Whatever happened to the noble art of the manly weep?
aeon.co
aeon.co
I fully support the premise, but it clearly ignores the reality. A man has to first be convinced that the environment around him will not reject him for crying, before expecting him to be vulnerable in such an unfamiliar way.
Will a crying man be deemed as someone unsuitable for being the emotional pillar in a relationship ?
Will a crying man be seen as someone who can't deal with crisis ?
Will a crying man be seen to be a child ?
No matter how much we tell someone it is alright, they won't believe it to be true until the environment shows it to be so. People talk about toxic masculinity as though it is a problem created only by men. But, the idea of it pervades throughout society. Affecting children, women and men alike. Men can't be the only ones battling it.
A comment pointed towards Khamenei crying at Soleimani's funeral as a sign towards encouraging men to cry. However, I only see it as an example for the contrary. Crying for men carries a weight, that implies that it must be reserved for an occasion special enough to warrant it. Had men crying at the death of their closest friend been customary, then Khamenei's voice cracking at the funeral would have never been reported as a special observation.
I dunno, I guess my conception of manliness is different because I think what makes "manly weeping" different from conventional weeping is precisely that emotion has so moved a man as to make social consequences irrelevant.
Literally everyone else but men are battling it, and very publicly. #metoo is a great example.
And I don't believe these instances derive their power from stigma. None of these people became less respected. In fact I don't remember any man hurt by crying.
The closest is probably Boehner (former Speaker of the House). It was actually his shtick and he would cry at two or three events every week, but the worst he got for that was some mild and sympathetic mocking by Jon Stewart.
And if you want to enlist women in your fight for the right to cry, I don't quite know what you expect from them? It seems they already care rather little about performative manliness, as evidenced by the growing partisan voting gap.
However, it ignores the reality that the most important kind of weeping isn't where you weep because you're recognizing something is socially coded as sad, but where you weep because you're feeling sad. Maybe you lost a job; maybe you feel like a failure; maybe you got your heart broken. And for all of these there's a substantial stigma, in that to be a Real Man(tm) you are forced to embrace your agency and act instead of feel.
A single controlled, manly tear is celebrated; messy weeping is deeply stigmatized, and many women would consider a man who does so weak and unsuitable for a relationship.
I would have a heck of a time finding the citation but I recall one study where subjects were shown one of two people. The general idea of it was that one of the subjects was shown to get better answers on a test and generally was more successful. The other was a neer-do-well. Then both of these subjects tripped. The neer-do-well who tripped was judged even more negatively. The achiever was judged more positively. Almost as if the mistake had "humanized" them.
I also notice that when people talk about men who are in touch with their feminine side, and open about things like being sexually assaulted, we see Terry Crews types who are built like a brick shithouse and are oozing with exaggerated masculinity and success. Can man who is already judged as weak and effeminette get away wiht crying and be treated well? I don't think that's the case and in fact I think the reverse is true. If a woman in the military trying to make a name for herself bursts into tears regularly will she be seen as strong enough to not break down in the midst of battle?
On top of that point... I think you're missing that the crying in all the cases you're talking about is quite controlled. To the point of Jibes about both Boehner and Obama playing up the waterworks to drive sympathy. Neither of these men are sobbing "I can't do this job... I'm not good enough". They're sobbing at some vague distant injustice to show how much they care about something. So I'm not even sure these examples demonstrate that crying is culturally accepted... and instead they merely show that specific circumstances allow for crying (high-status man, tragedy not caused by yourself, etc)
>Mandela
I think old men get an exception from cultural expectations around crying and i'm not sure why.
(And as for "toxic masculinity", wouldn't this be better described as "toxic femininity"?)
No. It's modern masculine culture that doesn't allow men to express their emotions for fear of appearing weak or "beta." The toxicity derives from that pathological aspect of masculine culture. Women doing what men do and reinforcing this toxic aspect of masculine culture are also engaging in toxic masculinity.
