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State of Health Report Shows Growing Despair Among American Men

166 points by eplanit 7y ago

hestipod 7y ago
I've spent every night for the last few months trying to find a way/reason to keep going mentally. Before that it was every other night, a few times a week, few times a month etc. Before the inciting event for this decline, badly done and ultimately unneeded surgery fifteen years ago taking away everything, I never ONCE considered this. In fact I was positive when discussing the topic that I would NEVER do such a thing and that there would always be a way, always be family or friends, always be a system there to hold me up. Because that's what I had been indoctrinated to believe. It wasn't true. I worked hard, in a career beneficial to society. I helped people, always had great empathy, and treated others with respect. Even then I didn't really get it when I would come across someone like I am now. Someone who suffered and lost it all. Someone on the edge. I did what I could to help them but I was as ignorant and naive as ever believing the rest of the system and society would give them that same attention and value. I thought it would be ok. It's not ok. The truth is in American society has decided human life and security isn't the most important thing. It's decided INDEPENDENCE and profits and ego and the chance to be wealthy and powerful is. Everyone for themselves. Guns are rights but healthcare is an "entitlement". Equality is somehow "wrong".If you need help you are "weak" and a "loser" and "nobody is going to live off MY tax money". They think if you can even open your eyes, or type an occasional rant online, that means you can grind away like everyone else and "why don't you just" and they KNOW this is true because they KNOW they would be able to when they reached this unfathomable state. Saying this will make a lot of people angry because nationalism is an identity for many and ultimately proves the point. About the same time my health was ruined a friend in Belgium had a similar experience. He was given social support to keep his flat, healthcare, spent a few years reeducating in a new skill and was able to reenter society and function. He has a happy life and family now. My experience was denials from government assistance programs, struggling to manage with savings and small private pension but no health insurance, watching a family full of puritanical hypocrites turn away and blame. My friend lost something of his life, but was allowed to regain one worth living and not fear every little bump being the end. He gets to have a future as a result. I do not. Next came cycles of motivation and disappointment and trying as hard as I could to hold it together only to have things collapse because with more limits and needs nobody can manage that alone despite what everyone needs to believe for their own mental security. The root of victim blaming right there folks. Some people are always going to need help. Some can rebuild at least some but still need help doing so. Stability. Access. Caring. After you see that help isn't coming comes the anger...then that anger slowly morphs into despair. Then one day comes this indescribable sensation that even the moment before you couldn't believe would ever TRULY happen even thinking abstractly about it. Acceptance. Not acceptance of the decline. Not acceptance of the despair. Acceptance that you aren't afraid to let all of this life go anymore. You don't WANT to not BE...but you want to not be THIS. You want suffering, judgement, isolation, pain, complete lack or agency in LIFE anymore. You are exhausted all the time and it's not worth the tiny if any moments of joy anymore. You are still rational. You aren't running around with your underwear on your head and flinging you poo at people. You are just running on empty, You swim as hard as you can and you sink, you relax and go with it and you sink, nothing works. It's always said to be your fault, not the fact you were unceremoniously dropped in the ocean and told to fend for yourself whilst people give "advice" from the shore like "just learn how to swim" and then get offended when you cannot as if your drowning insults them. You have walked over every "next hill" for years looking for petrol, and it's never there. Or if it IS there 1/1000000000 times and some nice and truly well meaning shopkeeper is smiling and waving you there, someone else swoops in front and takes the rest or the shop closes right as you straggle up to it because you stepped in a hole and that slowed you down even more. Despair isn't some inexplicable thing. It's 99% of the time rooted in clear, multiple causes. But this society, ESPECIALLY this society, won't face or address them. Most people like me don't end up like me out of some fault in themselves or some unsolvable problem. But it's easier to punch down for both ego fulfillment and to bolster your own feelings of personal safety because YOU are better than that and it will never happen to you. You were smart, and planned, and have good people around you. Well guess what...the "Just World" isn't. There was a time I was an activist for health and social issues. It never had any macro effect. I tried to "just get out of you don"t like it!" Doing that alone is very, very hard and I could never get it to work permanently. The damage done here would follow me everywhere and ironically block the path to even a life in those better conditions. There was a time I thought about crazy things like applying for asylum in a more socially conscious country, but the truth is people in this situation don't get approved. I am out of fuel and hope, there is no petrol station over the next hill, and my bootstraps were worn to dust years ago. There are countless people like me and nobody here ever thinks they will be one of them.
- codyb 7y ago
  I think a big issue is the incredible juxtaposition between what you learn about America as a child... The land of opportunity Work hard and be rewarded The shining nation on the hill And what you see as an adult Lose your job? No healthcare, and little support Get cancer? Go bankrupt and lose everything if you’re not lucky or super rich Let’s pass major legislation! Oh great another huge tax cut for the mega rich. Go to school? Be saddled in debt for decades. Get out of school? Work multiple jobs just to make ends meet in a system that favors employers And how’re you supposed to escape? By buying material possessions that don’t bring lasting quality of life improvements, or by wallowing away in a drugged up haze, or by binge watching television and other media. We’re supposed to be the leaders of the free world but we our government is increasingly disfunctional and tailored to special interests and the wealthy. Meritocracy? Ha. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is being hollowed out. This administration certainly hasn’t helped as it amplifies its fear based rhetoric of migrants, and crime while pushing us backwards on climate initiatives and ruining our reputation abroad. It’s no wonder people are depressed. Wage slavery sucks, living on a knife’s edge sucks, and there’s really not much going on to change it. I’m pretty hopeful for the younger generations, but boy is it a mess they’re inheriting.
  - alfromspace 7y ago
    Meritocracy? Ha. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is being hollowed out. This administration certainly hasn’t helped as it amplifies its fear based rhetoric of migrants Migration was and is a big part of the process. Not the only part, but still a problem to be solved. If you presumably want a European-style healthcare system in America and a job market that doesn't only favor employers, you'll need to acknowledge that the laws of supply and demand apply to labor and social services, and that an all-inclusive welfare state and mass migration can't work together.
    - ljw1001 7y ago
