Post: #1

I was listening to one of Joe Rogan's latest podcasts where he chats with a guy named Dan Doty.

I'm usually pretty hesitant to listen to unfamiliar guests on Joe Rogan's podcast because of the hardcore left-wing arrogance that many of his interviews dive into.

Anyway, I decided to keep listening to this Dan Doty guy, because he had some pretty interesting stuff to say.

Doty eventually dives into this topic about how middle-aged white men are the "loneliest" they've ever been. He then goes on to explain that loneliness basically comes down to emotional disconnectedness, and blames social media for replacing human relationships etc. etc.

He also describes how loneliness/disconnectedness is essentially rewiring people's brains in a negative way, because humans just aren't designed to go long stretches of time without being in a tight-knit community.

He ultimately says that human connectedness is so important that it needs to be placed on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Anyway, this got me thinking about the real reasons why America is in such a tough spot.

People are going kinda crazy in America (partially) because of the extreme disconnectedness that Americans face.

America is basically built on the concept of individualism, and the culture reflects this in every way. People live relatively isolated in the suburbs. Cities are sprawling, and it takes considerable effort to *drive* around in order to meet up with friends.

When you think about some European cities or even Latin American cities where it's logistically easy to visit with friends, see family, chat with neighbors etc. - I think it makes sense why these communities are relatively happy even while probably dealing with problems related to money.

So, what are your views on human connectedness in America? Do you find it harder to form authentic connections in the U.S. compared to elsewhere?

Post: #2

Totally agree with this, it's a huge nation too, which doesn't help too much. The problem of being able to build around local shops even (butcher, baker, candlestick maker) even affects the culture by way of efficiency competing with locality and thus, connectedness.

What's even more ironic is that we have religious "communities" that we travel to go to, as well. Think about that for a second.

Post: #3

Yeah the fact that you have to travel to your religious community is actually pretty mind-blowing. I hadn't thought of that.

Post: #4

(05-02-2017 03:07 PM)stefpdt Wrote:  America is basically built on the concept of individualism, and the culture reflects this in every way. People live relatively isolated in the suburbs. Cities are sprawling, and it takes considerable effort to *drive* around in order to meet up with friends.

When you think about some European cities or even Latin American cities where it's logistically easy to visit with friends, see family, chat with neighbors etc. - I think it makes sense why these communities are relatively happy even while probably dealing with problems related to money.

So, what are your views on human connectedness in America? Do you find it harder to form authentic connections in the U.S. compared to elsewhere?

The US has many many great things, and the concept of individualism is something I admire greatly, but there are pros and cons to everything and as someone who lived in Europe and is now living in the US I can tell you that one of the things it struck me while living here was exactly that, loneliness and disconnectedness. Not that you can't feel lonely anywhere else, I surely have felt so in Europe at times too, but here, because everything is so big, so far, so sprawled, because it's so difficult to go see and be with people, and because it's such a multicultural place to the point that you feel no connection to most people, that disconnectedness and loneliness is exacerbated.

Post: #5

(05-02-2017 03:07 PM)stefpdt Wrote:  Do you find it harder to form authentic connections in the U.S. compared to elsewhere?

Yep. Allow me to make a few points and observations about Americans without sounding like I'm "anti-American", because I do love living in this country and all the comfort that comes with it.

Put bluntly, I don't find Americans genuine. This is something many other immigrants notice and part of the reason why they head back. You can read countless examples of this on the Happier Abroad forum and such. Americans will ask you how you're doing, they might even grab a beer with you after work, but they don't really want to know you. You will often find yourself having superficial conversations with them on a number of topics, they'll smile and nod at you and you'll never see them again in your life Now, that's not to say that they're hostile - they are in fact very friendly, but as someone else put it very succinctly "they're friendly but they're not your friend".

Second, as the OP says, the nature of suburban towns and how they're laid out makes building friendships all the more difficult. My mom lives on a street where the neighbors have never spoken to one another outside of block parties. I find that insane!!

I don't find unity among individuals here, everyone is just kind of working, shopping and eating. Fun in the US consists of going out to restaurants and stuffing your face.

Post: #6

“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.” -- D.H. Lawrence

A characterization that is pretty much correct and remains so -- as long as you also remember that we are just about the nicest people in the world. Try holding both of those ideas in mind at the same time and you will get some sort of sense of what the American amounts to.

