society is doing, systemically, subsidizing sugar, putting antibiotics in factory farm animals.
Depressed? Consider the family structure, living alone, social ties, physically meeting, exercise regimen and societal expectations.
ADHD? Consider whether the public school system has become a glorified daycare because BOTH parents have to work full days at corporations just to pay the rent.
I feel a great model of what I do support is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Ac...
And so on. The answer is to change society, not blame the individual. I am a progressive in the sense of technology! But I am more of a social conservative in that I think the individual is constantly being blamed to keep up with the latest plan for normal behavior, when in reality society can improve. I would even be so bold as to take it to race as well:
Black targeted more by police?
Blaming individuals: “Recognize your white privilege”
Blaming society: “Useless drug war incarcerates Blacks disproportionately, Contraception availability leads to premarital sex instead of early marriages and more single parent homes, Failing schools face no market discipline because parents have no vouchers or choice, police are unaccountable”
Solutions: School vouchers, UBI, abolish minimum wage, end drug war, body cameras for all cops
Notice that all these solutions are race/gender neutral and may work far better!! But we suck all the political capital out of the room when we start talking about this new kind of bashing the individual, which is sometimes derogatorily referred to as “the regressive left” or “cultural marxism”.
A cursory glance at their home page reveals as much, and they spell it out clearly themselves.
From their FAQ [1]:
>What is OneNewsNow.com and who operates this site? OneNewsNow.com is the website of the American Family News Network (AFN), a national Christian news service. Our goal is to present the day's news from a biblical perspective. We not only feature the latest breaking stories from across the United States and around the world, but also news of the challenges facing Christians in today's society.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/gillette-ceo-8-billi...
To be sure, there is no way to prove causation from correlation. Perhaps it was a giant coincidence in timing. But I wouldn’t say there is “NO” evidence to support the thesis that men got offended:
There is no evidence that the "best a man can get" ads pushing back against sexism and bullying contributed to the $8 billion figure.
https://qz.com/1680613/pgs-gillette-writes-off-8-billion-as-...
It just leads to a fashionable, shallow, understanding of any subject it concerns. And just as it come into existence, it will go out of fashion in a decade or so. We have had such terms in every decade, from all sides of the political spectrum.
I'd avoid all such fad/mass-enforced framings...
Its main value is as a political tool to try to change people's behavior you disagree with, simply because you don't like it. When it stops being useful, it will be dropped for the next fad.
Could you share an example of such a study?
Genuinely interested in these studies, I didn't know they existed. Can you provide a reference?
> I disagree with any fad phrase (emerged in a year or so and suddenly used by everyone, the media, etc)
That is not skepticism, that's denial of anything remotely popular because of its popularity, not because of what it entails or puts forward.
Generally speaking, it's healthy (and good skepticism) to be suspect of "anything remotely popular because of its popularity". Not rejecting it outright, but being suspect of it. New things need to prove themselves. How is this in any way controversial?
That said, I didn't advocate rejecting "anything remotely popular". I said I reject "fad phrases", not "all new phrases" or "all popular phrases".
Fad: "a practice or interest followed for a time with exaggerated zeal"
That is, small terms that emerge out of nothing, are widely adopted from different sides for different purposes, are overloaded with different meanings, and after making their rounds, go out of fashion. And I specifically added the qualification that I'm mostly rejecting those supposed to address deep psychological/societal issues.
The dismissal of "what it entails or puts forward" is already present in my usage of "fad". I don't think those terms entail or put forward something significant, and they usually do more to confuse the issues.
(I've been old enough to see several such -- if I had been in the 60s and 70s I've had even more of those, now regarded as dead weight).
If I say "X is wrong" it doesn't mean I advocate -X ("the same metric just backwards"). I just say "don't use X". How about that?
Notice also how I didn't say I "Disagree with anything said using what I deem a fad phrase".
As I wrote I just disagree with the fad phrases themselves. One can write something right and clever even while using a fad phrase.
But they would have done better to write their arguments/thinking without resorting to fad phrases (is my point).
There's still the ages old, definition of what you want to say, in simple words (or more nuanced ones), without using pre-made, overplayed so that every source attaches their own irrelevant nuances, played to death, and ill-defined, framings.
Whereas "tree shaking" is a technical term, used in a precise context to describe a well defined process. Not really different than "compiling", "garbage collection", and so on. And even as a technical term, it's not used by everyone, all the media, etc, heck, not even all the technical media, or all the JS media. You seldom see it.
