5 ms·
We could talk about how this is largely a mental health problem. A lot of depressed young men do stupid risky stuff with no concern for their own well-being. I
by wisty 7y ago
We could talk about how this is largely a mental health problem. A lot of depressed young men do stupid risky stuff with no concern for their own well-being. I know a few guys who have wrapped their cars around trees. I bet most shooters were just throwing in the towel in a more hateful and dramatic way.
I see the main issue as a marketing problem for psychology. Men are focused on solving problems, and I'd bet they see psychology as a bunch of talk-therapy (like it's portrayed on TV shows and movies). Women might want to talk about their problems to find some kind of scapegoat, but men would often rather solve them. The ironic thing is, modern therapy is often quite problem-solving focused.
A related issue seems to be that a lot of these guys can't talk to women. As in, they can't ask women out. It's rarely their personalities or looks (look at domestic violence perpetrators if you want to see how awful you can be and still find a girlfriend), it's often that no-one wants to tell them how to ask women out (except on certain dark corners of the internet).
Recognising and addressing these kinds of problems means humanising them though. We can humanise Palestinian terrorists and drug dealers, but can we really humanise depressed and nerdy young men? I dunno.
- onetwofreddy 7y ago.
- wisty 7y agoI think that's going a bit far, the MSM can be kinda horrible to everyone. OTOH you'd have to be pretty fringe and controversial to explicitly stick up for young men.
- lumberjack 7y agoIt's not a mental health problem. It's a propaganda problem. These people aren't clinically insane. They are just enveloped in hatred. In particular dehumanization propaganda brainwashed them into seeing others as not even human. If you go to places with decades long conflicts, you'll see this mentality on display everywhere. So it's not a mental health issue. All these people aren't insane. They are just really convinced that some other people are the enemy and that those other people are not even worthy of existing at all and that their life is worthless.
- tomhoward 7y agoI can agree that it's not a problem of mental health in the sense of diagnosable conditions like major depression, schizophrenia, etc. But it is linked to the inability of people to achieve positive life outcomes - i.e., healthy friendships and intimate relationships, satisfying and well-paying jobs, and a sense of community engagement. This kind of deep hatred only develops after you've spent enough of your life absent of acceptance and love. There currently isn't an obvious path to a better life for people in this situation.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- natestemen 7y agothis is such a bad take on the real issue which is the radicalization of these men by website like the *chans. saying "this is largely a mental health problem" completely ignores the problem of large scale violence the far-right is committing, and only perpetuates thinking of these people as "lone wolves". they may seem like that from the outside, but seeing how much destruction they've done over the past few years makes it clear they are not. they are organized. treating fascism and nationalism as a "mental health problem" is a scapegoat so as not to talk about the real issue.
- nexuist 7y agoCan you not believe all of these are various inputs linked to the outcome? There are millions of far right activists and likely a non zero percentage of them have the same views as the shooter. Yet the shooter was the one to break out while the rest of them stood still. Radicalization requires people in poor situations to do its biddings; regular people may fall into the propaganda trap but most people would never sacrifice the comfort of their lives for an abstract political cause. I believe it is more of an education problem than a mental health. These movements based on the absence of facts and extremely reaching claims could only survive if the people participating do not have the tools to catch the logical snafus and realize they are being tricked. That people do not realize this and continue to fall for these movements tell me that we failed to equip my generation with the skepticism that results in critical thinking skills.