A few weeks ago I heard of a young ultrarunner guy who first spent 46 days running 4000 kilometers from Perth to Sydney for charity, and then was planning (just completed I think) doing a 1000 mile (1610) run in ten days, with the unique conditions of it all being on a 400 meter athletics track. For those counting, that is over 4025 laps in total, over 400 a day. He raised $1.4M for homelessness on the first run, and so far $1.8 million on the second one.
And in true internet fashion...
... He is a toxic male.
Yep. A guy who ran solo and raised money for charity, is toxic because he pushed his mind and body to the limit to accomplish something he set out to achieve. What a fucking terrible human.
While I haven't written about toxic masculinity much, nor have I spent much time on the demonization of men in modern society, I have written about the part that interests me far more in that ridiculous headline.
Mental toughness.
I have written about this quite a lot and the headline highlights what I have been mentioning for decades already, that we live in a victim culture, encouraging, celebrating and rewarding weakness. This guy is just "too normal" to be congratulated on his achievement, because he doesn't apparently have some acceptable physical, mental, or sexual issue to celebrate. Perhaps if he was an autistic, transgender, amputee - then it would have been okay.
It is perverse.
The various minority groups aren't necessarily perverse, but the way things that should be celebrated and encouraged, are cut down in the media because they don't came from an acceptable group. What this teaches is,
"doing good" isn't for everyone.
Because unless you come from the right group, there is no incentive and more likely, negatives instead. There is no payoff for being a good person and trying to do the right thing - just persecution. From the media at least. And because everything is public, the old rule of thirds will be in effect. One third of people will like you, one third will be indifferent to you, one third will dislike you. And, the internet encourages very loud dislikes.
But I digress.
Because what does annoy me the most is that there has been a drive to kill mental toughness, to kill resiliency, to kill emotional management and self-control, and drive for uncontrolled, reactive, thoughtless and violent behavior. As I see it, so many of the social problems we face in the world at the moment are due to poor mental hygiene and the inability and lack of will to control behavior.
Mental health is on a steep decline across the world, as depression, addiction and increasingly violent behavior across a wider cross-section of populations become apparent. Yet, we have never had so many people getting mental health support, with pharmaceuticals and therapists galore plying their trades. It is much like the waves of "diet" foods in the eighties, that just made people fatter.
Why is mental strength so bad these days?
I think it is because the majority of people have been raised to believe that controlling emotions is repressing emotions. And because many have bought in or have been conditioned to act on their automatic responses without consideration of the implications, even though they get poor results, they feel justified. Yet, they see people who are able to control their emotions doing incredible things, and their justifications turn into envy and jealousy.
From what I have observed through my life, it doesn't seem to matter how smart you are, how well-intentioned, how beautiful, or how skilled - if a person isn't able to control their emotions, every slight discomfort of any kind, is followed by an over reaction. Someone can have so much going for them, but if they don't have mental fortitude, most of their potential gets wasted.
I don't know much about toxic masculinity, but what is toxic is undermining people's achievements out of jealousy at not being able to do similar. And it is a toxic example to set for people that only those who are considered victims in some way, should get rewarded. They say to reward the behaviors we want to see more of in the world.
And that is what we are seeing.
An increasing line of victims.
And I would like to finish with an observation about what that headline implies.
Women can't be mentally tough.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
This is one of the reasons I wish I had played more sports when I was a kid. Besides the health benefits, I think it would have prepared me better for some of the mental challenges I have come across in life.
Sport is great for many things. I wish I had got into running for the mental side of it. I just couldn't maintain it - I would get bored far too easy running any distance and not chasing a ball. Now, I can't run at all.
Yeah, I hear you there. That's what's nice about the treadmill at home. I can put the TV on and it is at least a little distraction. Mostly from the pain. My legs still ache so bad when I run!
I think for men in particular, the bonds and friendships formed over team sports are pretty incredible and definitely contribute to mental health... the physical injuries from sports though... not so much.
Haha, yeah, that is probably a good point!
Dude, this article was designed purely to get this exact reaction out of you so that you would drive traffic to news.com.au.
It's not news... it's purely about one person's (not even someone particularly well known) opinion to another person's achievements. Even if the person was extremely famous, it's still not news. There would have been literally hundreds of thousands of supportive comments/opinions to choose from, but news.com.au chose one that would make people dunk on it to drive traffic. They deliberately took an opinion that literally everyone disagrees with purely for traffic - hell, the author is probably doing the exact same thing.
Traffic is money, so rage-bait like this is extremely profitable nonsense that you're now contributing to.
Don't fall for it man, it's literally not good for yours (or anyone's) mental health. This isn't worth your time.
I know, and I even predicted this response from you :) All news is like this - clickbait for a reaction. None of it is well supported by the majority of opinion, it is all cherrypicked. However, that doesn't stop it from influencing the majority of opinion, especially if there is already a preference.
Yes - all about attention.
Hahaha, I do like to be consistent.
You've written before about how MSM is corrupt and can't be trusted, so it does require some media literacy and mental discipline from us all to not feed into it. You've now driven traffic to news.com.au and given them exactly what they wanted.