Post: #7

(05-02-2017 10:08 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.” -- D.H. Lawrence

A characterization that is pretty much correct and remains so -- as long as you also remember that we are just about the nicest people in the world. Try holding both of those ideas in mind at the same time and you will get some sort of sense of what the American amounts to.

Damn, that's a good quote. Spot on.

Post: #8

I was struck by all of these posts:

(05-02-2017 03:07 PM)stefpdt Wrote:  I was listening to one of Joe Rogan's latest podcasts where he chats with a guy named Dan Doty.

I'm usually pretty hesitant to listen to unfamiliar guests on Joe Rogan's podcast because of the hardcore left-wing arrogance that many of his interviews dive into.

Anyway, I decided to keep listening to this Dan Doty guy, because he had some pretty interesting stuff to say.

Doty eventually dives into this topic about how middle-aged white men are the "loneliest" they've ever been. He then goes on to explain that loneliness basically comes down to emotional disconnectedness, and blames social media for replacing human relationships etc. etc.

He also describes how loneliness/disconnectedness is essentially rewiring people's brains in a negative way, because humans just aren't designed to go long stretches of time without being in a tight-knit community.

He ultimately says that human connectedness is so important that it needs to be placed on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Anyway, this got me thinking about the real reasons why America is in such a tough spot.

People are going kinda crazy in America (partially) because of the extreme disconnectedness that Americans face.

America is basically built on the concept of individualism, and the culture reflects this in every way. People live relatively isolated in the suburbs. Cities are sprawling, and it takes considerable effort to *drive* around in order to meet up with friends.

When you think about some European cities or even Latin American cities where it's logistically easy to visit with friends, see family, chat with neighbors etc. - I think it makes sense why these communities are relatively happy even while probably dealing with problems related to money.

Let's be clear about something: America is not built on the concept of individualism. It has metastasised into that -- we'll get to why soon -- but when you have a preamble to the US Constitution that speaks of promoting the general welfare, the common defence and a more perfect union, that's not a group of strict individualists speaking. That's a group of British traitors who know full well the only way they can fight a nation state with a military empire behind it is by fighting as one nation under God.

America is built on the concepts of self-reliance and self-responsibility, but these are perfectly in harmony with the idea of community. Wildcat miners still had to come back to communities. Storeowners opened on the prospect of there being people around to buy their goods. Indeed the 13 colonies were 13 separate communities that formed into one overall community, with the exact proviso that they would never have a feudal overlord above them all in the form of the king.

Driving everywhere, the sprawling nature of US cities -- these are 20th century products. The invention of the automobile drove this (pardon the pun) but its origin really lies in the creation of the US's major highway system. Getting your kicks on Route 66 has only been possible in the US officially since 1926. Think about that: from 1776 through to 1900 you didn't have massive highways everywhere, it would take you weeks if not months to get across the country. The Interstate Highway System was first officially built in 1956. Roosevelt and Eisenhower both championed it, Eisenhower in particular because he'd seen Germany's Autobahn system. But -- as with a lot of European products mistakenly introduced into America -- he missed the fact the US can hold Germany in it roughly 48 times or so.

It fed the 20th century diaspora and destruction of communities, but it was not the prime cause. Let's remember that America was always a big country, and its people have always had to travel to reach each other. Not everyone lived in small towns where you could always pop across the road to borrow a cup of sugar?

(05-02-2017 03:31 PM)Kid Twist Wrote:  Totally agree with this, it's a huge nation too, which doesn't help too much. The problem of being able to build around local shops even (butcher, baker, candlestick maker) even affects the culture by way of efficiency competing with locality and thus, connectedness.

What's even more ironic is that we have religious "communities" that we travel to go to, as well. Think about that for a second.

You think the average Western settler didn't have to travel substantial distances to his local church of a Sunday? Anne of Green Gables was set in 1850s Prince Edward Island in Canada -- i.e. the "civilised" part of the world -- and still talks about people having to travel for entire days even to see their close friends. Don't remember any mass complaint of loneliness or disconnectedness despite the fact people often lived several hours or even days apart. But you do find in that period a much greater sense of identity, and, consequent upon that, patriotism.

So how does one explain this, compared with the seeming isolation and disconnectedness of white middle-aged males today?

(05-02-2017 09:43 PM)Teutatis Wrote:  The US has many many great things, and the concept of individualism is something I admire greatly, but there are pros and cons to everything and as someone who lived in Europe and is now living in the US I can tell you that one of the things it struck me while living here was exactly that, loneliness and disconnectedness. Not that you can't feel lonely anywhere else, I surely have felt so in Europe at times too, but here, because everything is so big, so far, so sprawled, because it's so difficult to go see and be with people, and because it's such a multicultural place to the point that you feel no connection to most people, that disconnectedness and loneliness is exacerbated.