No, that's not what toxic masculinity describes. But I've been down this rabbithole before on HN, and I'm not going to waste time trying to convince you otherwise.
>You are even trying to describe women that "adopt" these behaviours as being bad for being more male. Thus, guilty and worthless. As if they are not A True Woman.
That's not even a remotely charitable or accurate interpretation of my comment. Good day sir.
The vast majority of heterosexual women lose respect for a man who shows weakness, and it's certainly not "women doing what men do", as the man displaying a stiff upper lip for his partner is substantially more likely to weep with his male buddies.
At risk of sounding like an MRA, we live in a society which accepts, prima facie, the lived experience of women as incontrovertible evidence of how the average man reacts to the average woman, for good or for ill. But the lived experience of men must be handwaved away as some sort of Occam's Razor-defying Rube Goldberg contraption of transitive culture.
Why is it so difficult to believe that this is something that actually happens?
I'm not certain women are as emotionally simplistic as this. Plenty are attracted to emotional vulnerability. A man who hides his emotions too much seems more likely to commit violence, after all. Then again, some women like that. Women, like men, are complex beings but unfortunately threads about masculinity and feminism here tend towards reductionism.
And what I mean by "doing what men do" is reinforcing the stereotype that a man can't be masculine and also display emotion (or "show weakness") as you put it. This isn't a behavioral trait created by women and forced upon men against their will. Plenty of men who spent their childhood getting beaten by their fathers or their classmates for being too "sissy" will attest that this is an aspect of male culture created by and largely reinforced by men.
No, most men wouldn't weep to their male buddies, they wouldn't dare.
>Why is it so difficult to believe that this is something that actually happens?
Why is it so difficult not to blame women for everything? Men aren't puppets, they have agency, they are responsible (really, far more responsible) for the nature of modern masculine culture and identity, good and ill.
Society as a whole polices men's emotional expression. But some feminists are extraordinarily unwilling to recognize that women are at the very least coequal perpetrators of this. Hell, some (and apparently you) are unwilling to concede that women play any role at all in this.
In my lived experience, my mother and female family members were much more critical of me expressing emotion than my father and male family members. Moreover, female partners police my emotional expression a lot more than male friends (or partners) do.
But, go for it, keep on denying women have any agency at all in gender politics and saying it's all men's fault.
The point of my original comment was literally that women bear some responsibility for reinforcing the harmful stereotypes of male culture. I merely suggested that women weren't entirely to blame, rather that both men and women were complicit in perpetuating toxic masculinity.
That attempted nuance has apparently gotten lost because I made the mistake of trying to engage with one of HN's trigger phrases and now this thread is locked into a fetal position of incel rage and defensiveness.
Serves me right, I guess.
Unfortunately, that doesn't really jive with this:
> Men aren't puppets, they have agency, they are responsible (really, far more responsible)
Women have agency. Many women do bad things, including enforcing toxic gender norms. It probably makes as much sense to call that "toxic femininity" instead of "toxic masculinity" when women do it, but you do you. Neither phrase is useful, because they focus on putting blame on one gender or another when toxic gender norms are really a collaborative effort.
Men, women and children all participate in society. Thus, the problem affects everyone.
It is the same reason that feminism is not solely about women. It is about changing societal perceptions of women in ways that ends up affecting everyone participating in society. Men, women and children alike.
> Will a crying man be seen as someone who can't deal with crisis ?
> Will a crying man be seen to be a child ?
When faced with questions like these, I'm reminded of Richard Feynman and the question "What do you care what other people think?"
It seems we've reached a point where we allow our insecurities drive our actions more than anything else.
The problem is that we do not deal with our insecurities at all - they aren't even seen as a problem to fix, but something we just live with. They are not tested, because the risks are deemed too great.
Some of the greatest things in life come from damning those insecurities and just fucking doing [X].
You cannot run from nature. Humans are social animals. Everything we do is informed by society. There is no 'you' in isolation from society.