If we wanted to drop the "to explain deep rooted human psychology, society" part, there are similar fads in the IT domain, but "tree-shaking" is not it.
Toxic expectations for masculine traits permeate throughout society, too. A lack of sensitivity and tenderness is one such expectation, along with aggressive sexual promiscuity. This might lead some to view men as questionable caregivers, especially to children. Some men feel a pressure to avoid careers involving children, like teaching, which robs children of positive male role models. One can even argue that it robs children of fathers when courts prefer giving custody of children to their mothers.
I would agree that it's connected to masculine cultural tropes. The toxic behavior stemming from it is IMO is a derivate of the mental mess it fuels.
Plato talked about this in Phaedrus about the allegory of the Chariot [0,1]. I think it's a useful lens to view the desires we humans have, though not a perfect lens:
>First the charioteer of the human soul drives a pair, and secondly one of the horses is noble and of noble breed, but the other quite the opposite in breed and character. Therefore in our case the driving is necessarily difficult and troublesome. The Charioteer represents intellect, reason, or the part of the soul that must guide the soul to truth; one horse represents rational or moral impulse or the positive part of passionate nature (e.g., righteous indignation); while the other represents the soul's irrational passions, appetites, or concupiscent nature. The Charioteer directs the entire chariot/soul, trying to stop the horses from going different ways, and to proceed towards enlightenment.
In the modern west, we have an idea of 'Pious vs. Evil' that each of us tries to balance (super broad strokes here). However, I think the ideas of Plato are interesting because of the tripartite idea of Logos, Eros, and Thumos. Mostly, I think that Thumos[2] is a great way to look at things and categorize issues that we feel. Quickly:
> Thumos: a Greek word expressing the concept of "spiritedness" (as in "spirited stallion" or "spirited debate"). The word indicates a physical association with breath or blood and is also used to express the human desire for recognition. [2]
Thumos is neither good nor evil, but is something that can get away from you and needs to be controlled (by the Logos). For example: Achilles was overly thumotic and was thus killed by his desire for glory, blood, and honor; all thumotic traits. However, it was the thumos of Achilles drove him to be such a great warrior that we remember to this day. Also, the author Jack London was a thumotic person. He was always moving about, getting into scraps, trying to improve his writing, becoming famous. But that desire for greatness is what killed him as he literally worked himself to an early death while writing.
So, the energy that we have as men can be seen in this tripartite way of Logos, Eros, and Thumos, not just destructive or constructive. Having outlets that are 'base' (Eros) are as needed as having outlets that are 'spirited/honorable' (Thumos) and 'intellectual'(Logos).
[0] https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/what-is-a-man-the-al...
Reminds me of that cartoon about procrastination https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrasti... (the mind has a captain and a monkey).
This is too real
It's helpful to be reminded there is a quiet demographic in the world of religious peoples who don't have any of these problems at all because they have peace in their faith.
I am having trouble understanding this sentence.
You plan B was to be socially excluded? Surely you plan B had a different goal, and exclusion was a side effect? Was was plan A?
Why did you imagine being excluded vividly? Were you actually being excluded?
It sure doesn't help that there's a bunch of articles about people who "found happiness" by moving to a rural area like a year ago. You may see some benefit in the short term (yes, one year is a short term), but on a long term it will fuck you up.
Can you explain on how being rural will fuck you up? Do I count as rural as described above?
I've seen plenty of comments from people in rural areas along the lines of "Why are all the young folks moving to the big cities instead of here?"
What needs to happen is distribution of work. It's difficult, granted, but not impossible for companies to create smaller offices for specific products or subdivisions.
But it's a chicken / egg problem; people working in the city (at a tech company) don't want to move because they live there now, and companies don't want to move or create offices further out because there's no good developers there.
But at the same time, companies will gladly pay for relocating people from abroad. Why not do the same for moving into the countryside? This should be fine for expats as long as they're not too picky about where they end up living.
I am pretty sure that some developers prefer to live in a low cost area but companies often use that as leverage to lower down compensation.
I have lived in big cities, but currently reside in a rural area. I have never felt less socially isolated than I do now. They say it takes at least 40 hours of time spent together to make a friend. That makes school the ultimate place to make friends as you're pretty much forced to be around the same people for >40 hours. However, as an adult no longer in school, I have found that the smaller community increases the chances of seeing the same people each day, which prolongs the time spent together, and increases the chances of becoming friends.