In short: white American males have a problem with their identity. This is a problem that has been building up since World War Two. It has also been, in part, conspiracy on the part of outside forces (notice I didn't use Teh Triple Brackets there, by the way, let's stay serious for a while). Until the Baby Boomers came along, Americans at least had an identity: rebels who held together against the old world. Then came the 60s, and postmodernism, and cultural relativism, and finally, mass narcissism: wherein generations of men are raised with no initiation ceremony into manhood. Where childhood is not (as some feared) removed but extended out into early middle age.

Where you are given no anchor of faith in God, faith in nation, or faith in ethnic identity: because the first was destroyed by patronising scientheists, the second was blown away in Dallas on 22 November, 1963, and the third could never be spoken after Francis Galton's fucked-up science and Hitler's idiocy made it a crime for a white man to glory in his pigmentation as openly and brazenly as a black man glories in his.

(05-02-2017 10:08 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.” -- D.H. Lawrence

A characterization that is pretty much correct and remains so -- as long as you also remember that we are just about the nicest people in the world. Try holding both of those ideas in mind at the same time and you will get some sort of sense of what the American amounts to.

DH Lawrence was something of a latecomer to America. Not to mention that he was an individualist and isolationist. He moved to America wanting to found a sort of proto-commie-commune, as he wrote to a socialist buddy of his back in Europe:

"I want to gather together about twenty souls and sail away from this world of war and squalor and found a little colony where there shall be no money but a sort of communism as far as necessaries of life go, and some real decency… a place where one can live simply, apart from this civilisation… [with] a few other people who are also at peace and happy and live, and understand and be free…"

And when it comes to his observation about the American soul, it's worth remembering what else he had to say about the American "condition":

Quote:When you are actually in America, America hurts, because it has a powerful disintegrative influence upon the white psyche. It is full of grinning, unappeased aboriginal demons, too, ghosts, and it persecutes the white men, like some Eumenides, until the white men give up their absolute whiteness. America is tense with latent violence and resistance. The very common sense of white Americans has a tinge of helplessness in it, and deep fear of what might be if they were not common-sensical.

[W]hen one comes to America, one finds that there is always a certain slightly devilish resistance in the American landscape, and a certain slightly bitter resistance in the white man’s heart. [Nathaniel] Hawthorne gives this. But [James Fenimore] Cooper glosses it over. The American landscape has never been at one with the white man. Never. And white men have probably never felt so bitter anywhere, as here in America, where the very landscape, in its very beauty, seems a bit devilish and grinning, opposed to us.

Moralists have always wondered helplessly why Poe’s ‘morbid’ tales need have been written. They need to be written because old things need to die and disintegrate, because the old white psyche has to be gradually broken down before anything else can come to pass.

To expand on this, Lawrence was a right winger and believed old Europe's culture was dying, and that people were therefore drawn to the US and similar for its young, supposedly pure, cultures. I think frankly he was seduced by Rosseau's myth of the noble savage and had ingested the same stupid white guilt over the American Indians that gets pushed on Australians institutionally for our aboriginal population.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #9

I believe that modern technology would also have a hand in this.

Post: #10

(05-02-2017 03:07 PM)stefpdt Wrote:  Doty eventually dives into this topic about how middle-aged white men are the "loneliest" they've ever been. He then goes on to explain that loneliness basically comes down to emotional disconnectedness, and blames social media for replacing human relationships etc. etc.

He also describes how loneliness/disconnectedness is essentially rewiring people's brains in a negative way, because humans just aren't designed to go long stretches of time without being in a tight-knit community.

I listened to the podcast. Doty sells weekend retreats to men to connect in the woods together. He talked about living in Brooklyn for seven years, and how Central Park and Prospect Park "were his salvation" living in the city, before moving his family to Montana. Now, consider the source. Doty is selling mens retreats to yuppies. To me it smacks of new age hipsterism, meets paleo, blah blah. Its a sales job. I am in the woods and I saw a bear. Gee willikers, I am a man now. I guess this is cool if you never played in the woods as a kid, but as someone who grew up hunting, fishing and camping, its not all that unique or spiritual. Truthfully if I were in the woods with a bunch of pussies who had never seen a wild animal, I would be annoyed as hell.

