Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes
theconversation.com
theconversation.com
Holmes core thing though is that he has an almost ADHD-esque craving for novelty and tolerance for risk taking. He also can't stand not actively working on things, and when he's not working is when he's depressed. He doesn't seem to know how to actually feel good, but he knows how to be useful, thus his penchant for productivity boosters like cocaine.
He's a great character, but I wouldn't over pathologize him according to today's understanding of mental health. Doyle was a physician and gave Holmes various traits similar to what he had seen in his patients.
> ...when he's not working is when he's depressed.
Holmes, being an exceptionally observant man, definitely would observe that walks raise the mood, allow for (most often silly) ideas to come and, last but not least, increase observation capabilities, attention to details and speed of thought.
Arthur Conan-Doyle did an extensive walks back then, but his hero was written to not to. This is not right.
Just because your logical mind says one thing is good to do and you know you should do it you are not going to always obey your rider, the inertia of the elephant takes over.
So you need a trigger to snap out of it, for Holmes it was a new case.
AFAIR those had a specific purpose (chasing a perp, tracking down evidence, etc.). Most of his thinking he did sitting in a chair and smoking his pipe for hours on end (sometimes the whole night).
(emphasis is mine)
I would argue that still in 2025 this is an extreme and institutionalized taboo.
There's a stoic quote I love:
> our ideal wise man feels his troubles, but overcomes them
- Seneca, Moral letters to Lucilius/Letter 9 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...
The way I see it, if you never let yourself be vulnerable, you can never fully feel your troubles, and you cannot fully overcome them.
Is this about other people being immature or looking to abuse us? Is this something that generally goes beyond school?
Yes to both.
Psychopaths do to everyone what everyone does to out-groups, and we're all someone else's out-group.
Sometimes the long situation. When a situation has lasted a long time, it sticks, and turns into culture, gender roles.
When a situation has lasted a really long time, it sticks hard, and becomes biology.
But most of the time, it's neither culture or biology which decides what men and women do. It's the immediate situation.
And even if you think it's culture, even if you think it's biology, if you don't like how men are (or how women are) you have to start with changing the immediate situation. The others will follow - eventually.
That's new. My crippling depressing and social anxiety will be glad to hear it!
And what do you mean by wrong times or reasons?
How could I trust someone's resilience when they don't show they've been through things that built that resilience, and demonstrate it?
How can I trust someone who so closely monitors how much and what sort of emotions to show to me?
Perhaps 'disconnected' is the wrong word, but what I mean is that emotionally healthy people feel their emotions and express them, not just hold them at arm's length and pick and choose which to feel and express.
The things that make you vulnerable change depending on what year and situation you're in. I can very much get behind the idea that you should consider whether your legacy sense of what makes you vulnerable is relevant to your current circumstances. I'm not so much behind the "freely dispense the rope people will use to hang you" version.
What are the exact vulnerabilities that we are talking about?
From my side I guess I can say I frequently feel like impostor type of things or that I'm not doing enough. I won't mention that at work, but I definitely share those feelings to my partner.
I would hate not being able to share something like that to my partner for instance.
I wonder what others are talking about?
Conversely, at my school you could be as overtly homophobic as you wanted with no consequences, whereas now you should probably be a lot more cautious if you harbour homophobic sentiments.
Talking about partners in particular, I've had partners I felt fairly safe sharing anything (most things anyway) with, and I've also had partners who would mine our conversations for any kind of viable ammunition. Which led to me being a bit more careful what I said. We can perhaps agree the first kind of relationship is better.
Yeah, during school it's difficult since you are forced together with potentially toxic people. As an adult you can choose at least in personal life and to an extent workplace, although sometimes workplace can also be difficult to get right.
I'd 100% rather be alone than around people who might judge or use in someway against me anything about me. It would feel internally disgusting for me to think that someone might be trying to get at my expense and that I'm not around people who are there to try and build each other. What a waste of time.
People seem to be romanticizing the term "vulnerable" though. I think it would be important to go deeper into this. What does "vulnerability" exactly mean. I have had depression, anxiety diagnosed in the past and addictions and other similar issues, are these vulnerabilities because they may interfere with me acting optimally or are they vulnerabilities because they provide someone a tool to try and get at me if they so wanted because they think there's stigma around those labels to influence others to think worse of me?
From my experience, the reason you'd risk being vulnerable is there are some things you can't achieve without doing so, it'd be like trying to do surgery with a scalpel on someone wearing platemail, or trying to detect radiation with a Geiger counter behind 20 meters of lead, for some tools to work properly they're required to be in a position where they're 'vulnerable', like eyes.
I think it's sad that performative emotions & vulnerability seem to be a popular thing to have to signal for acceptance. Which in my opinion is worse than nothing as at least when you're not faking something it's easier to agree that you haven't really tried it.
You only think it's performative because you think people are signaling. They're not and performative anything is not required for acceptance, but people are not accepting of others who deal with their social interaction in these terms and your very language betrays where you stand. These imaginary requirements for affection are not what's sad here.
You're correct that I think something because I think something else. You're assuming I'm unwilling or unable to tell the difference.
I don't see a betrayal to state that I think it's a shame that people that have copied a performative action, gotten nothing out of it and are then hesitant to try again because they feel they've already tried that avenue and had bad results. It's the same feeling of sadness I get when people have tried therapy, for whatever reason haven't gotten much out of it and then write it off as a sham.
I do get that you're saying 'aha ! I've detected your true intent through my clever analysis of your language' - consider your assumption "You only think it's performative because you think people are signaling. They're not"
They're not? You can state absolute facts with confidence about the people I've experienced in my life that you don't know anything about? That is either some amazing superpower or regular old conjecture.
It might help you to notice how many times I said I think or in my opinion, and how many absolutes you're willing to state.