In the big city, more often than not I'd meet people one day and then never see them again. That is isolating.
I have found that few in my broad age bracket(20-40) goes to many places regularly. Even the gym, which should be pretty regimented and consistent, is totally inconsistent in patronage. That's 3 years in the same gym and there is maybe 4 regulars. I have no trouble saying hello to people, but when I never see them again it's a moot point.
My best success so far is mountain biking, yet still. I am there the same time every day, three days a week, and rarely see the same person twice. When I do start to notice some regulars, I break something and then by the time I get back to riding the regulars are already back to irregular and I never see them again.
I used to think I need to be organizing stuff in order to make and keep friends, but I think we just need to make the concession to be somewhere regularly to give friendships the opportunity to happen. We seek novelty so much the idea of going to the same place twice in a fortnight keeps us all from bumping into eachother.
I would hope to take it the opposite end. Open to anyone in the community with monthly dues that regular people can afford. Just make it a nice place to socialize, play cards, listen to music, and meet new people.
I’m sure it would be an unmitigated disaster as I have no experience running something like this, but it’s a small dream.
there are plenty of regulars that go after work every day. and the atmosphere is substantially more social than a gym
School where I grew up wasn't much better than homeschooling sounds for the grandfather comment here: there just wasn't a culture of academic interest or many extracurriculars that interested me, beyond musicals and a school quiz team. Awkward high school me just didn't have much in common with the majority of kids where I grew up. A couple dozen classmates really isn't much to choose from. So I think you're overlooking the fact that you need a base of at least enough people that you can find some folks with similar interests, or at least people with compatible personalities.
Community college was a positive leap because I had a lot more diversity of classmates from all the different classes I took. That was the first time I was a member of a population large enough to actually find like minds and clubs/activities where I could build relationships.
Four year college was the best: I had friends in almost every class, most of the dorms, and had activities like TAing that actually interested me. Thousands of other similarly-smart kids with hundreds of clubs and activities to meet people? That's a perfect formula, and I wish I could replicate it in the post-graduate world.
Living in NYC since graduation has been a mixed bag. I feel like most people already have established friend networks so you need at least one decent connection to make it into one of those networks. One difficulty I found was that it takes a lot more active effort to maintain friendships. My college friends do not live nearby, so I have to organize travel to see any of them or at least try to call them up every week or two.
The other struggle is that most folks just don't have that much time outside of work. When I add up work (8-10 hours a day, including commute), sleep (6-8 hours a day), running (1 hour a day), cooking (1-3 hours a day)... there's only a couple of hours left to do anything. If you need to travel more than 30 minutes via subway to meet up with a friend, it's easy to start cutting into sleep time. God help you if you have a kid, or a dog, or a significant other who gobbles up more of that time.
Anyway, that basically means that most of my friend-making in NYC has boiled down to "people I work with" because that's the place where I see the most people other than my family/existing friends the most consistently. If you're not at a company with a culture perfectly aligned with your personality, it can be tough to make friends at work, and then you get isolated pretty easily.
I still haven't found quite the right formula for friends here: I've participated in running clubs, gyms, book clubs, and volunteer work, and none of them have hit the right balance for "regular group interaction" and "people I mesh with well." Hanging out at bars and coffee shops has its place too, but gets pricy and can be lonely to do alone at first.
All in all I think the big city just feels more isolating if you don't have friends because it seems like everyone else already has friends here. When I lived in rural America, it was depressing because I knew there was nobody I even wanted to hang out with. In the city I at least have hope that if I meet the right people -- who are definitely around here somewhere -- I could establish a great group of friends. The trouble, as it always is, is in meeting them.
There is an excellent article detailing the idea here: https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-y...
I wish it was mandatory reading for all youth.
There's a risk that, if you ask 'we' to teach this stuff, you're going to get a substantially watered-down message compared to the one in that article - perhaps even one that reverses it. After all, I doubt the "it's what's on the inside that counts" message the article disagrees with would've become so widespread if it didn't resonate with some people.
Isn't it better to make it easier for current crop of outcasts by explaining how to be useful members of society?
Aren't outcasts by definition people whom other people don't want to associate with? If yes, then how would explaining work?
To me it sounds like a Fox news viewer complaining about caravans of Muslims coming across the Mexican border to join MS-13.
It says more about your choices in what media sources to use to get a hit of anger than it does about objective reality.
I mean it sounds like a white nationalist talking point, but it also sounds like you believe it.
