I know we're collectively no fans of anecdata but I get a strong feeling that attitudes to typical work are changing, that jobs are making more people miserable. I get asked a lot by people seeking to do something different; I guess they're bombarded by successful side hustle stories and never by "I love my 9-5 day job, it's so rewarding" stories.
>I know we're collectively no fans of anecdata but I get a strong feeling that attitudes to typical work are changing, that jobs are making more people miserable
I tend to agree. My parents have completely different stories about their experiences with work 40 years ago. Much less stress, better pay, more mentorship, less competition, and lower demands generally. I’m sure part of that’s nostalgia, but nearly everyone I talk to seems to be miserable at their job anymore. There are rarely people who say they enjoy their job and want to do that exact thing until they retire.
I wonder if (apart from the points about workers' rights) this is also a "softer" consequence of automation: Yes, there will still be jobs, but those jobs will generally be more competitive and stressful and less straight-forward, because all "straight-forward" work can eventually be automated.
Older family friend made $30/hr in the 60-70s with pension and benefits working in a meat packing plant with a high school education. Same job today pays $15/hr with no benefits thanks to illegal immigration. There's a reason people like the Koch brothers spend millions in support of illegal immigration, they wanted to drive down the labor cost for jobs like the above.
Offshoring and illegal immigration has killed low skill jobs and given billion dollar multinational corporations the ability to demand whatever they want from workers because they have unlimited labor supply.
This doesn't just effect low skill labor either, it forces more people to go to college and take on debt which then drives down the wages of high skill work as well. It's a scam and the american people should be angry
For a limited number of positions, if you have a bigger pool of people to hire from, the wages will automatically go down. This is simple economics.
While the union effect might also be playing a role, it's curious that you rush to deny the big obvious factor while propping up a relatively minor reasoning factor as a primary one.
Probably because it seems doubtful that ten million people (the estimated number of illegal aliens in the US), tanked wages for everyone in a country of 330 million.
It's curious you immediately point to illegal immigration as the big obvious factor with no citations to support your claims.
The fact is wages have been stagnating since the seventies and most people attribute that to the weakening of unions, offshoring, and automation before illegal immigration.
The US is producing twice as much today as it was in 1984 with a third less workers. That seems like it'd have a much bigger impact to me. And painting immigrants as the reason American's qualities of life has dropped off seems disingenuous, simplistic, and prejudiced.
1. I think your heart might be in the right place, but I think your facts are mistaken / misunderstood.
2. Kochs are horrible people, but historically their union-busting, and other worker rights protection attacks are the cause of income falling at their refineries and other family-owned manufacturing plants in MN, WI, KS, etc. (If you want to see what full-on Koch / Republican leadership does to a place, look at what Kansas has become).
3. You (and Ezra, and most of the watchers) misunderstand Bernie Sanders in a few ways. Yes, low income earners would be great for Koch, but Koch is happy to pay Americans low income. Because they don't need foreign workers if they just pay American politicians to screw American workers out of worker protections, health care, etc: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=d000000186
4. Misunderstanding Bernie #2: open borders was brought up in the context of increasing immigration as an opening question. And Bernie said it was a Republican idea / Koch brothers idea because the context in July 2015 was that it is a Boogeyman. It was created as an idea to scare politically conservative people away from the "left" / "Democrats", as a "these crazy Democrats want open borders", not that anyone ever actually proposed as much. How do I know? Because that shit came back again this summer, making the same claims that Dems want open borders, which again had to be put down.
So yeah, hate the Kochs. Please. They are not good people. But hate them for the right reasons, not because you think they are pro illegal immigration or pro open borders (they aren't).
"Typical work" is changing. It used to be possible to get ahead pretty easily. Work reasonably diligently (but not excessively so) in average income jobs and you could buy a house, accrue wealth, etc. You would have a lot more options on how you lived your life. Having a house with a paid off mortgage gives you enormous freedom, you can work for an average income that is well below what would normally be acceptable and yet still pay all of your bills (since you don't have rent). You could switch careers, become an entrepreneur, simply build your wealth, go on extended travel, indulge your hobbies, etc. Or, you could simply build a family, have the ability to spend plenty of time with them without having both parents working 40, 50, or 60 hour work weeks constantly with no time off, you could go on vacations with them, you could ensure their financial well being by being there for them when needed and helping them pay for college, their first car, their first house, etc, etc, etc. All of the typical "American dream" stuff that used to be possible in the mid-20th century.
Today a lot of that is not possible. People can't afford to have children because they are crushed under debt and burdened by low wages and high costs of living. They can't afford to indulge their hobbies, travel, take vacations, switch careers, or become entrepreneurs because it would be financial suicide to do so without having some sort of benefactor already.
People end up working diligently for years and decades with little to show for it. No personal wealth, no home ownership, no family, no personal freedom, no stature from career growth, etc. And it's not because the money isn't there, the economy has grown like crazy over the last 40 years, it's because the gains have been gobbled up by those who are already rich and powerful. CEO pay, corporate profits, low minimum wages, busted up unions, tax revolts.
When I was a child the old saying went "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer", but it wasn't really true, the economy grew and even when the rich did get richer the poor still got richer even so. But in my lifetime that saying has become true. The rich get richer and the bottom half of the economy stagnates, and they get foreclosed on, evicted, driven out of work, made felons by the "war on drugs", etc, etc, etc, and their lives become more miserable. Our cities start acquiring barrios, slums, and shanty towns like barnacles, just like those in the 3rd world, just like those where corruption, iniquity, and injustice are the norm. Our economy creeps ever closer toward becoming a crony capitalist kleptocracy, if it isn't already. And the worst of all is that people think things aren't so bad because things aren't so bad for themyet. History is not going to look kindly on this era, nor will it draw as sharp a line between it and the more barbarous 20th century, 19th century, or even the middle ages. We have a chance to make the world a better place but only by acknowledging the problems that exist and moving forward with concerted effort.
Interestingly the states with the lowest suicide rates (Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, New York, and other relatively wealthy blue states) also have some of the highest income inequality [1]. Another counterintuitive thing about suicide in the US is that demographics that tend to earn less (e.g. young people, Blacks) tens to commit suicide at lower rates than wealthy demographics (Whites, Asians, older people).
Pointing to income inequality as cause of a high suicide rate does not seem particularly convincing.