      > If you presumably want a European-style healthcare system in America and a job market that doesn't only favor employers... This doesn't stand up to the least amount of reflection. There are immigrants in Europe. If you look at European countries individually there is massive immigration between them, as well as immigration from outside. And yet. The US system favors employers not because of free-market competition between employees (or at least not predominantly so) but because corporations have bought the US government and twist every law to their advantage. Destroying the last vestiges of labor unions was just one small part.
RocketSyntax 7y ago
Feel like we're either fat and unmotivated, or overworked and unsatisfied... with only a thin slice finding something in the middle.
- 40acres 7y ago
  Just turned 28 and can say I easily fit the bill for 3/4 of these descriptions. I've been chalking it up to a quarter life crisis and am desperate for a geographic move to add some new experiences to my life.
  - notadoc 7y ago
    Moving will briefly introduce new experiences but you will quickly adjust. Finding and developing new interests and hobbies is a much better longterm solution.
    - freehunter 7y ago
      I've moved and helped friends move quite a bit, and in my anecdotal experience, the only way a geographical change helps if either if you just can't do what you need to do in your home town (like moving to SV or NYC for work) or if your home town life is absolutely toxic and you can't get away from it without leaving. I moved across the country for no good reason except to move. Absolutely nothing was different. I was still the same person, except now without friends or family. I wasn't running from anything but everything followed me anyway. I've had half a dozen friends in the same situation. You can't run from yourself. Meanwhile I helped a friend move about a year ago because she couldn't get away from high school drama. She was in her 30s, and still caught up in high school drama from her high school friends. She moved away and made new friends and completely cut her old friends out of her life. Massive difference. I've had friends of friends do the same thing when their family life was toxic. Big help from the sounds of it. Immigrants do it constantly, running from toxic politics to start a new life in a safer place. It works. But if you're running from yourself? You can't run fast enough or far enough. You will always be you. Fix that before you fix your geography, or it will just be a very expensive lesson learned. It took a long time for my bank account to recover from my move and even longer for my circle of friends to recover.
AtlasBarfed 7y ago
Despite it's dubious underpinnings and specious applications, the theory of the disposable male seems to fit this. The only thing the majority of men are useful to in society is work/production. If you take that away, then the other function of men (reproduction/fertilization) can be accomplished by a much smaller fraction of the male population. We are taking away the only thing that justifies the existence of most men, and we are reminding them of it every day with the society we are creating with no safety net or healthcare. But after the last election, I stopped caring.
- Ancalagon 7y ago
  The article mentions younger female age groups are also experiencing marked increases in ODs and suicide rates, albeit not as quickly. It is not just men dying more often from despair. Additionally, the female age-adjusted obesity rate is higher than men's (41%! vs 38%) which can lead to larger health problems later in life, so we may only just be seeing the S-curve for equivalently increased female mortality rates.
  - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
    It must be really hard being obese in a media-saturated world of photoshopped instagram.
- bwb 7y ago
  Well said, i am so frustrated for how much value american culture puts on work but not life for men. I think all Americans could benefit from a better balance between the two...
  - t34543 7y ago
    This isn’t helped with the feminism bandwagon. It’s turner into a power struggle, and lost bearing on what’s right.
    - daseiner1 7y ago
ljw1001 7y ago
> The decline in life expectancy is occurring in part due to deaths from despair. From 2007 to 2017, the mortality rate from drug overdoses increased 82% This is a perfect example of how corporate greed (and a political system that now mostly exists to support it) is ravishing the American people. After decades of obvious abuses, the company pushing OxyContin is finally being stopped, but no one is going to jail (see: https://www.npr.org/2019/09/19/762455218/as-drugmakers-face-opioid-lawsuits-some-ask-why-not-criminal-charges-too https://www.npr.org/2019/09/19/762455218/as-drugmakers-face-...), and although the company is bankrupt, we're merely locking the barn door after the billions have escaped.
- notadoc 7y ago
  You're looking at the symptom rather than the disease. The despair is the disease. Drug and alcohol use are from people self-medicating their symptoms. If anyone cared to address this problem, they'd look at what causes despair. That despair is often from economic and social distress. Instead, everyone is outraged up on a media and politically driven moral panic about pharmaceutical medication that happens to be rarely abused and is almost never addictive (fewer than 0.1% chance of becoming addicted to prescribed painkillers, study on over 640,000 patients, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27400458 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27400458).
  - whiddershins 7y ago
    No, drug and alcohol addiction definitely can produce despair. Causation can and does work both ways in this one, causing a spiral which is almost impossible to trace back to a single thing. No, I don’t think economic problems per se cause despair. People are richer, much richer, than 100 or 1000 years ago. I don’t think that changes the fundamental human struggle with meaning, hope, purpose, and everything else that wards off despair.
    - harimau777 7y ago
      I think that part of the problem may be that people are richer in ways that don't make them happy or give them meaning, and poorer in ways that do. Most notably, it seems to me that owning your own house and land would bring a much greater sense of autonomy, accomplishment, control, etc. than more consumeristic things like TVs, video games, fancy food, etc. (not that its bad that those things exist).
mikelyons 7y ago
The main driver of my suicidality is the mate prospects. Seems like I'll only be able to end up marrying a divorcee with two kids who doesn't want any more children ... :(
- notadoc 7y ago
  What makes you think that? There are tons of childless women out there who want families, if that is what you are interested in.
  - TurkishPoptart 7y ago
    Well, for starters, if you don't have decent financial prospects, that's a problem for a lot of potential mates. Secondly, the best and most eligible women live in Ukraine and Russia, and it's not always so easy for them to come here.
    - daseiner1 7y ago
      yikes
    - eq_sd_ 7y ago
      > best and most eligible women live in Ukraine and Russia wut
      - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        I'm hoping that was sarcasm... (The GP, not the parent.)
        non-entity 7y ago
        I highly doubt it. I may get downvoted for saying this, but these sort of article bring out loads of garbage content in general.
    - throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
notadoc 7y ago
This is not too surprising for many reasons. Also, a significant part of modern American culture actively devalues men and thinks of men and masculinity as problematic. This is particularly true within certain political movements and social cultures. That has health consequences, as is already widely known from many studies on various other forms of discrimination and discriminatory movements.
- downerending 7y ago
  This has become a lot more noticeable within the last few years (e.g., the Washington Post editorial "Why can't we hate men?"), and it is indeed having a negative effect on my state of mind. Not easy to do, but I've been working hard on withdrawing from social media, outrage news, etc., and those who are wrapped up in it. It seems appealing in the moment, but I do think it ultimately contributes to this sort of despair.
