I participated in men's work, not specifically the ManKind Project but a closely related organization. I personally found it helpful doing weekly check-ins and having people holding me accountable to my goals.
Unfortunately, the stigma regarding men sharing feelings is prevalent in western society, and it's not only the men causing it. When I told several female friends about the work they did, their response was: "Are they gay?"
Our society will always value men who are confident, this is so much deeper to me than being scared to share your feelings because “it’s gay”. Women are attracted to confidence, employers reward confidence, hiring managers are impressed by confidence. Vulnerability and weakness are just not rewarded for men or women, but especially for men.
Confidence and vulnerability aren't opposites. The confidence that comes from going through vulnerability and coming out stronger is worth more than the facade style of confidence, which covers unprocessed weakness.
No one is going to be impressed if you burst into tears during a code review. They're going to be a lot more impressed if you bullshit your way through with positivity and can-do.
This is irrespective of the quality of the code.
This culture rewards overt displays of competitive individualism and punishes weakness irrespective of actual productivity, value, or objective performance.
Generally, being confident gets you breaks, even if you're astonishingly incompetent or just plain manipulative and dishonest.
Sometimes there's pushback from the surrounding culture before something goes horribly wrong - but just as often there isn't.
They're not! Confidence and unregulated overt vulnerability are conflicting (but not precisely opposite).
By acknowledging the possibility that you may have done something wrong, you make yourself vulnerable to judgment, and by doing so confidently you gain respect. Facing judgment is a sign of confidence and it requires making yourself vulnerable.
In a more subtle example, showing signs of vulnerability in personal relations is a way of letting others know you, and that takes courage. There'd be no point to having social interactions if you were invulnerable, any interaction would literally be inconsequential for you and thus unmotivated.
You "dress up" the vulnerability with a higher level strength (e.g. the capacity to listen to and analyze your own shortcomings), and then it's all good.
There's a difference between being vulnerable, and putting yourself in a situation that will hurt you. It's fine to show yourself vulnerable if you can do so in a way that incentives good behavior from your peers.
>> Generally, being confident gets you breaks, even if you're astonishingly incompetent or just plain manipulative and dishonest.
It gets you breaks until you reach the line which people don't want you to cross (which you will eventually cross due to your ever-inflating ego). At which point everyone you know will silently isolate you and you'll not even be able to realise what happened in time (again, due to your overly-inflated ego).
I had seen that happen. People who are full of shit always have a glass ceiling, since they are even more useless than people who are willing to directly do bad to other people (at least those are more-or-less clear in terms of the direction they take).
That glass ceiling limit seems to be at the CEO level, in the case of Elizabeth Holmes and other various "confident phonies" that get posted here on HN every few weeks. So, there doesn't seem to be a practical limit to how far overconfidence can get you in your career.
>> That glass ceiling limit seems to be at the CEO level, in the case of Elizabeth Holmes and other various "confident phonies" that get posted here on HN every few weeks.
Are you joking? Yes - she was the CEO, but she's also facing up 20 in prison after being that CEO [1].
It's not just about getting to the top. It's about whether you'll remain there and whether the history will try to forget you as soon as it can.
I think it is worth digging into the meanings of "vulnerability" and "confidence" here.
I think "confidence" is rooted in the belief that "whatever happens, I'll be able to handle it. I'll be okay." Showing confidence is externally-emoting as if you believe that to be the case.
Vulnerability...I'm less sure of. I think it is the ability to be wounded. By being vulnerable, you reveal information which someone else could use to ridicule you. Patrick Lencioni's work on organizational health refers to vulnerability as a key piece of building trust[1]. How does it work? By showing that you expect that people hold a social norm against ridiculing people for the thing you reveal. That you are willing to pay a cost for that social norm. I think when people use the word "vulnerability", they mean sticking your neck out for a social expectation of compassionate collaboration -- norm-building vulnerability.
And that sort of vulnerability is compatible with confidence. If they do ridicule you, then you've learned what sort of person they are and you have the power to respond accordingly.