If the point you're trying to make is that suicide isn't correlated with low income, you shouldn't look at broad demographics, you should look for studies about suicide that focus on financial status. Like this study, which found that low income was correlated with high suicides on a group of a million people after adjusting for other factors:
Low income is not inequality. Also, if you even bother to look at your google search result, it says "socioeconomic positions" proxied by insurance premium.
Why did I respond to a comment that drew conclusions using the wrong statistics? It's pretty simple. I was teaching someone a small lesson about drawing conclusions from the wrong statistics, and backing myself up with a link to a study to show them what statistics you should use to draw such conclusions. As the HN Guidelines say, "Eschew flamebait [...] unless you have something genuinely new to say" - I don't have anything genuinely new to say about inequality and suicide, and I don't see you or the other person who responded to me saying anything genuinely new either.
Also "Please don't use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle" - please stop making my comment (about drawing conclusions from the wrong dataset) about your own political interests, unless you have something genuinely new to say, in which case I'm all ears.
Women attempt more, men complete more. It's partially because men tend to choose more lethal methods such as firearms while women choose less lethal methods like pills.
There's also probably non-statistical reasons. As in it is so much harder to seek out help as a male. Speaking from experience here.
It's simple, generally it's more common in men that they don't ask for help, don't reconcile with their own true feelings, don't allow for their own full self expression, don't hug, don't cry, don't share emotions with naked confidentiality, and macho culture preys on any signs of weakness, to their own detriment. This carries on to the kinds of hobbies, interests and all that puts men further away from a simple emotional comfort than women. It took me two decades before it didn't feel awkward hugging my brother in earnest, and I consider myself a very sensitive person, so take that for what you will. Maybe it just takes longer for boys to become emotionally mature men. It varies culturally a lot for men and women by city and country, of course.
When statistics show a over-representation for a disadvantage for men, its men and male culture fault.
When statistics show a over-representation for a disadvantage for women, its men and male culture fault.
It must be that it is very convenient to blame men and male culture, but honestly I have a hard time seeing any truth in that. Suicide is connected with depression, culture and unemployment. We know from studies that men are more often misdiagnosed when it comes to depression, with experiments where doctors rate identical profiles more correctly if the name is that of a woman. We also know that culture has a major impact on suicide rates with a strong link to gender expectations, the same gender expectation that researcher suggest is causing misdiagnoses for depression in men. We also know there is a strong correlation for increased suicide rates for men when unemployment goes up but not for women, again pointing towards gender expectations as the culprit.
If we ignore that, at least make a study and look if men who do not express emotions is a valid predictor for suicide. I expect it is not but it would make for a interesting validation to read.
> again pointing towards gender expectations as the culprit
Well, that's exactly right.
In general, I wish we would move away from oversimplified "patriarchy"-based language of "aggressor" vs "victim" (which discourages male victims from coming forward and encouraged a culture of collective victim-hood we are in now, where to really leverage speaking power one must first prove that they, too, are a victim, an ultimately disabling attitude) and move towards couching all of this in the very inclusive and in no way "feminine" term like "gender expectations."
Straight men would feel personally attacked less and open to talking about unfair expectations of them more. They won't feel that any conversation about lack of fairness in cultural norms excludes them by default.
Women (and people who overall dislike the gender binary) would still be able to voice their opposition to expectations, too.
Statistical disadvantages are almost always on women's side on a variety of societal issues, yet women cope and mostly aren't loud complainers on a day-to-day (when they get together to do so male culture calls them out). It's easy to blame (some) men because older sexist men call the shots pretty much everywhere (even areas where most effective practitioners tend to be women, like cooking.) In this way women get used to coping, with injustice, unfairness, offense, from early age and in the presence of other women in their family. This may help explain further the learned ability to commiserate, so to say.
I don't know, maybe men who don't express feelings like being tough dudes and won't consider suicide, maybe the ones who suicide are the ones who do have and express lots of feeling, but misplace the venting somehow, or can't control well, who knows.
I don't mean "most efficient" or anything to that end, which is a moral judgement I'm not inclined to consider, but that effectively most practitioners (you know, at home, in small business et al) are women. The phrasing was a bit bad.
Perhaps it's a regional thing, but professional cooks seem to be more often male when I notice them. In particular, I'm thinking of small husband/wife shops where the wife is likely to be the waiter/cashier/etc. (All of those roles rolled into one job.) Perhaps I don't notice the other combination?
I of course agree that traditionally the woman is more likely to cook at home.
Men don't ask for help because nobody cares about them and they can't get good help. They don't expressed their feelings because they get shunned for doing so and are perceived as being weak. And it's not always men who are forcing this gender role upon men -sometimes it's women.
This isn't why. This is what feminism tells men, that their problems stem from them not being able to handle and process their emotions correctly. That's propaganda. The real reason is more along of the lines of their being less of a safety net for men, less people willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, and no attraction from women for men in the bottom 10%.
>This is what feminism tells men, that their problems stem from them not being able to handle and process their emotions correctly.
What "feminism" would probably say is that masculine culture doesn't allow men to display emotions as openly as women, especially when those emotions betray a sense of physical or emotional vulnerability.
The common term for this is "toxic masculinity," which is often confused by persons like yourself to mean that masculinity itself is toxic, whereas it really means that masculinity can be toxic, and can manifest in negative ways, such as an inability to express one's emotions for fear of being seen as weak, effeminate or possibly gay.
This isn't propaganda, it's an obvious and self-evident sociological and cultural phenomenon, a flaw in society, not in men themselves.
>and no attraction from women for men in the bottom 10%.
Oh. I see you've fallen down the rabbithole.
It's unfortunate that the lunatic fringe of redpillers and incels seem to taken over and undermined any legitimate credibility the mens' rights movement might have. Women aren't evil, and feminists aren't entirely wrong, and no, aren't driving men to mass suicide because they don't find them attractive.
All societies have flaws. The issue with the word 'toxic masculinity' is that it is ultimately lop-sided. When did you last hear the word 'toxic femininity'. I'd argue that it's more a propos to our day than ever. For example, anti-vaxxers are overwhelmingly women. My wife is about to give birth, and the number of mom's groups that act as if it is a personal failure on behalf of a woman to have a C-Section is astounding. Better yet, they blame men for the very existence of C-sections! Having lost our last baby, the last thing we need is more pressure on my wife. Where is the condemnation of this female 'macho' culture? It's nowhere. Feminists are completely absent on a major issue affecting women. If anything, men are still blamed for all these things, despite men being basically non-existent in the professions surrounding birth. How ridiculous.
