Monday, July 22, 2013

A tide of male depression?

Some not so great news:
One in 10 young Australian males contemplated suicide last year, a mental wellbeing study has found.

Researcher Jane Burns said the saddening revelation, to be included in a report to be released on Monday, reflected a mental health system that was failing young males. The survey found that nearly 70 of the 700 interviewed thought about taking their own lives and one in five felt "life is hardly worth living".

Some will no doubt say that the problem is masculinity itself, that men have to learn to express emotions and seek help and so on.

You have to wonder, though, whether the current drift of society isn't making it harder for young men to find the kind of anchors in life that they once did.

I can remember as a boy in the 1970s growing up with a very positive view of manhood. Australian men took pride in a history of masculine achievement. We were to live up to the achievements of previous generations of men, to take on the mantle of a proud tradition.

But increasingly the message has shifted to the idea that men in general, and white men in particular, have had a negative role and that any traditions they are associated with are morally tainted. I can't see how this message is likely to help young men build a strong sense of self-esteem or a positive regard for their role and place in society.

And modern life can seem empty. We exist to work and to shop and to be consumers of various kinds of entertainments. We are fundamentally to see ourselves as atomised individuals and to try to make sense of life on this basis.

This doesn't call on the deeper male instincts. We weren't made for this; there is no role in this for our strengths as men. Were we given our muscularity, or our instinct to serve and to protect, or our sense of honour and loyalty, just to end up wandering around a shopping mall buying things?

We are supposed to work together for larger ends, the most important of which is to uphold the existence of the peoples we belong to. And our role within the family is supposed to be a distinctly masculine one, a role that the wellbeing of the family depends on.

Not hedonism, not individual self-interest, not abstract universalism - none of these will ultimately work as anchors. None of these ties the best of what we are as men to a meaningful role in society.

11 comments:

  1. Maybe the men who are depressed, are trying to find out something more and to chase other stuff (the ones mentioned in this post), but because our modern enlightened secular liberal society doesn't allow for journey and this introspection, it comes out in other more bizarre ways?

    Just a thought.

    What's worse though, is people who want to give more of the virus and of the disease as some sort of "cure" to the problems.

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  2. Would "upholding the existence of the peoples we belong to" entail preventing the females of one's own ethnic group from mating with males of a different race?

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  3. Meh. The actual suicide rate in Oz isn't all that high, and therefore this study is basically a plea for more resources by government bureaucrats, academics, and other parasites.

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  4. Were we given our muscularity, or our instinct to serve and to protect, or our sense of honour and loyalty, just to end up wandering around a shopping mall buying things?

    No, we were not: we were given those things in order to protect the women of our tribe from invaders.

    "Anti-racism" is anti-masculine sexual humiliation.

    Here's a scenario that's commonplace throughout the West: the dark-skinned male walks down the street with a white woman, possibly with a brown-coloured child that she has given birth to, and white men are prevented by law from retaliating. The job of the police includes allowing the creation of a safe environment for white women to breed to with dark-skinned men.

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  5. Here's a scenario that's commonplace throughout the West: the dark-skinned male walks down the street with a white woman, possibly with a brown-coloured child that she has given birth to, and white men are prevented by law from retaliating. The job of the police includes allowing the creation of a safe environment for white women to breed to with dark-skinned men.


    What, I don't understand about the current Western order, is why do they always pick the darkest and blackest of males in skin color and features in the interracial realm.

    For what purpose? Why does it support and encourage that? Don't they know how many generations it takes to breed that stuff out?

    From black African to mulatto (1/2 black) to quadroon (1/4 black) to octoroon (1/8), it takes longer than White/Hispanic mixes or White/Asian mixes to process it.

    Why not mestizo/castizo Hispanic men? Or even Asian men?

    Why the darkest men alive? What about future generations?

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  6. Why do all them dog skin crackas got to be taking all our fine arse white women.

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  7. I saw this in a friend who went to Iraq.

    He is an immoral douchebag who I wish terrible things upon.

    However, he is merely the product of a family with no beliefs in anything. The fault firmly lies with his parents.

    So...he comes back from Iraq super messed up in the head. He attempted to turn to Christianity, but his father is so anti-Christian that would not be allowed. So he turned to the only thing he could turn to...

    Negro Worship.

    He found himself a Negro woman (he says she's Arab and Berber...honey she be black)and married her and converted to Islam.

    It's sad really. He has to pedastalize the Arab peoples because only then can he be free of the sins of his whiteness.





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  8. Anon,

    That is a sad story. And I do agree that parents can make a difference. If a parent maintains a good relationship with the child, and imparts his or her values intelligently, there is a good chance that the child will act favourably. I've observed this happen in a positive way.

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  9. Anon,

    Condolences for the unfortunate and saddening story. Still, if she is truly Arab and Berber, she isn't Black African sorry.

    Honey, she not be black. I once knew a girl who was a nominal Muslim, had an Arabic name, but she looked mixed, had a pleasant face, curly hair and a good body (and depending on the weather, she alternated between mulatta and quadroon looks in her skin colour and physical features).

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  10. I'd posit that there is a real lack of support for men in general.

    Look at education. Boys are becoming less likely to complete highschool, and it isn't because they are leaving school early to start a trade apprenticeship like they did in the past. We were at 50%/50% enrolement in universities for young men and women in the 80's (I was working at Monash Uni at that time). Women now make up over 60% of uni enrolments and male enrolement is slowly declining further.

    Another example was a report released by the Federal Parliament in Nov 2011 on domestic violence.
    http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2011-2012/DVAustralia

    The statistics provided in the report show that between 1/3 to 1/4 of domestic violence victims in Australia are men, but the section of the report that discusses how to tackle the problem, especially the section titled "Engaging Men and Boys" which focuses squarely on women as the victims and men as the perpetrators. There is no mention in the report (that I can see) of what to do about violent women. The report also makes an effort to mention support programs specifically targetted for women/girls who are victims of domestic violence, but makes no mention of programs that are targetted at men/boys who are in the same situation. I have to wonder if any such programs exist in their own right or are simply afterthoughts tacked on to the rump of programs that focus on women/girls first.

    I don't begrudge the lion's share of time/effort/resources going to the people who have the greatest need, but the situation in general appears to have significantly overemphasised men/boys as perpetrators of domestic violence and underemphasised men/boys as victims.

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