But I think its easy to confuse norm-building vulnerability with another vulnerability: insecurity-revealing vulnerability. This is where you present something that could genuinely hurt your sense of belonging -- Information which you think others could present as evidence that you should be ostracized from a group. For example, a man in a homophobic environment who reveals that he is bisexual. How should a man express these sorts of insecurities? By default, he shouldn't. He should hide them until he can find a supportive community. Unless he's with someone he already trusts or a mens' meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Don't express insecurity-revealing vulnerability.
Even though your example with bisexuality is a little off, i think your distinction between showing a vulnerability versus expressing insecurity is good
I want to push back on your assertion that vulnerability is inherently equivalent to weakness. Our society currently says it is, but I could equally imagine a future in which being vulnerable and honest about your feelings is seen as a feat of strength and courage -- because it DOES take a lot of courage, and even confidence, to be open and honest about your feelings.
Developing mental health issues and unstable personal relationships because you're unable to access and share your emotions is also a weakness that derives from the emotional suppression that men are taught is a desired masculine trait.
It doesn't have to be like this. Vulnerability doesn't have to be a weakness, showing your emotions can be a masculine trait. We're not defined by, nor locked into, our traditional cultural values and norms.
Vulnerability is a weakness. It's what the word means. I'm fine with people being more open with their emotions, fine, but I'm not a huge fan of the idea of socially mandating that weakness itself is strength, which is just a lie (would you wish that someone you loved were more vulnerable than they are?)
It's different to having a norm for admission of weakness being a marker of strength due to the courage required in the act, similar to how it takes strength for an addict to admit they have a problem and go get help. You want to normalise talking to someone about your problems with a view to improving the situation. You don't necessarily want to recast addiction (a weakness that you wouldn't wish upon someone you love) as strength, as a roundabout measure to get people to talk about it more. That just seems liable to backfire.
Merriam-Webster:
> capable of being physically or emotionally wounded
That can certainly be interpreted as a weakness. And it certainly is for things like vehicles, buildings, etc. But in the case of humans, vulnerability only means "weakness" when said human is perceived as an object, a means to an end, perhaps in a business transaction. The fact is that humans are in their most fundamental sense defined by the capacity to be physical and emotionally wounded. Therefore the term, being vulnerable, when used to describe a human attitude rather describes that person's expressed transparency to their innate humanness. As per this thread, more often men deny their vulnerability as if they cannot be emotionally wounded, which leads to a denial of their selves as a whole. Having the capacity to be emotionally wounded says absolutely nothing about somebody's emotional strengths and weaknesses, because we can all be equally wounded. Being vulnerable however potentially indicates a person's willingness to be transparent about their inner experience, namely their emotions, which can be anything from being overwhelmed to rage.
Semantically, you're absolutely correct. I think it's just important to clarify that "vulnerability" in this context refers more to "emotional transparency". I think someone who is confident in themself and has a respectable amount of emotional intelligence could navigate a position where they are emotionally honest (i.e. "vulnerable") with others without necesarily exposing weaknesses that compromise them from the professional point of view.
While I originally saw this discussion chain as you playing devil's advocate, I realize now you've done a good job helping reframe the scenario in a much better light. For most people (including myself), we don't separate emotional honesty from vulnerability because emotionally we _are_ vulnerable. Working towards a sense of self that is comfortable with emotional reviews that are as intense as a code reviews is something worth striving for.
Being vulnerable doesn't mean that you go around being a weeping mess all the time, it means admitting to yourself and to others that you're susceptible to negative emotions and to suffering. It's part of the human condition. If someone I loved went around suppressing their own emotions I would absolutely wish that they were more vulnerable than they are, because vulnerability in this case means that they accept their own emotions whatever they may be and that they can now deal with them in a healthy fashion instead of suppressing them.
Me saying that being vulnerable is a good thing is not the same thing as saying that addiction is a good thing. Addiction is what happens when we as a society can't talk about feeling vulnerable! That's the entire problem in a nutshell. The problem doesn't start with addiction, addiction is the self-medication people apply because they can't be vulnerable enough to talk about what's really hurting them inside.
When a person feels sad they should feel free to express this emotion (i.e. be vulnerable) instead of having to suppress it to live up to society's ideals about emotional expression.