Allowing yourself to be vulnerable means you are indeed open to attack. But it is also a large part of emotional connection. The alternative is being a fortress - with all the relationship problems that entails.
The very fact that you see vulnerability as “bad” is a perfect example of what that language is intended to highlight.
Historic ‘stoic male’ personas existed for a reason. Because in many situations, it works. Despite the complaining.
And being less ‘emotionally connected’ is valuable when people use that connection to exploit or hurt you. A very common experience for many men.
That people (especially women) then complain you won’t open up to them is a riot in those situations because it’s like someone complaining you keep putting on your bullet proof vest - while they keep shooting at you.
Historic male mental health issues also resulted. But notably, folks depending on the stoic persona for their own wellbeing would typically throw you under the bus for those issues too.
“How dare you get mad! You’re a dangerous threat!” says the person constantly harassing the person, or the boss putting you in worse and worse work conditions while pretending they are doing you a favor, etc.
They do that, of course, because mad people actually fight back. But if you need the job or are dependent on the relationship…
As many men have experienced, the only way to ‘win’ is shut off caring about what people say on that front - among other emotions.
It's always about that isn't it? Not getting the reaction you want, vilifying your interlocutor, then run crying with fingers in your ears screaming "lalala I didn't want it anyway" and declaring yourself a stoic is really indicative of the type of people who in the present day call themselves stoics.
This whole thread is just a long-winded version of redpill discourse, people who can see past minor adolescent romantic mishaps.
How pathetic is it to still model your whole life after women while pretending to be an isle of self-reliance? Men really are lost.
Emotions driven males are cultural and political leaders literally now.
That's only one emotion. What about all the rest?
Fighting a war? Absolutely. Defending your family? Absolutely. Getting in an argument with your spouse? Not at all.
It’s hard to not see that playing out in a large sense society wise right now, if we assume the first generation was the post WW2 folks, and the wealth was the post-WW2 economic benefits from the US not being bombed into the Stone Age like most of the rest of the world - and if anything, being the only major economy still standing.
Where exactly you draw the lines generationally is of course up for debate. But we’re starting to have to relearn a lot of hard lessons now that the post WW2 (and depression) generations understood as basic table stakes.
And it’s not because people today are ‘weaker’ per-se. Rather, they’ve lived a (relatively) comfortable life. That generally leads to not having to learn the hard lessons (or being so miserable) that they do the hard things required to build that society. And there is no free lunch. And it was never ideal, then, or now, and will never be ideal in the future either.
But it can be better if we put in the work and take the risk.
Trump and Musk are men who were born into wealth, and were boosted by mass media for decades, so I don't think they really count. Musk's main tactic has been to take credit for others' R&D.
Por op, women are at wrong when they want men to talk (which is outrageous ask), but also cause of men not talking. Which includes men not talking to other men, which is also fault of women.
Correct. And often accurate.
> it is women fault men do not open up
I don't think OP said that.
> Por op, women are at wrong when they want men to talk
Nor that.
> Which includes men not talking to other men, which is also fault of women
Nor that.
>It's always about that isn't it?
>How pathetic is it to still model your whole life after women while pretending to be an isle of self-reliance? Men really are lost.
If I were to hazard a guess: he said it in the passing. You read into it a little too much.
Completely ignoring what everyone thinks and doing your own thing is a good way to get in a very dangerous situation from a basic-life-needs perspective. And with women being a bit over half the population, saying ‘fuck it’ to what half the population wants, especially if you’re picking fights with them, is quite dangerous - even if they are not 100%.
But you know who can handle dangerous, and doesn’t need validation from the population (in that form) to get what they want and have their needs met?
The actual king.
It’s a high risk, high reward (potentially) strategy. Better be good (and actually strong) if you want to not need to be liked.
What I think we’ve been seeing play out is entire generations of men who learned that the best strategy was to be liked by women so the women would do all the work to support them. Which seems to have worked quite well for many of them for awhile.
But now people are burning out, and the ‘easy wins’ from the prior approach (or just lifestyle creep/inflation!) is causing more real and visible difficulty - and the situation is indeed getting more difficult. We even have clear predators showing up and operating in the open, with no one stopping them.
There needs to be more than just vibes and following the rules for things to work out now, and a different approach is needed.
We’ll see what ends up shaking out, eh?
One thing is clear though - if society won’t accept someone stepping up and punching someone in the face or worse (even if it is to protect them), you’ll eventually end up with a bunch of predators who will do whatever they want without fear taking advantage of society.
What are you talking about here. "Historic male persona" differs between periods and places, but anger, friendships and happiness are basically always parts of it.
Odysseus "weeps" and "cries". The whole romantic era was about overly emotional, passionate and sensitive guys.
Achilles in particular spends half the Iliad sulking in his tent, and the other half making shish kebabs out of the Trojan army on a tireless revenge-rampage where he's so goddamn angry he picks a fight with a river.
These types of characters are still written today, John Wick is something of a superficial parallel.
Though it could be argued that Achilles lengthy sulking is diva behavior, few would argue Captain Kirk is effeminate because he's more emotionally driven than Spock, who in many ways turns the stoic ideals up to 11. Likely because despite occasionally chewing the scenery with emotional moments, he is still ultimately in control.
(It's also worth noting that neither Achilles or Odysseus were likely intended as ideals, but rather tragic extremes, and Homer's works largely deal with the consequences of their personalities; the pride and rage of Achilles like we just discussed, the pathological distrust and constant scheming of Odysseus protracting his journey and being the true source of many of his countless obstacles)
for good reason.
They are typically not very dramatic, and do the right thing - even in difficult circumstances. That is anti-drama.
They are the ‘good dads’. The strong leaders who make sure the right things actually happen. Etc.
