Personal data point: I imagined vividly to be socially excluded at points in my life since that would be my plan B (great plan, I know, I gamble a bit with my life from time to time as I don’t see a better option).
And I did notice a few things:
- I have nothing to lose anymore
- I suddenly have a lot of free time to devote my energy to
- My mental state is slightly unstable
- I am in a shitty mood
I am not religious and do not know much about extreme views (I only know a bit about Buddhism) but I can imagine that extremist religious or ideological views would hyper charge the 4 things I talked about.
On another note, if this study would state that these people would become workaholics then I would also believe that. I feel it is the opposite side of the same coin.
You are totally right about the workaholics.
I have energy, destructive or constructive. My environment chooses which way that energy flows.
I'm lucky I have a 100 year old house that steals all my time with needing to be fixed otherwise I'd be finding trouble on the weekends.
I think a lot of men exist lacking hard physical and mentally demanding work, like working in a factory or on a farm, that can act as an outlet and as a thing to be proud of.
While I agree I want to add, for the sake of the conversation only, that it somehow paints a picture of men as beasts to be tamed (by work, by enrolling, etc.).
That's not a pleasant turn of phrase, but how inaccurate is it? We've all been angsty balls of testosterone at some point in our lives, and focusing that energy is the only thing that helps. Talking about feelings isn't always what's needed. Sometimes you have to get out there and break/make something.
We are indeed. But I'd argue that some animals are more civilized than you think. Primal behavior is simply partially out of ignorance (that's how it seems to me).
Humans are relatively unique in:
1. Language
2. Tool use (thanks to being land-dwellers, two legged, and having opposable thumbs)
3. Having a prefrontal cortex that allows us to inhibit any other instinct we have
Other animals have this as well to some degree or another, even all 3 of them. These 3 things combined allow us to sometimes escape our primal nature. But I wonder whether we're alone in that: how about dolphins, elephants and other animals of that sort?
I see this as a side effect of the ideals toxic masculinity puts forth. I was under that for a long time and I'm still learning through therapy how to express myself properly, because it was simply drilled into me that men don't express feelings besides rage, that anything else you feel is "weakness," that it's important to remain stoic and focused in all situations, etc.
I mean yeah it makes you really valuable in certain situations but it also makes your daily life hell.
How well is your therapy going? I thought about going because I see the same patterns in myself. The main drawback is that I strongly autoregulate and eventually something triggers me and I get coldly furious. I cut some long-lasting friendships due to this and I'm keeping everyone at a distance.
I would agree that it's connected to masculine cultural tropes. The toxic behavior stemming from it is IMO is a derivate of the mental mess it fuels.
Not GP, but: I think it's a useful phrase, though it's often overloaded/misapplied/used vaguely.
Some (generally recognized as) non-toxic stereotypically masculine traits include having confidence, a can-do attitude, being protective, trying to be helpful, being intellectual, being silly, leading people towards common goals. Even anger in moderation is not inherently toxic (we all feel it). These things can all be terrible in excess, of course, so I think sometimes people fairly call an excess of these things toxic (even if the trait itself is great in moderation). It's also bad if you are only allowed to embody a specific set of traits and behaviors; clearly men should not be limited to these traits (though the societal pressures to conform to traits like these are strong and are often what are referred to as "toxic masculinity" in reasonable discourse). Likewise, women should clearly be seen as equally capable of possessing these stereotypically masculine traits.
I think a lot of the use of "toxic masculinity" is in reference to the fact that men are often strongly discouraged, explicitly and implicitly, from doing things that are seen as non-masculine. This causes behavior that's harmful to oneself and others, like taking out all your emotions as anger, or feeling like violence is the most powerful and respected way to make an impact. In more benign forms, it can come from an excess of an otherwise good trait, like going from confident to cocky. Many people will use the term vaguely/badly, but I think the usage I just described is useful.
I think the most important point is that "toxic masculinity" (in its useful and precise form) is very different from saying "men are toxic". It's closer to "men face toxic pressure due to people's gender expectations that cause them to suffer and sometimes hurt others as well". It's about the societal pressure to conform to a narrow and inadequate spectrum of behaviors. It's like men are expected to span a 3D emotional space with only 1 emotional "basis vector" since the other 2 are effeminate. The 1 basis vector is not itself "toxic"; it's the denial of the other 2 vectors.
Wow! This is such an awesome comment! I know some non hacker news people in the gender/feminism community who asked me to copy/send your comment to them via email.
Toxic masculinity does discuss a facet of our society that should absolutely be discussed, but I think part of the issue with the term is that its phrasing is unproductively antagonistic. It's like talking about neurotic femininity or violent blacks. While there is something real and interesting to be to discussed about those real social issues, the phrasing frames the conversation in an unhelpful and mildly accusatory manner that is not conducive to a productive conversation.
I know what you mean, and I agree that the term's construction can easily lend itself to unproductive and divisive rhetoric, though I think it's a bit more complicated.
I do think "toxic masculinity" is very different from a phrase like "violent blacks" because it specifies a behavioral trait/set of cultural mores (masculinity) over which people have a significant degree of control versus an intrinsic trait (like maleness or blackness) over which people have no control whatsoever. There's also not much of a history of men being violently repressed or disenfranchised purely for being men, so the potential antagonistic aspects of a phrase like "toxic masculinity" are not instantly amplified by association/context in the same way as your other examples. Also, "toxic" is not tied to a specific harmful stereotype; this leaves one open to dissect which aspects of stereotypical masculinity are toxic, rather than concluding a priori that men are "violent" or "neurotic" like in the other two examples. I think "toxic feminity" could similarly, in good faith, be used constructively in ways that "neurotic femininity" cannot.
That said, the fact that a good number of people use "toxic masculinity" in a vague and unproductively confrontational way has given it a bad connotation to many; this sort of usage is certainly enabled by the brevity of the term. I think a lot of people (I suspect the majority) don't make the distinctions I made in my previous comment, and it undermines their efforts to use the term or concept of "toxic masculinity" in a truly helpful way. I've seen many examples of this: right-aligned people trying to discredit feminists as misandrist; feminists unempathetically erasing these distinctions; angry people in Twitter comment sections complaining about toxic masculinity; people who actually know better lazily using it as jargon on public forums where it can be misinterpreted (I'm sometimes guilty of this); and so on.
The term is also problematic in its omitted connotations; one of these omitted connotations is the interconnectedness of traditional feminine gender roles with toxic masculine traits. Many people ignore how these roles interact with and reinforce each other.
For example, where I live (NYC), it's unclear what type of masculinity is desirable to straight women. Most straight women I know are having a hard time finding guys they want to date because they've been trained to be attracted to some traits of toxic masculinity. But since they live in NYC in 2019, they also have learned recently to be wary of those same traits. Most of them are aware of this weird cognitive dissonance, but they can't figure out how to resolve it. Many of the straight men I know genuinely want to avoid toxic stereotypical behavior, and they're concerned about things like coming on strong/harassing women, but because many of the women they want to date still expect men to do more of the pursuing, it's ambiguous how precisely they should behave to make their dates feel desired but not cornered.
There are many less benign examples; I've seen plenty of women who mock boys and men for being too emotional, too prissy, too pretty, or too physically weak. It's not just men who define manhood in an overly-restrictive way. And these same women have to deal with the negative aspects of feminine gender conditioning. It's a cyclical thing, and I think the only healthy way I've seen to deal with it is to think of everybody as both perpetrator and victim. You can use "toxic masculinity" as a shorthand for the component of this approach related to masculine stereotypes, or you can use it in a divisive way that is unhelpful.
The fundamental issue is that "toxic masculinity" is non-technical jargon; it has a highly compressed meaning, but without a technical framework to limit its interpretation, it's also prone to heavy semantic drift through vagueness, malice, laziness, or stupidity. I think that someone choosing an alternative to "toxic masculinity" will have to deal with jargon's fundamental tradeoff between brevity and specificity. I won't be surprised if such an improved term (or at least and attempt at such) comes about at some point, as often happens with non-technical jargon, but picking such a term effectively is a deep problem rooted in the weakness and strength of natural language's inherent vagueness.
The phrase doesn't mean that masculinity itself toxic. It means that our culture's expectations for men hurt them and others. For example, the masculine ideal we hold men to is an expectation of stoic emotionlessness and self-sufficiency. As a result, many men feel a pressure to push through emotional difficulties, and feel a deep shame when they have trouble doing so. Some might even feel a deeper shame for seeking out help when they can't do it on their own, so they avoid involving loved ones and professionals that could help them. Men commit suicide nearly 4x as much as women do.
Toxic expectations for masculine traits permeate throughout society, too. A lack of sensitivity and tenderness is one such expectation, along with aggressive sexual promiscuity. This might lead some to view men as questionable caregivers, especially to children. Some men feel a pressure to avoid careers involving children, like teaching, which robs children of positive male role models. One can even argue that it robs children of fathers when courts prefer giving custody of children to their mothers.
I disagree with any fad phrase (emerged in a year or so and suddenly used by everyone, the media, etc) to explain deep rooted human psychology, society, etc.
It just leads to a fashionable, shallow, understanding of any subject it concerns. And just as it come into existence, it will go out of fashion in a decade or so. We have had such terms in every decade, from all sides of the political spectrum.
Disagreeing with anything you deem a "fad phrase" has literally zero more intellectual rigor than those who follow them. You're using the same metric just backwards.
If I say "X is wrong" it doesn't mean I advocate -X ("the same metric just backwards"). I just say "don't use X". How about that?
Notice also how I didn't say I "Disagree with anything said using what I deem a fad phrase".
As I wrote I just disagree with the fad phrases themselves. One can write something right and clever even while using a fad phrase.
But they would have done better to write their arguments/thinking without resorting to fad phrases (is my point).
There's still the ages old, definition of what you want to say, in simple words (or more nuanced ones), without using pre-made, overplayed so that every source attaches their own irrelevant nuances, played to death, and ill-defined, framings.
That doesn’t make much sense. It’s like saying regarding with skepticism any market mania, hype, or any arbitrary claim without evidence, is the same as getting caught up in the hype. There are thousands of possible fads you can participate in. Being a skeptic and demanding proof is not equivalent to abrogating all standards.
>That is not skepticism, that's denial of anything remotely popular because of its popularity, not because of what it entails or puts forward.
Generally speaking, it's healthy (and good skepticism) to be suspect of "anything remotely popular because of its popularity". Not rejecting it outright, but being suspect of it. New things need to prove themselves. How is this in any way controversial?