I will say that not all news is like this. Think of Watergate or Dieselgate, investigative journalism created real consequences and societal change - it used to be that journalism was society's main defense against corruption - so those of us who don't just mindlessly follow the masses need to support good investigative journalism and be disciplined against ragebait.
For sure. but, hopefully one or two people who go there see it through a slightly different lens than they would have. That media literacy takes time and effort to build.
It has been a while since much was done. The investment it takes for the 5 minutes it will be seen. Look at how the Panama papers, which was a whistleblower dump so not as much work was needed, just disappeared.
I don't know if you remember the "Family" of pedophiles in Adelaide from the 80s. They killed children and there was evidence supposedly that incriminated some very high up people - disappeared.
The things that actually matter, don't seem to get much light of the day.
I'm pretty sure he knows this, and I'm also pretty sure this could be considered a "triggering" topic for him (seeing as "trigger" seems to also cover "don't get me started" topics as well as ones that cause ptsd/fight or flight responses as far as I can tell purely from observation of statistically insignificant sample sizes) :)
Yeah, I'm sure you're mostly likely right... I just get so annoyed when media companies or influencers deliberately rage-bait because it just works so incredibly well... and distracts everyone from actual real issues that we should be working on.
Unfortunately I think rage-bait works best on triggering topics. Declare something about pineapple on pizza, get 100 comments... declare something political or about gender or race... 100,000 comments.
It is infuriating. One of many reasons I don't attend mainstream news at all anymore.
And absolutely which is why they do it all the time, guaranteed a massive over the top reaction from people who want to feel justifiably outraged and have zero emotional control (that thing Taraz likes to yammer on about incessantly XD).
It's so annoying.
The way I see it is that journalists are really the only defense society has against high-level corruption of politicians and CEOs - but they're not going to spend time and money doing that work when they can just earn their coin on low-effort, non-news articles about one person's social media opinion.
pineapple is good on pizza.
STRONG AGREE!
Another made up term made up to cover insecurities of others. I don't disagree that some guys can be testosterone fueled assholes, but they are just that, assholes.
There are assholes across the entire population, man or woman, or whatever else people call themselves these days.
Agreed. Assholes are behind us everywhere :)
I think the pendulum swings too far at times. Now we have a bit too much in terms of celebrating the societal groups that used to be repressed. It will balance out with time.
It will balance for a short time, before it swings the other way. The in group will always be the ones with power and control.
This is the petulant children wailing that people are doing better than them in lots of different ways. Or the whole thing pushing back against him could be completely AI generated bullshit. Either way it’s stupid because masculinity and mental toughness is crucial in the world we live in today.
It makes me laugh that, if it’s truly a person writing that, they haven’t the slightest clue as to how infrastructure is run. They will be the first to cry if the toxic males don’t keep the lights on.
The value of content has come down so much, that it doesn't even matter what is said. People will just see and hear what they want thoughtlessly. I like writing about this kind of thing, because the act of writing about it helps me process its ridiculousness.
You should take a look at this movie, it is an example of prophecy... https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1282015
We are in that communist era that Feodor talked about, "when intelligent people must stay silent as to not offend the stupid ones"
That looks like an interesting movie! Thanks :)
I think our mental health was first affected by the pandemic, then destroyed by the subsequent hyperinflation almost every country in the world.
It started long before. The pandemic just amplified and catalyzed it further.
Men, if they are mentally strong, that at the slightest stress or threat, they start wars and stupid.
Is that mental strength?
Being mentally strong does not mean that we do not have emotions or that we do not live stressful moments, but that we have the capacity to face the challenges that life presents us with. Obviously, women are not as strong as men, and we are more sentimental, but that does not mean we lack mental strength. Generalizing is the problem.
I think mental issues are getting overhyped day by day. Sure mental health is important, but the media, and society portray it in a harmful way.
Tell someone they are sick enough, they will become sick.
exactly!
That man needs to be celebrated, and if I could run, I would do the same, regardless of the criticism.
It's all about the purpose.
Some people's only purpose, is to comment on the purpose of others.
So true!
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BEER.I think it's important to find a balance between mental toughness and understanding our emotions. Society seems to push extremes either you're 'too tough' or 'too sensitive' but I believe both are important. It’s frustrating when people downplay hard-earned achievements just because someone doesn’t fit into a certain 'box.' We should celebrate effort and determination, no matter where it's coming from.
Sensitivity isn't about getting upset, it is about knowing when to apply different attributes. People aren't sensitive these days, they are volatile.
Even better if he was all those things.stack the abilities
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Interesting. I have been conditioned to believe that certain groups have inordinate advantages, so recognizing them for achievements which took hard work is not appropriate. However this leads to an internal struggle as my internal compass struggles to overcome my conditioning. I refuse to abandon reason for narrative truth. It makes me uncomfortable when I am around people who have adopted the prevailing narratives “hook, line and sinker” because I don’t seek confrontation, only the right to think for myself and judge a book by it’s contents.