They are not perfect, or superhuman. They can’t change the tide of a tsunami. But they do tend to make sure their family (and anyone who will listen to them without making their primary mission difficult!) also get to high ground at the right time.
If society actually listens to them, society might even build a high enough sea wall that the Tsunami doesn’t even destroy the city. That one is rare, however.
My point was, you made up "historic stoic persona" based on conservative ideology. Not as something that actually characterized historical manhood.
Tell me what I made up, eh?
The point of stoicism is to make your own decisions and be able to chart your own life by following principles you believe are just - in large part by avoiding being controlled by emotional reactivity/manipulation.
Not to cut out emotions all together, but to not be driven by them. Especially when someone is trying to induce them in you.
This often comes across as ‘stone faced in the face of extreme emotion’ - but doesn’t mean the person isn’t feeling them. Rather that they are not letting themselves be driven by or controlled by them in the moment, if they do not serve a useful purpose for them.
What about letting people know how you feel and your weaknesses while not caring if someone judges you for it? Is that being vulnerable or not?
We agree, assuming self knowledge, that the judgments of others tell you about them rather than about you.
It's unavoidable in many cases, but I'd prefer a life where I would surround myself with people who tried to build each other and not take advantage of each other. I think it's definitely possible, and I think I'm pretty much there at least.
This leads me to the next point, which is that I don't think it's a problem about men unwilling to be vulnerable, it's more so about them happening to be around people who might use it against them (and it succeeding effectively, ergo there being a critical mass of people supporting this).
I totally prefer the lift each other up crowd too. They exist, often in the same spaces as everyone else.
IMO, the problem comes down to a current inability to scale social knowing.
However, you seem to want to grind on an axe and I worry I might be getting in the way of that. I suggest you consider what has you activated and whether you can take away it's power to echo through and continue hurting you.
If you are currently a target of DV, reach out; there are lots of people and organizations who want to support you and have tools to do so. This may not apply to you but seemed appropriate place to remind us all.
What do you mean by that? What axe?
E.g. what are some concrete examples of what would make a man be vulnerable?
[edit: Giving up control seems to be a common feature. Maybe more simply being willing to cooperate when your interactant could defect.]
I think I'm a at a point in my life where I think that as long as with each person that I interact with, I'm looking to benefit both of our lives, I'm free to be myself. This wasn't always the case, and especially as a teenager, I was a lot more paranoid that people are out to get me, and in my 20s as well. I think I wasn't being myself because at those times it didn't seem like myself was received truly well. But now if I think everything I do is to benefit both parties - or whoever is in my circle, there's nothing to be ashamed about anything that I do. And any situation I treat as being in a team together whether it's work, friends, or with my life partner.
So what I'm thinking still is - if I do it like that, I can communicate my thoughts without concern. And is that being vulnerable or not? I don't think I'm a "kind" person or trying to virtue signal here or something or a naive person that could be taken advantage of because of this strategy. I do think however life is too short to be playing any such social games trying to hide or seek advantage from. I'd prefer to truly understand people and what they think, transparency. I'd prefer any situation is treated as a team working on a unified goal, whether it's understanding the World, each other, or making best of any gathering in terms of jokes, entertainment, insight or whatever.
There are still situations of course where I have to be on guard, and these I'm really bothered by, e.g. corporate environments. Not the best place for me in that sense. But I try to be as honest as I can. I guess my main issue is that I work in weird passionate bursts and I have trouble doing organizing/maintenance/routine stuff, so I feel like I have to hustle around that and what actually gives me frequently feelings of being an impostor. That I can't do many of the routine things that I consider boring, yet are frequently expected. I sometimes do 16h of very passionate, efficient, effective work, but the other days I'm completely disinterested in my paid work and so I have to kind of fake being productive or something, as I'm not sure how it plays to people that I just can't be bothered to work if I don't feel like it. Like I can't be that 9 to 5 person, but I work in corporate environment, because it pays me the most.
> Giving up control seems to be a common feature.
That is also an interesting one. What does giving up control exactly means? Another thing I've heard a lot about in my life. Someone's controlling, someone doesn't like to let go of control etc. I can understand how there are unhealthy controlling behaviors (e.g. intruding someone's freedom by pressuring or manipulating them to do what you want or not do what you don't want etc), but what does it mean to exactly giving up control over yourself?
I guess in romantic relationships maybe people can be vulnerable early in terms of getting hurt? E.g. putting yourself out there to be rejected. But I don't think that's where there's an actual problem with men? With men there must be this problem elsewhere.
Reading the article again - it doesn't seem to super register to me that it's the male vulnerability that is the problem. It seems there's an example of a homeless character that lies about being homeless. Is it that men don't want to leave an impression that they are unsuccessful? I can see how that's the case, although I think the main issue here is not the vulnerability, it's the fact that he's homeless in the first place. Perhaps if he didn't hide it, it could be solved somehow, but I don't know if that's exactly the case.
Nothing hidden. Hiding from anyone feels pointless and would leave me even more alone. I would need to live in a shell/shadow of myself and have to do a bunch of work to keep track of the boundaries - exhausting waste! Part of it is that I am a very odd primate. I had life circumstances that had me separated from most people followed by an existential crisis at 8 with no adults that could even start to discuss or support me through it. That led me off into lots of weird spaces and problems (and problem definitions) that I've been working on since then. My struggles mostly have to do with how humanity undermines and underperforms while dragging those attempting better down. I often try to enlist therapist's creativity to help solve subproblems but having a forum to discuss these things is itself relieving.
I'm with you about being able to just speak one's mind. Living your values and in a positive economic outcomes oriented manner is a pretty bullet proof strategy but it assumes a certain amount of physical and economic safety. A lot of people get stuck in the "social intrigue" pattern/asynchronous information building suboptimal strategy. I spend a lot of time trying to invite people to join and give them the tools and supports that make it plausible.