Part of the issue though is that expressing those emotions seems to undermine your personal power in other people's view of you. To them you may have become ineffective and potentially ripe for replacement whether that is in a job, relationship, or friendship.
Somehow you have to both express your emotions and that you are still highly effective. That you can't be exploited, a potential pushover, or a loose cannon for your emotional expression.
You're still thinking about this from a present day perspective.
Yes, as it stands now what you say is true. Men derive personal power from stoicism and emotional suppression, our primary value is in how effective we are at shutting down non-essential aspects of ourselves and giving ourselves over entirely to whatever endeavor (usually work). We're also taught that we're entirely replaceable: if you can't put up the numbers, we'll swap you for someone who can.
That is reinforced by our suppression of emotion, as that reduces us completely to whatever output society can get from us. If all you are is a highly efficient machine producing value, swapping you out requires no thought or emotion whatsoever. If you're a complete person with feelings and relationships with your fellow humans, you're no longer replacing Carl - The Production Machine, you're replacing Carl - our co-worker/friend/partner that you've an emotional history with.
But what if we imagine a healthier tomorrow? A world where men can express all of their emotions. Where we're no longer reduced to our most basic aspects and valued from what we can produce, but instead seen as complete persons with a full range of emotions.
All over the world men outdistance women in the number of successful suicide attempts by a wide margin. Some say it's because men tend to choose direct and effective methods (guns, hanging, etc.) whereas women tend to choose slower and less effective methods (pills, etc.). But it's also because there is almost no mental health discourse among men. We're taught to suppress our emotions and to never, ever, show them for fear of being labeled weak and replaceable. When we get to low points in our lives our first instinct isn't to reach out to a friend, family, or professional mental health services. Our first instinct is to suppress and deal with it on our own because that's what we're taught our whole lives.
When we stumble and can't do it on our own, nobody has a clue what we're going through because we're so good at suppressing it and so we feel totally alone and helpless. Is it a surprise that so many of us choose to eat a bullet?
Emotional discourse needs to change. Mental health discourse needs to change. People are literally dying over this.
It would be great but it would only work if men as a group someone come to some better understanding. Men collectively are our own worst enemies because there is always another man willing to put aside those healthy attitudes and behaviours. Until healthy male emotional expression becomes attractive it will be rejected by men and women. Currently unless you have other very attractive features being emotionally vulnerable is mostly against your self interest.
I wouldn't say never, I think you see substantially different behavior being rewarded in "metrosexual" cities and less stereotypical displays in leaders of groups that are aware they are unable to violate UN comittee rules, etc, to try to steal from other groups.
In general I agree that it's wrong to say "always" or "never" in any context, and especially with something as complex as human social behavior. However if you'll allow me a bit of anecdote, I've found that places which are outwardly considered "metrosexual" (maybe not the best descriptor, but maybe close enough) kinds of cities or countries actually lend significantly more success to "traditional" male sexual signals than other places.
Willingness to be vulnerable is necessary in close relationships. Otherwise there can't be a (meaningful) relationship. But being vulnerable by default leaves one open to endless manipulation.
> But that's literally what a vulnerability is: a weakness.
There is a concerted effort at social engineering so powerful that now the very word meanings are challenged. Vulnerability is always, unequivocally a weakness. It's the very definition of the word.
Redefining vulnerability as strength is exactly 1984's Doublespeak.
Therefore all humans are vulnerable. Where strength vs. weakness enter into it is how one deals with one's vulnerability. That gets complex. Is denial strength or weakness? Maybe both.
> I want to push back on your assertion that vulnerability is inherently equivalent to weakness.
They didn't assert that, though. They said that confidence is rewarded while vulnerability and weakness aren't. If anything, their description implies a distinction between vulnerability and weakness.
I took their statement to be primarily about perceptions. That anything people perceive as a lack confidence is penalised.