Does he have a point? Maybe. Porn, debt, divorce, drugs, marginalization in the media, no game, no pride, taught to 'just be themselves' as slobs their whole lives with white New Balance sneakers, what have you. Look at Robin Williams, the poster boy. Divorced into oblivion. Are Americans just weak as fuck these days, left to these devices. Most likely.

Post: #11

Yeah I saw that he sells retreats.

Camping with close friends or quality people is fun.

But I agree that taking weekend retreats with randos seems like a waste of time.

I'd much rather attend an RVF "retreat" in Bangkok.

And yes, there is always going to be the argument that the entire system is fucked.

Post: #12

(05-04-2017 07:14 PM)Stroked351w Wrote:  I believe that modern technology would also have a hand in this.

Technology is an amplifier. Nothing more. Ultimately, all technology does is make things faster or allows better economies of scale. Technology of itself did not cause the disconnectedness of the American soul, but it did enlargen and make more intense a rot that was already setting in by 1960 or so. The Internet is the exemplar of this concept, and social media the apotheosis of narcissism.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #13

(05-04-2017 08:46 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  and social media the apotheosis of narcissism.

Whats after narcissism? Do people just snap out of it and say "wow that was messed up." If narcissism is a plague, and we are signing up new ones everyday, do we lose empathy, or at some point, realize its all just chatter. Most of the young people I hear from say they want to put down their phones, but I dont really buy it.

Post: #14

(05-04-2017 08:07 PM)Vaun Wrote:  

(05-02-2017 03:07 PM)stefpdt Wrote:  Doty eventually dives into this topic about how middle-aged white men are the "loneliest" they've ever been. He then goes on to explain that loneliness basically comes down to emotional disconnectedness, and blames social media for replacing human relationships etc. etc.

He also describes how loneliness/disconnectedness is essentially rewiring people's brains in a negative way, because humans just aren't designed to go long stretches of time without being in a tight-knit community.

I listened to the podcast. Doty sells weekend retreats to men to connect in the woods together. He talked about living in Brooklyn for seven years, and how Central Park and Prospect Park "were his salvation" living in the city, before moving his family to Montana. Now, consider the source. Doty is selling mens retreats to yuppies. To me it smacks of new age hipsterism, meets paleo, blah blah. Its a sales job. I am in the woods and I saw a bear. Gee willikers, I am a man now. I guess this is cool if you never played in the woods as a kid, but as someone who grew up hunting, fishing and camping, its not all that unique or spiritual. Truthfully if I were in the woods with a bunch of pussies who had never seen a wild animal, I would be annoyed as hell.

Does he have a point? Maybe. Porn, debt, divorce, drugs, marginalization in the media, no game, no pride, taught to 'just be themselves' as slobs their whole lives with white New Balance sneakers, what have you. Look at Robin Williams, the poster boy. Divorced into oblivion. Are Americans just weak as fuck these days, left to these devices. Most likely.

The idea of the Men's Retreat is what I call a Manosphere 1.0 idea: it's in all the early literature like Iron John, At My Father's Wedding, and Steve Biddulph's early editions of Manhood. The idea that the early manosphere writers had was that if you could give men back their initiation rituals they'd be psychologically a lot healthier.

Noble idea, and maybe even stood a chance of working if done right. But as The Last Psychiatrist says about your parents, you're simply outnumbered. The entire culture is built around making you spend more money; and the only way they do that is to keep you infantilised, since children by definition don't have to worry about the cost of the things they want (notice I didn't say worry about paying for the shit you want: there's a difference).

One night cold and shivering in a forest somewhere is not going to change that. And it's even worse when you provide a Disneyland version of the initiation experience, either. I don't believe in the myth of the noble savage, but they did get a couple of things right. Australian Aboriginal boys became men when they were circumcised in their teens. The American Indian bravo had to go into the wilderness, get fucking high, and have a vision quest before he could become a man. And all of these assumed the boy was in a small community or a family that was constantly around him, something that does not exist in the West at large. I guarantee you the Doty version of the male initiation ritual is nothing but a sensory experience. It's not a psychological one, and it's the psychological experience that matters far more.

Many male initiation rituals required a ritual wounding, a scar inflicted. You have to be a little wounded in the brain to become an adult, because you have to become aware of your own mortality before you can really grow up. Only then do you look at the world with a wether eye, only then do you have a chance of resisting the consumerist bullshit they throw at you.