> e.g. corporate environments
Yeah, I've kinda washed out of all the horsecarp that happens in those. After 20 years and lots of success I still enjoy the work but the people ruin it for me. I'm planing a transition to farming. These social patterns destroy industry performance but it seems locked in on them.
> What does giving up control exactly means?
One always, outside of dystopic electrode or mind control ray scenarios, retains exclusive control over their connected neutral infrastructure but in having attachment to values we can feel induced into tradeoffs we would otherwise reject. Becoming attached to a life partner can cause shifts in your priorities and gives up control of priority updates, at least partially, to an uncontrolled entity. Lies told, being stuck in abuse patterns, and many other factors can create adverse dynamics and all these are risked. Similar risks can manifest in a business or investment decision. Even the accumulated knowledge, increase communications efficiency, and shared experience of any long term relationship becomes an asset that can exert control. Usually a worthwhile risk and trade-off.
The problem isn't gendered, that's just a distraction to keep us distracted warring against ourselves. Not to ignore the gender associated norms that lead to gender correlated adverse outcomes inside of a societal system that reflects and countersolves these. The problem is the distributed defection status and the challenges of social coordination coupled with social knowing not scaling.
However, I kinda ignore your last bit. I think you are saying "isn't the submission to satisfying the external the problem?" I believe it is a problem but it's paired with the collaboration can lead to far better outcomes factor. Society puts a lot of effort to make us dependent and through it dependence subservient. On the platform of society some attempt to get us to enslave ourselves (and others) to the whims of those same. Through such tangles, we all lose and pay dearly, living underperforming lives in an underperforming existence.
What do you think of vulnerability or whatever the thing you think we are discussing means to you?
I’m reminded of the concept of siege mentality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_mentality
> In sociology, siege mentality is a shared feeling of victimization and defensiveness—a term derived from the actual experience of military defences of real sieges. It is a collective state of mind in which a group of people believe themselves constantly attacked, oppressed, or isolated in the face of the negative intentions of the rest of the world. Although a group phenomenon, the term describes both the emotions and thoughts of the group as a whole, and as individuals. The result is a state of being overly fearful of surrounding peoples, and an intractably defensive attitude.
> Among the consequences of a siege mentality are black and white thinking, social conformity, and lack of trust, but also a preparedness for the worst and a strong sense of social cohesion.
I'm curious to hear how often do you hear it in every day life outside of the internet.
Especially for people working remotely without a family.
Oh … never mind.
I have always worked remote and been hermitting recently on a difficult set of (work) challenges.
I don’t know what I would do without HN.
I read a lot of science, math and tech news, but am only aware of one place where the discourse around topics that interest me has the quality of HN, which is HN.
I don't do alcohol, drugs, et cetera, because I saw other people who did, and found them disgusting. I don't want to be like that. Though if I could easily get my hands on a weapon, I would have probably shot myself already.
> I read a lot of science, math and tech news, but am only aware of one place where the discourse around topics that interest me has the quality of HN, which is HN.
There is also lobste.rs
(But therapy might help them getting there again. True eremits by heart are rare)
I have met some pretty unhinged therapists - both as a client and socially. I won’t even go into the history of psychiatry and clinical care.
One of the questions I like to pose is, what are we doing as a society by sending so many people to therapy? What do these practices do at a large scale? And to all those who decry things like gun violence: if you think our current mental health system would somehow be able to address the larger ills of society if only they had more funding, I have some serious questions about your view of its overarching effectiveness, and the specific effects of these practices.
I’ve had plenty of bad experiences which exacerbated my hopelessness but overall I feel I’ve found help when I most needed it.
I think the introductory things in almost any form of therapy will help people, after that it gets much more complicated and it’s up to the individual to find something that fits or decide it’s not for them.
While I am inclined to agree that most people would benefit from having a professional to talk to, it'd need to be economically viable as well.
But we're seeing this happening in real time; on the one side there's lower cost online councelling available (but whether that's actually certified professionals is debatable), and on the other ChatGPT became the biggest and most popular therapist almost overnight. But again, not sure if it has the necessary certifications, I suppose it's believable enough. I also want to believe OpenAI and all the other AI suppliers have hired professionals to direct the "chatbot as therapist" AI persona, especially now that the lawsuits for people losing their sanity or life after talking to AI are gaining traction.
I’m inclined to think chatGPT would probably be good enough for therapy basics and could help people that have never encountered them, but would probably become much worse after needing any specialized help. Online platforms like BetterHelp are complete trash and just make the therapist and the person feel hopeless.
I reckon the reason people use therapy is not because it's cheaper, but because they're less confident about how to do "mental exercise" than they are physical exercise.
A personal trainer is for boosting your physical health / performance. For mental health, you'd get a coach, training, or read one of many self-help books, not a therapist.
... the selves of 'self-help' books I found utterly bizarre. It was very much an eye-opener into the differences of our cultures.
> Too much psychology talk in every day life, everyone is traumatised and has unresolved issues etc. That may be, but I wish we would handle it all more privately...
Their problem isn't with the language itself, but how it is handled in public. That point doesn't really translate if you pivot to creating an environment conductive to mental health.
There is pathologisation which can be whimsical e.g. tidying/organising becomes OCD, studying becomes autistic or exaggerative e.g. sadness becoming depression, a bad experience becoming trauma or in order condemn e.g a political policy becomes sociopathic.
There is the way 'therapy speak' spills over into daily life e.g. your use of the work-kitchen must respect boundaries, leaving the milk out is triggering, the biscuits are my self-care etc.