It does require courage and even confidence but not of the masculine type. When a female exposes herself she receives an abundance of emotional support so there isn't much courage needed, just a little bit. So is easier for a female to feel confident about doing it. But if people see that you are a strong guy, then is natural for them to expect to "man up" and support yourself instead of elaborating victimist narratives. People want you to be a strong guy. Females and males. They expect it so badly that they will test that you genuinely are with jokes or challenges that if you are not psychologically strong, those can be felt like downplaying you. It feels that way because they are testing how strong your foundation is.
And whatever you make of this, nothing changes the fact that weakness is profoundly unattractive and stregth is very attractive.
No question those biases exist, but it's mistaken to think that vulnerability requires confidence "not of the masculine type". There are different ways to be vulnerable. Some have to do with being willing to take risks.
Say you're in a group situation and it is affecting you in some way that's not ok—not merely annoying, but touching something of deep importance in your experience. If you bring that information into the group and state what you're experiencing, you make yourself vulnerable. That takes confidence and strength. Then it takes strength to face the effects of that action, whether in the group or from an authority. And another strength too: by speaking of what you're personally experiencing, rather than accusing others of doing something wrong in the abstract, you preempt many conflicts that would otherwise arise. That is self-responsible.
To be vulnerable in that way is very much to "support yourself instead of elaborating victimist narratives". The victim reaction would be to say nothing, feel bad, and carry a residue of resentment. That's what most of us mostly do.
Vulnerability that comes from strength does impress others. When someone shows the capacity to speak coherently from a wounded place in a situation where it is called for, the quality that fills the air is dignity. The reactions I've observed in people at moments like that are admiration and a sense their own experience was touched, as if the one who spoke had spoken for them as well.
It's important not to confuse confident vulnerability with reactions that come from unprocessed woundedness getting activated in stressful situations—"bursting into tears during a code review", as a commenter memorably put it. Those reactions may be vulnerable but they don't show vulnerability in the sense of making a conscious choice to show oneself in that moment. They are more like a buffer overflow, with emotional bytes streaming through a breach in one's facade. Uncontained reactions make a situation more complicated because they are usually "too much" for the moment—the energy in them is coming from some other place more than what's happening right now, and not under conditions that offer opportunity for healing. That tends to result in wounds getting repeated rather than integrated.
The reason it's important not to confuse those things is that if you do, you'll probably get stuck with two shitty options: (1) push your pain away even further, stiffen your facade and pretend to be what you're not; or (2) expose yourself in uncontrolled ways that show weakness and that others find unattractive. Actually, you'll probably get stuck with both: #1 as your default and #2 bursting out in stressful moments. (I don't mean "you" personally, but generally, or at any rate about traditional male roles.) An alternative is to stop pushing away pain, face what one is denying, feel it fully and allow whatever happens in response. That brings healing and strength—genuine strength that one can feel in oneself, as opposed to pretend strength that one doesn't really feel. This doesn't happen all at once; it's one piece at a time, but usually each piece provides enough relief that the process sort of 'pays' for itself as it goes.
The other thing is—much as a lot of us, me included, would prefer otherwise—it seems to need to take place in the presence of others. The value of the work described in the OP, or some of it anyway, is that many men who would never otherwise take such a step find it possible to do so in the presence of other men, when the process is organized a certain way. This is a surprising phenomenon—it surprised me anyhow—and I don't think it's widely understood, but it's a good thing to take advantage of if one feels a pull in that direction.
Agree that pushing things under the rug doesn't help anyone but displaying vulnerability is a no-no for men. Men are not defective women. They need to process emotional thigns from a masculine emotional frame of streght, not vulnerability. In nature, when low in the status social graph, masculine homo sapiens are the disposable gender. Other people won't run to create emotional safety nets or safe spaces for them. Every men knows this deep inside.
At the same time I do think is totally okay to share that something is affecting you as a men but, if you are a man, is not good to express it from a feminine emotional framework. I has to be somehow preprocessed in a masculine frame:
"hey guys, let me share this with you, listen... I've been experiencing A, B and C and I see is causing D and E and affecting me in this F way... is that okay? Is that what we want? I think if we can review it in this X1 way it will be good because A1, B1 and C1 reasons... but if this isn't going to change I need to know because I'm a man with options and I eventually need to define if this is working for me, so I need to know it"
I don’t really believe this. I know some people who I value less specifically because they are overly confident relative to their abilities. I expect them to play social bluffs to play up what they know how to do (or pretend to know things they don’t), manipulate people if they can awe them and try to intercept credit for their work without giving much of their own effort, etc. They basically just cause a huge amount of trouble and damage the productivity of those around them. Meanwhile I know people of roughly comparable ability who I have a pretty good opinion of.