tathougies 7y ago
The good news is that the social groups where both traditional masculinity and femininity are not looked down upon (typically conservative, religious folks, not necessarily any particular religion, either) will grow due to the higher birth and family stability rates. This will hopefully lead to better mental health for both men and women who are suffering under the current system.
- matt4077 7y ago
  That theory (with a different group of people) has been a favorite of racists for at least two centuries. Yet, somehow, it never really materialises. In your specific case, it is bound to fail because the children of religious parents are rather likely to leave religion. The various kinds of injustice children experience at the hand of religious organisations helps in that regard. If you don't believe me, just think back in time: religious people have always had more children. And yet, religion has a been declining for a long time. Among the most reproduction-happy have been groups like the Amish. But they haven't taken over the US, have they?
  - scottlocklin 7y ago
    >Among the most reproduction-happy have been groups like the Amish. But they haven't taken over the US, have they? You realize their population in 1900 was around 6000, and they're now 325,000 right? At current "population doubles every 20 years" rates, well, it won't be long now.
  - tathougies 7y ago
    Really? I'm pointing out that religious populations like Catholics and Muslims are increasing and im being accused of racism? These are the two most diverse religious groups on the planet. Your accusation is laughable
_bxg1 7y ago
The headline is a weird, cherry-picked minor point from within the article. I had to Ctrl+F to even find it (after skimming).
Shivetya 7y ago
well the vilification in the media certainly does not help, the amount men are bombarded with the message that they are source of so much wrong has to be overwhelming to many. anecdotal nonsense, a few years back we went through a wave of new HR videos about harassment and intimidation and not one had a non male aggressor. it was so bad the women attending the sessions were mocking the presentation. fortunately they canned that approach not long after after the poor reception.
- threatofrain 7y ago
  Is the media really shaming young men for being useless? What are the most notable movies or shows?
  - Doxin 7y ago
    Anecdotally it seems to me that the "lazy, young, and failing at everything" stereotype is much more prevalent for men than women in popular media. On the other side the "young but really capable and never giving up" stereotype is much more common for women. Of course inversions of these tropes can be found all over the place so to properly see if there's a skew you'd need to analyse a whole lot of media and see which is more frequent. I'm not about to embark on that project so the best I can give you is a description of how it feels to me. In the end I don't think these sorts of stereotypes are too unbalanced, for every bad female stereotype you can find a bad male stereotype. I feel like the conversation shouldn't be about who has it worse and deserves compensation, it should be about how we decouple both good and bad stereotypes from gender or skin color or sexual orientation or what have you. You need stereotypes to tell compelling stories, otherwise you'd have to explain every single character in-depth. This isn't a bad thing, but we need to be more careful about attaching stereotypes needlessly to real existing groups of humans. If I were a script writer and it'd be up to me I'd probably just write the script with whichever stereotypes it needs, and then once the script is done flip some coins for the irrelevant character attributes such as gender or skin color or eye color. As far as I can tell those basically never matter for telling a story. Even in the case of it being historically inaccurate I wouldn't say it matters: you're already suspending your disbelief for a lot of stuff in the movies, the idea that e.g. a woman would be a commander in the first world war isn't a stretch big enough to break immersion. I need to learn to write more coherently and start a blog I think.
moosey 7y ago
Although I'm male, I live my life surrounded by women and have a large focus on women's issues. I also see the writing on the wall: IVF technologies that are being developed today will further erode the value of men in most if not all non-socially conservative societies. I predict large numbers of women in single, cohabitating, or lesbian arrangements having children together because large numbers of men have proven themselves insufferable. I certainly know I have demonstrated as much in the past. Men capable of rethinking their relationship with women and what it means to be a male, rather than a man, I imagine will do fine in the coming social upheaval.
- throw1234651234 7y ago
  What you basically said is that women > men - [physical advantages, reproductive necessities]. You didn't explain why.
  - uoaei 7y ago
    Women, collectively (at least in the sphere of the "public conversation"), are growing increasingly tired of dealing with men and their idiosyncracies. Or rather, they are realizing there are alternatives to silently accepting the errant behavioral traits. No one is making an absolute value claim of the two genders, so your comment is at best begging a divisive question that isn't relevant here.
    - rpiguy 7y ago
      Your assertion is extremely divisive. It implies female behavior is the norm (men and their idiosyncrasies) and that male behavior is errant. Women have plenty of idiosyncrasies and errant behavior, too.
      - uoaei 7y ago
        Whataboutism already? No one is challenging your claim either. Women are capable of making subjective value judgments and many who are willing to talk about it are demonstrating them.
sjustns 7y ago
Just wanted to leave a few quotes here, from The Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills, one of my favorite books. Also, if any of this resonates, see the link in my profile and come read with us: "The very shaping of history now outpaces the ability of men to orient themselves in accordance with cherished values. Even when they do not panic men often sense that older ways off feeling and thinking have collapsed and that newer beginnings are ambiguous to the point of stasis. Is it any wonder that ordinary men feel they cannot cope with the larger worlds with which they are so suddenly confronted? That they cannot understand the meaning of their epoch for their own lives? That—in defense of selfhood—they become morally insensible, trying to remain altogether private men? Is it any wonder that they come to be possessed by a sense of the trap? It is not only information that they need—in this Age of Fact, information often dominates their attention and overwhelms their capacities to assimilate it. It is not only the skills of reason that they need—although their struggles to acquire these often exhaust their limited moral energy. What they need, and what they feel they need, is a quality of mind that will help them to use information to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and what may be happening within themselves." "What are the major issues for publics and the key troubles of private individuals in our time? To formulate issues and troubles, we must ask what values are cherished yet threatened, and what values are cherished and supported, by the characterizing trends of our period. In the case both of threat and of support we must ask what salient contradictions of structure may be involved. When people cherish some set of values and do not feel any threat to them, they experience well-being. When they cherish values but do feel them to be threatened, they experience a crisis—either as personal trouble or as a public issue. And if all their values seem involved, they feel the total threat of panic. But suppose people are neither aware of any cherished values, nor experience any threat? That is the experience of