29 days “lost” at sea, is therapy for all of the external bullshit we deal with every fucking day.
By “we” I mean people in society, not just men. Everyone struggles with making their way in “this world” we built for ourselves. We made it to be this horrible.
I watch some trash reality TV and always find it kind of funny how contestants spend a long amount of time internalizing the stress of the situation the show they agreed to be on is putting on them.
Half of Love Island is “Why did you kiss them?” “Why did you go on a date with that person?” “Why did you break up with me?” Guys it’s a SHOW. The SHOW is making you go through these completely unnatural circumstances!
And then I think about real life and it’s like “why don’t I have energy? why am I so depressed? why can’t I be more productive?” …guys it’s CAPITALISM/SOCIETY. SOCIETY is making you go through these completely unnatural circumstances!
…except of course I didn’t agree to be on this show.
None of us did.
I didn’t get a say in whether or not to be born. I’m just here now and I have to deal with all of this shit.
When I was deployed it was nice, I didn’t have bullshit to worry about. I did my job, I ate, I took shits, and I slept.
did he have a volleyball with him.
The environment we created for ourselves takes advantage of our evolution and uses our biology against us.
Food is drowned in sugar to get us addicted. Social media is designed to keep us angry and upset. Entertainment is a recycled polished turd, designed to take no risks and challenge nothing and leave us only with shallow amusement.
We are losing our respect for the profound, our empathy for the other, and our curiosity for the unknown.
We have made a world of numbing poison for ourselves. A 29 day separation sounds like the most powerful “therapy” we could have tbh.
Damn, that is well said. This sentence in particular:
We are losing our respect for the profound, our empathy for the other, and our curiosity for the unknown.
is the kind of thing that sounds like an empty platitude when your mind/life is in a bad state, but after a few years of progress and healing I read that line and wish I could adequately express the years of reflection and learning that can be distilled down to such a short statement.
Thanks stranger.
I think a lot about daily life and the systems we’ve built and the way people treat each other and think about existence, and how we’ve changed and over time… or haven’t.
We’re advancing so much faster than we’re evolving.
I think that’s causing problems :/
i was a camp host for a summer and it was possibly the best summer of my life. no power, no water, no internet, minimal contact with people, cleaning toilets, and spending half of my day in a kayak.
That sounds like a great way to spend a summer. I wouldn’t mind running water but I’d probably learn to appreciate it after not having it for a few months.
the unexamined life is not worth living
That’s snappy. You should put it on a coffee mug.
I hate how I understand this.
Theraphy, when it works, only solves internal causes of one’s pain.
29 days away from present day society, will for a while suspend the external causes of one’s pain.
(Which is why the former usually doesn’t fully solve everything: the external shit, which often is what indirectly created much of the internal shit via things like trauma and coping mechanisms, is still there and pushing you)
I’m considering hard getting “lost” forever.
I felt this comment.
Thanks, I hate it.
29 days without having to work all day long, deal with chores and family and whatever. And then sleep a couple of hours to do it again. This has nothing to deal with this person going to therapy.
I read this as more “not having to experience the daily news for a month and being horrified”.
Yes I would, I hate therapy.
Oh fuck off. Therapy won’t help with… *gestures at everything*
Agreed. It’s more like “people would rather be lost at sea than live in a modern society”.
How bad can it be? /s
I don’t know what I’m holding out for. Maybe I should fix my teeth, take the gadgets I already have, and get lost forever.
To be fair we were breed to be lost at sea/forest/steppe, not live in a modern society. Like that’s our natural place to live and die, not a city.
We’re not homo naledi. We’ve been living in increasingly modern societies forever, and definitely long enough for it to be more natural to us as a species than shitting in bushes and dying of dysentery.
Quit crying. You’ll be fine. Don’t be such a crybaby. Man up. Put on your big boy pants. Boys don’t cry. Boo hoo, gonna cry about it? Gonna cry like a little girl? Be a man. Face your problems like a man. Crying doesn’t help anything. Take it like a man. Don’t be a baby. You’re acting like a girl. Grow a pair. Suck it up and move on.
Why will men do literally anything besides talk about their feelings?
To be fair it’s also men doing this to other men mostly. Women participate in toxic masculinity too, but really, men give each other a lot of shit with very little support.
Without giving away my age (But I do predates smart phones and home internet use), I’ve found men are perfectly fine with venting assuming the setting is right. Small group? Beer? Sure. Something embarrassing happens in the moment? Not so much.
Its everyone but your male friends who will give you shit for showing any emotion but anger.
I can confirm this despite likely being younger. Small group and sufficient alcohol helps.
You say “everyone” but it’s still just other men.
Nope, I meant everyone.
Edit: Although I guess a more accurate term would be, “Every demographic” since not everyone of any demographic will be that way.