> means that masculinity can be toxic
Almost anything can be toxic. The issue is when that label becomes a cultural meme that then gets used in ways it is not intended.
> persons like yourself to mean
Not the OP, but ad hominem attacks are considered poor form.
Finally,
> that masculine culture doesn't allow men to display emotions as openly as women, especially when those emotions betray a sense of physical or emotional vulnerability.
Feminism can sing this tune all day long, but it does not match my experience as a man. Went to an all boys high school too. Lots of male friends, I wouldn't say any of them bottle things up. They've cried on my shoulder. Told me their inner thoughts. I dunno what to tell you, other than that this is just a cultural meme that does nothing to actually help people.
>>The common term for this is "toxic masculinity," which is often confused by persons like yourself to mean that masculinity itself is toxic, whereas it really means that masculinity can be toxic, and can manifest in negative ways
And what modern feminists like yourself struggle with is that men are inately predisposed more toward certain personality traits than women. You want to talk about obviousness and self evidence? Look at evolutionary pressure. Look at our closest related primates (and most mammals) and how much more agressive males tend to be, and how with, for example, gorillas, few males will mate with many females, while less dominant males go mateless. Yet you do not even consider the possibility that humans are hard wired towards certain average behaviors, that men are almost certainly predisposed towards agression, that females may very well be attracted to dominance (hell, it's all over our culture if you look with an open mind).
Instead, you deny biology, hand waving away all discrepancies and differences with words like "toxic masculinity" and "patriarchy." You deny the pain and loneliness that unnatractive men experience daily because of factors beyond their control - height, build, facial structure, social difficulty.
You cannot fix society by ignoring biology, and you are only alienating these men, who are human beings like you and me, by slandering them as incels for having the same desires for companionship and affirmation unfulfilled while simultaneously blaming them for the problems in society.
Pride, agression, drives for achievement and competition, these natural, "toxic" masculine traits BUILT the modern world. Yes, there was plenty of bad along the way, but one cannot ignore all of the good that has resulted from these drives, and in truth, modern society cannot exist without them. Nor should it.
Nobody denies that masculine traits like aggression aren't natural tendencies in males. But, the notion that its natural isn't contradictory with the notion that it can be the driver of highly selfish and oppressive behaviors.
Slandering people as incels because they're ugly or unpopular is not a commonly held view. Calling them out for aggressively blaming women for their problems and encouraging sexual violence as a justified way to satisfy natural needs is common. The term incel is typically self-assigned.
Your last argument is a good example of the main fallacy here. Nobody says that drives for achievement and competition are bad. But its not an excuse to be an asshole. Maybe men are predisposed to certain behaviors that make them assholes. Doesn't matter. Don't be an asshole. Can't help it? Doesn't matter. Don't be an asshole. The drive against toxic behaviors is really simple. Don't do them.
>And what modern feminists like yourself struggle with is that men are inately predisposed more toward certain personality traits than women.
Yes, but what traits society allows men to express while still being considered "proper men" differs depending on culture, and mediates whatever biological imperatives might exist. Ancient cultures considered sex between men to be a perfectly reasonable thing for a masculine man to do, since the concepts of "hetero" and "homo" sexuality didn't really exist at the time. Men in Elizabethan times were far more free to express emotions than now - consider that many of Shakespeare's sonnets, including the famous Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day...") were addressed to a man.
>Yet you do not even consider the possibility that humans are hard wired towards certain average behaviors, that men are almost certainly predisposed towards agression, that females may very well be attracted to dominance (hell, it's all over our culture if you look with an open mind).
Also, innate predisposition doesn't justify all expressions of those dispositions. One may say that men are predisposed towards physical aggression due to their increased musculature relative to women and testosterone, but that doesn't mean every act of violence is healthy. Females may be attracted to dominance, but that doesn't mean all means of dominating women are justifiable.
We may be apes, but that doesn't mean we get to rape any female we find attractive and murder the offspring of rival males because, you know, we're trying to have a civilization here.
>You deny the pain and loneliness that unnatractive men experience daily because of factors beyond their control - height, build, facial structure, social difficulty.
Plenty of unattractive, facially asymmetrical and socially awkward men are able to meet with women, date, have sex, all over the world, every day. Believe me, if women didn't have low standards in that regard, our species would probably have died out long ago.
>Pride, agression, drives for achievement and competition, these natural, "toxic" masculine traits BUILT the modern world.
You see... I literally said that wasn't what "toxic masculinity" meant and that people automatically confuse the term for an attack on masculinity itself... you literally quoted the part of my comment where I said that and then you went and did exactly that.
At least try to approach this on an intellectual level and not be so triggered by feminist jargon.
> Yes, but what traits society allows men to express while still being considered "proper men" differs depending on culture, and mediates whatever biological imperatives might exist.
Having plasticity in societal expectations does not change the characteristics of 'typical male behavior' in those societies. All it does is require us to further abstract what constitutes 'male behavior'.
Studies on the effects of testosterone mainly show that it encourages men to display behaviors that gain them social status. In a violent society, this would be violence. In a peaceful society, this would be shows of benevolence. Either way, pursuing status-ful behavior is undoubtedly associated with testosterone. Violence, surprisingly, is not associated at all.
You might have misread that study. It doesn't encourage behaviors that gain social status, but rather maintain existing levels of social status. As the study showed, gaining status increase hormone secretion, which can be seen as a method to regulate how much effort and individual should be spending in protecting what has already been gained.
The conclusion is still the same. In a violent society individuals will defend their social status with violence. In a peaceful society status will be defended through benevolence. A individual seeking to stay at the top of a social ladder will undoubtedly have hormone secretion increased as a matter of biological effect.
> At least try to approach this on an intellectual level and not be so triggered by feminist jargon.
Maybe this is why men don't feel like speaking up so often. If you can't fully conceptualise every concept thought up by feminist sociologists then your just not "on our level" and "so triggered".
>If you can't fully conceptualise every concept thought up by feminist sociologists then your just not "on our level" and "so triggered".
