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.