As technical/math oriented people, it is very tempting to derive humanity from 1st principles like a derivation or posing our decision making process as a controlled trial.
However, I find that to be a fallacy. Often, people who claim to not care, merely turn a blind eye to the influence of things they care about, and ironically end up being most strongly influenced by them.
An insecurity is like a squatter in your house. You can claim to not care but that only give it more licence to destroy. The real way to deal with the squatter is to be fully cognizant of it and take deliberate steps to kick the squatter out. That is a lot of caring, yet is the best way to deal with the insecurity.
The biggest problem with something like "what do you care what other people think" is that we want to read it in an absolutest manner. But that's not how it should be read.
The question should be used as part of addressing the insecurity. Do you really need to care in this instance?
A healthy friendship means caring about what the other person thinks. I imagine marriage makes that even more important.
Caring about what some rando might think if he sees me crying? That's not important.
A key thing is being mindful and purposeful about it instead of just letting whatever your current view of society is dictate your actions.
It's irritating to read recommendations for people to effectively martyr themselves in the sake of progress.
>People talk about toxic masculinity as though it is a problem created only by men.
"Toxic masculinity" is an unfortunately named term that leads to a lot of people talking past eachother since what the term means academically, and what it means colloqually/what it implies are fairly different. I think the issue is intractable enough to justify doing away with the term entirely and eventually coming up with a euphemism that means the same thing.
I cry in front of them when I'm sad. And then I talk about why I feel the way I do, and that it will be okay. My oldest is developing wonderful empathy. "Why are you sad, daddy?" And then we talk about it. He probably doesn't understand it a lot, but I know he's learning that it's okay to feel these feelings.
Sadness is not a nice feeling, but it's a valid feeling. I think too often people see sadness as a bug that needs fixing. It's okay to be sad, and then you eventually stop being sad.
Closely related to this is another lesson I learned from my dad on not what to do. He's Willy Loman levels of optimistic. Thousands of times I've heard him go on and on about how great the day was, how much progress is happening at work, how the next big breakthrough is over the next hill. But as his child growing up, I badly needed him to occasionally say, "today didn't go well. X rejected our offer and Y isn't working so we have to start over on that one. But it's okay because these days happen and tomorrow might be better." To this date I'm still struggling with the reality that life, by design, has bad days, and that's fine.
You're a good dad. I've been trying to do this with my kids too (both girls). Teaching them that feelings are real, and valid, and trying to teach them ways to productively handle them.
The person you are replying to seems to be crying AT his children. "watch me cry!" "see how I feel!" "look wife, I'm a good man now!". To me, this seems to be self-indulgence. For example he is boasting "My oldest is developing wonderful empathy." Read: I am imposing the whims of a group I see myself as been good for associating with onto my child. This is not what a father is for.
I've seen my father cry a few times. The most recent was when my cousin commited suicide. He meant it. It was not an exhibtion of his goodness, but the acknowledgment of her goodness.
Maybe I am not the best person to answer this question.
To keep it simple:
1. for example, it was Christmas. I usually have a cry at some point when I think about the amazing Christmases my mother put on. Kids are in the room and I don't try to hide it. The oldest takes notice, worries about me. I engage him rather than trying to hide it.
2. I'm proud of my kids. If you've got kids you'll understand it takes effort _not_ to brag about their accomplishments all the time.
3. While not my intent, there's nothing wrong with boasting, and a bit of self-indulgence. Though I certainly didn't feel any.
4. What I want, above all else, is to share with other parents the lessons I'm discovering to be important. I cherish when parents share theirs with me. Parenting is fucking difficult.
We have tried everything and he’s old enough but won’t stop crying. I’m ready to just start spanking him every time he cries and to tell him that it’s not okay to just cry whenever he doesn’t get his way. It’s getting to the point where he is far too old to be acting this way and I’m at my wits end.
It's possible you're misunderstanding why they cry. Particularly as you say they're too old for it.