That said, I didn't advocate rejecting "anything remotely popular". I said I reject "fad phrases", not "all new phrases" or "all popular phrases".
Fad: "a practice or interest followed for a time with exaggerated zeal"
That is, small terms that emerge out of nothing, are widely adopted from different sides for different purposes, are overloaded with different meanings, and after making their rounds, go out of fashion. And I specifically added the qualification that I'm mostly rejecting those supposed to address deep psychological/societal issues.
The dismissal of "what it entails or puts forward" is already present in my usage of "fad". I don't think those terms entail or put forward something significant, and they usually do more to confuse the issues.
(I've been old enough to see several such -- if I had been in the 60s and 70s I've had even more of those, now regarded as dead weight).
It's abouut as rigorously defined as most things in psychology and about as easy to replicate in a lab as most things in psychology. It labels repression of emotions as a bad thing, but you can find a half dozen studies showing people who ignore traumatic events have a faster and healthier recovery than those that don't - and then turn around and find a half dozen studies showing the opposite.
Its main value is as a political tool to try to change people's behavior you disagree with, simply because you don't like it. When it stops being useful, it will be dropped for the next fad.
> It labels repression of emotions as a bad thing, but you can find a half dozen studies showing people who ignore traumatic events have a faster and healthier recovery than those that don'
Genuinely interested in these studies, I didn't know they existed. Can you provide a reference?
So what do you think about "Tree shaking" as a Javascript minification strategy? The phrase ticks each of your boxes for a fad phrase, but I wouldn't consider it to be one.
Literally my first line was "I disagree with any fad phrase (...) to explain deep rooted human psychology, society, etc."
Whereas "tree shaking" is a technical term, used in a precise context to describe a well defined process. Not really different than "compiling", "garbage collection", and so on. And even as a technical term, it's not used by everyone, all the media, etc, heck, not even all the technical media, or all the JS media. You seldom see it.
If we wanted to drop the "to explain deep rooted human psychology, society" part, there are similar fads in the IT domain, but "tree-shaking" is not it.
literally all of them? toxic masculinity is not about the traits themselves being inherently bad, it's about them being elevated to the point of excluding other things, and the unhealthy ways this manifests in society.
> toxic masculinity is not about the traits themselves being inherently bad, it's about them being elevated to the point of excluding other things, and the unhealthy ways this manifests in society.
To me it seems as simplistic as speaking about female hysteria (which was the case in the medical profession for centuries, ever since the Greeks).
Thinking in terms of “female traits” that are taken to an extreme. That kind of thinking itself says women should be afraid to give in too much into “their nature”, because it’s just a societal construct where they are encouraged to be, say, irrational, catty, moody, whatever. (They have to question who they act and “be more logical like men” — a social conservative like Jesse Peterson would still advocate that today.)
(And frankly I believe that ADD is the new Hysteria, but for kids.)
Does that sound like a productive way to conduct public discourse and discuss issues among adults?
The concept "toxic masculinity" is just the opposite of "female hysteria", actually. Hysteria historically was basically always been used as a crutch by the medical profession as "there's something wrong with this woman due to their inherent female-ness". Literally, "women are crazy because they have uteruses".
Contrast with toxic masculinity, which focuses on external, societal pressures which force/encourage men to behave in ways that are harmful to themselves and others, rejecting the idea that men are "just like that".
(As for ADD being the hysteria being the new hysteria, I can totally see the resemblance)
Also, the website for your source is run by a fundamentalist, anti-LGBT hate group [1], so you might want to consider picking a different one.
Right, that was lazy, I try to pick less biased websites in general to illustrate points. Although to be honest, I myself prefer to read both sides of an issue from biases sources, as they are more diligent. See my reply to the sibling comment for that.
Yeah, ADD is the new hysteria in my opinion, although you can also split hairs and say it’s different because kids really DO bounce around and have more energy, vs saying all women have anxiety or whatever. It’s close enough, in my mind, to discuss the general attitude by analogy.
Whether it’s something intrinsic to the person, or something that society makes them do, is an interesting question. But every time I object, it is because is framed in words that evoke the former, that something is “inherent” in kids and women and men, such as “masculinity”, and it can go too far.
That is not so much a critique of society, at least because of the choice of words, as say if we said:
Schools are the reason more kids experience ADD (sit down and shut up for 10 hours a day, learn to work for corporations)
Conditions women were kept in were the reason for their anxiety (eg yellow wallpaper short story)
How society uses men to do physically demanding and risky jobs / go to war / make the first move leads them to act the way they act.
Instead, it says “boys were taught masculine trait X, and that leads to wife battering” but that’s a short hop skip and jump from that to “it leads to sexist behavior” to “it leads to microaggressions” and “it leads to unwanted advances in the form of a compliment or asking someone out who you barely know based on their beauty alone”. In short, it can be weaponized to further eliminate what has until now been considered “normal masculine” behavior, because gender dymorphism does actually exist, etc. So many men are threatened and many women feel also that “all the real men” have disappeared. But really, it’s because of all the uncertainty about whether traditional gender roles (I’m talking about a man making the first move or holding open a door or planning a date, say) are desirable or not.
Anyway, I just feel when it comes to ADD, Autism, Depression, Hysteria, Toxic Masculinity etc. I’d rather focus 90% of my efforts on what society is doing NOW, and not use words like “bitchy woman” or “toxic masculinity” and excuse it by saying you’re just talking about what was done to boys in the past, because a lot of time the solutions lie in the present. And society can make it a LOT easier for people without putting them in these situations NOW. With changing society, NOT just medicating or doing psychiatric interventions.
Obese? Consider what society is doing, systemically, subsidizing sugar, putting antibiotics in factory farm animals.
Depressed? Consider the family structure, living alone, social ties, physically meeting, exercise regimen and societal expectations.
ADHD? Consider whether the public school system has become a glorified daycare because BOTH parents have to work full days at corporations just to pay the rent.
And so on. The answer is to change society, not blame the individual. I am a progressive in the sense of technology! But I am more of a social conservative in that I think the individual is constantly being blamed to keep up with the latest plan for normal behavior, when in reality society can improve. I would even be so bold as to take it to race as well:
Black targeted more by police?
Blaming individuals: “Recognize your white privilege”
Blaming society: “Useless drug war incarcerates Blacks disproportionately, Contraception availability leads to premarital sex instead of early marriages and more single parent homes, Failing schools face no market discipline because parents have no vouchers or choice, police are unaccountable”
Solutions: School vouchers, UBI, abolish minimum wage, end drug war, body cameras for all cops
Notice that all these solutions are race/gender neutral and may work far better!! But we suck all the political capital out of the room when we start talking about this new kind of bashing the individual, which is sometimes derogatorily referred to as “the regressive left” or “cultural marxism”.
I wouldn't necessarily ascribe too much journalistic merit regarding your source link; it's quite clearly a biased source by design.
A cursory glance at their home page reveals as much, and they spell it out clearly themselves.
From their FAQ [1]:
>What is OneNewsNow.com and who operates this site?OneNewsNow.com is the website of the American Family News Network (AFN), a national Christian news service. Our goal is to present the day's news from a biblical perspective. We not only feature the latest breaking stories from across the United States and around the world, but also news of the challenges facing Christians in today's society.
Sure, I just grabbed the first link I found about this fact that Gillette lost billions. Here are some more links about the same thing, with their CEO addressing it:
To be sure, there is no way to prove causation from correlation. Perhaps it was a giant coincidence in timing. But I wouldn’t say there is “NO” evidence to support the thesis that men got offended:
There is no evidence that the "best a man can get" ads pushing back against sexism and bullying contributed to the $8 billion figure.
Plato talked about this in Phaedrus about the allegory of the Chariot [0,1]. I think it's a useful lens to view the desires we humans have, though not a perfect lens:
>First the charioteer of the human soul drives a pair, and secondly one of the horses is noble and of noble breed, but the other quite the opposite in breed and character. Therefore in our case the driving is necessarily difficult and troublesome. The Charioteer represents intellect, reason, or the part of the soul that must guide the soul to truth; one horse represents rational or moral impulse or the positive part of passionate nature (e.g., righteous indignation); while the other represents the soul's irrational passions, appetites, or concupiscent nature. The Charioteer directs the entire chariot/soul, trying to stop the horses from going different ways, and to proceed towards enlightenment.
In the modern west, we have an idea of 'Pious vs. Evil' that each of us tries to balance (super broad strokes here). However, I think the ideas of Plato are interesting because of the tripartite idea of Logos, Eros, and Thumos. Mostly, I think that Thumos[2] is a great way to look at things and categorize issues that we feel. Quickly:
> Thumos: a Greek word expressing the concept of "spiritedness" (as in "spirited stallion" or "spirited debate"). The word indicates a physical association with breath or blood and is also used to express the human desire for recognition. [2]
Thumos is neither good nor evil, but is something that can get away from you and needs to be controlled (by the Logos). For example: Achilles was overly thumotic and was thus killed by his desire for glory, blood, and honor; all thumotic traits. However, it was the thumos of Achilles drove him to be such a great warrior that we remember to this day. Also, the author Jack London was a thumotic person. He was always moving about, getting into scraps, trying to improve his writing, becoming famous. But that desire for greatness is what killed him as he literally worked himself to an early death while writing.
So, the energy that we have as men can be seen in this tripartite way of Logos, Eros, and Thumos, not just destructive or constructive. Having outlets that are 'base' (Eros) are as needed as having outlets that are 'spirited/honorable' (Thumos) and 'intellectual'(Logos).
"3) The Have-To-Dos may happen, but not the Want-To-Dos. Even if the procrastinator is in the type of career where the Panic Monster is regularly present and he’s able to be fulfilled at work, the other things in life that are important to him—getting in shape, cooking elaborate meals, learning to play the guitar, writing a book, reading, or even making a bold career switch—never happen because the Panic Monster doesn’t usually get involved with those things. Undertakings like those expand our experiences, make our lives richer, and bring us a lot of happiness—and for most procrastinators, they get left in the dust."
I often read from sites like Reddit and HN people espousing the idea that people seem to be either non-religious or religious extremists.
It's helpful to be reminded there is a quiet demographic in the world of religious peoples who don't have any of these problems at all because they have peace in their faith.
Fair point. I have met Christians in that manner. I haven’t met any other religion in that way as it takes 90 days * 8 hours to see it — she was my elementary school teacher (she also adopted a student in dire need).
> I imagined vividly to be socially excluded at points in my life since that would be my plan B (great plan, I know, I gamble a bit with my life from time to time as I don’t see a better option).
I am having trouble understanding this sentence.
