Psychology

Musings On The Lonely Men Who Hate Each Other

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The “Male Loneliness Epidemic” is something I see discussed a lot. Men feel lonely and isolated. Men fall under the spell of grifters. Men don’t find what they need and get bitter and angry. Being a pretty generic guy, I take interest in this for many reasons, including the fact a lot of (white) guys voted for Donald Trump who, as of this post, is sort of ruining everything.

Having lived many, many decades I get the concern about male loneliness. I also however was raised with the idea that you can find and make friends. I suspect some of this is really that I hit a sweet spot of how I was raised, role models, connective nerd culture, and region. I grew up thinking about making friends and connecting, and that it’s my job to do it. I guess some people missed that.

Beyond my very broad experiences, I’m not sure I can comment on the fine details of this supposed epidemic, if it is an epidemic (I don’t think so), and so on. I think what is obvious is there’s a grifty, fascistic part of Online Male Culture that uses this sense of disconnection to give vulnerable men a pathological and unsustainable role model, what one person on Tumblr called wittily the Buff Scammer.

The Buff Scammer is a sort of capitalistic/fascistic/comic book ideal of a guy as a jacked hustler always making scores and gains. You don’t actually enjoy yourself, you just have to keep up the gains and the money to show off . . . to other men. Even relations with women are ways to show off to men, meaning that you enter into the bizarrely homoerotic sphere of men thinking of men in their wooing of women. These men don’t have friends or lovers, just targets of various kinds.

What is funny is that, with my (ever-advancing age) and interest in history is I’m used to seeing far different ideals of male role models that are not the Buff Scammer.. A lot of them involved an idea of citizenship in many ways, even if there were other pathologies. The idea of a man was an idea of being engaged and part of things (even if there was plenty of toxic masculinity otherwise). It’s weird to see that in, say, 2500 year old writings, but also remember it in my youth and feel like it’s sort of been pushed aside in my lifetime.

Citizenship gives one some grounding, some sense of place – and you feel less lonely. You’re playing or seeking to play a role. Maybe it’s just me getting old, but I honestly see that completely lacking in large parts of culture, including some of the male grift-o-sphere. I meet plenty of engaged citizens who are happy, but there are zones where the idea of citizenship seems long gone.

Citizenship as an ideal leads you to not be alone and to seek connection. You have an ideal of belonging. The Buff Scammer and his ilk have none of that. That has to not just be lonely, but it resists a traditional gateway for not being lonely – the idea of being an active citizen. I mean you may not like everyone but you’re part of something.

This makes me think of the events of the first few months of the Trump administration. Trump destroyed alliances and trade deals built over decades – indeed over a century. He isolated the country in a temper tantrum, trying to look tough. He was, in short, a Buff Scammer (well, not that Buff) who has no concept of friends, of citizenship.

And then I think of the lonely men who voted for him. They have no concept of friends either. No concept of citizenship. No concept of belonging.

It’s just lonely people in a temper tantrum, disconnected, isolated, and running things, leaving them even more alone. Citizenship may be a solution, but people will have to learn to be active about it. Certainly they just found some grifter is going to make them more lonely.

-Xenofact

A Chain of Tensions

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I do two forms of meditation – breathing and energy work. My breath meditation is refining a slow, even breath that I follow. My energy work (a form of Microcosmic Orbit) is harder to describe, but is is basically about “settling into” paths in my body and feeling and raising the “energy” within. What’s interesting is both forms of meditation lead to the same conclusion:

We are often amazingly tense.

Any form of meditation makes you more aware, and you’ll quickly become aware of how tense you are. It may not be painful or limiting tension (though it may be), but that odd tension, that bit of push-pull. It may not even by physical, but a few senses of odd division in your head and thoughts. Sometimes – many times – the mental and physical seem to be linked or the same thing.

It can be depressing or distracting depending on your experience and personality. Sitting down and meditating is like being locked in a straightjacket, and it’s a straightjacket that you always wear, but you only know about it during spiritual pursuits.

As you meditate and become aware of them – or in some forms of energy work “feel through them” – another thing comes to mind. A lot of what we think of as us is tension. Seriously, so much of what we think of as us is a pile of conflicts and walling ourselves off from the world and other parts of ourselves.