And the response to someone pointing it out is usually accusations of racism, misogyny etc. I'd say this pretty much describes your response to me...
https://www.salon.com/2015/12/22/white_men_must_be_stopped_t...
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/don-lemon-terror-threat/
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2018/06/10/why_can039t_we_... (Sorry, couldn't find something without a paywall)
https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/26/politics/michael-moore-2016-e...
https://kcjohnson.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/nungesser-comp...
Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w31B49W03io and see how many times the phrase "uneducated white men" is said with a sneer.
https://www.chicagoreporter.com/the-us-white-majority-will-s...
https://lithub.com/do-we-even-need-men/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end...
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/nov/17/row-after-...
[1] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/livable-city/la-oe-brown-rac...
The best you've been able to do is point out where media doesn't make males being born a sin (so, a counter-point to what you are saying).
That in a nutshell is what Nietzsche's master vs. slave morality dichotomy is about.
Master morality is concerned with the welfare of others and an individual's impact on the world. Slave morality is about oneself and an individual's own well-being.
According to Nietzsche both have their place and cultural history has always been defined by a struggle between them.
Nietzsche was also firmly in the master camp. Said so himself many times on many books
Now me? I agree with Mr Nietzsche completely
But most of these "excluded young men prone to radicalization" are really being rejected because they never bothered to actually offer something meaningful to the society that is rejecting them.
If the society is racist, that's a different matter altogether, and I already covered that case in my above comment. I do not claim that this "be a person that has something to offer" idea is a panacea to solve everything. But it does (or rather, would) solve many cases of social exclusion.
Just look at the despicable (and yes, now I am judging) "Incel" subculture in the USA. Sure, some of them might have genuine mental issues, but there is a lot of loafers and layabouts who prefer to pose as victims instead of doing something positive.
I also think you're mixing up cause and effect. I was the alienated guy in my early 20s--depressed, underemployed, angry all the time, flirting with alcoholism. I'm a programmer now, married, and working somewhere I really love. The acceptance came first, though, not the usefulness. A few key people in my life accepted me for who I was, not my utility.
That isn't to say it's always beyond the person's control, of course. But chalking it all up to being individually deficient seems insufficient to me.
Is this fundamentally different than telling women that since most of the world only values them as property, that accepting this fact would help oppressed women feel more comfortable with their positions in life?
Maybe you think you're doing people a favour by telling them a harsh truth about the reality they currently face, but here we're talking about how the world ought to be because of the pathologies caused by our reality. A great quote comes to mind:
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
This whole thread is about a pathology of the modern world that is harming a large segment of the population. The original poster responded to this argument by saying, "well, that's just how the world is", and further added that all young men ought to be taught this same view, further reinforcing it.
I think my post properly addresses the OP's response in this context.
As long as you can succeed in spite of what other think you can offer, they are not the same.
In my experience, offering value to society is not rewarded unless you also have the social skills necessary to capture the rewards. The problem is that, at least in the United States, there are vanishingly few resources for learning those skills.
This is exasperated by the fact that in many cases the "socially excluded young men" are already emotionally/spiritually exhausted by their past attempts to provide value to society.
This clickbait style of interpreting scientific studies only contributes to the already decreasing public trust in the scientific method.
1. According to this link, there are 600 hundred million men between the age of 15 and 24. https://www.indexmundi.com/world/demographics_profile.html
It certainly impugns the societal value of "productivity".
> If men were natural-born killers, hardwired by biology and destiny to take life, then there would be no need for patriarchal socialization to turn them into killers. > In patriarchal culture males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an antipatriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth.
— bell hooks
You just have to go back to WWII (if that!) to find obvious examples of this. Killers such as Richard Winters and Ronald Speirs are celebrated in history and fiction even today, 70 years later.
And convicted (male) mass-murderers have a tendency to receive an unexpected amount of attention from certain women, so even from that perspective this seems like an understandable evolutionary adaption.
Certainly not morally defensible, but nature doesn’t give a shit. It’s horrifying, but not incomprehensible.
And yes, in societies that reward cruelty and killing, cruelty will be high and so will killings.
Convicted male mass-murderers and soldiers are not really comparable. Convicted male mass murderers were not all that succesfull in having and keeping girlfriends until caught and locked. Just about only having a lot of children were the ones that run cult too.
Especially war killers you mention tend to typically be in group that reward killing and peer pressure each other into it.
Also through large parts of human history females were treated as chattel and weren't subjected to the same pressures as males.
