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ABigGuy4U
29d ago
Clark, who led last year’s expedition to the Afar region of northern Ethiopia, and UC Berkeley colleague Tim D. White, also said that a re-examination of a 300,000-year-old fossil skill found in the same region earlier shows evidence of having been scalped.
–The Yuma Daily Sun
WandererintheWilderness
29d ago
have the hair of a 70 year old
Wanting to keep all your hair is perfectly fair, as much as dyeing your hair, shaving, or any other aesthetic change to how you choose to style your hair. But I dislike this framing/phrase. Male pattern baldness is natural, and not a sign of aging or decrepitude - if anything it's a sign of virility and maturity.
- Aimless inspiration warning.
It might be helpful to break down different angles to attack symptoms of the rift.
Interpersonal Exit Veto (aka flight or fight, aka sorting, aka freedom of association)
I. Exit as Meme
"If Bush wins, I'm moving to Canada." We can trace the heritage of our modern Culture War to 1968. Young, progressive people really did flee to Canada to dodge the draft and exercise an exit. This exit was practical, so as to avoid the draft, but also a valuable tribal signal.
The new nationalism has, focused inhospitably on only one group of Americans—university teachers. Several thousand have arrived in recent years, either for ordinary reasons of job opportunities (Canada's universities are expanding rapidly and pay scales are rising), or for political reasons (which usually have to do with the war), or for both.
This meme, and the war that made it possible, cleaved open generational and tribal faults. Moving to Canada was a way for the professorate to escape imperialism, but it was also perceived as a giant middle finger to any remaining post-war American unity.
Move to Canada, as I experienced it, was not interpreted as a rebellious taboo. It was a light weapon in the culture war. A voice of snark that returned to national distribution for Bush 2, Election 1. One would find the meme in light hearted barbs on late night talk shows, the punch line in SNL skits, and among the sneer class in earlier internet forums. German publications even misquoted famous people's wives, because meme. The meme could be taken neither literally, nor seriously.
A bump in usage was captured by Google Trends during Bush 2, Election 2. Shown in the graphs are all the following elections where a Republican won, but notably absent in those where they did not. Its value to tabloids was double. When Famous Person didn't leave, writers got to generate a second, even snarkier article on how silly it was for Famous Person to say they were going to do a thing they didn't do. An unserious, performative part of a virus.
II. Exit as Illness
A virus which mutates and adapts as the individuals within a culture degrades. Anxious people loathe confrontation. Anxious people like the internet. The spaces a person congregates and the ideas and beliefs they soak. allow them to generate profits in the form of moral gains based valued at the spectacle.
One might protest to a Racist Uncle at Thanksgiving, "Racist Uncle, if you don't stop racism'ing at Thanksgiving I'm not coming." This escalates, and somewhere along the unforgivable takes hold. I have to imagine this, so I imagine this this is a or rationalized as a moral act of self-preservation. Once it's done once, doing so again is easier. Until you're giving the Racist Uncle treatment to your former acquaintance or your friend from high school. I wonder if Lana thought about this as a sacrifice, a necessity, or thought about it much at all.
It is easy to sneer at redditors who appear to want to give advice for the Lana's to cut off relationships. Alienation, isolation, and fatalism are all symptoms and expressions of depression. In addition, our perceived enemies can easily surround us -- even threaten us -- at all times through a small, 6" screen. The interpersonal exit veto is a product of our time, more normalized by some types than others.
I don't consider the practice of isolation, alienation, or intentionally destroying relations as a genetic inheritance for the progressive psyche to pass down. Lana experienced a life-sized collapse. To us readers, the psychological immune system she found comfort in consumed her. There's a lot of coherence and stability in ideas, even if those ideas are a false sort of immune system. As written, they consumed her. There is comfort is in praxis.
III. Exit as Veto
The choice to reciprocate a withdrawal and accept a detente is a natural resolution. There's no parity in this anecdote until the end where there is a parity of no-contact. The parity must be maintained by culture with status backing the position. Being personally caring, considerate, and reaching out can positively help in that respect, but it's a medicine. It also requires reciprocity. The model of a decent person, as I was raised, included the idea to extend if not care, then at least consideration and decency beyond the walls of our own beliefs. That's powerful, and I believe that's why I was inspired to write a response with a strange focus on an old meme. Prognosis is not positive, but I don't believe a moderately comfortable standard of living is all that supports the structure.