The concept that masculinity can have negative effects while not itself being negative isn't something that should take a great deal of effort to comprehend. There are entire male created social complexes like "gentlemanly behavior" and "chivalry" built around the pretense that inherent male traits have both positive and negative aspects.
The problem here is not that "feminist sociologists" are talking down to men and making them quail in fear -- men have no problems whatsoever speaking their mind in regards to criticising women or feminism. The problem is that men who oppose feminism often don't even bother to approach its concepts on their own terms at all. The feminism they oppose mostly doesn't even exist, or at best they're attacking the fringe and not the mainstream.
If you have a problem with the concept of toxic masculinity, for example, all I and the "feminist sociological agenda" (or whatever) ask is that you bother to find out what the term actually refers to. Cribbing from Wikipedia:
stereotypically masculine gender roles that restrict the kinds of emotions
allowable for boys and men to express, including social expectations that
men seek to be dominant (the "alpha male") and limit their emotional range
primarily to expressions of anger.
...that's not an attack on men, masculinity in general or on any healthy masculine traits.
Toxic masculinity get judged based on the meaning it express as words. Languages in the end is all about expressing meaning.
If we talk about toxic Muslims, we could define it to only be about terrorists or other narrow defined subgroup of criminals, but if you use those words then the meaning being expressed is a generalization that invoke a expression of racisms and hate. Lumping together all Muslims, only to then say "technically, I only meant this small subgroup" don't work. Does not work for racism, and it does not work for sexism either. The term toxic masculinity will always seem like veiled hatred against men, and no amount of "wait, I only mean ..." will change that.
The concept that masculinity can itself be positive shouldn't be too hard to comprehend either but here we are.
> men have no problems whatsoever speaking their mind in regards to criticising women or feminism
You haven't spent much time in democratic party meetings then.
> The problem is that men who oppose feminism often don't even bother to approach its concepts on their own terms at all.
And at which point do the "real feminists" stop and agree that it's just a fringe group of feminists that have an axe to grind against men?
> ...that's not an attack on men, masculinity in general or on any healthy masculine traits.
Um, it is?
Just look at the framing, claiming that TM "restricts" males. Why is the assumption always that freedom to express is always what people need and will always be a positive outcome?
Humans need structure in life, some more than others. When you try to deconstruct every social norm around a culture you will have a large amount of men who will find themselves lost in a landscape that is actively discouraging them from fitting within the beaten path laid before them.
Maybe the reason men are killing themselves isn't because they don't cry more to their mates but because they are thrown into this modern world that is actively trying to push them towards transcendence of the human condition.
Most of those biology claims have been found to be mostly or completely false by researchers observing primates and disproving theories of hard wired behavior.
For example, the theory that the most aggressive male primates get most children has been generally disproved since longer term studies show that those males at top generally get dethroned, injured and kill at much faster rate. A secondary issue is that primate females mate not just with the pack leader which means that paternity becomes a statistical probability, which get worse as you go up the hierarchy.
Similar aggression is only a effective strategy if and only if aggression get rewarded. Relative recent trend in primatology is to talk about culture, and it has been observed that it has a massive impact in regard to aggression. All those "hard wired" behavior which people took for certain in primates changed if a troop has a cultural change, which happens occasionally.
A unintended experiment is when a bunch of young specimens of a species is transfer to a new environment (often creating a invasive species but thats beyond the point). Behavior which researcher thought was innate and hard wired is then often found to have disappeared when no initial adult member is there to transfer existing cultural behavior, a fact that holds true multiple generations later.
Instead of looking for biological causes, let ask following questions. What does our culture define as attributes that women should look for in men, and men in women. What behavior defines social status for men and for women, and how do inter-sex competition work men and for women. Feminists who look to blame male behavior (with terms like "toxic masculinity" and "patriarchy") ignores half of the picture that defines gender roles and gender expectations, while also making negative generalization. It is very likely a contributing reason for increased suicide rates and polarization between women and men.
You have to understand most of the above poster(s) are either:
1. Too far gone from reality such that they actually believe this made up drivel they repeat constantly.
2. are of the type who are so privileged to say to these downtrodden men: "Let them eat cake"
I'm going to go with #2 as that is what most of these "feminists" are. They might even write an ironic article calling higher suicide rate amongst men a problem of patriarchy. Reading these comments you realize they have no self awareness.
FWIW I think the reasons you point to are just as plausible contributing factors as the ones GP mentions, but there's no reason it can't be both. And dismissing the effects of machismo/toxic masculinity as simply "feminist propaganda" is just not realistic.
No, these are feelings that men actually have, without anyone telling them anything. And this is a perfect example of how people are often completely unsympathetic with men when we do complain about our problems.
I'm not even close to the bottom 10% of men, and I don't feel like I get much attraction from women. It takes a lot of work and failures to even get a single date sometimes. This is a really shitty feeling and is one of the biggest causes of me feeling down. It can really make one feel like a worthless person sometimes.
I'm sorry you are having those problems. I was responding to someone who was blaming their problems on feminism without even bothering to google what it meant first. I have no patience for those people.
> I don't feel like I get much attraction from women
Well I am no expert on that myself, so I can't help you a lot there. I can tell you that the way you phrased it is worrying. Attention (any kind, not just the female one) is not something that is "owed to you". It's not a "right".
There are other ways you can look at it: as mutual thing - if you want attention from women, maybe consider paying them attention first. Like, learning what their problems are, and what feminism means. Or see it as a resource, finite and limited. They can only think about so many men in a day. So it is an optimization problem. What would make you stand out?
And yes, the physical thing helps in standing out, and so does being rich. Those are not the only levers available though (by all means, do some exercise. It is great for you in any case). Being empathetic helps. Being kind helps. Being assertive helps. Being socially active helps. Those things can be learned if they don't come naturally to you. Heck, just being around women more often than other guys will help (provided that you are not an asshole).
Try changing one thing every 15 days, and see what sticks. The worst that can happen is that you live a better life. Don't just complain over the internet without changing anything.
In case it helps: I have been married for 7 years and have a child, the "urge" to get attention from women went away in the 3rd or 4th year. I found it quite ... liberating, to be honest. I can't say whether it was due to the fact that I was married or due to reaching certain age (37-ish) though.
What I crave these days is free time. Families are like gasses, they expand to occupy all space available.