All it takes is a look at those OkCupid studies for rating distributions to see how much larger the difference is between success and failure for men.
This problem is not exclusive to men, but affects more men.
Women more often have an expectation of mating upwards, and high status women have a similar problem of finding themselves excluded.
For that matter, you don't have to be with anybody at all, which may be why you see women rather be alone than follow parent's suggestion!
1. High status men have access to a lot of attractive women. With the way men's biology is wired, it wouldn't be surprising that they would choose an attractive, relatively lower status woman over a highly accomplished but not that attractive one.
2. High status men often have stressful work lives. They would probably prefer a partner that makes them feel relaxed at home. High status women usually have careers themselves so it would be difficult to provide this need.
It’s acutally surprisingly obvious given the knowledge that it’s not the norm for men to have children, in evolutionary terms. So obvious it’s weird that there isn’t more focus on avoiding those outcomes in society.
Maybe it’s a leftover from agricultural society, where the institution of marriage reduced the tendency. I don’t prefer the strict marriage and fidelity norms of the past, but they certainly had a stabilizing effect. We don’t have a similarly effective stabilizer on the horizon.
So you'd expect anyone to get violent when they are starving or homeless, but only men to get violent if they don't see themselves getting a sex-partner in their future.
This at some times more than others seems like enough, if no one else takes responsibility. We are hard wired to seek meaning and protect the will.
I have the exact same vision as you: I can’t work in a company because I feel directly hated by the diversity programs (funnily enough, I hire women). Success and money is not happiness and life is... very ironic sometimes.
Thank you for sharing, I don't think you troll as some of my younger employees shared the same feeling of disenfranchisment in their 1:1's.
Even if the view of being othered by diversity programs etc. is a little bit skewed, it's definitely having an impact in their psychology, as it's an easy scapegoat for why a raise was not given, a talk got rejected, etc. etc.
The actual cases numbers of these things happening must be much much smaller, but that's beside the point, as it's the psychological aspect that's ruining their perception of themselves and what society expects from them.
I think that you understand subjectivity of that perception. World is not hostile, just indifferent and doing its own thing regardless of your existance or needs. You just gotta become fine with that and your outlook on life will improve.
> and easily get a feeling that people do not like me.
Some don't like you. Some feel your mistrust towards them. Some empathize with you and in your company begin to see world as more hostile to them and they don't like it. When you feel safer in the world your relationships will improve.
Now it is of course a chicken egg thing. If you became that way, because others did not really care about you, .. then it might not be "just", but it still does not change the outcome. You experienced toxic and now you spread toxic.
Money does not change that and there is no easy solution. It would require a inner change in you to adopt to your surroundings, and/or a change of the surroundings, if they are bad to you, until you are at a place where you want to be, with people you like and who like you.
Seriously, I know people in that place and they did see a therapeut for some years and then got seriously depressed, after they realized, that they were just a client to the person who they thought, they had a deep connection with, who in reality, also did not like them and just did their job for money.
Now sure, a good therapeut can help certain people, but I don't know the poster, so I would not dare to know the "correct" answer for him and if it is really a therapist. Might help, might also kill him. Hyperbole? Well, I wish. But a close family member got along (miserable) on his own, then went with the pressure to get "professional" help and now he is dead.
Oh and he is not the person from the first example, this person is probably still alive, but that can change any day. So I have some reason to not see therapists as the magic solution.
A good therapist can be very helpful in helping you unpack why and how you think about things, and how you might change both for the better. That can be a valuable professional service. Especially for people who might otherwise have few or no relationships where they can talk about those things.
It is tragic that your family member did not get enough out of therapy, or perhaps was actively harmed by it. But I think therapy has helped enough people that I find it strange to blanket recommend against it.
Perhaps we can at least agree that short-scale (a few months, not years), deliberate therapy has a place?
Where did I do that? I wrote:
"Now sure, a good therapeut can help certain people, but I don't know the poster, so I would not dare to know the "correct" answer for him and if it is really a therapist. "
"So I have some reason to not see therapists as the magic solution."
Psychoanalytical therapy definitely has its place. Also for years, if necessary, I never advised against that per se. I just blanket recommend against the "just go see a therapist" solution, as it really depends on the therapists and the person and the situation.