indifference, which, if it seems to involve all their values, becomes apathy. Suppose, finally, they are unaware of any cherished values, but still are very much aware of a threat? That is the experience of uneasiness, of anxiety, which if it is total enough, becomes a deadly unspecified malaise. Ours is a time of uneasiness and indifference-not yet formulated in such ways as to permit the work of reason and the play of sensibility. Instead of troubles—defined in terms of values and threats—there is often the misery of vague uneasiness; instead of explicit issues there is often merely the beat feeling that all is somehow not right. Neither the values threatened nor whatever threatens them has been stated; in short, they have not been carried to the point of decision. Much less have they been formulated as problems of social science." "Yet men do not usually define the roubles they endure in terms of historical change and institutional contradiction. The well-being they enjoy, they do not usually impute to the big ups and downs of the societies in which they live. Seldom aware of the intricate connection between the patterns of their own lives and the course of world history, ordinary men do not usually know what this connection means for the kinds of men they are becoming and for the kinds of history-making in which they take part." He goes on to talk about the relationship between work and leisure as a "crisis of ambition" in American society. Great read.
mainliningfbs 7y ago
But to be fair, the current state of gender relations is all men's fault. For all of time, let's say, the patriarch has abused it's power. Not sure how we could we could have avoided this backlash. And in my opinion, the revolution could have been much worse. And if men think their complaining should be heard, then go back over all of the times where women's complaints were completely ignored or even punished and is most scenarios, women never spoke up at all and suffered in silence. Not saying men have shitty lives too but men can't all of sudden be the victims after millennia of victimization.
- tathougies 7y ago
  Your issue is that you see everyone as groups rather than individuals. That is why you are having a difficult time empathizing.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  > But to be fair, the current state of gender relations is all men's fault. My current plan is to make sure more males until the age of eighteen, at least, are raised and taught by women. Getting more women in the education and childhood development process early will close the critical gap we have in ensuring boys learn (from an actual woman!) the right way to interact with and treat women. When that happens, it won't be mysterious to men when they experience cooperation and authority coming from a feminine perspective. It's about time we stopped having only men raise and teach every generation of men. Women have much to offer here too. EDIT: I suppose English does need an irony mark. I was riffing on "all men's fault", which clearly discounts female involvement in culture and morality.
  - freehunter 7y ago
    What are you talking about? By far most teachers are women, by far. Something like 75% of all teachers are women [1]. If that's your plan, you've already succeeded... we're far from "having only men raise and teach every generation of men". [1] http://cpre.org/sites/default/files/workingpapers/1506_7trendsapril2014.pdf http://cpre.org/sites/default/files/workingpapers/1506_7tren...
  - 7y ago
8bitsrule 7y ago
The following, recent Rolling Stone article provides some real-world context. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/suicide-rate-america-white-men-841576/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/suicid...
rpiguy 7y ago
It is at times like these that I wish Hacker News included number of views in addition to the number of replies. Threads like this give the impression that everyone is miserable and fill up quickly with sad stories. It’s good the internet gives those people an outlet and a place to connect, but if this was say viewed by thousands and only got 60 replies it might provide some perspective. Most people are just fine.
- threatofrain 7y ago
  Firstly, if you're saying most people are just fine then that's surely the wrong framing; you don't wait until most people are hurting. Secondly, why does one try to persuade people that the scope of hurt isn't that bad by... eyeballing a HN post for popularity? And using that to counteract a report full of collected data?
- kwoff 7y ago
  So, what is your source that "most people are just fine"? I'd wager that what you mean is, you're fine and you think most people you know are fine. Good luck, in any case.
  - rpiguy 7y ago
    These two articles sum it up nicely. About 5.7% of men are depressed and about 8.7% of women. Most people are just fine. I hate alarmist journalism and sensational headlines. https://www.healthline.com/health/depression/facts-statistics-infographic#1 https://www.healthline.com/health/depression/facts-statistic... https://www.verywellmind.com/depression-statistics-everyone-should-know-4159056 https://www.verywellmind.com/depression-statistics-everyone-...
throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
When I was in high school I had a stereotypical thought that most of the ass hole more popular guys would have shit lives after college. Historically that wasn’t true. But nowadays... it seems more valid. Most of the guy’s who followed stereotypical social strategies in high school have turned out pretty poor. The guys who have done well are the one man who were smart or kind. Your value to others should be self evident from being a person people like. People saying it’s all about work and money... sound like assholes who don’t realize it.
shaki-dora 7y ago
I'm a man, and for the life of me I don't get how people are feeling personally attacked by feminism. Same with racism: I just don't connect these issues with me as an individual. And I've never experienced an interaction where others have done so, either. I've been to any number of feminist events with my partner, and nobody ever made a negative comment rooted in the fact that I'm a man.
- droithomme 7y ago
  I supported feminism as it was originally explained to me, as against violent and abusive dictatorial strictly patriarchal systems insidiously designed to suppress and oppress minority viewpoints and ways. But since then I've realized there are many other things that feminism means to people. It's not a great label as it doesn't mean anything in particular. Some variants are definitely bigoted hate against a certain gender. I don't agree with those. Diffusion of label-meaning: what can be done about this. For me... be a label-skeptic. Irrelevant, though no one cares. Only mindless labels matter in the great big wide world.
  - godzillabrennus 7y ago
    Totally understand where you are coming from. My wife and I tend to see modern feminism as a way to tell males that being masculine is bad while simultaneously telling females that being feminine is bad. Seems like the same pay for the same work aspects of the movement are where they should instead focus. Likewise politically, I’m for individual liberty for all adults but not for an anemic taxation system for the rich. I guess that makes me a centrist these days?
- AlexandrB 7y ago
  I often ask the same question. But apparently so many feel personally attacked by feminism that you’ve been downvoted into oblivion.
- friendlybus 7y ago
  People that have sexual trauma are trivially easy to trigger with large shows of political power or 'abuse' around sex. It worked on me when I was younger. The only solution is to get your sex life in order and some of the people engaged in that debate are doing just that.
sdegutis 7y ago
Discovering what true masculinity means and how to fulfill it is going to be key for men today to keep their sanity and hope. And that begins with courage and a sincere search for the truth, and it continues with the courage to stand up for the truth in the face of threats and injustices.
JohnClark1337 7y ago
Liberals have something to celebrate today