There is also 'neuroscience speak' where people express their emotions in terms of neurotransmitters e.g. motivation and stimulation becomes 'dopamine', happiness and love become 'serotonin', stress becomes 'cortisol' etc.
It's just the way language and culture works and it now pulls more from science than myth and religion. New language might just be replacing older bowdlerisations e.g. hysteria. In the 'therapy-speak' cases, it's interesting how it often replaces more moralistic language and assertions about values that used be described in terms of manners, civility, respectability etc.
If we fill up the public discourse with the issues and wants of women and make the issues and wants of men a private matter this will skew the public understanding of the stance of women and men - we see this hardcore these days with boys and men being villainized, made invisible and made suspicious only due to their gender.
From here we have two ways forward: Either make sure that mens issues gain a proportionate part of the public discourse or argue that all issues are a private matter.
It's ridiculous since women's issues are only being better represented recently while men have long dominated politics, religion, and pop culture. But more importantly, the social pressures giving men and boys mental health issues come from the very same patriarchal gender roles that women's rights movements are rebelling against. This nuance had been drowned out by all the noise in internet "discourse".
This statement has more than one issue:
1. First and foremost, it is simply a rewrite of the history. There is a difference between descriptive and substantive representation. And it is true that men have been descriptively better represented. But the thoughtless implication that this leads to better substantive representation is simply wrong.
2. It justifies the idea of "reparations" for previous generations misdoing. Not only does this induce a high level if dissent, it is simply immoral. Even if we would accept reparations, it is still only justified by the rewrite of the history.
I appreciate the call for nuance, but I think the historical framing here deserves scrutiny.
You're right that men have dominated politicly, but it's worth distinguishing between who held power (descriptive representation) and whose interests were served (substantive representation). Most men throughout history had no political power - they were subjects of monarchies, excluded by property requirements, or conscripted into wars they didn't choose. The men making decisions were a tiny elite.
On "women's issues only recently being better represented" -this depends heavily on what we're measuring. If we look at something like life expectancy as a rough proxy for overall life quality (capturing war mortality, occupational deaths, access to resources, healthcare), historical data suggests men and women faced roughly equal burdens pre-industrialization, just distributed differently. Women faced maternal mortality and legal subordination; men faced conscription, dangerous labor, and social expendability. The female longevity advantage only emerges clearly in the modern era.
The point isn't to claim men had it worse - it's that "men have long dominated" obscures that most men were themselves dominated, and bore unique, severe costs within the same system.
I agree completely that rigid gender roles harm everyone. But framing current attention to men's issues as acceptable only because "patriarchal roles harm men too" still treats men's suffering as derivative of women's concerns, requiring feminist justification. Can't men's rising suicide rates, educational struggles, and social isolation warrant direct concern on their own terms?
The discourse does need less competition. But that requires actually taking men's issues seriously, not just when they can be reframed as collateral damage from patriarchy.
As regards generational blame, I disagree that it is immoral to place accountability (which is different from blame) on a people even across generations, and ergo, time. You might not have a hand at something that your ancestor did, but you could be reaping the benefits of it today. You don’t have to be sorry for it with your every breath, but since we’re already talking about morality, you do have the responsibility to recognize the past and where your current resources are from, and to make reparations towards people who are still suffering the consequences to the present.
And as a man, I would like for men’s issues to be more out there and recognized in its own right, but honestly, “men’s rights” is a very recent thing and only came about as a reaction against the rise of feminist discourse in social media. How could one not see that as a derivative of women’s issues? It’s not even talking about the things that really matter to me as a man, such as the discrimination of men against an “alpha” ideal which, I could argue from experience, is really what’s driving those mental health issues and suicidal thoughts. I’ve seen that men’s rights movements are actually trying to defend this ideal, and it doesn’t even seem to consider LGBT men in the picture.
You are completely right in your observations about women being disenfranchised from power and not hold the same rights. But this is just a minor aspect of life and invite you to reflect on whether this in its own right led to worse lifes as a whole for women - if you take all other obligations and privileges into consideration. I tried indicating that life expectancy could be a well understood proxy, but you are free to find other holistic proxies.
I do believe in full gender equality. and as while women has gained autonomy and agency men need to gain the same amount of protection of that of women. Men can not be the only ones conscripted for war. Men can not be the only ones taking dangerous and physical jobs.
I am also not here to push a zero sum view of these things - But to push a reasonable understanding of "sum" and be open for being taught something if it turns out that what we thought was not right.
Your comment about generational blame for entire groups of people is abhorrent and needs to be rejected. It leads to people "paying reparations" or "taking blame" for something they have not done just by being a part of that group. It is out of touch with societies based on rule of law. And it needs to be rejected.
You have absolutely no responsibility to accept or recognize anything you have not been a part of. This mere idea that you can force people to adapt (by accepting) a truth i borderline authoritarian. It is such an extreme form of mental coercion and needs to be rejected.
We take it for granted that virtually no one will make it through life without ever sustaining a serious or enduring physical injury. Why is it so implausible to say that practically everyone can expect to eventually have to deal with at least one significant mental injury, too?
A more feminine point of view is that we should shield against experiences that lead to a trauma.
What we want as a society is a democratic process, and it is heavily up for negotiation these years. It is completely fine.
Personally, my core belief is that whatever we ultimately decide on, it counts for all equivalent regardless of their gender.
I think that's true both for physical and psychological trauma! We should generally avoid preventable injuries and try to live and work with safety in mind.
All I meant is that the phrase "[almost] everyone has experienced trauma" doesn't seem that radical or extreme to me. It seems like common sense. (And it's not the same thing as "everyone is falling apart" or something like that.)
To extend you physical injury analogy: yes, people get physically injured. People break legs, and because of the focus and progress on physical injuries, they wear a cast for a few weeks, and then - for all practical intents and purposes - the injury never happened.