You plan B was to be socially excluded? Surely you plan B had a different goal, and exclusion was a side effect? Was was plan A?
Why did you imagine being excluded vividly? Were you actually being excluded?
Many people here say that "People shouldn't expect to be able to afford to live in populated areas, poorer people should just move to the country side."
I grew up homeschooled in rural America, most people would be better off moving to a different country than moving there. People shouldn't be surprised when isolation (either because of where someone lives or because everyone around them is telling them to stay away) creates horrible people, leaving for university and being around people there is what kept me from going to a pretty horrible place.
It sounds more like you finding a place to meet people (university) was what freed you from social isolation more than its actual location on earth. Had you not been homeschooled, it is likely you would have found the same outlet in the schools that were local to your childhood home.
I have lived in big cities, but currently reside in a rural area. I have never felt less socially isolated than I do now. They say it takes at least 40 hours of time spent together to make a friend. That makes school the ultimate place to make friends as you're pretty much forced to be around the same people for >40 hours. However, as an adult no longer in school, I have found that the smaller community increases the chances of seeing the same people each day, which prolongs the time spent together, and increases the chances of becoming friends.
In the big city, more often than not I'd meet people one day and then never see them again. That is isolating.
Regular exposure to the same people is the key. What has gone missing is regular gatherings where serendipitous conversations can happen with people you will meet again. That's why people would go to pubs, hobby clubs and skateparks. You know there will be someone you know there without organizing it, if you go there regularly.
I have found that few in my broad age bracket(20-40) goes to many places regularly. Even the gym, which should be pretty regimented and consistent, is totally inconsistent in patronage. That's 3 years in the same gym and there is maybe 4 regulars. I have no trouble saying hello to people, but when I never see them again it's a moot point.
My best success so far is mountain biking, yet still. I am there the same time every day, three days a week, and rarely see the same person twice. When I do start to notice some regulars, I break something and then by the time I get back to riding the regulars are already back to irregular and I never see them again.
I used to think I need to be organizing stuff in order to make and keep friends, but I think we just need to make the concession to be somewhere regularly to give friendships the opportunity to happen. We seek novelty so much the idea of going to the same place twice in a fortnight keeps us all from bumping into eachother.
If I had the money, I would think about opening a social club. I experienced them a bit when living in New Orleans, but I also know they are more commonly associated with the wealthy/upper class.
I would hope to take it the opposite end. Open to anyone in the community with monthly dues that regular people can afford. Just make it a nice place to socialize, play cards, listen to music, and meet new people.
I’m sure it would be an unmitigated disaster as I have no experience running something like this, but it’s a small dream.
I'm inclined to agree with this... mostly. I grew up in a very rural part of America (graduated high school with a couple dozen other kids) and now live in NYC. College was by far the best place for me socially so far in life. So I think it's pretty critical to find that "third place" where you can rack up 40 hours of friendship to get close with someone.
School where I grew up wasn't much better than homeschooling sounds for the grandfather comment here: there just wasn't a culture of academic interest or many extracurriculars that interested me, beyond musicals and a school quiz team. Awkward high school me just didn't have much in common with the majority of kids where I grew up. A couple dozen classmates really isn't much to choose from. So I think you're overlooking the fact that you need a base of at least enough people that you can find some folks with similar interests, or at least people with compatible personalities.
Community college was a positive leap because I had a lot more diversity of classmates from all the different classes I took. That was the first time I was a member of a population large enough to actually find like minds and clubs/activities where I could build relationships.
Four year college was the best: I had friends in almost every class, most of the dorms, and had activities like TAing that actually interested me. Thousands of other similarly-smart kids with hundreds of clubs and activities to meet people? That's a perfect formula, and I wish I could replicate it in the post-graduate world.
Living in NYC since graduation has been a mixed bag. I feel like most people already have established friend networks so you need at least one decent connection to make it into one of those networks. One difficulty I found was that it takes a lot more active effort to maintain friendships. My college friends do not live nearby, so I have to organize travel to see any of them or at least try to call them up every week or two.
The other struggle is that most folks just don't have that much time outside of work. When I add up work (8-10 hours a day, including commute), sleep (6-8 hours a day), running (1 hour a day), cooking (1-3 hours a day)... there's only a couple of hours left to do anything. If you need to travel more than 30 minutes via subway to meet up with a friend, it's easy to start cutting into sleep time. God help you if you have a kid, or a dog, or a significant other who gobbles up more of that time.
Anyway, that basically means that most of my friend-making in NYC has boiled down to "people I work with" because that's the place where I see the most people other than my family/existing friends the most consistently. If you're not at a company with a culture perfectly aligned with your personality, it can be tough to make friends at work, and then you get isolated pretty easily.
I still haven't found quite the right formula for friends here: I've participated in running clubs, gyms, book clubs, and volunteer work, and none of them have hit the right balance for "regular group interaction" and "people I mesh with well." Hanging out at bars and coffee shops has its place too, but gets pricy and can be lonely to do alone at first.
All in all I think the big city just feels more isolating if you don't have friends because it seems like everyone else already has friends here. When I lived in rural America, it was depressing because I knew there was nobody I even wanted to hang out with. In the city I at least have hope that if I meet the right people -- who are definitely around here somewhere -- I could establish a great group of friends. The trouble, as it always is, is in meeting them.
I'd love to move to the countryside, you can get a lot more house for the money you pay here for one, but the jobs aren't there. I mean they are, but they're not as hip as they are where I live and work at the moment - think back-end Java work or small time local business websites.
What needs to happen is distribution of work. It's difficult, granted, but not impossible for companies to create smaller offices for specific products or subdivisions.
But it's a chicken / egg problem; people working in the city (at a tech company) don't want to move because they live there now, and companies don't want to move or create offices further out because there's no good developers there.
But at the same time, companies will gladly pay for relocating people from abroad. Why not do the same for moving into the countryside? This should be fine for expats as long as they're not too picky about where they end up living.
> But it's a chicken / egg problem; people working in the city (at a tech company) don't want to move because they live there now, and companies don't want to move or create offices further out because there's no good developers there.
I am pretty sure that some developers prefer to live in a low cost area but companies often use that as leverage to lower down compensation.
It’s definitely worse, because you get to see all the people having fun and meaningful interactions all around you. If you are physically isolated you can justify it by there simply being no one there but in a city, there’s no escaping having it rubbed in your face.
I live in the countryside and have yet to find a profession performed in the city that isn't also done in the area here. In absolute numbers, there are unquestionably more jobs in the city, but there are also more people vying for those jobs. Relatively speaking, I don't see much difference.
If you are exceptional at what you do, I think it is fair to say that the most prestigious jobs are most likely to be found in the big city. Major league sports teams, for example, are pretty much only found in cities but even here in the countryside people are paid to play sports in not-so-major leagues. Rural folk pay for entertainment too.
However, I will add that even people in prestigious jobs often live in countryside. A surprising number of major league professional athletes, ones you have probably heard of if you follow their respective sports, have homes near me. Given their prestigious careers, they can afford to live away from work for at least part of the year. And not just professional athletes. I regularly bump into the CEO of a very successful tech company (thousands of employees with offices worldwide) who also lives out here in the boonies part of the year.
When I moved to thew city, from my small town 300km away, my boss at my first serious software gig happened to have a holiday home in my home town.
My next serious job after that, the CEO was born and grew up in the same town as my father, population of just hundereds, in the middle of the outback 700km away. Big continent, tiny world!
I couldn't agree more. I can't help but feel like the Venn's diagram between people who suggest "move to a more rural area" and people who never lived in a rural area for a prolonged period of time is a full circle.
It sure doesn't help that there's a bunch of articles about people who "found happiness" by moving to a rural area like a year ago. You may see some benefit in the short term (yes, one year is a short term), but on a long term it will fuck you up.
I grew up and lived in a small mountain community. 63 houses. The "big city" nearby was population 50k. That is where we went to school. I lived there for 30 years, and commuted to a coastal city two hours away for several years. I've since started being fully remote.
Can you explain on how being rural will fuck you up? Do I count as rural as described above?
What was your commute time to the big city? Being in a small community but being within a daily commute of a big city seems to make you a bedroom community, not an isolated community.
About 20-30 minutes into town. That town was traditionally agricultural but became what was considered the bedroom community for going another hour out to where a lot of people worked, or one more hour out to where more people worked. All that aside, rural means relating to the countryside rather than in town. We were out of town for sure.
I can't help but feel like the Venn's diagram between people who suggest "move to a more rural area" and people who never lived in a rural area for a prolonged period of time is a full circle.
I've seen plenty of comments from people in rural areas along the lines of "Why are all the young folks moving to the big cities instead of here?"
The world at large doesn't care what you need, only what you can offer. Realizing this (and acting on it) would help vast majority of these "socially excluded young men" to be included instead.
> The world at large doesn't care what you need, only what you can offer. Realizing this (and acting on it) would help vast majority of these "socially excluded young men" to be included instead.
Is this fundamentally different than telling women that since most of the world only values them as property, that accepting this fact would help oppressed women feel more comfortable with their positions in life?
Maybe you think you're doing people a favour by telling them a harsh truth about the reality they currently face, but here we're talking about how the world ought to be because of the pathologies caused by our reality. A great quote comes to mind:
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
You're talking at cross purposes. You are talking about how you think the world ought to be, and the person you're responding to is talking about how the world is. They're fundamentally different conversations, and it's not particularly useful to mix them, especially in such a critical manner.
> You're talking at cross purposes. You are talking about how you think the world ought to be, and the person you're responding to is talking about how the world is.
This whole thread is about a pathology of the modern world that is harming a large segment of the population. The original poster responded to this argument by saying, "well, that's just how the world is", and further added that all young men ought to be taught this same view, further reinforcing it.
I think my post properly addresses the OP's response in this context.
not quite. OP described how the world "is" (according to their particular worldview, which is subject to their biases as everyone's worldview is) and then prescribing what one ought to do in the world. The person responding is cautioning readers to consider what fitting in really means if the thing you're fitting into is profoundly malformed.
Not really, because you can do quite well based on what others think you can offer and not what you actually offer. So we're back to square one and there is no meaningful difference.
That makes absolutely no sense. You are saying that because person A offers nothing yet succeeds, person B is unable to succeed whether or not people think he offers anything.
As long as you can succeed in spite of what other think you can offer, they are not the same.
Nice try on changing the goalposts. Success is not the value being compared, so your argument is immaterial. I had thought you were making a different argument in my last reply.
Perhaps it might also help if the media etc. stopped acting as if being born male (particularly white and male) is some kind of horrendous original sin?