166 points by eplanit 7y ago

I've spent every night for the last few months trying to find a way/reason to keep going mentally. Before that it was every other night, a few times a week, few times a month etc. Before the inciting event for this decline, badly done and ultimately unneeded surgery fifteen years ago taking away everything, I never ONCE considered this. In fact I was positive when discussing the topic that I would NEVER do such a thing and that there would always be a way, always be family or friends, always be a system there to hold me up. Because that's what I had been indoctrinated to believe. It wasn't true. I worked hard, in a career beneficial to society. I helped people, always had great empathy, and treated others with respect. Even then I didn't really get it when I would come across someone like I am now. Someone who suffered and lost it all. Someone on the edge. I did what I could to help them but I was as ignorant and naive as ever believing the rest of the system and society would give them that same attention and value. I thought it would be ok. It's not ok. The truth is in American society has decided human life and security isn't the most important thing. It's decided INDEPENDENCE and profits and ego and the chance to be wealthy and powerful is. Everyone for themselves. Guns are rights but healthcare is an "entitlement". Equality is somehow "wrong".If you need help you are "weak" and a "loser" and "nobody is going to live off MY tax money". They think if you can even open your eyes, or type an occasional rant online, that means you can grind away like everyone else and "why don't you just" and they KNOW this is true because they KNOW they would be able to when they reached this unfathomable state. Saying this will make a lot of people angry because nationalism is an identity for many and ultimately proves the point. About the same time my health was ruined a friend in Belgium had a similar experience. He was given social support to keep his flat, healthcare, spent a few years reeducating in a new skill and was able to reenter society and function. He has a happy life and family now. My experience was denials from government assistance programs, struggling to manage with savings and small private pension but no health insurance, watching a family full of puritanical hypocrites turn away and blame. My friend lost something of his life, but was allowed to regain one worth living and not fear every little bump being the end. He gets to have a future as a result. I do not. Next came cycles of motivation and disappointment and trying as hard as I could to hold it together only to have things collapse because with more limits and needs nobody can manage that alone despite what everyone needs to believe for their own mental security. The root of victim blaming right there folks. Some people are always going to need help. Some can rebuild at least some but still need help doing so. Stability. Access. Caring. After you see that help isn't coming comes the anger...then that anger slowly morphs into despair. Then one day comes this indescribable sensation that even the moment before you couldn't believe would ever TRULY happen even thinking abstractly about it. Acceptance. Not acceptance of the decline. Not acceptance of the despair. Acceptance that you aren't afraid to let all of this life go anymore. You don't WANT to not BE...but you want to not be THIS. You want suffering, judgement, isolation, pain, complete lack or agency in LIFE anymore. You are exhausted all the time and it's not worth the tiny if any moments of joy anymore. You are still rational. You aren't running around with your underwear on your head and flinging you poo at people. You are just running on empty, You swim as hard as you can and you sink, you relax and go with it and you sink, nothing works. It's always said to be your fault, not the fact you were unceremoniously dropped in the ocean and told to fend for yourself whilst people give "advice" from the shore like "just learn how to swim" and then get offended when you cannot as if your drowning insults them. You have walked over every "next hill" for years looking for petrol, and it's never there. Or if it IS there 1/1000000000 times and some nice and truly well meaning shopkeeper is smiling and waving you there, someone else swoops in front and takes the rest or the shop closes right as you straggle up to it because you stepped in a hole and that slowed you down even more. Despair isn't some inexplicable thing. It's 99% of the time rooted in clear, multiple causes. But this society, ESPECIALLY this society, won't face or address them. Most people like me don't end up like me out of some fault in themselves or some unsolvable problem. But it's easier to punch down for both ego fulfillment and to bolster your own feelings of personal safety because YOU are better than that and it will never happen to you. You were smart, and planned, and have good people around you. Well guess what...the "Just World" isn't. There was a time I was an activist for health and social issues. It never had any macro effect. I tried to "just get out of you don"t like it!" Doing that alone is very, very hard and I could never get it to work permanently. The damage done here would follow me everywhere and ironically block the path to even a life in those better conditions. There was a time I thought about crazy things like applying for asylum in a more socially conscious country, but the truth is people in this situation don't get approved. I am out of fuel and hope, there is no petrol station over the next hill, and my bootstraps were worn to dust years ago. There are countless people like me and nobody here ever thinks they will be one of them.

codyb 7y ago
I think a big issue is the incredible juxtaposition between what you learn about America as a child... The land of opportunity Work hard and be rewarded The shining nation on the hill And what you see as an adult Lose your job? No healthcare, and little support Get cancer? Go bankrupt and lose everything if you’re not lucky or super rich Let’s pass major legislation! Oh great another huge tax cut for the mega rich. Go to school? Be saddled in debt for decades. Get out of school? Work multiple jobs just to make ends meet in a system that favors employers And how’re you supposed to escape? By buying material possessions that don’t bring lasting quality of life improvements, or by wallowing away in a drugged up haze, or by binge watching television and other media. We’re supposed to be the leaders of the free world but we our government is increasingly disfunctional and tailored to special interests and the wealthy. Meritocracy? Ha. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is being hollowed out. This administration certainly hasn’t helped as it amplifies its fear based rhetoric of migrants, and crime while pushing us backwards on climate initiatives and ruining our reputation abroad. It’s no wonder people are depressed. Wage slavery sucks, living on a knife’s edge sucks, and there’s really not much going on to change it. I’m pretty hopeful for the younger generations, but boy is it a mess they’re inheriting.
- alfromspace 7y ago
  Meritocracy? Ha. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is being hollowed out. This administration certainly hasn’t helped as it amplifies its fear based rhetoric of migrants Migration was and is a big part of the process. Not the only part, but still a problem to be solved. If you presumably want a European-style healthcare system in America and a job market that doesn't only favor employers, you'll need to acknowledge that the laws of supply and demand apply to labor and social services, and that an all-inclusive welfare state and mass migration can't work together.
  - ljw1001 7y ago
    > If you presumably want a European-style healthcare system in America and a job market that doesn't only favor employers... This doesn't stand up to the least amount of reflection. There are immigrants in Europe. If you look at European countries individually there is massive immigration between them, as well as immigration from outside. And yet. The US system favors employers not because of free-market competition between employees (or at least not predominantly so) but because corporations have bought the US government and twist every law to their advantage. Destroying the last vestiges of labor unions was just one small part.