In my experience, most people are not so principled or ideological. They are persuadable. They are responsive. Memes like Move to Canada have influence on their behavior. This could be more worrying if it weren't such an old observation. The is fear that we sort until we will share nothing in common, and we become so comfortable that we have no interesting in commonality.
The resigned don't see a way to sustainably apply triage to strained relationships. I don't see it either. The fully resigned don't see a way to even share a government. What if all the associated sorting and vetoes protects us from a point of no return? The sides of the horseshoe that drive the poles get heavy and bends, but it doesn't break. We sort as much as is needed, as much as is convenient, and it works.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
29d ago
It's completely fine to go bald, a book that impacted me a lot, Tyler digest, has a post titled points of change where Owen Cook aka RSD Tyler willingly goes bald after realising that him telling people "looks don't matter" is hypocritical if he takes Finasteride and minoxidil.
Better to choose strength over weakness, I'd still state that fin is totally safe for most in case someone's concerned about male pattern baldness. Just my opinion.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
29d ago
How's it a sign of virility? Maturity, certainly. A physical change that's associated with aging is mostly not a sign of a virility as older people are less virile. You can be old or bald and have a lot of vigor, not denying that, I'd want to age well, hope others too.
Plenty do stop the decay but male pattern baldness isn't perceived well by most people, men included, which is why millions take medicines daily to keep whatever hair they have left.
naraburns
nihil supernum
29d ago
Any chance you could drop a couple lines about him? It's an odd setup.
Sure--let's call him Dylan. Dylan is the son of a colleague, who I met briefly when he was in town visiting his parents. Long, sun-bleached hair, deeply tanned skin, very "beach bum" aesthetic. But not in a "manic homeless" way--he was clean and taciturn. I asked him what he does, and he said he picks pineapples in Hawaii. I asked if that was a year-round thing, he said "kinda." So I asked him what he does when he's not picking pineapples, and he said "play games I guess." Any games in particular? "Older stuff, my laptop is pretty slow." RTS, FPS, RPG? "Some RPGs, yeah. I play Starcraft, too." Well, I game, I played Starcraft (more than a quarter century ago, now...), so the rest of our discussion was about Starcraft. He never gave me the impression that I was getting the brush-off, or that he was especially reluctant to talk--just that he didn't have a lot to say. He seemed nice!
His parents later told me that, after finishing high school, Dylan enlisted with the army. He'd only been in for a couple of months when another soldier assaulted him, put him in the hospital. Dylan says the guy just had some unreasonable beef; whether that was Mom being cagey, or Dylan just never explaining events in detail, I don't know. The assailant faced charges, Dylan got an early discharge. Moved back in with his parents, got a job as a night clerk at a gas station. Soon after got a girlfriend, moved in with her. Split his time between working at the gas station, and getting high with his girlfriend--marijuana at first, harder drugs later. They have a scare and decide to get clean together. Six months later, six months clean, he comes home from work--she's had some old friends over. They brought drugs. She died of an overdose--some time in the early 00s.
Dylan moves back home, largely refuses to leave his room for months. Parents start talking about getting a diagnosis, maybe disability. Then one day, he says he's going to Hawaii. What's he going to do? "Pick pineapples." Where's he going to live? "They've got dorms and stuff." He takes nothing but a duffel stuffed with clothing and some personal tech.
His parents went out to visit him once, and as far as they could determine he was at that time living in a hammock strung between some palm trees. He doesn't date. He doesn't socialize. He doesn't use the Internet. He plays video games on an old laptop, which he charges whenever it's convenient. He doesn't read, or surf. He must hike, at least sometimes, because that is the activity he took his parents out to do. He'll come stateside to visit, occasionally, if his parents buy him a plane ticket. While glad he's independent, they can't help but feel a perpetual simmering concern. As long as he's not starving or doing hard drugs, they don't want to press the issue. "He's been through a lot."