If someone keeps confidently asserting that 1+1=3 and then tries to act like he’s my superior, my conclusion is generally that he’s just a moron or is deluding himself.
I had a typo above and wrote 1+1=2 but I’ve had the same situation: someone who is of normal competence keeps repeating things pretty much everyone in the room knows over and over and thinks he’s leading you forward.
Most people believe that vulnerability is a weakness and a disadvantage but this is demonstrably untrue. Showing vulnerability is a way to develop rapport and connection with other people. Here is a great example using Jennifer Lawrence who is particularly good at this:
There are definitely caveats to this. It has to be done a certain way. It works better when you already have some status. And I'd absolutely agree that society lets women express more vulnerability than men. In a hypermasculine environment like a group of socially clueless 20something males at a tech company, you will probably want to show vulnerability less often.
But with the general population and normal people, it's really fine and even good to show some vulnerability, just do it in the right context.
Isn’t this just faux vulnerability, or vulnerability from the position of power?
In other words, it’s not the ”oh my god, my life is crashing, I don’t know what to do, please help me” kind of vulnerability (that one isn’t seen as very attractive or welcomed by the society), it’s the “my life is awesome, except this tiny part, but it’s cool, I’ll manage” kind of vulnerability.
It seems like you're using an extreme example. Most people's lives are not crashing down around them, but they still have vulnerabilities -- anxieties, problems, things they're afraid of. I responded to a comment saying that vulnerability and weakness are not rewarded, and gave an example of how they can be.
>Showing vulnerability is a way to develop rapport and connection with other people.
Also a way for people to attack you. A vulnerability is always a weakness, it's the definition of vulnerability.
You are talking about faking a vulnerability, a social technique so old that is in Sun Tsu's "The Art of War".
I've found that depends on which generation you're interacting with. Millenials seem far more able to say "I love you" to people that they love outside of their immediate biological family. It's not just the women, either. Men are able to express their feelings to other men in a non-romantic way. Absent is the toxic homophobia that has so colored previous generations.
Hell, their recognition of non-binary genders, preferred pronouns, and a singular 'they' pronoun, speaks volumes as to how much ideas around gender and masculinity has changed. Not that long ago, the idea that a person's gender didn't fit neatly into one of two boxes was unthinkinable.
Maybe you would be surprised to learn that previous generations were also quite free with their love. They just expressed it differently and of course, having grown older, now understand that not everyone who says "I love you" is being emotionally transparent. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you were around for any previous generations. Perhaps you will understand when you get older and watch the next generation talk about how everything we (every previous generation) have done and are doing is a broken, shitty mess, and how they have it all figured out. This is how every generation plays out.
Openness has gone down over time imho. Too many unbroachable subjects and kneejerkers. I somehow observed life and came to the opposite conclusion as you did. Curious. Whats a big world we live in.
Before people had a firm idea of homosexuality, men did show affection for other men as well.
It went like this: it is ok to hold hands with a man (because no one will think you are gay/because no one thinks anyone is gay) -> it is not ok to hold hands (because people will think you are gay) -> it is ok to hold hands (because it would not be a problem if you were gay)
When I told several female friends about the work they did, their response was: "Are they gay?"
It's funny. From the days of chivalry all the way to the modern patriarchy, men's behaviours have been conditioned by one overriding factor: what will impress women? I don't see that evaporating overnight. Men suppress the emotions for the simple reason that women have demonstrated a preference for men that do that, and this is simply an example of that being made explicit. You could say "this is how the patriarchy harms men!". But it wasn't men who chose it to be this way.