Because the same attention wasn't applied to mental health, I think people realised they were surrounded by the equivalent of people dragging themselves around on the ground because of a broken leg a decade ago that never got fixed. Why would anyone do that? Either because they don't know about the treatment, or because they live in an environment where the idea of getting treatment is seen as a bad or weak or shameful thing.
> Why is it so implausible to say that practically everyone can expect to eventually have to deal with at least one significant mental injury, too?
Just like we expect to walk down the street and see the occasional person with a plaster or bandage to handle a physical injury, if you accept we all have mental injuries, why do you expect to see them handled any more privately than physical ones?
I think that's the crucial point: "because that's how we've always done it" is the only real justification I can think of for us not tackling mental struggles more head on. If we're brave enough to compassionately question the things we don't normally question, being more open about mental stuff is the right thing to do IMO.
I sometimes wonder if superficial, influencer-level chatter is an early part of the process of normalising tough conversation points. It can let people test the waters in a safe way, signalling they want to talk about this stuff without getting too deep or vulnerable, yet.
That does not mean we should all be talking to everybody about it all the time. I take stuff into a therapy session I'm not going to discuss anywhere else, because if I started talking about it at work, or even close relationships, I'm asking people without any ability to help me with it to just take it and work it out with me, and that's not helpful.
But at the same time, we do need to talk to people about it. And there are some toxic barriers we could do with addressing.
Men are not "meant" to cry or show vulnerability in almost all contexts in almost all cultures. That's sad, because while we don't all want men breaking down in tears when their coffee order isn't quite right, we also know it's healthy for men to acknowledge and process difficult feelings like grief and rejection.
While most people realise it's not OK to tell a woman she'd look prettier if she smiled more, few people see the hypocrisy in thinking it's OK to tell a man he'd be sexier if he was more confident. That causes problems I think we can all call out and name in modern dating culture.
According to some stats I just pulled up for the UK, surveys suggest that more than 75% of men report as having had mental health issues, but only 60% have ever spoken to another human being about it at all, with 40% of men stating it would have to be so bad that they are considering self-harm or suicide to talk to anyone, ever. This is horrible.
So, sure, perhaps we don't need to talk about Freudian analysis down the pub, and nobody at work wants to hear about you reconciling feelings about how you were treated as a child by members of your family, but please:
Most men need to talk to somebody about their mental health. And for many problems, that somebody needs to be somebody with the appropriate skills and abilities to help them with it.
If you're reading this, and think that might be you, please, for your own sake, go talk to a professional.
You might not gel with the first therapist, counsellor, psychiatrist or psychologist you speak to. That's OK, they won't mind if you say you want to try a few different people. You can find people who will help in your town, on video calls, on apps, all over. Just speak to someone.
Having values is important. Integrity, humility, all of that, absolutely useful.
They are not in themselves sufficient to assure you of good mental health.
Men generally process negative emotions in private so others don't worry about them. This has led to the incorrect common viewpoint that men don't process these emotions at all, and attempts to make men process them like women do.
Is that really a thing?
I mean sure there might people doing this, but it is obvious that telling someone they have too little self esteem, that this is a personal and can very well be perceived as an attack (especially by someone with low self esteem).
(Also I think the distinction is a bit weird in general. Isn't confidence sexy in women, too?)
Confidence is sexy. Smiling faces are more attractive. That does not mean you have a right to say that to somebody as if they "owe you" sexiness or attractiveness. Negging somebody who is feeling crap about themselves is not going to make them want to be with you.
I'd like to elaborate on something you touch on briefly:
> I'm asking people without any ability to help me with it to just take it and work it out with me, and that's not helpful.
> that somebody needs to be somebody with the appropriate skills and abilities to help them with it.
I think there's an important line to walk here. I think it's important everyone (men and women) are able to talk about their feelings and experiences with their friends - but I don't think the goal needs to be "helping work it out". Just sharing and listening can be liberating, can help ease the road to talking to a professional, and can help others see that others struggle too.
There is a tendency in conversations of any sort to be always searching for a "solution" or an "answer", instead of just listening.
(There's a lot of nuance here in choosing when to share, etc, but I just wanted to talk a bit about it)
Having deep feelings of inadequacy and bringing that to the friendship at every opportunity is asking that friend to help you with those feelings, they probably aren't equipped to do that in all sorts of ways.
As with most things, it's a spectrum, not binary. Some friends would love to help you overcome childhood trauma, but most will not. Your partner may be able to help you deal with the way that family member behaves, but quite often, that's your thing, not theirs, deal with it. A work colleague might be able to support you when a co-worker is being a jerk, but might not have the skill or ability to help you manage your feelings or deal with that behaviour.
A therapist is trained to help you with those things your friends, family and colleagues can't. More specifically, they are trained to help you figure out what you are going to do about it.
Sometimes, when we talk to people about problems, we're "giving them the problem", as in, we want them to tell us what to do about it, or to actually do something about it. They often can't or won't do that - it's your thing. Therapists won't take it either, but they'll help you manage it as your thing.
A friend who is just there to listen, that's different, if the ask is just to listen and be somebody to talk to, sure, most friends have that ability and skill, and are happy to do so. But there's a lot of stuff people go through where that isn't enough, and asking those same people to do more is probably not going to work.
I actually think that, most of the time, people just want someone to listen. But there's something in our culture that injects that need to "give advice" instead of "just listen."
> if the ask is just to listen
We need to swap this default around. People should need to request advice/help, not request that they listen.
> But there's a lot of stuff people go through where that isn't enough, and asking those same people to do more is probably not going to work.