I was fascinated by the story, because on one hand, it kind of sounds to me like drugs and tragedy just fried this guy--that he's a walking husk with no ambition, no particular concern for his own well-being, just barely functioning enough to earn enough money as a laborer to keep himself alive. On the other hand, I can also imagine him a sage of stoicism, someone who has so thoroughly embraced minimalism and detachment that he has transcended the weight of social expectations entirely. No wife, no children, itinerant labor, apparently homeless, but not entirely without places to go. I poked around the Internet a bit and all the references I could find to pineapple picker dormitories are dated to the 20th century; I also learned that pineapple picking in Hawaii is a much smaller industry than it has been in the past. This tempted me toward wild speculations--is this all a ruse? Is Dylan involved in secret government operations, or organized criminal activity? His parents seem confident that his girlfriend's overdose put him off drugs extremely decisively--he only, they claim, ever used with her. But maybe they are kidding themselves?
Then I remind myself--just because I have trouble imagining the life of an itinerant laborer, does not mean they don't exist. Just because a life sounds mind-numbingly dull to me, doesn't mean it's not someone's life. But he's been at it for nearly two decades, and it seems unlikely that he has been saving for retirement. He can't pick pineapples (or whatever) in Hawaii forever. Can he?
pigeonburger
29d ago
We're all just actors in a play. We enter stage, say our lines, and exit stage. The surest way to be disappointed with this is to try to direct from the stage.
I demand a full accounting of the stage!*
Mentally healthy people do not want to self destruct, no. Doing so 'as cope' is talking themselves into it via perverse incentives, but they don't want to self destruct, they want the psychological comfort of believing they are in control.
Edit: "They just want to self destruct" is a defense mechanism. It is a person saying they have tried to help in every way they can think of and it doesn't work and so they must want it. But addicts and other mentally ill people can be helped - it's just really unpleasant and hard, harder than anyone should have to go through without a salary. Which is to say nobody should be expected to do it and shouldn't feel ashamed that they didn't. But that doesn't mean that the mentally ill want to self destruct, that doesn't mean they are intent on destroying their lives and bringing everyone else down with them - that is just easier to accept than your own helplessness.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
29d ago
Maybe it's the contrarian in me (I was a Paultard in high school/undergrad, so being at political odds with pretty much everyone is nothing new even if I'm more into Nixon than libertarianism these days and less ideologically committed in general.), but I'd take "no MAGA" as a challenge. Then again, I've always found blue tribe dilettantes to be charming, especially if they're smart and argumentative.
On a totally (not) unrelated note, I remain baffled as to why the bar I used to work at (which aspires to cater to grad students/professor types) hasn't followed my suggestion to do anything they can to market to the university law school. FFS law students might be the last group of young people that actually drink!
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
29d ago
It's pretty bad. Women are honed to sense out status and sub comms, most can sense out the left winning in the ways reactionaries describe it and choose the winning side. What happens is that the winning side is anti family and anti human in its purest form, which means that if you are an acolyte, you'll be forced to adhere to stupider arguments that others will start calling out after a while. The sunk cost ensures that you stick with it and by the end you have nothing but your ideology which makes you stick even more to your identity.
I feel terrible about these people when I hear these stories. Owning sjws seems fun because the doctrines they swear by are evil and stupid, when you step back, you see a broken person who needs help. I'm not a pro Trans fella, I also recognize that what they feel is painful. Culture wars end up eating people, it's similar to the monastic order in some small cases wherein the people who purity spiral too hard end up being wierdo asetics where all they have left to show for is their ideology.
YE_GUILTY
29d ago
how gay pederasty was morally pure compared to disgusting heterosexuality.
Ah, you know Pausanias?
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
29d ago
What happened with your post? I found it kind of hard to read in an "am I getting a stroke or is sleep deprivation finally getting to me" way from the start, but then halfway in it seems to reach the point where words are actually unambiguously rearranged out of their proper places, like in
The interpersonal exit veto (I won't be dissuaded) has a lower barrier to execute than Move to Canada. Lana's collection of ideas, beliefs, ailments, and suffering in were normalized, grown, and reinforced in she spaces sought out.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
29d ago
On the other hand, I can also imagine him a sage of stoicism, someone who has so thoroughly embraced minimalism and detachment that he has transcended the weight of social expectations entirely.