12th or 13th century chivalrous poetry from South of France was still full of feelings and what have you, and a little earlier the Arthur-related stories were not void of feelings either. I personally blame the “Protestant ethic”, for lack of a better name, which started culturally imposing itself starting with the mid-1600s in England and present-day Netherlands (in the early 1600s a guy like Shakespeare was still not afraid to share his feelings in his Sonnets).
Probably, otherwise why would have they wrote the way that they did? And earlier than that we have Achilles, the male character that is synonymous with courage and presented by Homer as “the greatest of all Greek warriors”, but even so he wasn’t afraid to cry when his close friend Patroclus was killed in battle.
Whenever I hear patriarchy in a conversation I can't help but start laughing as it reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarch which as growing up in an eastern orthodox family was a central part of my belief. It never helps the conversation.
When you say "male emotions," I feel a bit unsure which emotions you mean. Sadness? Anger? Confusion? Pride? I'm not sure if there is a culture, indigenous or not, that values the expression of all emotions, and if it does, not sure if the people in the culture walk the talk, so to say. I take it back, I think many religions seem to value the expression of most emotions, especially Buddhism, at least in theory, and yet I don't know how many people achieve that in practice. I keep trying and it really really challenges me lol.
I mean, Tantra, or at least some takes on it, is training yourself to be receptive and open to your own emotions. To various extents in Taoist groups historically, presumably at least partially continuing. Being in touch with your own emotions is a pretty big aspect of a lot of martial arts, although I suppose not expressing them.
With regards to martial arts, maybe it just depends on the definition of expressing them. To put them into words, maybe not so much. I remember taking a Krav Maga class and I saw the head trainer go from calm to intensely focused and powerful in a flash, and then back to calm after the exercise. So, for me, he was expressing the emotions physically, just not so much with his words.
At the same time, in other self-defense trainings I've taken, I've seen more emphasis on how to express verbally, lending towards conflict de-escalation.
But I would agree, overall, that most martial arts don't seem to highlight the verbal expression of emotions...but I hope to one day change that. I've been building a martial art/self-defense system that focuses more on responding to emotional attacks, as I believe I'm much more likely to be emotionally attacked than physically attacked.
That sounds interesting, and yes, I meant verbal expression. I'm a second degree black belt and I find it tricky to respond to emotional attacks, it'd be nice to practice techniques for not being angry for ten minutes after a car cuts me off in a crosswalk.
It's not an emotional attack in the sense that attacks need to be intentional, but tools for recognizing the source of emotions and letting that tension release is a life skill that is not explicitly taught much. I definitely didn't learn it in karate, but I did learn it in meditation practices from other sources. Combining it all holistically would be interesting.
I’ve been in Bali recently, and although it’s still a very patriarchal society, I’ve had a distinct sense that masculinity is more fluid than in — say — Thailand, which might feel like it should be similar. There are Balinese guys with flowers in their hair, and I’ve seen none of the aggression that occasionally raises its head in Thailand.
You can have emotionless warriors or you can have emotional pacifists. You might even have emotional warriors, but emotionless pacifists is a hard sell.
If the State monopolizes violence to the point that we can’t hash things out with our fists, and there’s no room in our society to emotionally vent, then what’s left? It’s not like violence disappeared from society, it just takes different forms when suppressed.
I mean, sometimes I think about the days of yore when people could punch each other and the fight would resolve itself, and maybe that happened in the past and maybe I'm just thinking it happened like that.
I think with physical violence, it can escalate. You punch me and "win" the fight, next time I come back with a few friends and the fight may get worse over time. And that's just assuming it's only punches. If knives or guns are involved, it can escalate really fast, and perpetuate unresolved for years, if not generations.
And I agree with you that the violence is just taking other forms. One can't punch another, so instead, we shame that person, humiliate them, embarrass them in front of their friends and loved ones. I sometimes have fear of posting on public forums, saying something that will make someone angry, and then receiving an onslaught of comments ridiculing me and beyond.
So while I think some conflict can resolve itself through merely putting on gloves and duking it out, I think more often than not conflict resolves itself much better through communicating in a nonviolent way.
That is the thing, though. Violence had social norms around it. It was not the case that you could escalate forever.