Certainly - but in my experience just talking about those things can be hugely beneficial, and sure, it would be great if they'd go to a therapist for those things - but as discussed, therapy still has a ways to go toward being accessible to everyone. In the meantime, if someone needs to vent about something, we should be here to listen*
* - up to a point, of course. There's a lot of nuance and lines to walk here that I feel I'm not addressing properly, but
There is something to be said for soldiering through a rough phase. It's not always the right thing to do but below a certain threshold, it's necessary to build some amount of resilience.
Collapsing at the slightest exposure to an uncomfortable situation and having to rely on an extensive support structure that includes a therapist, drugs and other things should not, in my opinion, be the default.
As for Holmes, I read, re-read and practically memorised most of the canon when I was in my late teens and early 20s. Mental health was never one of my take aways. I was fascinated by the intensity of the character and how his work meant so much to him. That the lack of it depressed him might have been something Doyle observed in his patients and decided to use as a foil but I don't think he was "exploring men's mental health" in the stories. He was merely trying to make a believable detective who explains his methods. My feeling is that this is overlaying a 2025 interpretation onto a Victorian tale.
As a matter of interest, many of the traits were inspired by someone Doyle worked for named Dr. Joseph Bell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bell) who emphasised and used careful observation - a skill that can be very useful to a medical practitioner. The relationship between Bell and Doyle was fictionalised into a series called "Murder Rooms". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_Rooms:_Mysteries_of_the...
I built and released a game called Autism Simulator recently. Online feedback was overwhelmingly positive but with plenty of gaslighting sprinkled in, e.g. "everybody's a bit autistic", "that just sounds like working in tech".
Minimization is always the default go-to for men's mental health issues.
Would you mind linking to the game so I can check it out?
I am 100% certain that conservative men being less likely to seek help is _part_ of the reason why various data shows them as having fewer mental health issues than their liberal counterparts. But I doubt that's the whole picture, and it's also by far the least interesting part of the picture - the cause and effect there is pretty simple and clear.
As another commenter in this thread observes, there's "too much psychology talk in every day life, everyone is traumatised and has unresolved issues etc". I think that's part of it as well, and it's not difficult to believe that this is something that impacts "liberal and left leaning men" more than conservatives, due to sheer exposure if nothing else. I think you do a disservice to the discussion if you dismiss this outright.
Conservatives are less likely to see proffessional help but not help. They simply rely on family which imo has a better incentive structure than therapists.
Anecdotally I've watched a lot of people go down the therapy and medication route over the years. I've noticed they become more unstable as time passes. Maybe that would have happened anyways.
or
Maybe it's because humans weren't designed to spill our guts to strangers and then take prolonged phycoactive drugs to fix mental problems that science does not understand.
As written in a sibling thread, I am mostly concerned with the relative visibility of issues as that creates equal opportunity.
The implication of not focusing on men's issues is that we can not focus on women's issues either.
Good luck fighting for that.
BBC Sherlock has too little episodes to bring audience along a prolonged struggle with mental health.
Also, re: Dr. Who, Moffat gonna Moffat
I don't think any actor has come as close as Jeremy Brett did.
As I said downthread.....
In Conan Doyle's books, Holmes was a user of cocaine, not an addict.
This modern desire to portray Holmes as a drug addict says far more about our own times.
Of course Brett was in fact completely out of it for much of the filming on all sorts of things.
Secondly, the stories that mention coke use are all written from the perspective of Holmes' best friend, who we'd expect to be biased towards writing about his friend in a positive light. I don't think this is accidental. Watson quotes him effectively saying "I just do coke because life is so mundane and boring, and not stimulating enough for me" which is nearly the exact same justification and thought process used by like, every addict and if not a word-for-word quote, then at least very similar for Chris Moltisanti's justification of his own addiction to Tony Soprano.
It may not be an exact rendering of what was in the books but it is extremely natural modification to make, where otherwise we'd have flat Marty Stu character who is talking in ways that seem very consistent with at least problematic use and yet who's not addicted. "Our own times" have dealt with at least 100 years of coke addiction, 50 years of crack so maybe we're just not naive enough to believe that a guy who's saying "my friend just takes it when he's bored, but he's bored all the time because his mind is too sharp for this dull world" isn't a problematic user or addict.
"For years I had gradually weaned him from that drug-mania which had threatened once to check his remarkable career. Now I knew that under ordinary conditions he no longer craved for this artificial stimulus, but I was well aware that the fiend was not dead but sleeping, and I have known that the sleep was a light one and the waking near when in periods of idleness I have seen the drawn look upon Holmes’ ascetic face, and the brooding of his deep-set and inscrutable eyes. Therefore I blessed this Mr. Overton, whoever he might be, since he had come with his enigmatic message to break that dangerous calm which brought more peril to my friend than all the storms of his tempestuous life."
- https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Return_of_Sherlock_Holmes...
I also agree that the view directly into the state of mind of both Watson and Holmes was refreshing.
I read the stories as an child, and seen various of the film adaptations; Holmes became a meme even within Conan Doyle's lifetime, but I'm sure I'd benefit from going back to the source as an adult.
It’s a tragedy of the commons we are all largely oblivious as a species.
Maybe the only interesting part is that drug use was considered (barely) socially acceptable and holmes was still respectable. Note that he wasn't an alcoholic.
Shout out to the bbc adaptation which does a fantastic and hilarious job of portraying holmes as an erratic drug addict.
An Englishman’s proverbial “stiff upper lip” came to be a cliche for a reason.
“Boarding school syndrome” would be the term coined for the emotional damage that was an educational ideal for a long while.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_school#Psychological_...
The old boys network and class still plays a big role in UK politics. I'm convinced that the behaviour of Boris Johnson and even Starmer is incomprehensible without that unspoken element.
Is it a bad thing? perhaps. Is it a recipe for disaster? I would say the historical evidence is pretty clear that no, not really. It worth pointing out that the US where class is much less important is more successful.