RocketSyntax 7y ago

Feel like we're either fat and unmotivated, or overworked and unsatisfied... with only a thin slice finding something in the middle.

40acres 7y ago
Just turned 28 and can say I easily fit the bill for 3/4 of these descriptions. I've been chalking it up to a quarter life crisis and am desperate for a geographic move to add some new experiences to my life.
- notadoc 7y ago
  Moving will briefly introduce new experiences but you will quickly adjust. Finding and developing new interests and hobbies is a much better longterm solution.
  - freehunter 7y ago
    I've moved and helped friends move quite a bit, and in my anecdotal experience, the only way a geographical change helps if either if you just can't do what you need to do in your home town (like moving to SV or NYC for work) or if your home town life is absolutely toxic and you can't get away from it without leaving. I moved across the country for no good reason except to move. Absolutely nothing was different. I was still the same person, except now without friends or family. I wasn't running from anything but everything followed me anyway. I've had half a dozen friends in the same situation. You can't run from yourself. Meanwhile I helped a friend move about a year ago because she couldn't get away from high school drama. She was in her 30s, and still caught up in high school drama from her high school friends. She moved away and made new friends and completely cut her old friends out of her life. Massive difference. I've had friends of friends do the same thing when their family life was toxic. Big help from the sounds of it. Immigrants do it constantly, running from toxic politics to start a new life in a safer place. It works. But if you're running from yourself? You can't run fast enough or far enough. You will always be you. Fix that before you fix your geography, or it will just be a very expensive lesson learned. It took a long time for my bank account to recover from my move and even longer for my circle of friends to recover.

AtlasBarfed 7y ago

Despite it's dubious underpinnings and specious applications, the theory of the disposable male seems to fit this. The only thing the majority of men are useful to in society is work/production. If you take that away, then the other function of men (reproduction/fertilization) can be accomplished by a much smaller fraction of the male population. We are taking away the only thing that justifies the existence of most men, and we are reminding them of it every day with the society we are creating with no safety net or healthcare. But after the last election, I stopped caring.

Ancalagon 7y ago
The article mentions younger female age groups are also experiencing marked increases in ODs and suicide rates, albeit not as quickly. It is not just men dying more often from despair. Additionally, the female age-adjusted obesity rate is higher than men's (41%! vs 38%) which can lead to larger health problems later in life, so we may only just be seeing the S-curve for equivalently increased female mortality rates.
- AtlasBarfed 7y ago
  It must be really hard being obese in a media-saturated world of photoshopped instagram.
bwb 7y ago
Well said, i am so frustrated for how much value american culture puts on work but not life for men. I think all Americans could benefit from a better balance between the two...
- t34543 7y ago
  This isn’t helped with the feminism bandwagon. It’s turner into a power struggle, and lost bearing on what’s right.
  - daseiner1 7y ago

ljw1001 7y ago

> The decline in life expectancy is occurring in part due to deaths from despair. From 2007 to 2017, the mortality rate from drug overdoses increased 82% This is a perfect example of how corporate greed (and a political system that now mostly exists to support it) is ravishing the American people. After decades of obvious abuses, the company pushing OxyContin is finally being stopped, but no one is going to jail (see: https://www.npr.org/2019/09/19/762455218/as-drugmakers-face-opioid-lawsuits-some-ask-why-not-criminal-charges-too https://www.npr.org/2019/09/19/762455218/as-drugmakers-face-...), and although the company is bankrupt, we're merely locking the barn door after the billions have escaped.

notadoc 7y ago
You're looking at the symptom rather than the disease. The despair is the disease. Drug and alcohol use are from people self-medicating their symptoms. If anyone cared to address this problem, they'd look at what causes despair. That despair is often from economic and social distress. Instead, everyone is outraged up on a media and politically driven moral panic about pharmaceutical medication that happens to be rarely abused and is almost never addictive (fewer than 0.1% chance of becoming addicted to prescribed painkillers, study on over 640,000 patients, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27400458 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27400458).
- whiddershins 7y ago
  No, drug and alcohol addiction definitely can produce despair. Causation can and does work both ways in this one, causing a spiral which is almost impossible to trace back to a single thing. No, I don’t think economic problems per se cause despair. People are richer, much richer, than 100 or 1000 years ago. I don’t think that changes the fundamental human struggle with meaning, hope, purpose, and everything else that wards off despair.
  - harimau777 7y ago
    I think that part of the problem may be that people are richer in ways that don't make them happy or give them meaning, and poorer in ways that do. Most notably, it seems to me that owning your own house and land would bring a much greater sense of autonomy, accomplishment, control, etc. than more consumeristic things like TVs, video games, fancy food, etc. (not that its bad that those things exist).

mikelyons 7y ago

The main driver of my suicidality is the mate prospects. Seems like I'll only be able to end up marrying a divorcee with two kids who doesn't want any more children ... :(

notadoc 7y ago
What makes you think that? There are tons of childless women out there who want families, if that is what you are interested in.
- TurkishPoptart 7y ago
  Well, for starters, if you don't have decent financial prospects, that's a problem for a lot of potential mates. Secondly, the best and most eligible women live in Ukraine and Russia, and it's not always so easy for them to come here.
  - daseiner1 7y ago
    yikes
  - eq_sd_ 7y ago
    > best and most eligible women live in Ukraine and Russia wut
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      I'm hoping that was sarcasm... (The GP, not the parent.)
      - non-entity 7y ago
        I highly doubt it. I may get downvoted for saying this, but these sort of article bring out loads of garbage content in general.
  - throwawayhhakdl 7y ago

notadoc 7y ago

This is not too surprising for many reasons. Also, a significant part of modern American culture actively devalues men and thinks of men and masculinity as problematic. This is particularly true within certain political movements and social cultures. That has health consequences, as is already widely known from many studies on various other forms of discrimination and discriminatory movements.

downerending 7y ago
This has become a lot more noticeable within the last few years (e.g., the Washington Post editorial "Why can't we hate men?"), and it is indeed having a negative effect on my state of mind. Not easy to do, but I've been working hard on withdrawing from social media, outrage news, etc., and those who are wrapped up in it. It seems appealing in the moment, but I do think it ultimately contributes to this sort of despair.