In primitive tribes they brought this mortality on in the initiation ritual ... and note that sometimes men didn't survive it. Indeed those that didn't pass the ritual were often treated as dead men, cast adrift from their communities, ghosts. None of that applies in the Disneyland Time To Grow Up Weekend, I promise you that, which is why it won't be effective.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #15

(05-04-2017 08:54 PM)Vaun Wrote:  

(05-04-2017 08:46 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  and social media the apotheosis of narcissism.

Whats after narcissism? Do people just snap out of it and say "wow that was messed up." If narcissism is a plague, and we are signing up new ones everyday, do we lose empathy, or at some point, realize its all just chatter. Most of the young people I hear from say they want to put down their phones, but I dont really buy it.

In answer I would quote the Last Psychiatrist:

Quote:Q. Describe the march of the past century.
A. Fascism, then socialism, then narcissism.
Q. What differentiates the three?
A. Technology.
Q. What followed fascism?
A. War.
Q. What followed socialism?
A. War.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #16

(05-04-2017 11:31 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

(05-04-2017 08:54 PM)Vaun Wrote:  

(05-04-2017 08:46 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  and social media the apotheosis of narcissism.

Whats after narcissism? Do people just snap out of it and say "wow that was messed up." If narcissism is a plague, and we are signing up new ones everyday, do we lose empathy, or at some point, realize its all just chatter. Most of the young people I hear from say they want to put down their phones, but I dont really buy it.

In answer I would quote the Last Psychiatrist:

Quote:Q. Describe the march of the past century.
A. Fascism, then socialism, then narcissism.
Q. What differentiates the three?
A. Technology.
Q. What followed fascism?
A. War.
Q. What followed socialism?
A. War.

I dont really see any proof socialism died. Fascism isn't as trendy or prevalent as it once was, instant communication sort of prevents it now. Dictators can't hide their atrocities now. We can say WW2 ended blatant fascism, but socialism? The Berlin Wall coming down, Soviet Union collapse? I dont know what battle or event can truly put a flag on that event. The US is a socialist country, as are all G7 and major countries. I don't think its going anywhere.

But if there is a war with narcissism, what are the sides? Men and women? Empathetic people vs. narcissists? If narcissists truly can not handle adverse events well, which is one of their defining traits, wouldn't any sort of traumatic event knock them back into place? War, depression, etc. Any sort of major event will make them irrelevant again in my mind.

I tend to view things pre and post 9/11. I think it affects our world much more than is discussed. Pre-9/11, we were a much more peaceful country. You could argue that crime has dropped dramatically, which is true, but we are divided more than ever, racially, economically, personally, etc. Why is that? Pre-9/11, there was much less tension on the streets of the US. Travel, commerce, the economy, consumerism, etc. Things were stable and growing. Now, everything is in flux, day after day, week after week. Its easy to blame social media as the genesis for rampant narcissism, but I see it as nihilism, in a society full of young adults that witnessed unimaginable death and destruction in the earliest ages. I watched the Challenger disaster as a kid, in a 4th grade classroom. That was nothing, what does that do to a people, an entire global generation of people that watched this as children? People are living for now, apps and phones enable that even faster, and IG ho's happen as a result. Narcissism is a required ingredient of nihilism.

Post: #17

TigerMandingo is spot on.

European who lives in Southern California speaking here. It is literally impossible for me to make American friends. I must recognize I am not the most social person ever, but I had never experienced anything similar in my life. People here are rootless , soul-less individuals.

People don’t want to know me. They are just veeeeery nice and friendly. That’s all.
I define American Friendship as a function
f: person x activity \rightarrow {0,1}

So, I indeed do stuff with people, but those people only "serve" for that activity and that’s all.

Added to the fact that I am not a leftist or democrat, my isolation is total. Pussy is relatively easy here, though.

Wait, let me correct. Yes, I do have "friends"... females who like me. But male American friends? Forget about it. Especially white American men.

I see white American men as the no-women, no-gay, no-black, no-minority humans. Their identity is only retrieved when they are to be blamed of anything. Identity politics is perverse.

Another little comment. Something that surprised me A LOT, is how easily the words "creepy" and "angry" are associated with adult white men. It is unbelievable. I will definitively NOT get old in SoCal.

Post: #18

(05-05-2017 12:27 PM)Vaun Wrote:  

(05-04-2017 11:31 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

(05-04-2017 08:54 PM)Vaun Wrote:  

(05-04-2017 08:46 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  and social media the apotheosis of narcissism.