I remember one message from a father to a son, for example, that said "never throw the first punch unless he is X inches taller than you". Of course, this might have been a tad to noble for the time, but still, there were norms.
There's a lot of room in our society to emotionally vent; it just happens in private relationships and on internet forums. The challenge is that the emotions are often uncontained, and uncontained emotion is closely related to violence, as you say.
I agree about spaces to emotionally vent...goodness, the internet lets me vent about anything, at any time, with almost any audience of my choosing, through words, sounds, and video.
On the second part, I would say that emotions are often unarticulated, which may be similar to what you're saying. For me, what I've been trying to practice is that when I start to feel angry, to say "I feel angry" instead of "what is wrong with you??" I've noticed in traffic that if someone cuts me off, I'll have a reflex to cuss out the guy or say something about him being an idiot, and then I'll pause and go, "I really just felt afraid that I would crash." I could tell story after story about how the emotion is not being clearly articulated, and that when it is, it can really realign the situation.
But, to quote James Pennebaker, author of Opening Up (a book that I read and loved) and lots of work on journaling and emotions:
"Verbally labeling an emotion is much like applying a digital technology (language) to an analog signal (emotion and the emotional experience)." --from https://c3po.media.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2016/..., an article I have not yet fully read.
So, in conclusion, maybe my unarticulated is your uncontained analog signal :-D
I'm not sure I understand the bit about digital technology, but this seems to me to be pure gold: "For me, what I've been trying to practice is that when I start to feel angry, to say "I feel angry" instead of "what is wrong with you??""
Regarding the digital technology part, for me it's basically saying that we have this messy, organic, chemical mix of things happening within our bodies, and then we condense all of that into one word, e.g., "happy."
What fascinates me about language, and frustrates me, and does many other things to me, is the fact that when I use the word "happy" it may be describing a different internal messiness than your word "happy," and yet, the more we have in common, the more I will often assume our definitions are the same. I can't tell you how many conflicts in which I've found myself from definitions that I assumed to be shared but were in fact different, e.g., "I'm ready to leave," lol.
What's even more interesting (to me, at least) is that venting might not be helpful.
"Does distraction or rumination work better to diffuse anger?
Catharsis theory predicts that rumination works best, but empirical evidence is lacking."
It is an interesting question. I've personally found that most venting and catharsis leads to repetition and maybe even strengthens existing patterns. Contemporary work on trauma (Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, Gabor Maté) regards catharsis as retraumatizing and works instead with "titration", i.e. re-experiencing and expressing just a little at a time.
On the other hand, I've personally experienced a cathartic process that—as best as one can trace these things—brought real change, so there's no single answer about this.
To your point, that same stigma about LGBT guys being weak, feminine, and emotional is one of the many factors that stops a lot of people from coming out too.
Don’t know why you’re being downvoted. This seems mostly true to me. One thing I’ve noticed is younger gay men still seem gay but don’t seem as effeminate as the older men. Maybe that’s just selection bias but it seems like the culture doesn’t ask for as strong of signaling as it did in the past.
Which, I gather, was common at the time among warriors.
The Greek concept of sexuality was quite different than ours, and their class system played a very predominant role in what we would call gender. Also, age.
Yeah, I'm glad you pointed out that it's not just us men pressuring each other to speak/feel in certain ways. I think so many of us reinforce the emotional code on men and on each other. I'm guilty of doing it as well.
While a woman may have told me "don't cry (or be sad)," "don't be a baby (or express helplessness)," "don't be lazy (or feel too relaxed)," or "stop being so jealous," I have also told people "don't worry," "relax (or don't feel stressed)," "chill out (don't be angry)," and others.
I try as much as I can to let people feel whatever they are feeling, annnnnd I'm still human and project a lot of my cultural expectations on others and myself. Really grateful to have this space on HN for this conversation and to further the conversation :-D
There's a part in Brene Browns "Daring Greatly" where a guy says that his wife and daughter would rather he die on his horse than to fall off. Brown comes back with a very impractical response to the effect of "well then they have work to do too".