Edit: maybe to elaborate a bit more: the op said he views the world as hostile. So he does not trust people. So why would he trust "a therapist"? And if he finally do seek one and that one is a bad one .. or even a really bad one who tells his friends in the bar at night about his nutcases and they all laugh and the op finds out, because he is paranoid and has bugged his therapists mobile or have him followed (he has money) ... then the consequences can be fatal. As then he has proof, "yes, the world is indeed hostile to me"
Modern sensibilities cannot accept this method of increasing productivity.
To bring the point home, unrealistic hopefulness or hopelessness sets a person up for failure. Whether they internalize any resulting failures into bitter anomie and desire for omni/suicide depends on an individual's coping skills, ideology and social support (or lack of each thereof). Combine a lack of hope, opportunities and many negative experiences leads to angry people who take their pain and loneliness, and wish to lash out.
Where a young man could once pack his bags and leave on a grand adventure and start a new life where noone knew him are long gone. He could join the military or sail the seas and see the world and noone cared where he came from and there was no way to know either. But that time is past.
The problems are with your own state of mind. They are issues you haven't adequately addressed. And no amount of running will get them to 'go away'.
I know, cause I had similar, and had to confront them head on. And, I was successful.
Sure, return once you've got a new habit/routine in place and can confidently confront the old.
I'm not sure about this.
I mean I haven't watched Endgame yet because my family is still catching up but I've had all of the major plot points already spoiled thanks to my Reddit addiction. That kinda sucks.
A woman facing the same pressures is plenty capable of "burning down villages to feel their warmth" too. Maybe a few percent less? Who cares?
"We act this way because our ancestors were hunted by sabre-toothed tigers" might sound deep, but what if the sabre-toothed tigers are still around? If so, then maybe it's better to do something about the sabre-toothed tigers, than to expect people to change their behaviour.
I'm straight, I'm white and I just have a job, like most of us. My boss is a woman. Why shouldn't women (and people in general) worry about hurting my feelings just because there are other straight white men with a lot of money and power? That's just dumb.
Which is why no serious feminist (or gender-egalitarian or menslibber or whatever) should excuse women being bitches. But it doesn't change the fact that
>(...) When someone says "Straight white men still hold the majority of political, economic and social power in the world" they are excluding the vast majority of straight white men.
they are still, well,correct. It'd be more precise to say "rich straight white...", but the sentiment is true.
The "main issue" probably isn't singular, but my take is that
a) the dissolution of "soft" power structures (men over women, social view of whites over blacks, straight over LGBTQ+...) will take time to be culturally processed
b)activists need to embrace and push the difference between "problematic" and "bad", and push the idea that "good people" can and should be criticized for bad stuff they do, without immediately crucifying them - and the rest of the world will need to learn and embrace that difference, and also learn how to actually listen to people who might be oppressed, the difference between being publicly criticized and "having their life ruined" (there is much more to this, but this would get too long)
c) hard structures (job expectations, economic incentives) need to be changed to accommodate the (assumed as desired) new social structures. E.g. the "google memo" guy had a very good point which was very positively received in the (german) feminist circles I hung out in online at the time, namely that maybe we need to enforce "work life balance" in the fields where women are underrepresented, because if the job expectation is to forego a family life, that makes it drastically more likely for women to nope out than men.
Wouldn't it be more precise to just say "rich", and to replace "rich" with other attributes that aren't good predictors is just (intentionally) leading away from precision?
There's an entire strain of popular "feminism" that is exactly that. The logic seems to be "women could never allowed to act like massive assholes (like men could), so doing so is feminist"
i.e. reversing/destroying preconceived gender roles
consider Lena Dunham, babe.net etc
It feels like maybe the tide is turning a bit, but so much damage has already been done to our society. At some point people need to stop painting all men with the same brush used to describe the very worst of the worst of them.
* https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/13/femini...
I had no idea it was so controversial. Every time I've seen coverage of Pinker, his statements are completely taken out of context and he's spun as some sort of alt-right apologist. These are conversations we need to have.
(I first saw him talk about it in his sit-down with Sam Harris.)
This also happens a lot with Sam Harris, Joe Rogan and anyone who critiques or discusses certain topics. Even though they are obviously not remotely alt-right (indeed they're on the left). It's incredibly frustrating, self-defeating and has a dangerous chilling effect.
Sam Harris has been consistently taking alt-right positions for the past few years (at least). I don't think it's unfair to associate him with the movement.