He wasn't blaming his problems on feminism, he was saying he disagreed with them.
I know you are trying to be helpful with your post, but I honestly found it offensive. All I said was that lack of attention from women does actually negatively affect men (contrary to what you were asserting). And from that it seems you decided I fit some selfish, misogynistic stereotype. You assume that I don't listen to women or sympathize with their feelings. You assume that I think attention is a right or something owed to me, when I never said anything even hinting at that. I didn't blame women, or imply that they are doing anything wrong.
I wasn't "complaining on the internet", I was trying to inform you and others about how people actually feel because obviously even men don't all get it.
And I didn't really get the point about how being married reduced your urge for attention. It's almost tautological. Once you have the attention of a woman, attention stops being a concern.
Men talking about their problems are seen as "whiners" and have various other insults heaped upon them. So they choose to live a life of "quiet desperation" which leads to suicide.
Interpreting this as charitably as possible (though I suspect it might be a lost cause): yes, that is exactly what it is.
GP didn't suggest that GGP was wrong, stupid, harmful, evil, or any of the above. They understood what GGP wrote, and suggested that it might be based in an opinion formed due to a skewed cultural influence, with the implication that re-examination of said opinion might be in order.
That's understanding a claim, thinking about it, and issuing compassionate criticism. Whether you think it's correct or not is up to you, but it certainly isn't a failure to listen.
> That's understanding a claim, thinking about it, and issuing compassionate criticism. Whether you think it's correct or not is up to you, but it certainly isn't a failure to listen.
So is it listening or criticising? I'm not even making an argument that the claims either way are wrong or right but when people say listen these days, it's usually implied that you aren't supposed to turn around and criticise them, thats at best giving constructive feedback.
I'm just pointing out how men are being told to speak up, but often when they speak up they are spoken down to by the current culture for holding "wrong" views. Considering we are talking about people committing suicide it seems like this isn't exactly helping the situation.
In general, women have way more power than men when it comes to choosing who they mate with, so women are always more appealing than men at the same level of attractiveness.
Try an experiment where you sign up an online dating profile for a woman, and see how much action you get as compared to a similar man profile.
Or go to a coffee shop and count how many times a woman is being approached by men over an hour, and how many times a man is being approached by a woman (hint: 0)
A contrary view/hypothesis: women have higher average levels of social anxiety (as measurable by prescriptions for anxiety meds, and also on demographic studies of the Big-5 personality traits of agreeableness+neuroticism.)
And people with social anxiety don't want to take risks that could result in increased happiness/relief from suffering, but which also have the potential for greatly decreasing their social status.
Examples of such actions: romantically initiating (see "Lesbian sheep syndrome"), asserting one's worth in interviews (= a non-negligible part of the wage gap, after materity effects are removed), "saying no" to unwanted advances, and... committing suicide.
(Fun corollary hypothesis: anti-depressants like SSRIs increase suicidality precisely by removing the inhibitory effect of social-anxiety upon this class of positive-utility-but-disapproved-of actions.)
Antidepressants increase suicidality because their mechanism of action relies on rapid up-regulation and then gradual down-regulation of autoreceptors. For some people, the initial result is a paradoxically anxiety-ridden and dysphoric state.
personal opinion alert: western society seems to preach that the inherent value of men is zero and all value comes from success and accomplishments whereas women are inherently valuable due to their ability to raise children. combine failure to meet the expectations levied upon them by society with a quaker/protestant belief system where all shortcomings boil down to "you didnt work hard enough" plus a culture where showing weakness or seeking help isn't believed to be a masculine trait and it becomes surprising that the discrepancy isn't greater.
Yeah this is my exact line of thinking. We are all trying to find meaning and purpose in life and the ability to give birth is inherently valuable. Men feel the need to create value through work/skill so if you fail totally in that area....
Where is it preached in western society that the inherent value of men is zero? Men can raise children too and last I heard it usually takes a man to help create that child also.
Creating 500 new humans takes 500 women and 1-2 men, most men are totally superfluous for procreation, thus us needing to define our value in other ways.
Probably, and I can make an educated guess how: modern society eschews the value of human relationships in favor of status and wealth seeking.
People find they are not happy, so they search for a path to happiness and our culture tells them that it is through being wealthy, famous, and successful. They search for a path to those things and find that it often involves long hours, greed, and psychopathic behavior. Human relationships are a risk, and risks are to be minimized. They put this knowledge into practice and find that it doesn't work.
My own theory of how depression works is that it involves an inescapable realization that your model of reality is broken and can't be used to make predictions that allow you to effect the change you want to see in your life. You wanted to be happy, society gave you a bad model to work from, and the mind's reaction to discovering that this model doesn't work is depression.
> My own theory of how depression works is that it involves an inescapable realization that your model of reality is broken and can't be used to make predictions that allow you to effect the change you want to see in your life. You wanted to be happy, society gave you a bad model to work from, and the mind's reaction to discovering that this model doesn't work is depression.
You should read the book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions by Jonathan Hari. I read it this summer, and it completely overturned how I look at depression (and other mental health issues). I truly believe that a lot of them (not all, mind you; there's also a lot of over-diagnosis) stem from a breakdown of what made us human, particularly relevant in American culture. It's a very interesting read.
A very insightful comment. I have no idea to what extent your hypotheses describe reality, but the elegance of your line of reasoning deems this path worthy of further investigation.
Some people find sex pleasurable and emotionally gratifying. If you have a soulless job etc and you also aren't getting other pleasures in life, I can see that being a factor.
I mean, that's kind of a nutshell version of the issue. Human psychology and sexuality are complex. But I think it's a worthwhile detail to consider.
It's worse than that, it's active avoidance of human relationships because they're a liability. Not just because they create dependencies but because in order to form connections we need to make ourselves vulnerable.
My biggest concern is are we following a similar trend to Japan (low sex rate, high suicide)? While I am no means an expert, the overall theme that I've seen describe the phenomena in Japan is that they have just "stopped caring" about all the social pressures.
I wonder if Western culture is starting to have the same effect where the "rules of society" are just becoming so convoluted that people are "opting out". I'm looking at this more from the birth rate speculation, but not having a family to go home to at night and stressful work environments may have a connection.
> I'm looking at this more from the birth rate speculation, but not having a family to go home to at night and stressful work environments may have a connection.