In my head Holmes is descended from minor nobility while Watson is solidly upper middle class.
Now, Labours envy based attacks on the private schools that gave them all their advantages in life helps nobody. It won't matter to rich kids and is just a barrier to success for middle class kids. When you consider the quality of state education, at least there should be some educated people to run the country, even if it's a bad system.
Ot but hogwarts is a great parody of the British boarding school system. A drafty, dangerous castle full of dangerous animals, homicidal, abusive and incompetent teachers, serious injuries are a fact of life and complacent staff. Add in the most incompetent and negligent headmaster in all literature, who hardly does anything throughout the series and thinks that soul sucking demons are an acceptable security measure to protect his students and runs the school as his personal domain. Throw in class based bullying in the student body and you have everything. I always found it striking that the most hatable character in the series is a school inspector (Umbridge).
The boarding is the point.
It is like failing fast for people. It looks cruel but in the long run is more honest.
That is not to say the networks from exclusive day schools do not help, they do.
Again the Brits had their biggest empire when led by this caste of people, which is why their boarding schools get so much overseas business today. To paint that as incompetence or a failed society is wishful thinking - they were the peak of what they could be.
It’s one and done. The system doesn’t care.
People have a tendency to look at the cruelest warriors of history and think that is success. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar or Napoleon are not something to emulate. They were successful by causing horrific pain to a lot of people.
Napoleon spread enlightenment values that benefitted generations that came after. Julius Caesar took civilization across a continent. Deng Xiaoping was leader during Tianenmen Square but brought more people out of poverty than anyone else in history.
Being great means being able to do some things others do not like because the resulting upside is better for everyone.
One was exiled, the other assassinated. They were in no position to write history.
Except in Conan Doyle's books, Holmes was a user of cocaine, not an addict.
This desire to portray Holmes as a drug addict says far more about our own times.
He was definitely not holding together his life by any traditional measure.
Mind actually using words to form useful sentences?
He of course insisted he wasn’t an addict - like all addicts do - but he always went back that I remember - like all addicts do. And he used it to cope with not having any interesting problems and the misery of life.
He was enabled by Watson and his brother, and mostly supported in the elements of normal social functioning by them.
Where we draw the line between addict and not is quite subjective in these situations eh?
That Holmes would encounter Sigmund Freud seemed to me at the time as a wild use of artistic license. Since then though I have come to believe that there were a lot fewer people on the Earth in general than I could really appreciate at the time, and some of these luminaries may well have shared a drink together. (So why not a fictional luminary as well?)
He accumulated character flaws along the way, as if Doyle wanted to make Holmes as unsympathetic as he could without changing his core traits.
But Holmes is not "unsympathetic" in any of the stories, so I don't see your theory matching the facts.
> He accumulated character flaws along the way, as if Doyle wanted to make Holmes as unsympathetic as he could
[citation needed]
I don't even see the first part of that assertion fulfilled, and I read the books multiple times.
If there was a pill for that, how many masterpieces like the Sherlock Holmes books would never be made? The products of misery have always been the devil's advocate's best arguments. If Doyle had not sympathized with Holmes' afflictions, he could not have written him. Or if he had written Holmes as a Mary Sue we wouldn't have cared. (Though for some reason it worked for Harry Potter.)
An effective education requires a certain amount of torture, and it works better when self inflicted.
(Fun fact, you know that "lorem ipsum" text that's used as filler? It's not nonsense Latin, it's from a speech by Cicero where he denounces the stoic ideal of suffering being good for the soul, or at least "pointless" suffering anyway)
What bulletproof word choice. Robert Harris called Cicero the first modern politician, and that looks right.
> An effective education requires a certain amount of torture, and it works better when self inflicted.
It's the tortured artist myth. You can turn pain into art but it's not a prerequisite.
Poor people trapped in unemployment have something in common with rich kids trapped in lethargy. A kind of spiritual constipation.
That's a feature, not a bug. Fighting for life has more meaning and purpose that yearning for death. We're designed for it. It has only recently become atypical.
It’s an interesting topic, but the paper makes no revelatory statements and provides a very superficial analysis of Doyle’s work. Hell, it doesn’t even provide a single quote from Holmes to illustrate the mental anguish or “battles with drug addiction” which the author claims that he experiences in the books. Holmes’ 7% “solution of cocaine” usage was never presented as rising to the level of addiction in the books, by the way. Nor does the paper delve into the repressive nature of the Victorian society in which these stories were written and released to show us what was so novel about Doyle allegedly tackling these subjects and why he might have had to merely allude to them rather than discussing them frankly.
All in all, this essay is a poor showing and would have earned the author a C at best in high school English for failing to provide adequate supporting evidence for her assertions.
Asked and answered
(If you know of better articles on this topic, then please provide links!)
Not to mention that that the character in this particular story is not actually struggling with debt, he simply discovers, somewhat incredibly, whilst researching for a newspaper story, that he can earn far more money begging than in his job as a reporter. There simply is no pressure, he just lacks integrity.
Where exactly do you observe this?
But it always has been, just less self-important/self-reporting drama (x is getting divorced because they told us!), and more ‘we just found out x celebrity is getting divorced’.
[1] New research highlights a shortage of male mentors for boys and young men
The flagged thread is flagged, not downvoted. 45 points, 87 comments.
I doubt RAND[1] and IPSOS are in the redpilled subculture, that's quite the reach.
Not everything touching on men's problems in the current age is redpilled
[1] https://www.rand.org/about.html
>The RAND American Life Panel and the Ipsos KnowledgePanel are nationally representative probability-based survey panels of adults in the United States
this is what's killing HN (and everything else, tbh)
While HN is not great on politics, I'm not aware of any decently large (or small!) community that is.