In my experience, when a man complains about their ‘men’ problems to anyone online they’re given the treatment grueling_spool is describing by both men and women.
But in more “insulated” face to face conversations its pretty varied/mixed. I suspect this is mostly an “all to all” online conversation effect. There are people who are absolutely ruthless online towards men complaining about problems men specifically face and they will find complaining men and mock them.
I think I probably agree with your assessment, but I really just wanted to highlight that this thinking is endemic to western culture, or at least the slice of it with which I am familiar. Sure, a lot of people might not say things like this face-to-face, but you probably wouldn’t be shocked if you witnessed it, would you?
Just like with any other harmful idea, all it takes is one person in a room to say it loudly and persistently while everyone else says nothing (or fecklessly points out the person’s gender as if dispensing some profound insight).
anecdotally, as a guy in my thirties, even my acquaintances (wouldn’t actually consider them friends tbh, since we only hang out at rec game times) are quite supportive. sure there’s the surface level of shit talk, but if you start to get serious, they do too. a few of them surprised me with this.
in my experience nowadays, it’s equally just shitty people of any gender that say suck it up, no real bias one way or another
but that’s of course just my own circles. I tend to just drop out of (or not join in the first place) any circle that has shitty people
For sure, women usually say they want a man who can show his feelings. It’s just that the second he does cry about anything other than a dead child, she gets the ick and loses all respect for him, in my personal experience. I think they talk a big game but when the chips are down they find out they’re not actually as into it as they thought.
Ok, but in my experience, it is manflu they are whining about and having to do house chores while having it. Shit I deal with every fucking day.
Yeah I hate being understanding when my gf is sick or on her period too, like man up and wash them dishes bitch!
Oooooor you could be more understanding if one of you is under the weather regardless of gender I guess if you wanna be a loser.
To be fair, who said it wasn’t also men?
No, we’d rather be lost at sea than have to participate in the broken society that makes people need therapy.
I lack the photoshop skills, but uh
The ‘plap plap GET PREGNANT’ meme, but with a therapist shouting:
‘accept what you can’t change’
‘don’t blame yourself for things out of your control’
‘oh, the copay is $125’
‘you missed the last appointment so we charged you for not canceling in advance’
‘im worried you’re not taking our sessions seriously’
sorry psych professionals, there is no ethical therapy under capitalism
i feel vindicated.
The ‘plap plap GET PREGNANT’ meme, but with a therapist shouting:
h’whut with h’whomb?
Ok, I may not have great photoshop skills, but I do have a knowledge of ancient memes:
there is no ethical therapy under capitalism
Lol
100%
But also, go to therapy
You can just do that. No one is stopping you from buying a canoe and floating away
A cursory glance implies a decent canoe starts at $2000, so my bank account is stopping me, at bare minimum
“lost at sea”
mf land right over there
???
Therapy doesn’t help much if you have no power over the root cause
Totally get where you’re coming from. If you’re staring down the barrel of something massive like trauma, abuse, an entire system that’s completely fucked and seems way bigger than you and the others fighting it are or ever will be, it feels like no matter how much “self care” you do, the external crap stays the same, right?? It’s fucking maddening.
But idk, to me, therapy (actual, good therapy with a non-shitty therapist) isn’t about giving us power over the root cause, not always anyways because like you said, sometimes it’s impossible. Imo, a lot of times it’s about helping people stop handing more power to “it” (whatever it may be) than “it” already has. We don’t get to choose what happens to us sometimes, but we do get to choose how we respond to it, how we carry it, how we let it affect us, how we pass our pain onto others. It can be a super uncomfortable, yet extremely liberating, paradox. Like, okay, I might not be able to slay the dragon here (sorry, nerd here), but I can sure as hell stop feeding it in whatever way I was (constant unhealthy thought patterns, my own actions or the lack thereof, etc).
Therapy doesn’t fix the world for sure, but it can help us decide which parts of the suffering are necessary, or which parts we might be unconsciously choosing to carry longer than we need to. Idk, that’s where our power really is, imo.
Edit: fixed some typos
It sounds like you’re telling me to stop caring about climate change cause I’d be happier
Fair, it can teach you tools many people do not have
My therapist is taking two weeks off for their own mental health, been hearing the same woes from everyone and it’s weighing
Therapy has become the new buzzword to prescribe to any individualistic issue because most people don’t know what it is or who its for, they just think it’s a silver bullet solution to everything because everybody else says so… but it’s not.
Therapy is great for specific people with specific disorders, it’s there to help provide these people with solutions and treatments to improve their conditions. It’s not meant to be a replacement for a social circle or to fix the problems in your life.