There is. Having high stress competitive work prevents you to go to familly (because you are working overtime) and makes you loose it (whether formally or you just looses relationship). Conversely, having familly often prevents ones career and limits job opportunities.
But, I don't think western rules are convoluted. It is more that economy sux and tends to be winner takes all.
There are multiple factors correlated with sucicide, but notable is that the US rate has increased 30% during a time of decrease in suicide rate of other nations:
This one lists Belgium, Finland, France as higher rates than the US. But other research also notes differences in rates of various races, I guess whites commit suicide at a observerably higher rate too.
This link of yours links suicide rate to social welfare spending, this is unlikely given that France, Finland and Belgium and specially Japan offer free healthcare and have much higher suicide rates. In fact, if you take out suicide by gun in the US, you get much lower suicide rates and it is a fact that guns make suicide easier and more likely.
The article hypothesizes suicide increases because of reduction in social welfare spending as well as social support. And notes some correlations, and calls for deeper study.
Suicide by guns counts, it just diminishes even more the inequality cause because if you take out suicide by guns then suicide rates are even much lower than in these other countries with less inequalities and free healthcare but no suicide by guns.
I think that's a huge unknown assumption that if there were no gun, the victim would simply not commit suicide. There might be some dissuasion, but we have no way to gauge it - and pegging it at everyone in that group would be saved if only we took away guns seems like an assumption at one extreme end.
Not to complicate things more, but social welfare spending != efficient social welfare spending, leading to more potentially contrary (in both directions) trends.
It's very difficult to compare suicide rates across countries. This is because they use different definitions. Your link doesn't say where they're getting their data and how they've fixed this problem.
Your linked list has socialist Venezuela at #148 with 3.7 suicides /100k and now capitalist Lithuania at #1 with 31.9 /100k so the link seems unproven.
I wonder if anyone knows how many opioid deaths are deliberate. The suicide rate could actually be much higher if this turns out to be a thing and is not included in the stats.
The Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media group features for both men and women.
I wonder if 'hustle culture' has anything to do with this...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381605
Separately this is a huge HR problem that just isn't addressed properly in the USA. If the suicides are due to work pressures that employer has a direct responsibility for that situation.
Echoing what others have said here, if you are contemplating suicide talk to people about it. Don't suffer in isolation. Get out of your bubble of despair and try to see your life in perspective - get help that's what we are all here for, each other...
Quick PSA: If you are contemplating suicide you should reach out to professionals for help. You are not alone in this struggle and deserve to be happy and live a fruitful life. What do you have to lose by talking with a professional?
Why can't suicide be noble? Why can't we respect a decision to not participate in this experience that none of us asked for in the first place? Why is the answer more pills or shrink sessions just to keep on to the next day? Please tell me one actual down side of suicide for suffering person. It's selfishness ultimately; we want them to stick around for us, not for them.
I suppose I could respect it, but many survivors of suicide attempts decide not to repeat their attempts. IMO this suggests that some of them believe that they might be better off alive.
but many survivors of suicide attempts decide not to repeat their attempts
I survived a suicide attempt at age 17. I'm 53. I'm still frequently suicidal, in part because of an incurable medical condition, in part because the world is a shitty place, full of really shitty people.
I have not made a second attempt. There are myriad factors there. One is that if I'm stuck here, it's better to be stuck here without extra medical bills and people assuming me to be incompetent. My life is hard enough without those additional burdens.
To be fair, this is survivor bias in the purest sense. There is an elegance in respecting one's choice, but most suicidal people are instead in need of sincere help and understanding, the ideal policy is likely to assume it would be regretted in the scheme of possible futures.
I haven't repeated, and I am ... satisfied to happy now. But that doesn't mean that it was worth going through that part of my life that drove me to that point to get to where I am now.
Only because the dead can't express measurable regret (i.e. even if there is an afterlife, they can't establish communication with the living to convey their regret)
Well then the supposed survivorship bias would cut both ways too then? Why should we assume people with failed suicide attempts should have regret at a higher rate than those with successful attempts?
It's probably not politically correct or socially acceptable for people to run around saying too much "I wish I had succeeded because my life still sucks." It's also basically counterproductive.
I often wish I had simply not been born or had died years ago when I was in the midst of a serious medical crisis or would just "wake up dead." Going to sleep and "waking up dead" has been a common fantasy of mine since at least my teens.
I just don't run around harping on that constantly. It would be nothing but trouble for me and is potentially a good way to inadvertently encourage others to finally off themselves. I consider that irresponsible, so I generally don't publicly say things like "I don't understand why more people with my medical condition don't kill themselves." Other people with my medical condition don't need to run across that opinion on the internet every time they turn around, so I mostly keep such thoughts to myself or share them only with my adult sons.
I have a Dread Disease. What it does to your life is horrible. There is no real hope of a cure. I am slowly getting better by pursuing "alternative" stuff (diet and lifestyle, mostly) and I get constantly attacked and dismissed for talking about that.
Being constantly attacked and dismissed instead of getting the support I need to succeed makes me suicidal. But the fact that I am slowly getting better means my life is vastly better than it is supposed to be and I know what it is supposed to look like and if I genuinely believed in my heart of hearts that what doctors told me was all I could expect -- that people like me don't get well and I can look forward to a long, slow and torturous decline ultimately resulting in death -- then I likely would have killed myself.
And other people with CF don't really need to run into my thoughts on that when it means essentially that I am left-handedly saying "Why don't you just go kill yourself already?" (or could be interpreted as such -- that's certainly not my actual intent)
It's not my business to decide how much they should be willing to endure. It's not my business to decide how much they should value life and try to survive in the face of that. I would consider it irresponsible behavior for me to constantly harp on that. So I don't.
But it doesn't mean that I don't think such things. So I can well imagine that a lot of people who wish they were dead just aren't sharing that information constantly because they aren't assholes.
Which is a very long way of saying "We don't actually know, so please stop trying to claim that we can infer X when we really can't."
As an American I wouldn't call that a noble suicide. Waste of life all around for a misplaced sense of honor. Which apparently is still misplaced today. I'm not sure you can have much of a noble suicide in fact. I know it is sort of fetishized in some aspects of Japanese culture, like seppuku (harakiri), but I think it is a mistake calling it noble even then.