As a white male living in North America, I've never felt the way you're describing. Consider that perhaps the point these sources are trying to make is a little more subtle than: "white man bad". On the other hand, read some accounts[1] of how ethnic minorities (even affluent ones) are treated every day. That's someone actually being treated as if the circumstances of their birth are an original sin.
My media bubble is WSJ, NYT, WaPo, NPR, Fox, and Al Jazeera (but I rarely read opinion pieces). None of these behave the way you suggested. Except that Fox has some of their opinion (non journalist) people that blame the media of such behavior.
I'm in the US. I don't see it in the US. Can you point to examples of this? UK specific is fine. Note, you keep repeating "the media" and have yet to produce the evidence to support this. I know you can't, but I'm giving you the opportunity to present it.
The best you've been able to do is point out where media doesn't make males being born a sin (so, a counter-point to what you are saying).
The media etc. is absolutely awash with it, to the point where I pretty much consider dismissals of the evidence of my own eyes as gaslighting. I've given up on all contemporary TV and film because the virtue signalling is obnoxious and incessant.
And the response to someone pointing it out is usually accusations of racism, misogyny etc. I'd say this pretty much describes your response to me...
Well, here's another white male from North America who has lived here for many decades but who lives in a very different world from you. I urge you to consider dispassionately how this could be. Don't dismiss it immediately as "virtue signaling" or "gaslighting". Assume that I am sincere in my beliefs and accurate in my observations -- maybe you are accurate as well; I have observed North America and different times and places. Now consider how it is that you and I perceive the same place so differently.
You seem determined to play the role of a victim. No one has accused you of anything but perhaps picking bad media sources. "The media" is not a monolith and you've failed to provide even one piece of evidence for your assertion.
Believe me I've tried - I love TV and film, but cannot get very far before the obligatory strong, independent and sassy minority group representative appears to deliver their identity politics sermon. No thanks! It's patronising and boring.
Reminder: The Alien franchise managed to have a strong female lead and be one of the best sci-fi series ever, and all without including the barely disguised sociology lectures. Go back and look at films from the 60s-00s - many were able to integrate minority characters/themes etc. with charm and subtlety, and managed to avoid the contemporary subtle as a brick approach. We're at the point where gems like Blazing Saddles could never be made due to the po-faced, finger wagging authoritarianism of the PC establishment.
I struggled to get through the latest incarnation of The Mist because of this very thing. I like to think that this is what got it cancelled, since it was an otherwise cool concept, just ruined.
> The world at large doesn't care what you need, only what you can offer.
That in a nutshell is what Nietzsche's master vs. slave morality dichotomy is about.
Master morality is concerned with the welfare of others and an individual's impact on the world. Slave morality is about oneself and an individual's own well-being.
According to Nietzsche both have their place and cultural history has always been defined by a struggle between them.
But we teach kids reading, writing and maths because it prepares them for life, and left on their own, kids would just play all day. By the same token we shouldn't leave kids to figure that shit out themselves, but help them get there..
In some places, if you leave your kid's sex education to the state, they get abstinence-only sex ed - because there are people who genuinely believe that stuff even though it's wrong.
There's a risk that, if you ask 'we' to teach this stuff, you're going to get a substantially watered-down message compared to the one in that article - perhaps even one that reverses it. After all, I doubt the "it's what's on the inside that counts" message the article disagrees with would've become so widespread if it didn't resonate with some people.
But leaving everyone to raise their kids as they see fit can be unfair to the kids. If public education might let your kids down, learn what it's teaching them. If what they're getting is crap, demand accuracy. They can't hide what they're teaching. If you agitate for science-based education for your kids other kids will get it too and your kids don't have to grow up with neighbors whose parents passively allowed their kids to grow up with a crappy education.
It's not wrong. There is the standard for scientific proof, and then there is the standard for mathematical proof. If you abstain from sex, then you will not catch a disease while having sex. It's simple and reliable logic. It's more math than science. The conclusion is formally correct, and p=0 without p-hacking.
Yes, sometimes it's like that (being rejected based on race, religion, etc.), and it's sad.
But most of these "excluded young men prone to radicalization" are really being rejected because they never bothered to actually offer something meaningful to the society that is rejecting them.
That's an extreme generalization. In most cases these people work, sometimes hard, yet they feel excluded because either their values don't align with the society they live in, or the society is outight racist. And it's the ones who work (in immigrants receiving welfare, typically the men) who become extremists.
If their values do not align with the society they live in, then they are not offering something the society wants. I am not saying this as a judgment, but as an objective fact.
If the society is racist, that's a different matter altogether, and I already covered that case in my above comment. I do not claim that this "be a person that has something to offer" idea is a panacea to solve everything. But it does (or rather, would) solve many cases of social exclusion.
Just look at the despicable (and yes, now I am judging) "Incel" subculture in the USA. Sure, some of them might have genuine mental issues, but there is a lot of loafers and layabouts who prefer to pose as victims instead of doing something positive.
Ah yes the Incel link, which i think is totally unproven yet i am sure "pundits" will be sure that it exists. This study is about immigrants in europe, which is better defined, and who are excluded in more specific ways (including celibacy i would guess in some cases). Plus i don't think calling anyone with emotional problems (which are always ugly and always express themselves as ugly) is right. You probably wouldn't do the same if they were women either - in fact lots of women say bad things about men too. Neither is despicable , calling someone despicable is a cop-out and uncharitable.
Whatever one's theory for why atomization occurs, it can't simply be that people aren't trying hard enough. That doesn't take into account other forces that shape their lives. The right will generally talk about institutional failure and the collapse of a common culture, the left might talk about the community-destroying tendencies of capitalism, but the fact remains that people are atomized.
I also think you're mixing up cause and effect. I was the alienated guy in my early 20s--depressed, underemployed, angry all the time, flirting with alcoholism. I'm a programmer now, married, and working somewhere I really love. The acceptance came first, though, not the usefulness. A few key people in my life accepted me for who I was, not my utility.
That isn't to say it's always beyond the person's control, of course. But chalking it all up to being individually deficient seems insufficient to me.
I think there is a lot of truth to that article, but there are also things that it is missing.
In my experience, offering value to society is not rewarded unless you also have the social skills necessary to capture the rewards. The problem is that, at least in the United States, there are vanishingly few resources for learning those skills.
This is exasperated by the fact that in many cases the "socially excluded young men" are already emotionally/spiritually exhausted by their past attempts to provide value to society.
In western society we force our youth into pursuing "employable" roles. Anything expressive through the arts or craftsmanship is risky and you'll be lucky to have support from someone close. This doesn't seem to be the case for middle-class families that are not always waiting on next months pay check.
If the world “doesn’t care for what I need” it then becomes a viable alternative to try and change/influence said world so that it does indeed start to care. Granted, one social outcast guy trying to change the world all by himself won’t do much, but once several guys like him congregate in greater numbers (through the Internet, let’s say) then things start to change. And let’s not forget that major social movements of the present world were started by people for whom the world as they knew it didn’t care that much: Christianity was mostly started by Paul, a lowly employee from a fringe Roman province, while 20th century communism was only implemented because of Lenin, a low-key intellectual from a fringe-European - fringe-Asian country which had just started modernizing.
Of course. And then, when a new world order is established, and there is a new crop of "alpha" people on the top, you have a new crop of outcasts. And the cycle continues.
Isn't it better to make it easier for current crop of outcasts by explaining how to be useful members of society?
Way too broad a conclusion from a small, specialized sample.
This is the kind of study that needs to be replicated in different environments to be useful. It's also not clear, even if this is real, that this effect comes from individual exclusion from a peer group or exclusion of the peer group from the larger society.
It continues to amaze me that narrow scientific studies are used to make extremely broad statements that apply to literally hundreds of millions of people [1]. This study was conducted on 500 people of a very specific background in a very specific city and country. Drawing any sort of universal conclusion from that is highly unlikely.
This clickbait style of interpreting scientific studies only contributes to the already decreasing public trust in the scientific method.
This finding is in line with my intuition. Social exclusion triggers an instinct in the male brain: become something, something higher status, or die. It is “evolutionarily accurate” - socially excluded males do not reproduce. Men who are okay with being excluded literally died out. This instinct probably drives productivity around the world, causes men to be startup founders as well as terrorists and school shooters.
I have found myself socially excluded most of my life. I see the world mostly as a hostile place, and easily get a feeling that people do not like me. Though I have obtained a good status in life by some metrics, what good is it if the world is so toxic to me?
Try to put it in perspective, do you think, it is possible, that other people view you as toxic as well? I skimmed through some of your recent comments and it seems to be the case. You don't seem to give a shit about other peoples feelings, so why should they care about you?
Now it is of course a chicken egg thing. If you became that way, because others did not really care about you, .. then it might not be "just", but it still does not change the outcome. You experienced toxic and now you spread toxic.
Money does not change that and there is no easy solution. It would require a inner change in you to adopt to your surroundings, and/or a change of the surroundings, if they are bad to you, until you are at a place where you want to be, with people you like and who like you.
Ah yes, the modern solution to loneliness. Go and pay someone professional to listen to your problems.
Seriously, I know people in that place and they did see a therapeut for some years and then got seriously depressed, after they realized, that they were just a client to the person who they thought, they had a deep connection with, who in reality, also did not like them and just did their job for money.
Now sure, a good therapeut can help certain people, but I don't know the poster, so I would not dare to know the "correct" answer for him and if it is really a therapist. Might help, might also kill him. Hyperbole? Well, I wish. But a close family member got along (miserable) on his own, then went with the pressure to get "professional" help and now he is dead.
Oh and he is not the person from the first example, this person is probably still alive, but that can change any day. So I have some reason to not see therapists as the magic solution.
A good therapist can be very helpful in helping you unpack why and how you think about things, and how you might change both for the better. That can be a valuable professional service. Especially for people who might otherwise have few or no relationships where they can talk about those things.
It is tragic that your family member did not get enough out of therapy, or perhaps was actively harmed by it. But I think therapy has helped enough people that I find it strange to blanket recommend against it.
Perhaps we can at least agree that short-scale (a few months, not years), deliberate therapy has a place?
"I find it strange to blanket recommend against it."
Where did I do that?
I wrote:
"Now sure, a good therapeut can help certain people, but I don't know the poster, so I would not dare to know the "correct" answer for him and if it is really a therapist. "
"So I have some reason to not see therapists as the magic solution."
Psychoanalytical therapy definitely has its place. Also for years, if necessary, I never advised against that per se.
I just blanket recommend against the "just go see a therapist" solution, as it really depends on the therapists and the person and the situation.