Striking them to stop is a great way to really fuck them up.
If you're feeling stuck and not sure how to proceed this is absolutely an appropriate thing to talk with their physician about.
This is extremely counterproductive, and this punitive attitude might be why he has so much difficulty handling his emotions. Spanking the tears out is a great way to raise a volatile misanthrope who drinks his pain away and beats his wife and kids (my dad). It sounds like what he needs is a bit of talk therapy.
Ask him why he's crying. Dig deeper. Ask him why losing at a video game illicits such a strong emotional response. Ask him why he continues to play, even if he knows that there's a risk of failure. Help him reason through this stuff, and it'll start to click after a while.
He'll enjoy this even less than spanking (which, fyi, can and does turn into a fetish for folks; yes, even straight boys can have "daddy issues"), but more importantly, you'll be equipping him with the tools he needs to process complex emotions.
This isn't meant as an insult; but you might consider therapy yourself. We all need it, even if we think our life was idyllic or that a hard life made us too tough to need the help.
So either he reacts to failure in a way he's been taught to or you can teach him to react to failure in new ways.
By spanking him when he cries, the only thing he'll really learn is that failure carries with it punishment. He'll start getting really good at hiding failure and unwilling to try things for fear of failure.
What you need to do is to teach him how to respond to failure. Part of this is by example. First, analyze how you respond to failure. How those around your son respond to failure. Do you complain, make a deal of it, treat it like something significant? Stop that.
Acknowledge the failure. Say that it was hard and that you couldn't do it. Then move on. Make light of it. Something other than dwelling on it. Get him focused on problem solving rather than dwelling. Ok, I failed. What went wrong? What can I do instead? Is it worth doing instead?
And don't acknowledge the crying. Don't give in to it. Ignore it. Don't respond to it. No threats, no withholding, no bargaining. Nothing. Act like he's not crying. Be calm, be rational, be steady. He will eventually respond in kind and respond to failure as you do.
Going by the article and experience, it sounds like you see it as a problem that needs fixing, which means you're probably not being supportive when he does cry, and don't have or want a very intimate relationship with him. Children need care from their parents, even too much of it to the point where it annoys them! Knowing they can rely on the safety of their parents gives them confidence to take greater risks.
Go pick someone your own size. No, wait, that would not be ok either. Don't fucking hit people who are not aggressive towards you.
But I feel I've gone too far in the other direction now, that if you go through a difficult stretch you can't let yourself be a dark cloud. It doesn't help anything, people want progress, joy, hope, etc.
It's a tricky balance to find, especially since my actual internal experience seems to vary more by week or month than by day.
Comedy is, if nothing else, the purest form of honesty.
Life is fleeting, I'm about 1/3 of the way done, am I really that upset about X?
In practice, I feel like gender inequality can hurt both men and women in different ways. More gender equality allows everyone more freedom to choose their own path in life and express their true selves without being forced into a set of stereotypical molds.
On one side we have a culture of extreme sexual liberation, with the media, hookup culture, and the porn industry, and on the other side we have the yes-means-yes, firings for touching a women's back (Garrison Keillor), special legal proceedings for sexual assault accusers, ect.
How is anyone supposed to navigate a culture as complex as this?
The parent reasonably points out two families of sign-chains and sketches how they conflict by emphasizing how the signs espouse conflicting opinions on male sexuality.
Porn and other media content are even more obviuously not real...
Sex is fine. Hell, sex is great! Just don't do it with someone who doesn't want to do it with you.
Inequity doesn't just affect any particular group; its mere existence changes the way we think about what's fair and tolerable.
I'm not saying this to be true, but it's a fact that larger people require more resources, especially in a globalizing environment where resources are created for the average human and outliers are having a tougher time just existing?
I don't expect anyone to really take this seriously, and I don't want to equate this to the struggle of being non-cis-white-male.
Everyone needs to chill, and then whoever has power in a given circumstance needs to start using it to promote equity and equality.