I think perhaps part of the issue is that lots of Americans who think of themselves as liberal, and who were shocked by the idea of Trump becoming President, actually agree with him on a lot of issues. So, yeah, Sam Harris still presents as an anti-Trump liberal. But if you look at what he's actually saying, he's much closer to Trump than he is to the liberal left. (His atheism is these days just a fig leaf for an anti-Islam stance.)
Also establishment: why are men so angry?
Or has it just moved on and empowered everyone else to expect the same freedoms and responsibilities as men?
From where I'm sitting (white male, in an office, working a tech job) it looks very much like the removal of the systemic disadvantages on other groups is misinterpreted by some as an attack on them.
Removing laws that keep others down is not an attack on you.
I don't know about the rest but about this, e.g. most male spaces have been actively dissolved or forcefully turned gender neutral.
Even with the new policy, at the troop level (~30 kids), which is where most BSA activity is focused, they will still be gender-segregated: there will be boy troops and girl troops. They will interact at district and council levels, but that's it. Cub Scouts (for younger kids age 7-11) will optionally have mixed units.
There's still plenty of "male space" in the BSA. And learning how to interact respectfully with other genders at that age is a good thing.
The official policy is not enforced because no one wants to be called a sexist. But it does have an effect on the boys. They behave differently around girls. And what was once their only male space is now gone.
So my experience is totally anecdotal. And maybe everyone else is following the program. But it is really heartbreaking to see in person.
Further it lessened the amount of resources the boys got. Girls have to get their own den leader. So packs that had no girls had double the amount of adults attending to their needs, while others had an adult running activities for a single girl scout.
The idea that trying to teach young boys stuff like brotherhood is disrupted by adding a girl in the mix shouldn't be controversial, but here we are.
that said, some people seem to feel very strongly about having at least some same-gendered spaces for children to be in. I'm not entirely sure how to reconcile that with the growing understanding that not everyone is straight, fits into a binary gender, etc., but to leave at least a couple "boy spaces" and "girl spaces" doesn't seem too harmful.
That's not a majority of men.
If this isn’t what you intended to imply, then the only other reading of your statement suggests that you think men have not historically held almost all positions of power in society—which, demonstrably and obviously, they have. https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/11/america-is...
It’s subtle, but it’s out there. I suspect that there is plenty of subtle and not so subtle bias all over the place against all sorts of people. We should be working to eliminate all such biases.
Often the gender role issue is treated as zero-sum, which it isn’t. A strong male role model doesn’t detract from a strong female role model.
What do I care that all the kings of England are white men "like me" when I have never been nobility? Take away unfair power mechanisms, don't simply re-implement them facing the other direction.
This is obviously a complicated issue, but the tone often taken with issues like this are glib, and vindictive towards the current male generation.
Because as a man I genuinely see this as a good thing.
Edit: Am I being downvoted for being wrong, wrongthink or because my opinion makes people uncomfortable?
I think a more descriptive / honest version of that statement is: When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
Edit: fix typo
An example of how this anti-male bias manifests is in the very language used in academic work on men. So often there is talk about "toxic masculinity" when discussing boys and men, and discussions of how male traits are problematic - described as 'aggressive' and 'uncooperative' - while female traits are almost universally described in more positive terms.
Of course both genders exhibit destructive behavior, but women do not have to suffer the same harsh treatment in the academic literature as men.
We could speculate on the reasons for this bias, but I believe it can be tied to the overall anti-male climate, which in itself is an overreaction by the rest of society - but the intellectuals in particular - to the unequal treatment of women for most of history.
More speculatively, I believe the high numbers of women and effeminate men in academia, especially the social sciences, have biased the field.
If someone commits a mass shooting I don’t think it’s the text on a mug that’s responsible.
If you want to assign systematic (and in some cases personal) blame I'd say look to the voices championing strongest for a back step of social progress for the "sake of men". Just from my own experiences in the southern US (poster child for the "follow an arcane set of rules and defend your "masculinity" and cash out on full ride entitlement") I've seen the systematic undermining of young men's skills and development in favor of baseless dreams of a past (that may have never existed). A handful of journalists taking the piss are nothing compared to the semi-coordinated movement looking to weaponize a vulnerable (by their own making) segment of the population.
Sympathy for the lonely, education for the unskilled, exposure for the unsocialized; these are all good ideas to move forward. Just, imo, never fall into the trap of assuming any of this is "natural" and something to be accepted (or even embraced).
"I’ve written before about the lack of resources for young men during critical times in their lives. What feminism does for women — providing girls with alternative media, cultural norms, and a language to understand sexism — is what we need for boys and young men.