Edit: maybe to elaborate a bit more: the op said he views the world as hostile. So he does not trust people. So why would he trust "a therapist"? And if he finally do seek one and that one is a bad one .. or even a really bad one who tells his friends in the bar at night about his nutcases and they all laugh and the op finds out, because he is paranoid and has bugged his therapists mobile or have him followed (he has money) ... then the consequences can be fatal. As then he has proof, "yes, the world is indeed hostile to me"
I think that you understand subjectivity of that perception. World is not hostile, just indifferent and doing its own thing regardless of your existance or needs. You just gotta become fine with that and your outlook on life will improve.
> and easily get a feeling that people do not like me.
Some don't like you. Some feel your mistrust towards them. Some empathize with you and in your company begin to see world as more hostile to them and they don't like it. When you feel safer in the world your relationships will improve.
I’ve sold my first startup and the second is a great success, multimillionaire and I have a Youtube channel talking about men’s issues where dozens of thousands of boys (and benevolent women) learn and talk about men’s issues. But the only people I wanted to be listened by were my family, for support in dealing with women, and that will never happen.
I have the exact same vision as you: I can’t work in a company because I feel directly hated by the diversity programs (funnily enough, I hire women). Success and money is not happiness and life is... very ironic sometimes.
Thank you for sharing, I don't think you troll as some of my younger employees shared the same feeling of disenfranchisment in their 1:1's.
Even if the view of being othered by diversity programs etc. is a little bit skewed, it's definitely having an impact in their psychology, as it's an easy scapegoat for why a raise was not given, a talk got rejected, etc. etc.
The actual cases numbers of these things happening must be much much smaller, but that's beside the point, as it's the psychological aspect that's ruining their perception of themselves and what society expects from them.
Being othered is, as anyone in such a position, especially people with diverse backgrounds, can tell you, not "the notion that they're not the center of the world", but pretty much the feeling of being actively excluded in a "everyone BUT not (people like) me" sense.
Imagine you'd phrase the same statement directed towards people from a minority that are trying to express their feeling of being actively excluded in certain aspects of life, it would be rather vile.
Ok, maybe my experience is limiting my empathy. I’m a white man working for a big Silicon Valley company that has plenty of diversity programs, some mandatory training for all employees. The notion that these programs are seeking to actively exclude people like me seems so absurd that I can’t imagine believing such a thing unless I were essentially a white suprematist seeking victimhood.
When I don’t get a promotion, it’s because I didn’t do enough politics and went home every night to see my family rather than burn the midnight oil; not because diversity-brainwashed white men are somehow conspiring against me as a white man.
I'd encourage you to try to be less judgmental when it comes to the perceptions and feelings of other people, they may be less valid than your own, but they are just as real and their effects on the psychology of the people experiencing them is.
How about we talk about an example that's easier to empathize with:
Close to where I live (Germany) is a social worker center that offers a very special program for kids with severe behavior problems, kind of as a last resort to save them from a life of crime and unemployment. This program includes going rafting and doing lots of exciting outdoor activities in general, constructing a building together with a tradesmen company and even travelling abroad. This is paid for by the child protective services on a case-by-case basis as it's deemed cheaper than paying for years of possible incarceration, drug abuse treatment etc.
A hot topic among teens that hear about this is that a majority of the kids going to this program are from a migrant/minority backgrounds, as our CPS equivalent already often has their attention on these families and suggests the program when it deems it beneficial. Especially kids from poor families that can't afford holidays or most after school activities ask:"So I don't get to do X because I didn't rob a store and my dad is working as a cashier?" as a way of communicating their feelings of being filtered out.
Their feeling of course isn't valid, the kids being sent to this program aren't to be envied as their lot in life is a tough one, but it's easy to emphasize with the teens p.o.v. that all the helping hands are pointed to other people and theirs isn't arriving.
Sir I’m so touch by the psychology and the empathy you use to explain what I tumbled at explaining... I’ll never have those speaking skills as I’m slightly autistic and socially awkward, but when I make a two or three millions (depending on valuation) with my startups, but I’m less than no-one in a (nerd) company, I know people are using my weakness.
World is wild ok, but diversity is just a way to exclude people who can’t defend themselves.
> These same reactionary-minded young men are often repeating mantras like “facts don’t care about your feelings”. Why don’t they apply this sentiment to their own workplace grievances?
You're building up a strawman-stereotype and tearing it down.
Blanket affirmative-action policies are by-definition discrimination, but they are typically viewed as acceptable because they help a group that is statistically disadvantaged. Statistics, if broad enough, will mask details. If your argument starts and ends with "The group this person is a part of most likely has X feature" you will absolutely end up discriminating against some amount of that group. So someone can be a part of a group like "white men" that has, statistically, been the biggest, baddest group in the sandbox in Western society but simultaneously derive no benefit from that being a part of that class.
Whether or not the ends justify the means is subjective opinion.
Offering a resource to a supposed out-group overlooks the fact that members of that out-group could have come from a very privileged background. Would you rather be a wealthy minority from a well-functioning home or a white man from a poor, dysfunctional home?
If you answered the latter, I would love to know why.
Religion was once answer to that question: What is life meaning in situations where I'm failure? Answer was: Meaning is obedience to God commands that are universally good since they are from God. Today unless you have family and satisfying job, I would say hope that you can find in fact that you don't know everything, so although you don't know meaning of your life perhaps there is meaning in all this. In the end we are all product of Big Bang so everything including you is equally meaningful or meaningless.
I'm not advocating religion especially extremist version although there are way more cases in which religion helped people that's why it survived so long, I said once it was good solution and than I explained what is solution for today's world.
I have a theory (half-formed) that we are seeing the results of our always connected society, and a shrinking crowded world and there's no way to escape.
Where a young man could once pack his bags and leave on a grand adventure and start a new life where noone knew him are long gone. He could join the military or sail the seas and see the world and noone cared where he came from and there was no way to know either. But that time is past.
I don't believe it is, but it requires one to disconnect from the internet - and their families / social circles. But I get what you mean, it used to be there was no way to contact the people you left behind except for maybe letters or a phonecall from time to time. Nowadays there's a satellite internet connection with the home front when you're deployed out there.
Oh, I don't know. My heart is racing at the excitement of traveling to the Off-World Colonies, it's practically bursting out of my chest. At least I think that's my heart.
That is true to an extent, but to solve some problems a change of location can make a difference. Breaking destructive habits is one as they can be triggered by returning to the location where you previously engaged in that activity.
Sure, return once you've got a new habit/routine in place and can confidently confront the old.
I've moved around a lot for work, and I think it's still pretty easy to restart your life if you wanted to. My name isn't very common, but there's a least a dozen globally that show up if you search for me, that I'm pretty certain I could just fuzz up my public profiles to make it hard to match the right page to me. Granted, my work history would still follow me around, but socially I could become a blank slate.
There seems to be a common mania state of irrational exuberance with unrealistic hopefulness. It has many examples: people in love, positive/devout Christians, big-idea startup startup and even residents of Raqqa under the Islamic State playing in the river Tigris, unreasonably hopeful about their future.
To bring the point home, unrealistic hopefulness or hopelessness sets a person up for failure. Whether they internalize any resulting failures into bitter anomie and desire for omni/suicide depends on an individual's coping skills, ideology and social support (or lack of each thereof). Combine a lack of hope, opportunities and many negative experiences leads to angry people who take their pain and loneliness, and wish to lash out.
I'm sure I once read about a study that indicated something related: The more things I shove into your face that I have (and you don't) the more likely you are to become criminal to get them too.
FOMO? It's definitely a thing, a big one is piracy - a feeling that you HAVE to watch e.g. Game of Thrones as soon as possible because else you're missing out on the hype, the ability to talk with people about it, and if you're not fast (or disconnected from social media) you'll get major spoilers hitting you unexpectedly.
I mean I haven't watched Endgame yet because my family is still catching up but I've had all of the major plot points already spoiled thanks to my Reddit addiction. That kinda sucks.
A good example of where reaching for biological explanations for behavior is unnecessary, because the logic of the situation already does a perfectly adequate job of explaining the behavior.
A woman facing the same pressures is plenty capable of "burning down villages to feel their warmth" too. Maybe a few percent less? Who cares?
"We act this way because our ancestors were hunted by sabre-toothed tigers" might sound deep, but what if the sabre-toothed tigers are still around? If so, then maybe it's better to do something about the sabre-toothed tigers, than to expect people to change their behaviour.
I m not entirely convinced if the pressure is evolutionary or social. There seems to be a range of attitudes, from social rejection of the unmarried, to indifference and demographic catastrophe
How is this at all unique to one sex? Any excluded human would die out and not reproduce. Any high quality evidence for your large claim that purports a biological-only difference in social patterns between male and female humans?
In fact, that many men will instinctively resort to any means in an effort to achieve higher status and probability of sex if they are socially isolated...
It’s acutally surprisingly obvious given the knowledge that it’s not the norm for men to have children, in evolutionary terms. So obvious it’s weird that there isn’t more focus on avoiding those outcomes in society.
Maybe it’s a leftover from agricultural society, where the institution of marriage reduced the tendency. I don’t prefer the strict marriage and fidelity norms of the past, but they certainly had a stabilizing effect. We don’t have a similarly effective stabilizer on the horizon.
One piece of evidence is that men have a flatter distribution of outcomes and more often than women are falling off either end of the chart, for better and worse.
All it takes is a look at those OkCupid studies for rating distributions to see how much larger the difference is between success and failure for men.
This problem is not exclusive to men, but affects more men.
Women more often have an expectation of mating upwards, and high status women have a similar problem of finding themselves excluded.
Its hard to feel too much sympathy for such women when the obvious answer would be to lower their standards somewhat. The exclusion seems to be down to their own choices.
I read an alternative interpretation somewhere about this. Take it with a grain of salt.
1. High status men have access to a lot of attractive women. With the way men's biology is wired, it wouldn't be surprising that they would choose an attractive, relatively lower status woman over a highly accomplished but not that attractive one.
2. High status men often have stressful work lives. They would probably prefer a partner that makes them feel relaxed at home. High status women usually have careers themselves so it would be difficult to provide this need.
Certainly, women have unconscious desires. However, the existing situation is a “tragedy of the commons”. It is in any one woman’s individual interest to hold out for the best possible match that they can get.
However, if that strategy is shared by the vast majority of women then they will end up in competition over a very small (somewhere between 5-10%) of the most attractive males.
In view of this, it would be rational for many women to consider settling for less attractive men who still might be a good father/provider.