I worked with a guy like that at a locally owned version of doordash in a college town, one of many characters we employed (Our long-term staff from ownership down were ground zero of the male loneliness/failure to launch epidemic, referred to as "the lost boys" by one of the more clever among us or "the expendables" by the owner.). I don't know his specific story, but he's in his early 40s, single, lives with roommates, etc. such that he has insanely low overhead. He doesn't really drink/go to bars, doesn't do drugs other than weed I guess, and is into Marvel and videogames and that's it. If his car craps out there's always another relative with a cheap Toyota, but otherwise he's self-sufficient. Nice guy and perfectly competent, but infuriatingly lazy, truly dedicated to working as little as possible with the bare minimum of hassle necessary to meet his expenses. We jokingly refer to him as something of a monk, in contrast to the suckers who grind and spend insane amounts of money on bar tabs for the illusion that they might gat laid, or at least have a pretty bartender remember their name.
cjet79
29d ago
Great post, reminds me a bit of my parents marriage, which has thankfully and surprisingly survived the Trump years.
My mom: heavily pro-choice, bit of a hippy, microbiologist PhD, main breadwinner doing government contracting stuff, likes reading books about myers briggs personality, or deep getting in touch with your feelings type stuff. Sucks at making friends, only talks well with very close friends or family. Can be bossy and annoying unless too drunk. (cavalier culture)
My dad: redneck, carpenter (but doesn't make much money doing that these days), was barely too young to ever go to vietnam and was sad about that, weed and age have helped his anger issues, ocd, generally republican, thinks trump is funny but doesn't personally like him, loves voting for trump, hates political correctness, likes racist jokes and dropping the n-word. Makes and keeps friends easily. Easy for everyone to talk with, fun to be around. (border culture)
Idk I feel like there are multiple scenarios where both of them could have just gone a little further off the deep end on their respective sides and it would have been an end for the marriage. As much as they sort of sound like stereotypes at times (my dad being the redneck stereotype, and my mom being the PMC karen stereotype) they also have the awareness of why those sterotypes are bad and annoying. They both have friends that have fully crossed over into those stereotypes, friends who would never get along with my other parent.
I get along with all of them, both of my parents, and all the crazy friends of theirs that feel like walking stereotypes. I think you are in a somewhat similar spot as me. You are no one's outgroup and everyone's far-group. You might as well be living in a different country. I used to think that I'd just learned some social skills and had the right attitude of "I can't lose friends over politics, because my views are too weird and I will have no friends." But its really more on other people. Having enemies is usually exhausting. Smart, well adjusted people learn to keep their enemies in the hypothetical.
I have to wonder if social media and smartphonification is making people give up on relationships.
They're simultaneously encouraged by toxic groups and subreddits to dump that gaslighting abuser already!! while also being programned to feel shitty about themselves. You shouldn't have to compromise so much when it comes to love!!, after all.
There's an endless doomscroll of ways to learn how your partner is a narcissist taking advantage of your empath nature while he weaponizes his incompetence to leave cleaning the bath tub to you.
Maybe the Great Awokening is not the cause of relationship collapse so much as another head on the social media-smartphone serpent frying people's brains.
Hieronymus
29d ago
both my Baptist friends and my Pentecostal cousin are drinking (alcohol) now
This is indeed much more common than it used to be, and I think it’s a spiritually healthier place for the church to be. I have little knowledge of how it’s gone inside the holiness movement, though.
and women in pastoral roles is becoming a commonplace belief and practice
This is sort of true but in a weird way. There used to be more of a middle ground for evangelicals to combine a mostly theologically conservative outlook with gender egalitarianism. But that middle ground has eroded heavily, as the gender egalitarian types usually went liberal in other ways over time, to the point that this has become a kind of unconscious expectation. The delay for public figures to go from supporting women in ministry to deconstructing is now shockingly brief. I know some folks who still try to occupy that middle ground, but few of them are younger than Gen X.