I don’t believe young American men end up in racist and sexist online spaces — spaces that radicalize — because they are innately bigoted. They end up there because they are confused and seeking out community, and no one else is providing an alternative."
https://gen.medium.com/young-white-male-rage-is-the-biggest-...
The principle of charity leads me to take the view her heart is in the right place but she like many of us has published caustic words on the internet that don't really represent us correctly.
No one should apply anything from these findings to the US. Although there may be some similarities, those are based on your own experiences and not backed up by a study conducted on boys half a world away.
According to the DoJ, 100% of race-based domestic terrorism in the US in 2018 was committed by radicialized white supremacist terrorists[1]. Having a better understanding of why people join groups like that (eg "are they similarly isolated young men?") helps us stop people joining in the first place.
[1] https://www.salon.com/2019/08/09/trumps-doj-hid-shocking-rep...
Why would this only be limited to a specific group value like jihad and not a broader thread that runs through male psychology? Seems like a perfectly reasonable mount point for HN discussion and empathy.
For example, consider social exclusion's role in radicalizing men to adopt these group values: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Going_Their_Own_Way -- doesn't seem like a stretch. That's basically the next rung on the same ladder I started climbing when I joined PUA usergroups when I was 15, though thankfully some social windfall (meeting my first girlfriend) snapped me out of it.
The old school Muslim radicalism, like MB, was truly ideological and religious/political and so was the first version of AQ.
New breed or radicalism rebels against the modernism, but the form it takes, the nihilism and alienation in it indicates that it's too late. They are already internalised the western individualism.
"Determined to get some attention from the others, Antwary bites into an unedible plant."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvxDZGMc-Fs&feature=youtu.be...
> In this online exclusion game, participants pass the ball to three virtual players, who were given typical local names: Dani, Javi and José.
Wonder if the result would have been the same if the virtual players were named Ahmed, Mustafa and Mahmod. Or a mix.
Social isolation does not make you extremist on itself - contact with extremists that recruit you make you extremist. Social isolation make you more vulnerable to extremists.
Three is just a number if you don't know the sample size. If it's 3 out of 3 million and the US had 600 mass murderers out per 300 million population then 8channer is twice as safe as average Joe. (Made up numbers to illustrate the math).
It's the same problem as Facebook and other social media: people present a curated persona, and ignore that they're only seeing everyone else's curated persona as well.
Ad marketing is already well into figuring out how to manufacture "authenticity".
You can have bits of social satisfaction from hearing 'hello, how are you' from a store clerk or from watching people interact on TV. Definitely you can get it from getting responses to you anonymous or curated speach on the internet. Of course its not the same thing as honest interaction with your friend or loved one but it doesn't mean it does nothing for you.
Please notice they made people feel isolated by not passing a ball to them in a computer game.
Social circuits in the brain are so low level they can be activated by most superficial stimuli.
It normalises then amplifies extremist behaviour.
Also, police should arrest hate preachers? Define 'hate', please.
The people that have somehow wound up in positions of power the tech world seem to believe that placing a carpet over a hole in the floor fixes the hole. And then act surprised when they fall through the hole.
[1]: http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf
I’m not old enough to speak seriously about the way the Internet used to be, but I am old enough to remember what happened when I would be banned from a service: I would move on, until I either eventually learned my lesson or I was completely banned. Both are acceptable outcomes and the (unfortunate) consolidation of online communities over the last decade has made the former an easier policy target than the latter.
Btw its scary that they asked 500 morrocan muslims in Spain and were able to recruit 38 extremists.
And not from 500 "randomly drawn" subjects from a bigger group.
Women have reactions to social exclusion too, but different ones
"Introduction: Theory of the Culture of Honor is one of the few models in criminology specifically geared toward homicide. It proposes that, in certain societies, men must never show weakness and are required to react violently to any perceived threats to their reputation, thereby increasing their probability of committing a homicide. This has been suggested as the main explanation for the high rates of this type of crime in Brazil, particularly in the Northeast. Underlying this explanation there are complex mechanisms and processes that have yet to be clarified."
"Extremism" is a value-judgement, not a pathology. Abolitionists were also called "extremists".
This is psychology in service of staziism--using questionnaires and fMRI to identify serfs with higher wrongthought potential--rather than diagnosing and treating illness.
Don't tell me you get that idea by being the popular girl in school!
http://nyheder.tv2.dk/krimi/2017-11-24-kundby-pigen-kendt-sk...