The fact that I like cake is not a conscious decision. My decision is whether I will eat it or not. You don't actually have to be with the people you're attracted to. (We all get old and ugly eventually anyway.)
The requirements are different, a woman can reproduce as long as she gets food and shelter since finding willing men is easy, a man have way higher requirements on social status before he has a reasonable chance to reproduce.
So you'd expect anyone to get violent when they are starving or homeless, but only men to get violent if they don't see themselves getting a sex-partner in their future.
One male can make dozens of women pregnant. If you go back in time far enough, you'll see that most women had offspring in their lives, while the same certainly isn't true of most men.
I think that generally speaking, women tend to be more social, and, biologically speaking, have a higher desirability (it is low-effort for men to produce offspring, but high-effort for women).
the old, tried and true way was to introduce slavery. The men work, and work, and after a long enough time, and having worked long enough, is granted a women to reproduce with (and their offspring is also a slave - thus perpetuating the cycle).
Modern sensibilities cannot accept this method of increasing productivity.
If by the "male" brain, you mean the "male-socialized" brain, and not "instinct" but socialization, then we're in agreement.
It certainly impugns the societal value of "productivity".
> If men were natural-born killers, hardwired by biology and destiny to take life, then there would be no need for patriarchal socialization to turn them into killers.
> In patriarchal culture males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an antipatriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth.
The argument is that men are hard wired to create a splash, not to kill. Murder creates a huge splash, but you can do it in other ways such as saving lives, getting rich, becoming a leader, mastering a craft or furthering human knowledge.
But even so, hard though it is to admit for us children of peace-time, being an accomplished killer of «the enemy» is a high-status achievement in itself, in time of war. Enough so that it’s easy to imagine an evolutionary tendency that can be triggered under extreme distress.
You just have to go back to WWII (if that!) to find obvious examples of this. Killers such as Richard Winters and Ronald Speirs are celebrated in history and fiction even today, 70 years later.
And convicted (male) mass-murderers have a tendency to receive an unexpected amount of attention from certain women, so even from that perspective this seems like an understandable evolutionary adaption.
Certainly not morally defensible, but nature doesn’t give a shit. It’s horrifying, but not incomprehensible.
What does that have to do with ordinary extremist that is cog in a machine, does no splash whatsoever and have no status whatsoever?
And yes, in societies that reward cruelty and killing, cruelty will be high and so will killings.
Convicted male mass-murderers and soldiers are not really comparable. Convicted male mass murderers were not all that succesfull in having and keeping girlfriends until caught and locked. Just about only having a lot of children were the ones that run cult too.
It's two pressures meeting at an equilibrium of ordinary extremist. The evolutionary pressure to accomplish something and the social pressure to not break any laws.
Wut? What social pressure to not break laws when we are talking about terrorists? They are under social pressure to break laws, especially when otherwise isolated from non-terrorist social contact.
Especially war killers you mention tend to typically be in group that reward killing and peer pressure each other into it.
Purely my opinion but can it be that the main issue is just plain old generalization? When someone says "Straight white men still hold the majority of political, economic and social power in the world" they are excluding the vast majority of straight white men.
I'm straight, I'm white and I just have a job, like most of us. My boss is a woman. Why shouldn't women (and people in general) worry about hurting my feelings just because there are other straight white men with a lot of money and power? That's just dumb.
>I'm straight, I'm white and I just have a job, like most of us. My boss is a woman. Why shouldn't women (and people in general) worry about hurting my feelings just because there are other straight white men with a lot of money and power? That's just dumb.
Which is why no serious feminist (or gender-egalitarian or menslibber or whatever) should excuse women being bitches. But it doesn't change the fact that
>(...) When someone says "Straight white men still hold the majority of political, economic and social power in the world" they are excluding the vast majority of straight white men.
they are still, well,correct. It'd be more precise to say "rich straight white...", but the sentiment is true.
The "main issue" probably isn't singular, but my take is that
a) the dissolution of "soft" power structures (men over women, social view of whites over blacks, straight over LGBTQ+...) will take time to be culturally processed
b)activists need to embrace and push the difference between "problematic" and "bad", and push the idea that "good people" can and should be criticized for bad stuff they do, without immediately crucifying them - and the rest of the world will need to learn and embrace that difference, and also learn how to actually listen to people who might be oppressed, the difference between being publicly criticized and "having their life ruined" (there is much more to this, but this would get too long)
c) hard structures (job expectations, economic incentives) need to be changed to accommodate the (assumed as desired) new social structures. E.g. the "google memo" guy had a very good point which was very positively received in the (german) feminist circles I hung out in online at the time, namely that maybe we need to enforce "work life balance" in the fields where women are underrepresented, because if the job expectation is to forego a family life, that makes it drastically more likely for women to nope out than men.
> It'd be more precise to say "rich straight white...", but the sentiment is true.
Wouldn't it be more precise to just say "rich", and to replace "rich" with other attributes that aren't good predictors is just (intentionally) leading away from precision?
There's an entire strain of popular "feminism" that is exactly that. The logic seems to be "women could never allowed to act like massive assholes (like men could), so doing so is feminist"
i.e. reversing/destroying preconceived gender roles
Way to categorize an entire subject as "These people"! Like they're all the same and all work the same way.
Oh wait, that's just the complaint being made...this post is my vote for the record unintentionally ironic post of the year.
Try being a woman for even a day. Its not all about male world leadership (though that has its ghastly consequences). Its about so many guys in a position of power, marginalizing women daily.
Because being a woman is automatically harder than being a man? I'm a man every day. I want to kill myself every day. Whoop-dee-fucking-do. Who wins? Nobody. Everybody is suffering, yet somehow only women get to have people fight to help them.
The response to my comment is telling. Nobody cares about random guy. He should just suck it up and take it like a man.
The rise of excluded male extremism has been predicted for some time, but sadly anyone who mentions it usually gets blasted online. I think the “I drink male tears” coffee mugs as sipped by journalists at global media publications* look particularly dangerous and distasteful in this age of mass shootings. Alienating and ostracizing people will only further push them into extremism.
It feels like maybe the tide is turning a bit, but so much damage has already been done to our society. At some point people need to stop painting all men with the same brush used to describe the very worst of the worst of them.
Steven Pinker pitches a convincing theory of how/why young men self-radicalize due to social exclusion that had me nodding along from my own personal experience. Made total sense and described exactly how I once was tempted to partake when I was younger.
I had no idea it was so controversial. Every time I've seen coverage of Pinker, his statements are completely taken out of context and he's spun as some sort of alt-right apologist. These are conversations we need to have.
(I first saw him talk about it in his sit-down with Sam Harris.)
> his statements are completely taken out of context and he's spun as some sort of alt-right apologist.
This also happens a lot with Sam Harris, Joe Rogan and anyone who critiques or discusses certain topics. Even though they are obviously not remotely alt-right (indeed they're on the left). It's incredibly frustrating, self-defeating and has a dangerous chilling effect.
Sam Harris has been consistently taking alt-right positions for the past few years (at least). I don't think it's unfair to associate him with the movement.
I think perhaps part of the issue is that lots of Americans who think of themselves as liberal, and who were shocked by the idea of Trump becoming President, actually agree with him on a lot of issues. So, yeah, Sam Harris still presents as an anti-Trump liberal. But if you look at what he's actually saying, he's much closer to Trump than he is to the liberal left. (His atheism is these days just a fig leaf for an anti-Islam stance.)
Here's the problem: If I took what you just stated and replaced "excluded male" with "African American" it would make just as much sense and be a societal force going back hundreds of years. Yet there's a segment of society that claims that racial equality is already achieved and the African American community is solely responsible for its own problems. In fact, this is often the same segment that complains loudly about how society excludes males. This is why it's hard to take the "excluded male" argument seriously sometimes.
This is a superficial comparison of these trends and also dodges the point. So what if the people complaining about excluded males are hypocrites. Are they correct? They can be wrong about black people and still correct about men.
Interestingly the same writer wrote this recently:
"I’ve written before about the lack of resources for young men during critical times in their lives. What feminism does for women — providing girls with alternative media, cultural norms, and a language to understand sexism — is what we need for boys and young men.
I don’t believe young American men end up in racist and sexist online spaces — spaces that radicalize — because they are innately bigoted. They end up there because they are confused and seeking out community, and no one else is providing an alternative."
The principle of charity leads me to take the view her heart is in the right place but she like many of us has published caustic words on the internet that don't really represent us correctly.
Is "undermine their position in society and the structures they value" some sort of euphemism for allowing women the same rights and opportunities that we have?
Because as a man I genuinely see this as a good thing.
We've gone from a single decent income being enough to provide for one's family to two incomes now being all but required can sure make it look that way. Before the 1970s/90s (depending on where you live) a man was "the" income. That was his role and it gave him something to optimize for. Now he's only bringing in half and that's assuming When everyone else around you gets a promotion it feels like you've been demoted even if you haven't. So what do you do to find meaning? Therein lies the rise of extremist movements, nobody ever made their mark on the world by being rabidly centrist.
Edit: Am I being downvoted for being wrong, wrongthink or because my opinion makes people uncomfortable?
That is a fair question. Frustratingly, I think an important part of the solution is actually pampering and providing disproportionate help to the "historically privileged that think the recent equality is oppression against them". After all, empathy is the most important thing, even if the person you are giving it to is particularly bad at showing empathy back (and refuse to acknowledge the structural privileges they have had).
Has society attacked men, undermined their position in society and the structures they value?
Or has it just moved on and empowered everyone else to expect the same freedoms and responsibilities as men?
From where I'm sitting (white male, in an office, working a tech job) it looks very much like the removal of the systemic disadvantages on other groups is misinterpreted by some as an attack on them.
Removing laws that keep others down is not an attack on you.
For those unaware, the Boy Scouts of America changed their policy a couple of years ago to allow girls into more parts of their program, since they realized a lot of boys had their sisters tag along, in part because the Girl Scouts program has little emphasis in hiking and camping.
Even with the new policy, at the troop level (~30 kids), which is where most BSA activity is focused, they will still be gender-segregated: there will be boy troops and girl troops. They will interact at district and council levels, but that's it. Cub Scouts (for younger kids age 7-11) will optionally have mixed units.
There's still plenty of "male space" in the BSA. And learning how to interact respectfully with other genders at that age is a good thing.
This is a good summary of the official policy. But, it has not been my experience in practice. In my district there are 2 girl troops and neither is following the official policy. They meet in the same place at the same time as their corresponding boy troop. They do all troop activities together as well.
The official policy is not enforced because no one wants to be called a sexist. But it does have an effect on the boys. They behave differently around girls. And what was once their only male space is now gone.