Whats after narcissism? Do people just snap out of it and say "wow that was messed up." If narcissism is a plague, and we are signing up new ones everyday, do we lose empathy, or at some point, realize its all just chatter. Most of the young people I hear from say they want to put down their phones, but I dont really buy it.

In answer I would quote the Last Psychiatrist:

Quote:Q. Describe the march of the past century.
A. Fascism, then socialism, then narcissism.
Q. What differentiates the three?
A. Technology.
Q. What followed fascism?
A. War.
Q. What followed socialism?
A. War.

I dont really see any proof socialism died. Fascism isn't as trendy or prevalent as it once was, instant communication sort of prevents it now. Dictators can't hide their atrocities now. We can say WW2 ended blatant fascism, but socialism? The Berlin Wall coming down, Soviet Union collapse? I dont know what battle or event can truly put a flag on that event. The US is a socialist country, as are all G7 and major countries. I don't think its going anywhere.

I merely said that war follows fascism and socialism. Not that it brings an end to either.

Socialism survives only so long as the economy allows for it, as Margaret Thatcher noted. The most recent example of this is Venezuela, albeit that is not following the standard model of economic implosion following hyperinflation because Maduro has the horror triptych of controlling the ports, the money supply and the food supply via nationalisation. When hyperinflation arrives - and it must, eventually, given the state of the US's national debt and the fact it's still climbing - there may be hardcore union rioting and trying to turn to communism as the solution, but the reality -- especially combined with narcissism -- will be brutal individualism on a national scale. It won't turn into Lord of the Flies, but I think the US stands a good chance of outright balkanisation between Latino and white communities at least. Black communities, less so: they're in a constant state of war on themselves, there's no real cultural coherence there. When the economy crashes, women's value tends to flatline just as clearly as the stock market does. And socialism is a woman's value.

(05-05-2017 12:27 PM)Vaun Wrote:  But if there is a war with narcissism, what are the sides? Men and women? Empathetic people vs. narcissists? If narcissists truly can not handle adverse events well, which is one of their defining traits, wouldn't any sort of traumatic event knock them back into place? War, depression, etc. Any sort of major event will make them irrelevant again in my mind.

Resilience is not the same thing as narcissism. The former is a product of the education and cultural systems that operated on kids from roughly the 1980s to the 2000s, the latter is the dominant mental illness afflicting the entirety of the Western world across four generations: Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, millennials. They certainly are what a doctor would call co-morbid conditions, i.e. where there's one you often find the other, but they are not identical. There are many examples of narcissists who took adverse events extremely well precisely because they believed it was part of their personal story. The key thing that narcissists lack is an ability to love other people, being aware of it at a deep level, and it being a cause for massive frustration in their lives. That is: an inability to connect with others.

The war with narcissism is one waged against the self. And most people cannot win wars against themselves, as evidenced by the massive obesity rate and the massive antidepressant prescription rate in the United States. As with a lot of things, human beings resist change until it is forced upon them.

An economic collapse might catalyse such a change, make people actually look up from their smartphones and see real people around them. The flapper girls all disappeared when the Depression hit and Wall Street started raining bankers. But defeating narcissism essentially requires a person to accept, at a very real and deep level, that the people around them have lives as meaningful and real as their own. And the biggest problem is that we've systematically destroyed most of the crutches/supports that human beings have used in the past to help that recognition along: religion is not credible (but science hasn't given any code of meaningfulness to replace it), nations are not credible, and even your race is not credible.

Of course a narcissist feels disconnected all the time: he isn't talking to anybody as real as he is. You know the old joke about two narcissists who go out together? They spend the entire evening waiting for the other person to close his mouth so he can talk more about himself.

(05-05-2017 12:27 PM)Vaun Wrote:  I tend to view things pre and post 9/11. I think it affects our world much more than is discussed. Pre-9/11, we were a much more peaceful country. You could argue that crime has dropped dramatically, which is true, but we are divided more than ever, racially, economically, personally, etc. Why is that? Pre-9/11, there was much less tension on the streets of the US. Travel, commerce, the economy, consumerism, etc. Things were stable and growing. Now, everything is in flux, day after day, week after week. Its easy to blame social media as the genesis for rampant narcissism, but I see it as nihilism, in a society full of young adults that witnessed unimaginable death and destruction in the earliest ages. I watched the Challenger disaster as a kid, in a 4th grade classroom. That was nothing, what does that do to a people, an entire global generation of people that watched this as children? People are living for now, apps and phones enable that even faster, and IG ho's happen as a result. Narcissism is a required ingredient of nihilism.