tathougies 7y ago

The good news is that the social groups where both traditional masculinity and femininity are not looked down upon (typically conservative, religious folks, not necessarily any particular religion, either) will grow due to the higher birth and family stability rates. This will hopefully lead to better mental health for both men and women who are suffering under the current system.

matt4077 7y ago
That theory (with a different group of people) has been a favorite of racists for at least two centuries. Yet, somehow, it never really materialises. In your specific case, it is bound to fail because the children of religious parents are rather likely to leave religion. The various kinds of injustice children experience at the hand of religious organisations helps in that regard. If you don't believe me, just think back in time: religious people have always had more children. And yet, religion has a been declining for a long time. Among the most reproduction-happy have been groups like the Amish. But they haven't taken over the US, have they?
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  >Among the most reproduction-happy have been groups like the Amish. But they haven't taken over the US, have they? You realize their population in 1900 was around 6000, and they're now 325,000 right? At current "population doubles every 20 years" rates, well, it won't be long now.
- tathougies 7y ago
  Really? I'm pointing out that religious populations like Catholics and Muslims are increasing and im being accused of racism? These are the two most diverse religious groups on the planet. Your accusation is laughable

_bxg1 7y ago

The headline is a weird, cherry-picked minor point from within the article. I had to Ctrl+F to even find it (after skimming).

Shivetya 7y ago

well the vilification in the media certainly does not help, the amount men are bombarded with the message that they are source of so much wrong has to be overwhelming to many. anecdotal nonsense, a few years back we went through a wave of new HR videos about harassment and intimidation and not one had a non male aggressor. it was so bad the women attending the sessions were mocking the presentation. fortunately they canned that approach not long after after the poor reception.

threatofrain 7y ago
Is the media really shaming young men for being useless? What are the most notable movies or shows?
- Doxin 7y ago
  Anecdotally it seems to me that the "lazy, young, and failing at everything" stereotype is much more prevalent for men than women in popular media. On the other side the "young but really capable and never giving up" stereotype is much more common for women. Of course inversions of these tropes can be found all over the place so to properly see if there's a skew you'd need to analyse a whole lot of media and see which is more frequent. I'm not about to embark on that project so the best I can give you is a description of how it feels to me. In the end I don't think these sorts of stereotypes are too unbalanced, for every bad female stereotype you can find a bad male stereotype. I feel like the conversation shouldn't be about who has it worse and deserves compensation, it should be about how we decouple both good and bad stereotypes from gender or skin color or sexual orientation or what have you. You need stereotypes to tell compelling stories, otherwise you'd have to explain every single character in-depth. This isn't a bad thing, but we need to be more careful about attaching stereotypes needlessly to real existing groups of humans. If I were a script writer and it'd be up to me I'd probably just write the script with whichever stereotypes it needs, and then once the script is done flip some coins for the irrelevant character attributes such as gender or skin color or eye color. As far as I can tell those basically never matter for telling a story. Even in the case of it being historically inaccurate I wouldn't say it matters: you're already suspending your disbelief for a lot of stuff in the movies, the idea that e.g. a woman would be a commander in the first world war isn't a stretch big enough to break immersion. I need to learn to write more coherently and start a blog I think.

moosey 7y ago

Although I'm male, I live my life surrounded by women and have a large focus on women's issues. I also see the writing on the wall: IVF technologies that are being developed today will further erode the value of men in most if not all non-socially conservative societies. I predict large numbers of women in single, cohabitating, or lesbian arrangements having children together because large numbers of men have proven themselves insufferable. I certainly know I have demonstrated as much in the past. Men capable of rethinking their relationship with women and what it means to be a male, rather than a man, I imagine will do fine in the coming social upheaval.

throw1234651234 7y ago
What you basically said is that women > men - [physical advantages, reproductive necessities]. You didn't explain why.
- uoaei 7y ago
  Women, collectively (at least in the sphere of the "public conversation"), are growing increasingly tired of dealing with men and their idiosyncracies. Or rather, they are realizing there are alternatives to silently accepting the errant behavioral traits. No one is making an absolute value claim of the two genders, so your comment is at best begging a divisive question that isn't relevant here.
  - rpiguy 7y ago
    Your assertion is extremely divisive. It implies female behavior is the norm (men and their idiosyncrasies) and that male behavior is errant. Women have plenty of idiosyncrasies and errant behavior, too.
    - uoaei 7y ago
      Whataboutism already? No one is challenging your claim either. Women are capable of making subjective value judgments and many who are willing to talk about it are demonstrating them.

sjustns 7y ago

Just wanted to leave a few quotes here, from The Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills, one of my favorite books. Also, if any of this resonates, see the link in my profile and come read with us: "The very shaping of history now outpaces the ability of men to orient themselves in accordance with cherished values. Even when they do not panic men often sense that older ways off feeling and thinking have collapsed and that newer beginnings are ambiguous to the point of stasis. Is it any wonder that ordinary men feel they cannot cope with the larger worlds with which they are so suddenly confronted? That they cannot understand the meaning of their epoch for their own lives? That—in defense of selfhood—they become morally insensible, trying to remain altogether private men? Is it any wonder that they come to be possessed by a sense of the trap? It is not only information that they need—in this Age of Fact, information often dominates their attention and overwhelms their capacities to assimilate it. It is not only the skills of reason that they need—although their struggles to acquire these often exhaust their limited moral energy. What they need, and what they feel they need, is a quality of mind that will help them to use information to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and what may be happening within themselves." "What are the major issues for publics and the key troubles of private individuals in our time? To formulate issues and troubles, we must ask what values are cherished yet threatened, and what values are cherished and supported, by the characterizing trends of our period. In the case both of threat and of support we must ask what salient contradictions of structure may be involved. When people cherish some set of values and do not feel any threat to them, they experience well-being. When they cherish values but do feel them to be threatened, they experience a crisis—either as personal trouble or as a public issue. And if all their values seem involved, they feel the total threat of panic. But suppose people are neither aware of any cherished values, nor experience any threat? That is the experience of indifference, which, if it seems to involve all their values, becomes apathy. Suppose, finally, they are unaware of any cherished values, but still are very much aware of a threat? That is the experience of uneasiness, of anxiety, which if it is total enough, becomes a deadly unspecified malaise. Ours is a time of uneasiness and indifference-not yet formulated in such ways as to permit the work of reason and the play of sensibility. Instead of troubles—defined in terms of values and threats—there is often the misery of vague uneasiness; instead of explicit issues there is often merely the beat feeling that all is somehow not right. Neither the values threatened nor whatever threatens them has been stated; in short, they have not been carried to the point of decision. Much less have they been formulated as problems of social science." "Yet men do not usually define the roubles they endure in terms of historical change and institutional contradiction. The well-being they enjoy, they do not usually impute to the big ups and downs of the societies in which they live. Seldom aware of the intricate connection between the patterns of their own lives and the course of world history, ordinary men do not usually know what this connection means for the kinds of men they are becoming and for the kinds of history-making in which they take part." He goes on to talk about the relationship between work and leisure as a "crisis of ambition" in American society. Great read.