So my experience is totally anecdotal. And maybe everyone else is following the program. But it is really heartbreaking to see in person.
Having taken my son to cub scouts lately, what happened when a girl enters what is normally a boy only space is pretty telling. The boys act different when a girl is around, and the girl plays social games with the boys that make it clear one boy was lessor and should be ostracized. (like she made it clear 1 or 2 kids were cool enough to be around her and everyone else wasn't) And addressing this behavior by the girls was never addressed because they didnt want to be perceived as being against girls in scouts. When the boys decided to ocstracize one of the others, it was addressed, but it was from my observation never followed with the girl scouts.
Further it lessened the amount of resources the boys got. Girls have to get their own den leader. So packs that had no girls had double the amount of adults attending to their needs, while others had an adult running activities for a single girl scout.
The idea that trying to teach young boys stuff like brotherhood is disrupted by adding a girl in the mix shouldn't be controversial, but here we are.
having gone to the same kind of school, I'm inclined to agree. years of deferred socialization...
that said, some people seem to feel very strongly about having at least some same-gendered spaces for children to be in. I'm not entirely sure how to reconcile that with the growing understanding that not everyone is straight, fits into a binary gender, etc., but to leave at least a couple "boy spaces" and "girl spaces" doesn't seem too harmful.
Incredibly, you seem to consider the process of granting equal rights to women “undermining the position [of men] in society”.
If this isn’t what you intended to imply, then the only other reading of your statement suggests that you think men have not historically held almost all positions of power in society—which, demonstrably and obviously, they have.
https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/11/america-is...
That’s an uncharitable interpretation. There are plenty of other plausible interpretations of the op’s statement: the Homer Simpsonization of male characters in TV comes to mind (dumb husband paired with super smart, capable wife describes a whole lot of sitcoms, or see all male characters in the recent Star Wars flicks), the undermining of works of literature simply due to the author being white and male, etc.
It’s subtle, but it’s out there. I suspect that there is plenty of subtle and not so subtle bias all over the place against all sorts of people. We should be working to eliminate all such biases.
Often the gender role issue is treated as zero-sum, which it isn’t. A strong male role model doesn’t detract from a strong female role model.
There's a difference between re-balancing, and undermining.
What do I care that all the kings of England are white men "like me" when I have never been nobility? Take away unfair power mechanisms, don't simply re-implement them facing the other direction.
This is obviously a complicated issue, but the tone often taken with issues like this are glib, and vindictive towards the current male generation.
But most traditional/historic family dynamics in the west involve the woman/mother being subservient to the man/father. Am I missing something here? (And no, I do not see how being the breadwinner vs the homemaker makes this right.)
> The author of this particular column is a writer of feminist literature so of course her views are going to be extreme.
The Guardian is a mainstream publication, not an extremist one. They can publish whatever they want, I’m just saying this rhetoric is hateful, unhelpful and possibly part of the problem of male extremism mentioned in the OP.
You can rest your case all you want, you're still wrong. The language in the original comment did not imply ALL journalists. You are arguing against your own misunderstanding.
Say anything you want is a lie. Let's see some real hate speech in a column targeted at minorities. You won't. So why should it be tolerated for any group.
>But... it's the column section? It's not journalism.
It is, however, a piece of work that the paper stands behind. If it were not, it should not be there; newspapers are curated, unlike, say, YouTube or a comments section.
>Are you saying mass media should stop the age-old tradition of the column section
We're saying they should exercise more discretion in what columns they publish. If they don't, they should give up any then-false pretense of being reliable, believable, reputable, etc. The local paper doesn't have to publish the column Crazy Herman sent in about how dragons are cultivating furries' minds for use as concubines, and doing so makes the paper look less respectable.
Plus, in a lot of online media, the Opinion columns are often interwoven among actual reporting, making it less obvious which each is. Especially with this format, which columns they choose to publish become part of the paper's image... and even if unintended, "I drink male tears" columns gives the idea that that publication supports dismissiveness of the emotions of men.
Testosterone levels are correlated with aggression but does not actually cause it, and research which tries to predict aggression based on natural occurring testosterone levels always fail because... it does not actually cause aggression.
More recent (ie newer than 20th century) research into testosterone levels have found a more accurate model of what testosterone actually do in regard to aggression. It increases the amount of energy an individual will spend in order to defend social status when challenged. In societies where male social status is tied with aggression you thus see a link.
Testosterone levels however does not predict attempts to gain social status, including in societies where aggression is the main method for it. You can pump up a man at the bottom of the social hierarchy with as much testosterone as the person at the top and the hierarchy does not change one bit. Its a purely defensive mechanism, which is further explained in that testosterone levels increases after people gain social status. It is a response to how much effort should be spent defending social status based on recent success.
Society as the collective effect of hormones would be the amount of instability that the social hierarchy will have. The lower the amount the less people will defend it, the more incentives there will be to attempt increasing it, potentially resulting in more "aggressive" behavior.
> I drink male tears” coffee mugs as sipped by journalists at global media publications* look particularly dangerous and distasteful in this age of mass shootings
If someone commits a mass shooting I don’t think it’s the text on a mug that’s responsible.
It's not just the journalists who tend to be anti-male. The psychological and sociological establishments have been subtly anti-male for a long time.
An example of how this anti-male bias manifests is in the very language used in academic work on men. So often there is talk about "toxic masculinity" when discussing boys and men, and discussions of how male traits are problematic - described as 'aggressive' and 'uncooperative' - while female traits are almost universally described in more positive terms.
Of course both genders exhibit destructive behavior, but women do not have to suffer the same harsh treatment in the academic literature as men.
We could speculate on the reasons for this bias, but I believe it can be tied to the overall anti-male climate, which in itself is an overreaction by the rest of society - but the intellectuals in particular - to the unequal treatment of women for most of history.
More speculatively, I believe the high numbers of women and effeminate men in academia, especially the social sciences, have biased the field.
Blaming the victims of mass shootings for antagonizing the shooter is never a good look. The reason you get "blasted" online is because the sentiment takes a broad brush and paints men awfully (ironic considering the "pointing to all men statement"); this fatalistic (and frankly entitled) view that unless men are babied and served to at the exclusion of everyone else they'll turn violent and ruin the party for everyone.
If you want to assign systematic (and in some cases personal) blame I'd say look to the voices championing strongest for a back step of social progress for the "sake of men". Just from my own experiences in the southern US (poster child for the "follow an arcane set of rules and defend your "masculinity" and cash out on full ride entitlement") I've seen the systematic undermining of young men's skills and development in favor of baseless dreams of a past (that may have never existed). A handful of journalists taking the piss are nothing compared to the semi-coordinated movement looking to weaponize a vulnerable (by their own making) segment of the population.
Sympathy for the lonely, education for the unskilled, exposure for the unsocialized; these are all good ideas to move forward. Just, imo, never fall into the trap of assuming any of this is "natural" and something to be accepted (or even embraced).
Take any fMRI study with a bucket of salt. Especially when the press release generalizes from "frontal cortex imaging of a ball game" to "extremism in young men", with p values near the significance limit. That said, it's an interesting topic for wider discussion.
>in a group of young Moroccan men living and schooled in Catalonia and vulnerable to radicalization.
No one should apply anything from these findings to the US. Although there may be some similarities, those are based on your own experiences and not backed up by a study conducted on boys half a world away.
No man should relate to men in other geographic locations? I don't understand. Plenty of us here have encountered some degree of social destitution and know what kind of places that can leave you mentally.
Why would this only be limited to a specific group value like jihad and not a broader thread that runs through male psychology? Seems like a perfectly reasonable mount point for HN discussion and empathy.
For example, consider social exclusion's role in radicalizing men to adopt these group values: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Going_Their_Own_Way -- doesn't seem like a stretch. That's basically the next rung on the same ladder I started climbing when I joined PUA usergroups when I was 15, though thankfully some social windfall (meeting my first girlfriend) snapped me out of it.
I don't think that's a good take. What the study says is that men can be radicalized if they're put in a situation where they're isolated. Using the study to understand that better and apply it to isolated groups anywhere is useful.
According to the DoJ, 100% of race-based domestic terrorism in the US in 2018 was committed by radicialized white supremacist terrorists[1]. Having a better understanding of why people join groups like that (eg "are they similarly isolated young men?") helps us stop people joining in the first place.
Muslim extremism in the Europe is mostly 2nd generation problem. Those who move to EU are not drawn to extremism and neither is the third generation. It's those young men whose parents still live in the old culture who are alienated.
The old school Muslim radicalism, like MB, was truly ideological and religious/political and so was the first version of AQ.
New breed or radicalism rebels against the modernism, but the form it takes, the nihilism and alienation in it indicates that it's too late. They are already internalised the western individualism.
This is true as far as it goes, and yet, there are people in this world who will not grow up and function except in the face of overwhelming social pressure. They will not be taught, nor learn on their own -they must be broken- and if they are not, well, this kind of thing is what happens. The answer isn't to stop excluding them, but to strip away the new enablers.
> Vulnerability was considered to exist among those who expressed willingness to defend the sacred values promoted by jihadist terrorist groups, either by engaging in violent protest and actions, financially supporting nonstate militant groups, joining a nonstate militant group, or fighting and dying on their own. The 38 participants who met this criteria and were interested in participating in the study while maintaining their anonymity were invited to a neuroimaging session.
> In this online exclusion game, participants pass the ball to three virtual players, who were given typical local names: Dani, Javi and José.
Wonder if the result would have been the same if the virtual players were named Ahmed, Mustafa and Mahmod. Or a mix.
Wouldn't this imply that excluding places like T_D and more recently, 8chan, further continue to fuel further extremism in groups that already feel marginalized?
Not really. There's reasonable empirical evidence[1] to the contrary: removing large sources/sinks for extremism makes it harder for extremists to unify their message for effective dissemination.
AFAICT, there’s no evidence that online moderation hides extremism rather than eliminating it.
I’m not old enough to speak seriously about the way the Internet used to be, but I am old enough to remember what happened when I would be banned from a service: I would move on, until I either eventually learned my lesson or I was completely banned. Both are acceptable outcomes and the (unfortunate) consolidation of online communities over the last decade has made the former an easier policy target than the latter.
However, those who are truly motivated continue to be exiled into smaller and smaller slices of society, until what you have left is environments of concentrated toxicity, but now hidden from the watchful eyes of the general public.
It does, and it is precisely why despite all the exclusion hapening around, we still get shootings and bombings.