FistfullOfCrows
29d ago
Well, they are mostly skeptical because the "experts" have done everything in their power to tarnish their image, there is no trust anymore. For a good chunk of time we've been told people are perfect blank slates and completely fungible, a woman is actually indistinguishable from a man and evolution stops at the neck you bigot. That's why those less interested in the ACTUAL science are skeptical, that and the activist class has latched onto the Trans thing after their previous raison-d'etre was "won" with gay marriage.
My personal opinion is we should be working on ways to actually change or at least ameliorate these feelings of gender or body dysphoria with a mix of therapy, an altered memeplex and drugs at the chemical/neuroplastic level. But we're not, in fact if I laid out my full position IRL, I'm sure some trans activists will brand me the second coming of the devil and want to burn me at the stake for trying to erase their class from existence with medicalism.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
29d ago
As someone with a mother who most likely suffers from BPD (Mercifully, she's been pensioned off on VA disability and has embraced the "disabled veteran" identity in middle age, so she's mostly not my problem now.), I think you more or less nailed it. It's hard to describe, but if mom loved you, you were invincible. If she hated you, you were an enemy combatant to be destroyed. If someone else you loved was the object of her ire your only recourse was to stay out of the way.
It's an amusing instead of awful story (There were plenty of those.), but to give an example when I was seven years old right after my parents had divorced my father took me mud riding in his SUV. As a little boy into all things motorized of course I had fun mud riding with dad, but when I came home and expressed that I'd had fun mother took it to mean that I loved dad more than her, and so she kicked me out of her house, threw every belonging of mine out of onto the front yard, called my dad, and told him that he could have me. Of course, it couldn't be that easy. After dad showed up and dutifully packed all my stuff into his car mom changed her mind and there was a fight. Mom won, I stayed with her, and I'll never watching my clothes sway in his his back window as he fishtailed making the turn away from her house. My parents' post divorce "co-parenting" wound up being a 15 year War of the Roses.
I'm not sure it's entirely possible to come out of that experience without a mis calibrated emotional Richter scale. I find myself drawn to emotional intensity and struggle with finding women who don't have that to be...boring (The trick is to find someone who has an intense affect, but is otherwise relatively sane.). I have a sufficiently developed fear response that the actually violent borderline types (Mom was one, but they're a minority relative to the unfixable dysfunctional black holes.) will make me run quickly, but those who are skilled at eliciting care/pity have been a sore spot in my life. I'd be lying if I said with certainty that I wouldn't ruin my life for the right combination of hot/smart/crazy. Being on the right side of it is that good.
borderlines will hurt and manipulate you as a part of hurting and manipulating themselves, and feel everything.
Yeah...that's accurate, and yes it's tragic. My last encounter was very brief (about six weeks), a roommate gone wrong. Her life's story was something akin to Jenny from Forrest Gump, sexually abused by father turned sex worker in her teens/twenties turned to drugs/alcohol to being hopelessly burned out by her mid-30s, interested only in drinking herself to death. There's "self-diagnosed on Tumblr", "diagnosed by a mental health professional but working on it", and "would never dare face a mental health professional but gives me all the heebie-jeebies", and she was firmly in the third category. I had the sense to nuke things quickly and got out of it unscathed, but I still think about her sometimes and hope that she found someone whose variety of codependency can deal with her, because she deserves better than what she's gotten/given herself from life. I just couldn't do it without being dragged down into her Hell, and as intoxicating as her affection was it wasn't worth it (could've been hot enough if she took better care of herself, wasn't smart enough to be interesting).
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
29d ago
You seem to be focused on pedantry, based on your determination that the suicidal fit who I was talking about because suicide is self destruction, so I don't think you are interested in my point. Talking, if bitching is too 'harsh'.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
29d ago
You are no one's outgroup and everyone's far-group. You might as well be living in a different country. I used to think that I'd just learned some social skills and had the right attitude of "I can't lose friends over politics, because my views are too weird and I will have no friends."