mainliningfbs 7y ago

But to be fair, the current state of gender relations is all men's fault. For all of time, let's say, the patriarch has abused it's power. Not sure how we could we could have avoided this backlash. And in my opinion, the revolution could have been much worse. And if men think their complaining should be heard, then go back over all of the times where women's complaints were completely ignored or even punished and is most scenarios, women never spoke up at all and suffered in silence. Not saying men have shitty lives too but men can't all of sudden be the victims after millennia of victimization.

tathougies 7y ago
Your issue is that you see everyone as groups rather than individuals. That is why you are having a difficult time empathizing.
humanrebar 7y ago
> But to be fair, the current state of gender relations is all men's fault. My current plan is to make sure more males until the age of eighteen, at least, are raised and taught by women. Getting more women in the education and childhood development process early will close the critical gap we have in ensuring boys learn (from an actual woman!) the right way to interact with and treat women. When that happens, it won't be mysterious to men when they experience cooperation and authority coming from a feminine perspective. It's about time we stopped having only men raise and teach every generation of men. Women have much to offer here too. EDIT: I suppose English does need an irony mark. I was riffing on "all men's fault", which clearly discounts female involvement in culture and morality.
- freehunter 7y ago
  What are you talking about? By far most teachers are women, by far. Something like 75% of all teachers are women [1]. If that's your plan, you've already succeeded... we're far from "having only men raise and teach every generation of men". [1] http://cpre.org/sites/default/files/workingpapers/1506_7trendsapril2014.pdf http://cpre.org/sites/default/files/workingpapers/1506_7tren...
- 7y ago

8bitsrule 7y ago

The following, recent Rolling Stone article provides some real-world context. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/suicide-rate-america-white-men-841576/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/suicid...

rpiguy 7y ago

It is at times like these that I wish Hacker News included number of views in addition to the number of replies. Threads like this give the impression that everyone is miserable and fill up quickly with sad stories. It’s good the internet gives those people an outlet and a place to connect, but if this was say viewed by thousands and only got 60 replies it might provide some perspective. Most people are just fine.

threatofrain 7y ago
Firstly, if you're saying most people are just fine then that's surely the wrong framing; you don't wait until most people are hurting. Secondly, why does one try to persuade people that the scope of hurt isn't that bad by... eyeballing a HN post for popularity? And using that to counteract a report full of collected data?
kwoff 7y ago
So, what is your source that "most people are just fine"? I'd wager that what you mean is, you're fine and you think most people you know are fine. Good luck, in any case.
- rpiguy 7y ago
  These two articles sum it up nicely. About 5.7% of men are depressed and about 8.7% of women. Most people are just fine. I hate alarmist journalism and sensational headlines. https://www.healthline.com/health/depression/facts-statistics-infographic#1 https://www.healthline.com/health/depression/facts-statistic... https://www.verywellmind.com/depression-statistics-everyone-should-know-4159056 https://www.verywellmind.com/depression-statistics-everyone-...

throwawayhhakdl 7y ago

When I was in high school I had a stereotypical thought that most of the ass hole more popular guys would have shit lives after college. Historically that wasn’t true. But nowadays... it seems more valid. Most of the guy’s who followed stereotypical social strategies in high school have turned out pretty poor. The guys who have done well are the one man who were smart or kind. Your value to others should be self evident from being a person people like. People saying it’s all about work and money... sound like assholes who don’t realize it.

shaki-dora 7y ago

I'm a man, and for the life of me I don't get how people are feeling personally attacked by feminism. Same with racism: I just don't connect these issues with me as an individual. And I've never experienced an interaction where others have done so, either. I've been to any number of feminist events with my partner, and nobody ever made a negative comment rooted in the fact that I'm a man.

droithomme 7y ago
I supported feminism as it was originally explained to me, as against violent and abusive dictatorial strictly patriarchal systems insidiously designed to suppress and oppress minority viewpoints and ways. But since then I've realized there are many other things that feminism means to people. It's not a great label as it doesn't mean anything in particular. Some variants are definitely bigoted hate against a certain gender. I don't agree with those. Diffusion of label-meaning: what can be done about this. For me... be a label-skeptic. Irrelevant, though no one cares. Only mindless labels matter in the great big wide world.
- godzillabrennus 7y ago
  Totally understand where you are coming from. My wife and I tend to see modern feminism as a way to tell males that being masculine is bad while simultaneously telling females that being feminine is bad. Seems like the same pay for the same work aspects of the movement are where they should instead focus. Likewise politically, I’m for individual liberty for all adults but not for an anemic taxation system for the rich. I guess that makes me a centrist these days?
AlexandrB 7y ago
I often ask the same question. But apparently so many feel personally attacked by feminism that you’ve been downvoted into oblivion.
friendlybus 7y ago
People that have sexual trauma are trivially easy to trigger with large shows of political power or 'abuse' around sex. It worked on me when I was younger. The only solution is to get your sex life in order and some of the people engaged in that debate are doing just that.

sdegutis 7y ago

Discovering what true masculinity means and how to fulfill it is going to be key for men today to keep their sanity and hope. And that begins with courage and a sincere search for the truth, and it continues with the courage to stand up for the truth in the face of threats and injustices.

JohnClark1337 7y ago

Liberals have something to celebrate today