Nihilism is to reject any meaningfulness in life at all. Narcissism is the opposite: it rejects any meaningfulness to existence except as it relates to the self.

Even so, it's interesting you bring up 9/11. The Last Psychiatrist finds the effect of the event was puzzling:

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/03/r...atrix.html

Quote:9-11 should have marked the end of the postmodern era, and of the cultural narcissism we were all a part of.

This was an external reality vigorously asserting that it was not going to be the setting of anyone's personal movie.

It caused three narcissistic injuries:

(Recall: a narcissistic injury is when the narcissist learns that his preferred identity is not accepted by others.)

First, it defied the size and time. Some things never get destroyed. Remember WTC bombing 1993? Shrugged off because there was a feeling that the Towers could never really fall; see? They didn't. Neither could Reagan really die; neither could we have a real war (Falklands, Beirut, Gulf I.) There were doomsayers and crackpots, of course. But the real world plodded along averagely.

Interesting: we accused the media of hyping things because what we understood is that such big events can't really happen, but the media needs a story.

We were satisfied with our postmodern explanation because for most people's life spans, nothing gigantic happened. Cold War ended: meh. It was all hype anyway, government bluster, invented to keep us scared and subservient. Not real. Not like global warming.

The narcissist says: if it can't happen to me, it can't really happen. 2500 Americans can't just die in one day.

But 9/11 was different. It didn't respect the rules.

Second, it violated the most important aspect of postmodern narcissism: story. Not only was the attack a surprise-- no warning, no buildup, no exposition, no rising action-- but even the characters were a surprise.

At least if it had been the Russians, or even aliens, it would have followed a previously understood narrative. Has anyone seen this movie before?

We didn't know they even existed. Tali what? Did anyone know the backstory? Was there a movie with them as the bad guys? Back To The Future!-- wait, weren't they Libyans?

Turns out we are just bit characters in someone else's movie.

Third: we were revealed to be powerless. No heroes. No one knew kung fu. Who was there left to fight, anyway?

Were they any heroes? Anybody? How about... firemen?

Ultimately, 9/11 contradicted The Matrix. We weren't more than we appeared, but less.

We were so psychologically paralyzed that the very first thing we did was change the language to minimize the narcissistic injury, the discovery that other people were able to affect us. We called Oklahoma City a bombing. This was just a date.

On one sunny, cloudless Tuesday, postmodernism was obliterated. Two days short of Neo's thirtieth birthday.


Narcissistic Injuries Result Always In Rage...

If you are under 23, this probably won't have the same significance: the government, the media, and the American public were seriously debating the use of nuclear weapons.

We got Iraq, say whatever else you want. Right or wrong, it would never have been possible pre-9/11.

... Or Denial

But 9/11 didn't take. I cannot explain this. Within a year, two years, we were back to the same old narcissism. "Everything changed after 9-11" turned out to be exactly false. The stock market went back into familiar bull run mode, and in 2006 Time named "You" it's Person of the year, a laughable move at any time in history, let alone post-9/11 and waist deep in Iraq. 9/11 should have changed everything. It changed nothing.

And The Matrix is Good For Another Two Sequels

So we went back to the teachings of The Matrix. Back to individualism, back to defining yourself based on what you believe rather than what you do. Self-entitlement, self-fulfillment, and until then the thousand yard stare of hope. The ideas in The Matrix should have given us ten more years of narcissism, until the "next thing" came along. And, indeed, it did.

You might say that the Great Recession we're in now should end postmodern narcissism. Nope. Amazingly, all I hear and read are calls for punishing those who got us into this mess (Wall Street), "fixing the system," "solving the housing crisis." People are waiting for things to "get back to normal." People: this is normal. The past twenty years-- easy credit, college for everyone that leads to a job at Starbucks, unemployment under 6%-- that was abnormal. We associate the word "unemployment" with steel workers, but do you think any economy not top heavy with credit can afford to pay 600 extra Starbucks stores worth of baristas $8/hr? Or computer programmers $50k? Don't yell at me-- I'm not saying they aren't worth it-- I'm saying this economy cannot, and could never, afford it.

I know, greedy companies are outsourcing to India because they want to maximize profits. You say that thinking that if they stayed in America, they'd make less profits. Wrong. They'd close.