Not OP, but one of my favorite party tricks is to critique Ronald Reagan from the right by taking the left's criticism of him as accurate (Tell a Boomer that Reagan was a continuation of Carter with a more optimistic demeanor and remind the social conservatives that he legalized abortion and no-fault divorce as Governor of California along with screwing the pro-lifers by nominating O'Connor to the SCOTUS. Heads will explode.). Really though, while my beliefs best map at whatever JD Vance is stabbing at (I'm not sure he even knows at this point.), I'm not overly ideologically certain compared to my youth spent as a firm member of the Ron Paul camp. I can be polite, though, and as long as their arguments are well-reasoned instead of being cable-news tier crap I'm willing to listen to and respect anyone.
As for my parents, they divorced long ago but they're both shrieking harpies when it comes to politics. Mother has been a Hillary Clinton Democrat of the worst sort as long as I can recall while Dad went from caring little about politics to being a Catturd following Trumper who worships Elon Musk. I just don't talk politics with either of them.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
29d ago
My maybe hot take is that addicts are optimists. However intolerable they find their lives and/or motivated by warped incentives they are, they choose to kill themselves one day at a time instead of permanently, always telling themselves that they're going to quit.
Speaking as an on-off alcoholic who has generally trended from "pathetic, shut-in drunk who blacks out every night" in my early 20s to "incorrigible barfly" in my late 20s, to "weekend warrior who hits a happy hour or two a week out of boredom" I guess that my tolerance for feeling like shit during the day has declined and my desire to be present instead of hungover during the day has increased as I've gotten older. I'll probably never have great impulse control as far as drinking is concerned, but I have or at least try to have better things to do with my free time. My father has been an 18 pack of coors light a night guy as long as I can recall and I have no clue how he does it in his late 50s. I'm not tough enough and/or don't hate myself enough to do that.
I'm far from a sage or any kind of example to follow but if asked for advice I just tell people that they have to find something better to live for, something better to be for. Maybe professionals can help there, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect a layman, friend, or spouse to be able to find that thing for you.
TIRM
29d ago
Social media brainrot hits some women very hard and this is the result? People living in an online echo chamber amplifying their vague progressive leanings into extremism and cutting off all the evil conservatives, MAGAs, etc from their lives. People living the rhetoric of the lowest grade of Reddit political discourse.
I think a lot of political-extremists-by-night-milquetoast-law-abiding-citizen-by-day people, i.e. most people who comment on politics online, do actually sincerely believe that open war should be waged against their political extremist enemies, but at the same time it should obviously not be waged at the expense of the milquetoast law abiding citizen life they enjoy. It's easy to say that yeah, you support breaking out the long knives, but at lot less easy to go the extra mile to actually accept that you might lose everything you value and enjoy in the process.
So in my view it's not - not consciously - all just empty rhetorics and jokes to be in on.
Rather, the calls for violence come with the unspoken assumption that you and the people on your side can crush the despicable enemy without much resistance, because that's how people talk themelves up. Obviously my side will win, we're on the right side of history, our values are better, our enemies are idiots. But when someone nominally aligned with you goes through with acts of political violence, you suddenly realize that you aren't the well-regimented, organized and coordinated forces of good about to exterminate your weak and irredeemable enemy - you personally are sitting in comfort and luxury at home while your cause's champion is a deranged mass murderer who just killed a bunch of random people, picked a fight with the very establishment that guarantees your comfort and luxury, and got absolutely crushed by it. Your actual political enemies didn't even get to factor into it.
And there you are, left holding the bag full of needing to square that okay, that guy's intentions technically aligned with what you demanded, but obviously he's not supposed to
- be a lunatic who attacks random people instead of the enemy's champions
- be ineffective
- endanger your comfort and luxury (firstly by putting you in the establishment's sights for wrongthink, secondly by highlighting how suicidal your violence would be were you to commit it), which you aren't willing to risk no matter how infinitely evil your enemies are
Everyone who isn't Uncle-Tedding it by going off the grid entirely is a first-world citizen first, and a political extremist second.
Just as we're more concerned with female vulnerability due to men's physical aggression, I'd argue another big contributor to our concern about male loneliness is the fact that female aggression tends to manifest socially, particularly via ostracization of the target.
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