It's bloody obviously that we don't live in a zero-sum regime, what with productivity and living standards continually rising for hundreds of years with no corresponding rise of poverty elsewhere.
I've been to quite a few feminist protests because my partner works at an NGO, and not once was I treated badly or accused of anything, even though I am often one of few men among many women.
It's probably a specific mindset, where you do see one group of people with responsibility, but do not extend that to guilt of any individual (unless they give reason). This way of thinking, which probably comes natural to a German like me, seems to be alien to those men opposing feminism.
I would say that the fear of feminism makes way more sense if you slide down the income ladder. If you are a straight male who works a job near the poverty line, feminism seems like it’s already handed out a big advantage to your female peers. If you are a poor women, you have substantially more viable options to increase your lot in life and generally a lot more support. The big winners of our current “patriarchy” are only rich men, and it seems like feminism only enhances the advantages they have. Women get a lot of benefits from being on the receiving end of the courtship game, and yet feminism somehow frames that reality as a negative(I get “harassed” by men wolf-whistling at me in the street).
Examples of unspoken advantages of women/grievances of men at this income bracket:
women seem to be able to find work much more easily than men, and they generally seem to be given more leeway in general. This seems a second order effect of men being demonized by many groups and because feminism’s fight for sexual liberation of women has resulted in many less women being reserved with who they sleep with. The result is that ethics be damned, male bosses want to hire females more. But because of the sexual dynamic of women seeking a provider and the social demonization of men/tribalization of women, women bosses have either no preference or prefer women also.
it’s no secret that more women are graduating from college than men and that primary/secondary education is better suited for females, and yet it feels like things are just continuing to favor women more and more.
Women just get a lot more attention in general, and as a result tend to have better self esteem. People frequently tend to stick up for women and trample men. As a result, females’ egos on average seem to be much more inflated, making dating very difficult for low income men who generally receive little to no encouragement and most attention they get is negative. Meanwhile men suffer in the shadows with high rates of suicide and depression, and US society would rather focus on taking away guns than making people not want to kill themselves or others.
The biggest irony is that sex and having an SO are pretty well known to be a fairly common part of living a happy, fulfilling life. And yet when men complain about their inability to successfully court women, they are typically lambasted and called names. Hell “nice guy” is basically a pejorative now. This further drives home the feeling that society really doesn’t care about men. The incel community didn’t used to be anywhere as toxic as it is now, and it seems it was largely driven there by bullying.
While we are talking about bullying, men are almost always expected to be able to deal with bullies alone(unlike women who are typically given attention and empathy about bullies), and there is a pretty strong dynamic of females wanting the attention/courting of bullies. Feminism has fought hard for men to realign their expectations about women, yet there seems to be nothing done at all to change women’s expectations of men.If anything Hollywood and pop culture is full of roided up men with objectively unnatural physiques who live unattainable lifestyles and ridiculously wealthy bad boys who seem to make a sport of unethical behavior.
Women are, generally speaking, the ones who call the shots in a relationship if you are poor. Wealth as a proxy for ability to give care/attention drives this. If you are a low earning male, you are seemingly much more likely relative to a women of the same income to be subject to a lot of unsavory behavior from females, partially because women who are emotionally stable are typically shooting for someone who brings home the bacon, and partially because women perceive the weakness of your position and use it against you. the latter happens to both men and women, but generally speaking there are no social brakes on women abusers like their are on men, who are truly demonized for perceived abuse. I think this problem is hidden to a lot of more wealthy feminists because of the perception that wealthy men(or the people they are courting) are portrayed to be shitty, see pop culture.
Women can essentially decide unilaterally to have kids, and then they get support from the government. They get a chance to raise someone to take care of them, and all of the psychological benefits of Child-care. Meanwhile, if you are subject to abuse as a male you have virtually no support network and will find even getting people to side with you difficult.
Feminism targets the social problems observed fairly high up the income/privilege ladder, and seems to be against making any kind of concessions.