Selfishness cuts both ways - what if they had kids? Or other responsibilities? Just like they didn't ask for the experience, their kids didn't ask for it too.
I would argue that suicide is itself extremely selfish.
Remember this point, when a person commits suicide they most deeply hurt the people that love them the most. Is that right? Is that fair? They don't hurt the people that don't care about them, they hurt the ones that love them. It's such a cruel, unjust thing to do.
Everyone dies eventually. Having a loved one kill themselves vs any other reason, you can never really get over it. It's just a punishment to the ones that love you that continues on. So we are left with two reasonable options. First that you do it out of spite and anger to intentionally hurt people that love you. Don't need to talk about that, that's just wrong. Second, you think no one loves you.
So that last case, if really no one does love you, it's still not noble. It is the ultimate quitting, the ultimate admission of defeat. And it is irreversible. You feel this way now, at this moment, but you give up the chance to feel another way ever, for any redemption.
A wise person once told me that arrogance/selfishness and depression were two sides of the same coin; an unnatural focus on self. Life is not worth living? Fine. Die to yourself. Stop thinking about yourself. Your life sucks, its going to suck, fine. Start thinking about other people. You are walking dead already, but you still have a brain and some abilities. Do something for someone else.
Another extremely wise teacher, who tried to convince people to love each other, said this: "If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me." meaning before you could be like him and live for others first you need to die to yourself. And then he said that those people would find true life.
Edit: I'm not just saying this and telling suicidal people to suck it up. I've been through this personally from all these angles. I'm sharing what I have experienced and what worked for me.
If thinking about suicide as a form of giving up helped you our of your funk, then more power to you. I don't have any real experience on the matter, but I want to share this as not everyone relates to your experience and sees suicide as a form of giving up.
It's really funny. I teach a class of students who would never give the time of day to thinking deeply about things ("yee-yees", as they even call themselves), but it came out that a former teacher/assistant coach at our school had committed suicide. They went into a well-thought out discussion about whether suicide was selfish or not.
I think, in the end, they decided that it both was and was not selfish. It was selfish, in the regard that you're putting yourself ahead of others in terms of you being at peace while knowing others are going to hurt (and this person was found by their child-age daughters...), but they also said we can't really know it's truly selfishness because we have no clue what they're going through. We literally can't put ourselves in their shoes to see if there might have been another way out, etc. It was quite an insightful discussion, one I would've never expected from these kids.
There's a difference between sacrificing yourself to save people you love and killing yourself because you are deeply unhappy. The later is generally viewed as a mental disease that can be assuaged with therapy and allow the victim to be happy again.
Also, I know there are a lot of other reasons to kill yourself (onset of terminal disease, etc.) but I would wager the vast majority are rooted in unhappiness.
That means you believe you simply die and your pain is alleviated, which many people (who are not intellectually lazy) don't agree with, so they might want to genuinely help out. In any case suicide most often comes from a moment of spiked anxiety or panic, so why should we just let people who would otherwise care and like to be near us take their lives in a moment their rational brain isn't working with the calm generally afforded for important decisions (say, business decisions) that have big effects the person contemplating death otherwise cares about?
You're getting downvoted but it's a legit concern. Not all depressed people are suicidal. And some people live in rough areas that need a gun because the police are not with them 24x7.
Yeah. Utterly hopeless (at least in Australia). I was attempting to talk myself down from suicidal thoughts, I called as anonymously as I could (turned off caller ID and didn't give my name) and they still called the police.
The service I called was Lifeline Australia. I suggest that if you don't want to experience the absolutely dire and abusive mental health system that you don't call them. They may say they are confidential, but they aren't. Even after I made an official complaint about their lack of warning on their phone system (which states they are confidential!) they have done nothing about this. It really feels like they are trying to trick people into calling no matter what.
I have and the response I got was, "if you feel like this is a serious risk, you should go to the hospital." To be fair I don't know what else they could say.
Saying stuff like "you are not alone" while referring people to an unspecified "professional" is completely empty. It feels like a slap in the face. It belittles very real problems that people actively try to shut suicidal people up about.
I'm dirt poor. I have been for years. People here aren't comfortable hearing that. They seem to fear I'm asking for a handout.
I appear to be the highest ranked woman here. I had hoped to use HN to network. That hasn't been very effective. Pretty much every time I comment on that and suggest that my gender is a barrier to me resolving my financial problems, someone jumps up to inform me that I am wrong and stupid and HN simply isn't a good means to network and my gender is not an issue and sexism is not an issue and, also, I'm just a loser, basically, among other things.
Men routinely tell each other here "You must be very competent because you have so much karma on HN." No one says that about me. When I point out I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leaderboard, I'm dismissed, belittled, accused of being obsessed with ridiculous, empty and meaningless internet points etc ad nauseum ad infinity.
I have a diagnosis of atypical cystic fibrosis. Talking about that at all is typically drama. I have spent more than 17 years getting myself well. No, no one is writing articles about that. Instead, I get attacked for trying to say anything about health topics. I basically get called a liar, deluded and a teller of tall tales who can't possibly know anything whatsoever useful about medical anything.
If I say anything about my accomplishments in life, I'm accused of making stuff up, exaggerating and generally being full of crap.
Absolutely the only thing anyone is willing to believe is that I spent years homeless. That's basically it. And longstanding and intractable poverty is absolutely not a reason for anyone here to hire me, promote my work, help me figure out how to make money, etc. No, it's apparently just evidence that I must not have any valuable skills or knowledge that is worth any money whatsoever and fuck me, not their problem.
I've been here over nine years. The negative treatment I get on HN is one of the things that makes me suicidal. The blatantly obvious sexism involved in my intractable poverty that everyone routinely denies is one of the things that makes me suicidal. The fact that I have to walk on eggshells and not state that too frequently or too bluntly also contributes to me being suicidal. And most of the time I don't want to poke too much at that in part because being banned from HN would make my life even worse, and in part because a large part of the psychological anguish there is due to a short list of awful people who specifically crapped all over me in specific. So it isn't really fair to hold all members equally accountable for the incredibly bad behavior of a few people. On the other hand, there are any number of other people who could have helped me and thereby completely wiped out the importance of those negative experiences to my life. So it also doesn't really make sense to say it's just that short list of awful people and not "everyone."