Not to mention that therapy is either expensive or hard to access or the therapist you do get to see are usually not that great. It is very hard and very rare to find a good therapist that’s affordable and nearby. Even then, a therapist can only do so much. They’re trained to work through common disorders using several established methods, but not much beyond that. Therapists can help you overcome your anxiety, but they can’t help you find meaningful relationships.
This is doubly true for men, because a lot of men are facing issues related to finding purpose and meaning in life, and that’s something that’s beyond the scope of therapy. Maybe these issues could be resolved as a result of treating a disorder, but that’s not always the case. The point is that therapy is not a magical solution, and it’s not going to solve huge societal problems like men turning their backs on society.
You say men are turning their backs on society. I would argue it’s the other way round. Modern society has lots of problems unfortunately, and can be quite hostile especially to men.
I don’t think these two things are mutually exclusive
Yes this is very true. I think if anything they go hand in hand, if society is hostile towards you, you are equally more likely to turn your back on it. If you start turning away from society, people are more hostile, so it reinforces that decision. It’s still a systematic failing though. Society should be pulling people back from the brink, not pushing them further.
This is, of course, the fault of women.
No? It’s the fault of all genders. Men perpetuate ideas that hurt other men, and women perpetuate ideas that hurt other women. Vice versa is equally true.
Im sure. So hard to hear men have it so uniquely rough.
No one is saying women don’t have it rough. The difference is one gender is being pushed out of society, the other is being pushed under it. Men are basically encouraged to give up and go away, maybe commit suicide or go fight in a war. Women are encouraged to find a “man” and become some tradwife who has no agency. Neither is a good thing, but don’t pretend they aren’t different.
Non heteronormative women are absolutely encouraged to die.
5150 holds (local code, idk how local) are like a rite of passage.
I hadn’t considered that. I can’t say I know much of the struggles of lesbians.
men built society. whatever problems are inherent in it were practically designed by men. as a matter of fact, the further we go, the more we slip away from the feminine qualities of our humanity (our more egalitarian hunter-gatherer roots). and as it begins to collapse around us, you incels are gonna cry about how it’s unfair? fuck you. put your big boy pants on and deal with it. or better yet, retreat completely from it and let the people with honest consciences rebuild it.
god, i fucking hate incels.
This is a rather bizarre response to come up with. First I am not an incel, that’s a right wing ideology I don’t subscribe to. I mean some of the concepts they use don’t even make sense statistically - like they are logically impossible. I digress.
Women make up more than half the population. Sexism wouldn’t have been as big of a problem and still wouldn’t be as big of a problem if women didn’t perpetuate it too. Just look at the trad wife movement or modern women who despise feminism, or like any women’s beauty standards, or the whole thing about matching outfits, etc. All of these are forms of sexism that men just don’t engage in to nearly the extent women do. Purity tests for butch lesbians and trans girls is another one. At least you can argue that men also do that, but they aren’t the ones kicking women out of bathrooms.
Absolutely toxic masculinity is a problem largeley caused by men, but that’s not the fault of the individual. Like I didn’t decide that boys don’t cry. Plenty of women too help perpetuate and reinforce these ideas by doing things like breaking up with men who show any vulnerability. There is a reason why gay men are better at this.
As for the whole thing of slipping further away from feminine qualities - you do know not all past societies were more feminine, right? Have you heard of ancient Greece? You do realize feminism has made large strides at addressing much of these issues? Like this all used to be much worse, things have been progressively changing for the better and still are in most places. It’s only the USA that seems to have taken a nosedive recently. Even that is a push back against broader change.
therapy also teaches a lot of sociopathic traits.
my SIL went through therapy recently (after getting into a weird polygamous relationship which allowed her the $$ to do so). she and my wife had lived through a pretty traumatic upbringing after their wonderful father died and left them to deal with a BPD mother who blew through the family money and left them to practically fend for themselves while being batshit crazy.
all the therapist taught her was to be selfish. she practically cut off contact with both her sister and mother and just got really good at doing what was best for herself and herself only. since then, her mother has become disabled and now my wife is having to deal with it all alone while the sister lives a very lavish life on a farm.
fuck therapy and fuck modern life in general. no wonder we’re all becoming assholes.
If the mother is so bad and abusive then why is your wife helping her? I think the sister did the right thing here. The state has mechanisms to take care of the elderly for good reasons.
Just goes to show how insane society has become that you’d rather go to therapy than take a 29 day break by being lost at sea.
29 days away from reality is therapy.
There’s a tiny town in northern California called Downieville that my wife and I love to visit. It’s maybe 200 people, sits on the convergence of two decent sized rivers, and there is pretty much no cell service. Even just a week of sitting by that river is enough to fully recharge me and not want to break everything for at least 4 months.
“Gee I love working, can’t wait to reduce my down time to work some more.”
Society hasn’t become that bad. It’s becoming that bad again, and almost none of us are used to it.
Being lost at sea is reality. Society is the dream