Our bodies and mind tense up as we are embarrassed. We seal off thoughts we don’t want to have, and enter into an eternal battle that defines who we are. Our fears of a situation tense our bodies up, ready to pounce, and that tension becomes a point of identity. We force ourselves to be certain people and do certain things, pitting tension against tension.

We’re a giant interlinked pile of tensions. The experience of this can be both enthralling and depressing when you get into meditation.

One one level it’s amazing and liberating to experience this. You suddenly see how much of you is just a bunch of conflicting stuff, a Rube Goldberg chain of neuroses and tense muscles. It’s no wonder some people have such insights in meditation and go wild about it – it’s liberating and overwhelming. I’ve had energy meditation sessions where the tensions drop away, and it’s like a thunderbolt shaking your body – it’s easy to take it so seriously you ruin it.

On another side, it’s kind of depressing. The “you” you’re used to is a janky collection of sensations and ideas and a lot of them are tensions. You’re you is always building giant walls to keep things out – building tensions (see my previous writing on “The Escape Capsule”). Your “you’ can seem awful lame when you see how much of it is self-limiting or avoidant. Nothing like looking at yourself and going “well that’s some stupid shit I’ve done for 30 years” and sitting with it.

It’s liberating and depressing to see the role of tension in our lives at the same time.

Me, I try to remember it’s just the way it is, and remember the Taoist references to refining our breath or refining our energies. I am what I am, my tensions are what I are. By my ever-tuned breath,I am refining myself like metal or purifying water. Discovering these tensions are milestones – signs I am doing something right, so I keep doing it.

But, honestly, sometimes I’m just amazed how much of “us” is just some form of tension or separation. I think that’s why we’re often envious of people with wild creativity or who are just chill – because so many of us are not that way.

-Xenofact

The Escape Capsule

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When I meditate (regular breath and energy circulation) sometimes I notice a peculiar thing. Namely, I notice myself – and why I’m there.

Somewhere in what I’m doing there’s a bit of me there, pulling away and sealing itself off. It’s peculiar because I’m both meditating but also trying to separate myself from meditating. On top of that I’m aware of me doing it, so I’m watching myself watching myself try to separate myself from what I’m doing.

No wonder some people find meditation hard, disturbing, or weird. Or they drop a few shrooms and wonder what the hell is going on. Self and ego is strange no matter what’s forcing you to confront it, but meditation is cheaper.

I’ve recently christened this thing The Escape Capsule (though, yes, I’ve seen other terms and references to it), and have been thinking about what it tells me.

Part of our identity is based on separation. There’s us and the other stuff in the world and the other stuff inside ourselves. We try to separate from the world and we try to separate the “real me” from the stuff we don’t like in ourselves. Some of our “me” is an attempt to not be things, to get away – thus I recently called it The Escape Capsie.

(I could go into I and Thou but perhaps later.)

The Escape Capsule is that idea we can wall ourselves off, and I think there’s a wiff of simplistic immortalism. We can cut ourselves off from everything else and get away from it forever. In fact, I think that sometimes our idea of an immortal, separate soul may well come from this human tendency to run away..

I mean if we can feel distant from everything doesn’t that mean there’s some separate us?

Of course as we all know identity and self isn’t that clear. We can’t wall ourselves off from parts of us as it’s all us. Whatever identity we imagine atop the rickety pyramid of self, the pyramid is a lot larger than what we pretend we are. Too often our fears, desires, memories, and reality intrude and the Escape Capsule doesn’t protect us.

Of course we know it doesn’t protect us from the world. The world is bigger. The world is where “me” comes from.

Seeing The Escape Capsule helps me understand myself and my flaws. I also am sure you, if you meditate, have also had moments where the walls of The Escape Capsule melt and you realize your you isn’t you. It’s quite something to be yourself while seeing yourself melt away. It’s also quite something to realize how much of your idea of yourself is based on not being something.

This is one thing I’ve come to appreciate about meditation. The goal is to do it – not “perfectly,” not well, not to have certain experiences. But being there in those moments where you just see, even if what you see is disturbing or humbling.

And there are moments you can’t get away.

-Xenofact