And I carry that psychological load every single day and every time I log in here and I get zero credit from anyone, much less the short list of awful people in question, for not turning that into public drama on HN during an incredibly difficult time in my life that has lasted for years.
So listening to some paragraph long PSA referring me to some nebulous "professional" knowing the nine years of nonsense I've endured just makes me see red. Because I'm absolutely sure you wouldn't do anything at all to redress any of those wrongs right here on HN, much less cure my medical condition or give me the cash to buy a house (or do a fund raiser if you aren't that rich), not because you couldn't try to find ways to help redress some of my problems to some degree, but because you honestly don't actually care. It's not your problem and you aren't actually going to help.
So I find it monstrously uncompassionate akin to flipping me a bird for being poor, stupidly having been born female and making the egregious mistake of having a genetic disorder.
And that description is going to generally be true for most people who are suicidal. They are generally going to have one or more serious personal problems that the world at large neither wants to help with nor wants to hear too much about because it makes them uncomfortable. The specifics will vary, but, in a nutshell, suicidal people have big problems and they routinely get met with an attitude that they aren't really supposed to talk about them and they can't expect real help for any of that.
I just want my life to work. That's it. That's all I want. And I've literally spent years working miracles to try to get there and I still can't get there largely due to social BS.
I see PSAs of this sort to be more of that pattern of social BS where the entire world wishes me well and hopes my problems get better... Just don't expect them to help and "take your issues elsewhere, honey. Not my problem. You can be not alone with someone else, not me."
> Saying stuff like "you are not alone" while referring people to an unspecified "professional" is completely empty.
I have to agree. It sounds and feels like saying "don't worry, someone else has it worse" which I think people say thinking that should be comforting when, in reality, it feels more like an excuse to ignore and even belittle your misfortune.. "yeah, whatever, fuck me then"
> I see PSAs of this sort to be more of that pattern of social BS where the entire world wishes me well and hopes my problems get better... Just don't expect them to help and "take your issues elsewhere, honey. Not my problem. You can be not alone with someone else, not me."
Yeah. Being wished well with no help really gets old.
Another thing that gets old is giving testimony as to the problem space and then having a bunch of internet strangers pile on to make random suggestions of half-baked ideas like I'm just stupid. It's refreshing to see my actual point engaged.
In the South, the correct polite expression is God Bless. I'm not religious and I don't know the correct expression on the internet. I just want to leave some kind of meaningful acknowledgement of your comment and I don't know what that would be.
America is not a society where anything happens without money.
In eastern countries, there are easy to go community centers like temples, churches, local social organizations, festivals etc., all for free. Just go in. There is always someone to reach out to. There are always welcoming people.
I know you want to believe that the world is a good place and someone who's suffering enough to consider death as an alternative can be helped easily and cheaply, but that just isn't the reality we live in. My experience is that free help is a bunch of minimum-effort volunteers. Depression can be a very complicated thing and it isn't well understood by very many people, often even the expensive professionals just throw drugs at it.
I can certainly think of possible cases where the mental help needed might involve more than a help line or support group long term. Heck there might even be cases when physical health help is what is unavailable in the long term -- chronic illnesses considerably raise the risk of suicide. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170612094032.h...) A help line is probably not going to resolve a chronic illness.
I know the original comment was at the individual level, but from a big picture perspective I do think "money" definitely matters. Specifically, the United States health care system lacks compared to other rich nations when it comes to coverage and accessibility. Based on an ecological study I found (https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/16669716) it seems like there's a definite link between suicide rates and this issue -- factors like funding for mental health and insurance coverage matter a lot here.
Wrong. You're conflating crisis care with on-going care. Crisis care maybe free, but on-going care is definitely expensive in the US. Crisis care is no substitute for on-going care because it's a bandaid.
This is almost like the exact opposite of the reality of eastern and western culture. Healthcare for example is full of free clinics where people get free care. I worked at one.
Also, the differences in religious institutions in east and west is also vast. Food, shelter, and healtchare are provided for free by thousands of churches in the United States, I'm not familiar with anything similar in the East and I've spent many years there.
The people in US churches are welcoming. But the society isn't. The individual under duress is always losing the time value of money by going to Church instead of bettering their financial condition.
Heck, an entire political party blames individuals under duress for their own financial condition.
This would not happen as much in the east. While time value of money exists, life so cheap that people can take time off, anytime in their life, just go to a church and heal. And no political party will blame them for their financial condition. They will always get resources from other people, for free, just because they are in need.
Money seems irrelevant in this scenario, but there are plenty of free services that will assist you. I also doubt friends and family will charge you to talk to them.
Out of curiosity, why does one deserve this? What universal truth is behind it?
I understand that the question might be unpopular, but think about it. Suicide is well within the realm of self-determination. If a person decides, "I'm done.", why should we not allow that, or, seek to prevent it? We might say, "It causes harm to the family." So does divorce, but our society is practically giddy about out growing spouses as a sign of maturity and knowing ourselves better.
"It's so final for a temporary condition.", might be your next line. Is it temporary? Let's say you have actual depression. Not mild depression, but major, chronic depression. That's not temporary. Drugs don't appear to work. If they do, they're masking the problem. Stop them, I mean wean yourself off them, and you're back to being depressed. Why not allow people to end it?
To loop this back to the original question, why does one deserve, where deserve sounds like a right, to be happy? When did the Universe declare that? When did we vote on that? Ultimately this idea seems to be only emotive with no thought about the human condition and ability to make our own choices.
Well after reaching the bottom of philosophical non cognizance, most people come to realize that being happy is nice and that we should try to do that. So maybe just trying to be happy and help others be happy is a decent worldview.
I'm okay with that world view. My issue was with the concept of deserving. No one deserves to be happy. You can earn happiness. There are a myriad of ways to make yourself happy or content with your situation
If we start saying you deserve happiness, then anything that makes you unhappy is an attack against your very being. It's a human rights violation. People are going to feel entitled to being blissful all the time. That is a danger road.
I’d like to mention as someone who’s mother committed suicide when I was a young child that if you choose to take your life you’re harming your family and friends In ways they’ll never fully recover from. So I request people think about that before making a decision to go through with commmiting suicide.
That story may be true, but even if it is, your belief that it is common enough to merit being a meaningful driver of increasing suicide rates is a heavy indication that your views are wildly off base.