I think good places to start trying to tackle these problems would be for feminists to spend much more effort demonizing the portrayal of unnatural, anti-social men in the media. I think a $1000/month UBI would make the biggest immediate impact, as men almost certainly wouldn’t feel like they were getting shafted by society so badly, and women might not be so preoccupied with finding a provider. Probably most controversial and unrealistic, I think that to pair with Planned Parenthood we should have public gyms that also facilitate the supervised use of steroids. Having sex constantly without pregnancy is no more natural than benching 600+ pounds, both are, outside of rare cases, the result of exogenous sex hormones, yet we hand out estrogen to women to fulfill the sexual fantasies of men, but make it illegal (unless you have a bunch of money) for men to get their sexhormones to match women’s sexual expectations.
I suspect I'd probably keep my crying to myself if I had a reason to, which seems to go against the norm on the internet. On reddit in particular, people can't seemingly wait to announce their tears over one thing or another. It's like a competition as to who is the most emotional. Part of me thinks "Good on you, I wish I was that emotional", the other part of me thinks they're crying out for attention.
Reddit is a very bad place to go for a picture resembling "reality for normal people". The format of the website is very conducive to people trying to one-up each other with their conformance to whatever things are popular at the time and that gets divorced from reality really quickly.
Replace "crying" with "pooping" and see how senseless the stigma becomes. You don't need to do it in public but only bad things happen when you try to prevent it. It's a perfectly normal physiological process.
What makes the stigma even more odd is that we accept it when we see a strong male character crying in a movie or on TV. On the surface it was absurd when Tom Hanks was crying over losing "Wilson" yet we understood it, and related to it. In his isolation-induced mental state, he had lost a loved one. There was no shame in that. Would we think the same if our co-worker choked up when describing how his cat had just died?
Don't get me wrong - I get choked up, I get teary. I'm actually rather easily emotional - any tear-jerker movie will get to me.
But once I have the emotion, I don't know how to let it out. I WANT to. When I look at my wife and female friends, they all occasionally have a good cry as an emotional outlet, and while whatever prompted that is bad, the cry itself is a good outlet. They can feel better for having done it. But me? I just feel like all the emotions are stuck and I'm clogged up.
I'm not consciously fighting it, thinking I have to protect my manhood. While others being around does make it worse, I can't have this kind of release in private either. I don't know how much is subconscious and how much is the fact that I've spent 4+ decades NOT crying and I just don't know how to.
I don't strive for the "manly weep" that the article describes - I want to be able to all out bawl and just let this out.
Case in point, my father passed away rather suddenly on Christmas Eve -- just two weeks ago today. We weren't super close, but I do have fond memories of him. I haven't cried once. When I was informed of his death by my brother, who was tearing up as he told me, I literally just said "Damn..." and then drove around for a few hours aimlessly thinking. It seems like I should, like I'm SUPPOSED to cry, to the point where I feel like something's wrong with me because I haven't. Now I'm concerned that weeks or months from now I'll end up being triggered by something in an inopportune public place and just start bawling. But who knows?
Why cry, anyway? Unless someone dies or is extremely ill, everything else seems tolerable to me.
As someone that have extensively studied history and evolutionary biology, I know exactly how good life is for me (and for many people, really). There's absolutely no reason to cry or feel sad about anything, especially things beyond my control.
Right now, we are connected through an online forum from our homes. It's just amazing! We got transportation, we can visit other countries, we have freedom (of some sort), some of us are in great physical shape, financially free, etc., we got running water, we got all possible foods from each corner of the world, we got infinite entertainment, etc. etc.
I don't want to offend anyone, but when I see a person that's not satisfied based on these things alone (sanitary, water, food, not that many active wars), that's a person that has no idea about the history of our species. This is life on the easiest mode ever recorded. Cherish it.