The people that have somehow wound up in positions of power the tech world seem to believe that placing a carpet over a hole in the floor fixes the hole. And then act surprised when they fall through the hole.
It's a tough one. On one hand 8chan is a source for stupid values to sacralize, on the other it lessens social exclusion and staves off extremist behavior.
Anonymous internet message boards with a vague "large" audience are not substitutes for actual social interaction.
It's the same problem as Facebook and other social media: people present a curated persona, and ignore that they're only seeing everyone else's curated persona as well.
Ad marketing is already well into figuring out how to manufacture "authenticity".
It is a social interaction and it has effects of one albeit weak.
You can have bits of social satisfaction from hearing 'hello, how are you' from a store clerk or from watching people interact on TV. Definitely you can get it from getting responses to you anonymous or curated speach on the internet. Of course its not the same thing as honest interaction with your friend or loved one but it doesn't mean it does nothing for you.
Please notice they made people feel isolated by not passing a ball to them in a computer game.
Social circuits in the brain are so low level they can be activated by most superficial stimuli.
I dunno, at the same time people on these communities will try to one-up one another just to get attention. (this isn't limited to just 4/8chan btw, youtube "challenges" like tasering a dead rat or instagram things are other examples)
Do you understand that two things can be true at the same time even though they sound like they're opposite to one another? It's entirely reasonable to assume that places like that both prevent many people from falling further down a hole of exclusion but also push others further inside.
Their further fall into exclusion is stopped, because they are echo-chamber bubble that pushed them further into hate.
Social isolation does not make you extremist on itself - contact with extremists that recruit you make you extremist. Social isolation make you more vulnerable to extremists.
And how many mass murderers were not linked to any online forums or they were so crazy that they got ostracised even on the most extreme forums?
Three is just a number if you don't know the sample size. If it's 3 out of 3 million and the US had 600 mass murderers out per 300 million population then 8channer is twice as safe as average Joe. (Made up numbers to illustrate the math).
But that's like saying that little neighborhood "mosque" with the hate preacher should be kept open because well, it means the "Muslim" extermists have their community there...
I put mosque in quotes because I don't recognise hate preachers' claims to be a representative of the Muslim religion.. and yes, hopefully police are arresting hate preachers and shutting down their congregations. If there are legitimate preachers there, of course the mosque shouldn't be shut down.
If you are struggling with social exclusion, and for no good reason, there is a manipulator in the ranks and for whatever reason the people in the group have no capacity to think for themselves. There are billions of people on this earth, many of whom have developed brains. Make your friends with those people, not the ones without the ability to formulate their own opinion.
iirc at least 4% of those are trolls - I read about that on HN the other day, forgot what the effect was called and can't find it in my history. But the gist of it is that these numbers are done via polls online and the statistics are poisoned by people filling stuff like "I believe in flat earth" for the lulz.
Do they also say they want to kill everyone who thinks otherwise? I don't like these trivializations, because these moroccan men CAN be helped in most cases, but if we consider them as dumb and deplorable we 're doing the opposite.
CAN fuel that, it can also cause depression, isolation, etc. You can't just make an absolute statement like that without looking at the reality - the reality is that while there are a ton of socially excluded and isolated people, only a very small fragment of those become violent.
Just as a side note it's always made me extremely sad when we demonize the shooters and terrorists. Of course what they did is terrible. But we should have sympathy with them because they are sick. Love is cheap if it only matters on Hallmark cards and corporate holidays.
I think the meme that 'all murderers are sick' has been thoroughly debunked? Real ordinary people can decide to do horrific things if they get in the wrong state of mind.
I think the difference is that mass murderers kill people just to kill people. While other 'traditional' murderers kill for more material reasons (money, drugs, etc.)
"Traditional" murders were are not necessarily for material reasons.
"Introduction: Theory of the Culture of Honor is one of the few models in criminology specifically geared toward homicide. It proposes that, in certain societies, men must never show weakness and are required to react violently to any perceived threats to their reputation, thereby increasing their probability of committing a homicide. This has been suggested as the main explanation for the high rates of this type of crime in Brazil, particularly in the Northeast. Underlying this explanation there are complex mechanisms and processes that have yet to be clarified."
I used to buy into this kind of genetic reductionism, and the notion that we're ultimately just replication bots.
But it's neither a proven-factual way of looking at the world, nor a meaningful one.
People want all kinds of things, including optimism, purpose, safety, community, connectedness, virtuousness, recognition, transcendence, confidence, and more.
Status for reproduction is a part of what people want, but it's not the only or ultimate thing.
This just-so narrative is both extremely dull and extremely damaging.
Maslow's hierarchy is a philosophical model, not hard science. It's not even wholly embraced by the psychology profession, let alone any hard-science field.
Besides, the parent I was responding to was talking status for reproduction, not just sex.
Bear in mind that plenty of notable extremists have had partners and children.
I don't dispute that people are generally happier and more content if healthy sexual intimacy is a part of their life, but it's clearly just one part of a much bigger and more complex whole.
This kind of armchair biological handwaving isn't doing anyone any favours. It's reductionist and frequently wrong and I have yet to see good studies supporting this with any kind of reproducibility. This is of course the status quo for psychology as a field, so that should surprise none of us.
Aren't there many studies that show a very high correlation between income inequality and and increased male on male violence within regions? Those kinds of findings support that idea partly.
Young and isolated breeds radicalisation, this is not a new conclusion and one that has previously been observed in Northern European people as well. Their cultural background has no bearing on that fact, regardless of whatever things you might want to say about an entire group of people. The examples that you pulled in are uncalled for and not even vaguely racist.
Exists there any radicalization of young immigrants from post-Communist countries? Their emigration is mostly economic, they're not any less lone, isolated, and frustrated in the foreign places they've come to and oftentimes the're similarly a subject to political and religious agitation.
Why are they toxic? They are toxic because they were excluded. So now you shame and exclude them further because they were excluded by someone before you. It's a brutal world we live in.
That's a massive assumption, I don't honestly agree with the root commenter, but I have worked around young men, and honestly a lot of young men get excluded from young ages because of parental social neglect, i.e. they exclude themselves by exhibiting very antisocial behaviours and then responding badly to the negative response, and no-one intervenes.
You see this even into teenage years, a boy picks up behaviour from somewhere, gets a bad response and then doubles down harder and harder unless someone, who may have zero responsibility to do so, steps in and basically acts as an unpaid therapist for an unwilling and sometimes violent and rude patient.
I'm sure there's better ways of dealing with isolation than we have now, but you can't just act like they're excluded for no reason whatsoever. There's always a reason, sometimes it's a terrible reason, like being gay or some other "undesirable", but it's almost never arbitrary. The only people who believe it's arbitrary are usually the ones who've done something wrong.
Your comment is perfect example. You are willing to protect one group of minorities, but do not want to find out root cause why some members from majority are failing.
Yet, unlike the sacred group value of jihad in the study, it's even more obvious how social exclusion can lead the way to a group identity like incels, which is a bit of a tautology because the incel identity is specifically social exclusion.
This headline is about "young men". No skin color or ethnicity is specified.
But have you noticed that when those Muslim attacks happen, societies mobilize and often the results are wars? The US has spent several trillions of dollars fighting Islamic extremism (not to mention the costs of law enforcement focusing on this at the expense of white collar crime, etc) when the data clearly show that white male extremism is by far a bigger threat today.
Would you rather we spend money on a war against these extremists, or would you rather we think about and discuss the systemic forces that lead to these results?
"Extremism" is a value-judgement, not a pathology. Abolitionists were also called "extremists".
This is psychology in service of staziism--using questionnaires and fMRI to identify serfs with higher wrongthought potential--rather than diagnosing and treating illness.
I have no issue with the study. Seems plausible. I do have an issue with, for example, the idea that a diversity program at a company constitutes a mode of social exclusion rather than an attempt to redress historical exclusion. But I seem to find myself standing in a room full of people that take it as self-evident that men are oppressed.
> But I seem to find myself standing in a room full of people that take it as self-evident that men are oppressed.
Nobody is saying that men are particularly oppressed, just that men irrespective of race has much stronger reactions to it. An example is that women have never in history made a violent rebellion against their male oppressors, but male slaves has done so countless times in every society which kept slaves.
When I wrote my comment, the first comment that appeared on the page linked the hiring of Sarah Jeong at the NYT to mass shootings. It appears to have been deleted, thank goodness.
I find it fascinating that people here project own problems and feelings on mass shooters. "Surely mass shooter was just lonely nice guy like me who flipped one day" - except wasnt.
The other worrying think is the "surely we need to get some girl to out of her way to get to know Roger Elliot, Adam Lanza or Connor Bretts and suffer relationship with him, how do we structure society so that she must" train of thought.
Fair. And if the left extended their "circle of caring" beyond the intersectionality hierarchy to include everyone who suffers we could stop wasting time fighting each other and work together for the betterment of all.
Re: non-underprivileged mass shooters ...
I'm not currently aware of any of mass shooters who are super rich, have super high IQs and tonnes of girl friends.
There are all sorts of sources of pain. I think the wealthy more often have toxic family dynamics. And speaking from personal experience, those early feelings of social exclusion, of shame, are extremely hard to shake. I'm on the left and I care about everyone, so much it's painful to see the world the way it is.
Disregarding the false dichotomy, Anders Breivik, while definitely coming from an unusually troubled upbringing, seems to have a reasonable high IQ, enjoyed economic success, and have been able to at least mimic social relationships.
Addition: This weekend's mosque shooter in Norway is reportedly a 21 year old (NOK) millionaire. Fortunately, his antisocial behavior was finally corrected when he got a beatdown by a 65 year old. It would surely have been better for him and everyone else if he was more gently corrected and put on a better path long ago by family, friends, and society--someone tried to notify Norwegian security police but they didn't take it seriously, alas.
okay. it's just kind of humorous because choosing to downvote an expressed concerned instead of responding to it might be considered to be a form of "social exclusion" encouraged by the platform which apparently "fuels extremism".
Just in men? I recall a young woman here (15 years old at the time) not so long ago, who converted to islam and made a batch of TATP with her boyfriend, planning to bomb her school dance.
Don't tell me you get that idea by being the popular girl in school!
And I did notice a few things:
- I have nothing to lose anymore
- I suddenly have a lot of free time to devote my energy to
- My mental state is slightly unstable
- I am in a shitty mood
I am not religious and do not know much about extreme views (I only know a bit about Buddhism) but I can imagine that extremist religious or ideological views would hyper charge the 4 things I talked about.
On another note, if this study would state that these people would become workaholics then I would also believe that. I feel it is the opposite side of the same coin.