I have few male friends I can share feelings with and most of the females I've dealt with just don't want this while wishing for men to be more sensible.
One thing I find fascinating about humans is that we are so compulsively cultural that we will actively propagate cultural practices that are harmful even to ourselves. When you are young, you absorb whatever culture is around you completely uncritically, and then you immediately turn around and start broadcasting to the next generation.
Cultural changes and evolves, of course, but it's really hard to uproot a norm or more once it's settled in, even if it's one that causes you personal pain.
> Cultural changes and evolves, of course, but it's really hard to uproot a norm or more once it's settled in, even if it's one that causes you personal pain.
Terence McKenna lectured on this at length. Here are some apropos quotations:
"As a global civilization, we can no longer afford the luxury of an unconscious mind. When you can pull down the fusion processes that light the stars on the cities of your enemies, when you can sequence DNA, when you can map the heart of the atom, then it is entirely inappropriate to have an unconscious mind, because the power that is given onto you is a kind of god-like Promethean power. So how can we switch on the lights on our animal nature…? I think it is very simple: we have to de-condition ourselves from culture. We are sick, we require medical intervention… into what is a galloping, cancerous state of neurosis - the growth and spread of ego. Ego is like a calcareous growth in the psyche of human beings, and if it is not treated, it creates the kind of society that we have. A society based on hierarchy, male dominance, accumulation of physical goods,suppression of the weak by the strong… This is why the psychedelics are so socially sensitive, because they dissolve de-conditioning. Every culture is a scam. Every culture is a lie. A shell game, run by weasels, for the amusement of rubes. If you do not want to be a weasel or a rube, then you need to inform yourself of how the shell game works, and what lies beyond the carnival midway of civilized values. And the way to do that is to go back to the plants, to the original gnosis."
"Culture is an effort to satisfy this weird desire human beings have to close off experience, to live with closure, to force closure. That is why cultural trips are so bizarre; why they don't make sense to anybody but the Witoto, or the Guaraní, or the Americans, or the Japanese. If you are not inside a culture, it seems crazy. Cultures do not make sense because they are not trying to make sense. What they are trying to do is produce closure, which then somehow makes a human being, who is living in the light of closure, a more manipulable, a more malleable, a lesser thing… The message coming back at all of us is: live without closure. That is the honest position given that you are some kind of a talking monkey, some kind of a primate, some kind of creature, on a planet, in an animal body,in a time and space. In the face of that, life without closure is the only kind of intellectual honesty there is. If you have to inoculate yourself against the various means of closure that are around,psychedelics do that. That is why they are so politically controversial and potent, because more than any other single act that you may voluntarily undertake, they pull the plug on the myth of cultural meaning."
Culture has a political element. Creating a new culture or building an authority over one would be as difficult as any political movement. Subcultures are usually built around selling a product where there's plenty of incentive to put the effort in to make it happen.
I think the young execute on a unique position to see the culture of their elders and actively choose to fill spots where it could be improved for their own benefit and drop customs that are no longer worth it.
> Cultural changes and evolves, of course, but it's really hard to uproot a norm or more once it's settled in, even if it's one that causes you personal pain.
I don’t know if I believe this in general. Certainly we are happy to utterly change our lifestyles whenever a convenient new technology comes about. How much have smart phones or social media changed us culturally in the spans of a couple decades? If culture can change quickly over convenience, surely actual pain would drive it to change even faster. It seems that those “hard to change” cultural aspects are actually _useful_ in some way, and therefore they survive.
It’s not just adopting technology, but the package of lifestyle and cultural changes that go along with it. Perhaps it is “consumerism” in some broad sense—we adopt our culture quickly to our convenience and entertainment.
I'm a little confused, who are the they you are referring to? People are hired on to perform tasks in return for remuneration and feelings should be reserved for outside the job. Getting emotionally involved with ones co-workers is a recipe for disaster. If you're ever invited to a workshop on diversity, don't go. James Damore and Professor Alessandro Strumia would know why.
Unfortunately, the stigma regarding men sharing feelings is prevalent in western society, and it's not only the men causing it. When I told several female friends about the work they did, their response was: "Are they gay?"