And it's not always at the right time or the right amount. I'm a person who buries his feelings, but they can't help but come out. I used to bury them deeply, and didn't cope with them at all. This was seriously unhealthy and as a result, my mental health suffered.
Then I learned how to cope some, and things got better. The more I coped with my feelings instead of burying them, the more I cried. That's not to say I cry all the time, but if a song hits me the right way, or even a good dance routine on World of Dance or some other show catches my heart the right way, I'm crying. Not just weeping, but holding back deep sobs. Those deep sobs are an overreaction, of course.
Why do I have to fight deep sobs at something as simple as a touching dance routine? I think it's because I have a LOT going on in my life, some of them quite troubling. Serious health issues in my family which have altered our life significantly, and will cause damage for years to come- for a life time for my daughter and I. My wife is dying and doesn't have much time left. And while I try to be brave for her, she knows how much it troubles me- despite that I have a firm hope for the future and I know it'll all be okay in the end- it still troubles me. For her sake I try to hold back my tears, but this backfires. What was a suppressed weep here and a stifled weep there is suddenly gushing forth right in the middle of a less serious discussion! It's not the right time.
Why do these inopportune things happen? Because I've not learned to be okay with crying. If I could manage to be okay with having many smaller sessions of crying, at the right times, then these outbursts of crying wouldn't be there. As it is I hold them back enough that they'll eventually come out in a more dramatic scream sobbing fit that lasts several minutes and usually leaves me without a voice for a week.
Weeping isn't manly. Weeping isn't for women. Weeping is for humans.
Hello. I am a human. I cry.
Teens? All the time. Perhaps monthly or even weekly at times.
20s? Less so, but more intensely. Perhaps every six months on average.
30s? Only twice in two years, and I'm a 32-year-old male now.
Those times were basically weeping, and I'd thought I'd hit rock bottom in a mental health/depression context. Maybe I had, but life got much, much worse after that. The interesting thing however, is that somewhere along the line I lost the ability to cry. I'd want to cry, but I couldn't anymore.
Haven't been able to for over a year now. It's like when you hit what you think is the bottom, you drop through to the basement. I hesitate to say it's an unfeeling basement—if anything it's more extreme feelings of despair—but it's certainly one where for whatever reason, crying no longer exists.
When things were really bad recently, I'd look in a mirror and just see this tearless dry laugh or heave of despair. Wanted to cry, but it's like the emotional pain or stress or anxiety was too high to allow it.
My best friend and I saw Joker during the midst of all this, and then we went home to make dinner after. It disturbed him a little when I nailed emulating the laugh without even trying, the first time. Usually I'm the one that can't do voices to save my life, and he's the one who can do anything. He couldn't do the Joker laugh no matter how much he tried.
My theory is I had already experienced the aforementioned feeling in the mirror. I unwittingly had practice. You have to be either a really good actor, or seriously hurting to emulate that laugh correctly. It's a laugh because the tears are dry for some reason.
That said, I'm sure despair can go far deeper still, and I really hope to never experience that.
-
It could be that crying is like a muscle. Perhaps it's a developed emotional mechanism that—when used appropriately—is beneficial to emotional well-being. However, like any muscle it can atrophy if it isn't used frequently enough, or lacks in sufficient nutrition.
Maybe crying can only happen when conditions are right. If things get too bad, or you're too worn down, you lose the ability to do so.
Perhaps crying doesn't happen because depression in combination with stress or anxiety are the primary reason for the despair. I'd probably cry immediately for the death of a loved one, for example.
Whatever the case, that's my take on it. Everyone's different and likely has their own reasons why they cry or don't cry. As the article points out, societal factors of course play an outsized role as well.
-
Disclaimer: Wrote this simply for the exercise of it, to explore the topic. Not a plea for help or anything, I'm fine. Joker was a flawed yet excellent film that explored some serious mental health topics, and I dislike the notion that it somehow had a violent or anarchic message. Quite obviously the contrary in my opinion.
These days, no way. I'm not sure why it is, but I recall reading a few threads where people our age lament the same thing happening to them.