"You don't know what you're talking about. Why would Toyota build plants in Alabama and hire American workers if it wasn't profitable?" Because it gets them two senators and a bunch of congressmen, that's why.

Instead of having that discussion, the one we're having is whether we should tax AIG bonuses at 90%. I know I'm alone in this, but someone has to say it: this is idiocy. Sure they don't deserve those bonuses, but really, is this the best use of Congress's time? Really? "But it's about perception." Isn't it time we focused on something more than perception? Isn't our obsession with perception exactly what is wrong with us?

So: two huge historical realities have had no impact on our cultural narcissism.

This is further support to my contention that meaningful cultural change can't happen to a society while it still lives. It requires a change in generation, in biology.

Thankfully, we are setting them up very nicely.

From twenty years surfing what is becoming the great collective unconscious of the planet it does not seem to me that any great change is on its way, unfortunately. War will follow narcissism -- most likely with Islam since it's one narcissistic culture meeting another -- but it will be a proxy war for the war the West faces with itself.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #19

Check out bowling alone by robert putnam, has some really interesting things to say on just this topic.

Post: #20

In a word: liberalism. And in more than one way.

In 1965, there was an immigration act that drastically increased the amount of non-white immigration into the United States. Many people in the U.S. are now not only different races from each other, which could sometimes work, but many immigrants have also kept their own religions, cultures, ideologies, and sometimes languages. People simply have much less in common with their neighbor than they did 50 years ago. Race baiters like Sharpton/Jackson telling minorities that all of their problems are due to whites hasn't helped either. On top of that, victim politics causes another split within white America - with white liberals accusing conservatives of racism for not "checking their privilege", and white conservatives growing to hate their white liberal neighbors because of their bad-faith accusations.

Another aspect is feminism. With changes in divorce and child support laws - California Governor Ronald Reagan signing the first no-fault divorce bill into law - families became much easier to break up. Women could not only break up the family on a whim - they were usually rewarded for it. Kids grew up somewhat disconnected from one of their parents, and the parents probably became more wary of the opposite sex as well. Feminism also taught young women that men were evil and oppressive, so that in some ways the two sexes became distanced from each other before marriage could even happen.

The last thing I want to touch on is "individualist" propaganda. Now I believe that certain individual rights are extremely important, but that's not what I'm talking about. You look at TV shows for example, from sitcoms to commercials, and you'll see what I mean. Buy the new sports drink that "sets you apart" from everyone else. Oh look, another joke about how your dad is a total idiot. A movie making divorce look "fun". All of that almost seems like it is meant to separate people - not just group from group - but even individual from group. It seems really weird and a little dystopian, too.

Anyways, that's my .02.

Post: #21

(05-12-2017 09:10 PM)SirTimothy Wrote:  Another aspect is feminism. With changes in divorce and child support laws - California Governor Ronald Reagan signing the first no-fault divorce bill into law - families became much easier to break up. Women could not only break up the family on a whim - they were usually rewarded for it. Kids grew up somewhat disconnected from one of their parents, and the parents probably became more wary of the opposite sex as well. Feminism also taught young women that men were evil and oppressive, so that in some ways the two sexes became distanced from each other before marriage could even happen.

I've been thinking, one of the more subtle effects of the easy availability of divorce, is that when you know you can just remarry (and maybe get some a new wife who's just as good or better), it becomes easier to become colder toward your wife if it gets to a point where she's threatening to leave, or has already left.

If she says, "I'm leaving you," then the endgame, as the system is set up now, is that six months or a year later she's probably going to file divorce papers. Then you're free to remarry. As long as you don't have one-itis, and as long as you didn't get her pregnant, what's the downside? It's easy to have an attitude of, "Don't let the door hit you on your way out, BITCH." You may already be looking forward to sliding into an 18-year-old's pussy rather than worrying about the woman who just left.

If, on the other hand, divorce didn't exist, then her leaving wouldn't really have much of an upside. It wouldn't set you free to remarry. So you'd be more inclined to want to stay on good terms with her, in hopes of salvaging the relationship.

These days, Facebook can cause separation or divorce to become a scorched-earth affair, where your wife ruins your reputation on her way out. The damage is done when she makes her announcements and gives explanations to people (including your friends and family), and then she can't really go back to you without looking like a fool. So Facebook helps keep you apart.

The silver lining is that the friends and family you lose in these situations probably weren't that great anyway, because they were, after all, Facebookers.