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Yeah I've seen some of that. I guess that's part of what I don't understand. There seems to have been this massive outpouring of utterly unhinged rage and hatr

by api 9y ago

Yeah I've seen some of that. I guess that's part of what I don't understand. There seems to have been this massive outpouring of utterly unhinged rage and hatred from a lot of otherwise very intelligent people in the past couple years and I'm not seeing the cause. I mean sure there are things to be angry about, but most of the people doing all this rage spewing are not the ones affected. They're largely upper middle class nerds with (comparatively) cushy engineering and IT careers, not factory workers in the Midwest who just lost their jobs. They seem obsessed with crime yet crime rates are declining. They're enraged at women for some unfathomable reason, and if it's sexual frustration that's a bit strange given that this is the age of Tinder and it's never been easier for a single guy to get laid. They're obsessed by Islamic terrorism but most terrorist attacks in the past 10 years in the USA have been by white males. They're obsessed by the decline of the West when the West is landing rockets, building prototype fusion reactors, and developing advanced gene therapies to delay aging. (For all the noise about the rise of China I still see China mostly just copying Western technology and culture.) I guess there is this nutty wing of leftism on some college campuses but it's a small movement that doesn't have much power beyond those little campus bubbles. It definitely doesn't justify abandoning all enlightenment ideas and resurrecting Hitlerism. I guess I just don't get it when people go insane over manufactured issues that do not affect them. I get it even less when these people are high-status privileged individuals who are in the top 1% of world income and standard of living. They don't have anything to be angry about. These people have just flat out lost their minds. Edit: I've toyed around with the idea that maybe their high status, cushy lifestyle, and immense opportunity is the problem. Maybe we have this part of our brains that's wired for adversity and if there is no adversity we go nuts and start inventing it.

JoshTriplett 9y ago
First of all: yes, everything you just said. (I do think there's a fair bit of representation of this ridiculousness at numerous different status and success levels, not just among relatively successful people, but despite that everything you said still applies.) I think there's a critically important meta-argument in what you're saying, as well. I think it's worth taking the time to understand where such mindsets come from, if only to be better able to recognize and deal with them when they arises (and they do arise far too often). I'm not an expert, though by necessity I've done a great deal of reading on the topic. There's a huge amount of documentation out there on the various motivations involved. For one of many starting points, for one facet of the problem, you might try http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2014/10/subtractive-masculinity.html http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2014/10/subtra... and http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2014/10/the-problem-with-gaming-is-subtractive-masculinity.html http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2014/10/the-pr... . (Comments are mostly a cesspool, skip them if you don't want to feel drained.) There are a hundred more issues where that comes from, but that's one particularly baffling one that does exist in broader society and provides motivation for these kinds of hate groups.

by api 9y ago

JoshTriplett 9y ago

First of all: yes, everything you just said. (I do think there's a fair bit of representation of this ridiculousness at numerous different status and success levels, not just among relatively successful people, but despite that everything you said still applies.) I think there's a critically important meta-argument in what you're saying, as well. I think it's worth taking the time to understand where such mindsets come from, if only to be better able to recognize and deal with them when they arises (and they do arise far too often). I'm not an expert, though by necessity I've done a great deal of reading on the topic. There's a huge amount of documentation out there on the various motivations involved. For one of many starting points, for one facet of the problem, you might try http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2014/10/subtractive-masculinity.html http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2014/10/subtra... and http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2014/10/the-problem-with-gaming-is-subtractive-masculinity.html http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2014/10/the-pr... . (Comments are mostly a cesspool, skip them if you don't want to feel drained.) There are a hundred more issues where that comes from, but that's one particularly baffling one that does exist in broader society and provides motivation for these kinds of hate groups.