In my case, I suspect it may be rooted in anxiety, guilt for fear of wasting time not being productive.
Yet, illogically I'll end up hooked on certain competitive multiplayer games and waste the time just the same. I suspect certain games play into anxious behavior more, especially games with a short match format.
The last single player game I truly enjoyed in a magical sense, I had to block out the time for it ahead of time, like it was a task to complete. That seemed to help a lot with enjoyment strangely enough.
I discovered recently a book that says we carry with us some "lifetraps" we picked-up during childhood. The lifetraps are:
1. "Please, don't leave me!" - The Abandonment Lifetrap
2. "I can't trust you" - The Mistrust and Abuse Lifetrap
3. "I'll never get the love I need" - The Emotional Deprivation Lifetrap
4. "I don't fit in" - The Social Exclusion Lifetrap
5. "I can't make it on my own" - The Dependence Lifetrap
6. "Catastrophe is about to strike" - The Vulnerability Lifetrap
7. "I'm worthless" - The Defectiveness Lifetrap
8. "I feel like such a failure" - The Failure Lifetrap
9. "I always do it your way" - The Subjugation Lifetrap
10. "It's never quite good enough" - The Unrelenting Standards Lifetrap
11. "I can have whatever I want" - The Entitlement Lifetrap
One way we cope with them is by avoiding the feelings they cause and we do that by numbing ourselves.
LE: The book is called "Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior" by Jeffrey Young.
A close friend and family member lost a 6 month old baby late last year through no fault of their own. Little guy slept so deep he stopped breathing.
Being so close to such a truly gut wrenching loss gives me a new perspective everyday.
The last time I had something even remotely like that was when a family member was scheduled to be in the Twin Towers, on the top floor, the morning of 9/11/2001. Through a total fluke, this person didn’t go to work that day. Odd, because he was the focus of this meeting and really should have been there - rather, he decided to hang out with his kids as he had been traveling too much. He’s living on borrowed time and admits that every September.
All this to say - the worst part of modern technology and society is the ability to escape from reality, in my opinion.
You, your kids, and the rest of your loved ones will be dead one day. Probably when you dont expect it.
Putting the phone down and spending valuable time with them is the best decision you can make at any point in your day.
Still working on the anger / frustration front, so. I'd really love to feel even less of that. But than I am a rather analytical type, so not sure if it is an age thing.
Having kids seem to throw a switch in my brain that made me get really upset at the idea of harm being done to children, any children.
To put it another way: You have become comfortably numb.
Ah, I'd say it was anything but comfortable.
That ending scene was pure fucking genius. It transformed that character for me. That crazy was believable, and I can't wait to see what they do next.
"Cry like a man!"
(This would mean to cry openly, deeply, and bravely, since a great many sorrows require good grieving and crying is a healthy outlet for grief. Crying is much less damaging to others and to oneself than other regrettably-common male outlets for grief, such as getting drunk and/or domestic violence.)
I hope one day crying by men becomes more acceptable to society. Life is often painful. Grieving is often necessary.
"Agamemnon shed tears as it were a dark-running stream or cataract on the side of some sheer cliff."
https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/6812.iii-4-the-l...
One thing I have noticed though is that I can cry about a situation and then I'm good to go. My wife on the other hand will cry off and on for days. Maybe the no crying thing came out of the typical need to get things done after whatever crying situation occurred?
We're at the 100th anniversary of the Spanish Flu that happened right after WWI. If we were living 100 years ago, we still have Prohibition, mass bank failures, the Great Depression and WWII to look forward to before mid-century.
Be thankful you aren't in a trench.
Sure, it's the fault of the 18 year old draftee getting shelled in a trench for 4 straight days. It's the fault of the farmer who lost his life savings because a bank shut down. It's the fault of the young factory worker that Hitler decided to invade Poland. Self inflicted by whom exactly? Maybe you should reevaluate that statement.