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This is the kind of LARPing I was talking about.
"These men" by and large are not going to do shit. The vast majority of lovelorn men will do nothing but masturbate and seethe; they are not some sort of existential threat whose wrath anyone needs to fear. As for the tiny number who do go on a killing spree, I find it very unlikely that society could have done anything to help them - they'd probably have been the sort of person who goes feral even in a healthier society.
That said, we should care about people who need help, though I'd classify them as similar to drug addicts; they need to want help and recognize the degree to which their own choices have put them in this situation.
They run amok because they think they've got nothing left to lose, so all deterrents are void. Ensure that people have something worth living for and they won't run amok.
Citations: WP, some guy on the Internet, and my memories of the time I ran amok as a teenager (thankfully with a body count of 0). And yes, it was at the tail-end of a depressive episode.
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By and large, probably yes. But some of them provably do (and I dispute that they would have done it anyway in a healthier society). And when they do, it's often treated by most as something that should be prevented even in the singular case.
It seems like this site is different from average people in this regard though and doesn't see it as particularly relevant if the occasional Sandy Hook is part of the price of the issue. So I guess I won't be seeing too many condolences on this site the next time something similar happens, or at least that's what I'll expect if motivated reasoning isn't afoot.
Some men provably go on killing sprees for lots of reasons. We clearly cannot stop every unbalanced person unhappy with life who decides to go out violently.
But I was not talking about the occasional loner who snaps, I was talking about the premise that lonely men in Western society pose a threat to social order because there are so many of them they will turn into a disrupting force. I don't think there are that many of them, I think very few of them will ever actually "do" anything, and I stand by my claim that those who do, were probably mentally unbalanced in the first place (and not just because they couldn't get laid).
This is incredibly simplistic, reductive logic, sloppy thinking that would not even remotely pass in regards to any other issue.
"Some cars provably crash for lots of reasons. We clearly cannot stop every vehicular incident that ends violently."
"Some kids provably drown in bodies of water for lots of reasons."
"Some buildings provably collapse."
I'm sure you get the point. No, you probably can't realistically entirely eliminate men who have a grudge against society and are unattached enough to any of its benefits (which probably does involve some degree of mental imbalance, as history shows it is probably the normative human response to be placated enough by bread and circuses regardless of anything else) to choose violence. But obviously you can ameliorate the issue with changes to society, same as any other.
This again is just sloppy logic. Let's take Adam Lanza. Now let's put him in whatever his version of a dream world would be, the perfect society that absolutely caters to him (other than that shooting children is still illegal and life-ruining, if he'd actually still want to do that). You think he still shoots up Sandy Hook in that world? I doubt it. You don't think that if he lived in a world that was 10% closer to his dream world, his probability of committing the shooting wouldn't be lowered by at least 1% or so? So obviously there's a gradient here.
Of course there's a clear counterargument to this that someone might make, at least in regards to preventing his conduct: "I think Adam Lanza is nuts/evil/etc. and don't want to live in his dream world or any world that's even 1% closer to it." But I doubt this is true, what with the old saying about stopped clocks and all.
Unless you completely agree with the state of modern gender relations, or want them to be even more like the OnlyFans world they've become, where the traditional marriages that built modern prosperity are becoming increasingly less common and more antiquated (particularly among youths) than old grandfather clocks that a mouse might be running up in a nursery rhyme, then you inevitably almost certainly agree with guys like Lanza, Elliot Rodger, etc. to some degree on some things.
Are you aware of the 2023 Pew Research survey that found 63% of young men aged 18-29 to be single?
I am normally somebody who advocates for careful skepticism of Reddit-style "Source sweaty?" link-mining, but the fact that even a single survey from a relatively reputable organization was able to derive this result is objectively insane and I believe likely automatically renders false your assertion that there aren't that many lonely men these days.
Now in fact I unfortunately must agree with you on one thing here. I think the demoralization is too complete and the panopticon is so strong that we're unfortunately unlikely to see an uprising of dissatisfied men. The best case scenario for them is probably a mass exodus to AI-powered waifubots, VR, etc. (which is already happening, though not much yet as the technology is still primitive), a boycott that may eventually leave biological women in general in an actually far worse position than if they had just accepted the trad revolt (but far more gradually).
With that being said, when you have an issue that affects almost 2/3rds of young men of prime fighting age and at the peak of their virility, I don't think you can say anything for sure. If they decided they were sick of the issue and going to band together to fix it by any means necessary as soon as possible, I doubt anybody could stop them for long. Unfortunately though I also think the system is well aware of this and going to work very hard to make sure they don't get to that "if" (as it already is with the onslaught of feminist subversion and other various divide and conquer tactics). I think it will probably succeed.
I just don't think you can make any absolute statements about something that negatively impacts so many people. Complete societal-wide revolutions have been started before by far smaller cohorts (with many of the contributors to these also being relatively listless in their prior society, since after all if they had already been living such great, successful, and dynamic lives of fulfilling their ambitions and fully satisfying their hierarchy of needs they'd have had little desire to change much). To completely dismiss the capacity for violence and change of so many people with shared incentives is what I would call arrogant, cavalier, reckless, and just plain bad civilizational reasoning.
Using lots of adjectives does not add authority to what was essentially an empty assertion on your part. You are asserting that incel killing sprees are either a thing, or something we should be worried about. My assertion is that they are rare, isolated phenomena and that sexless men are of no greater risk factor in this respect than any other social malady, in terms of turning a few unstable people into killers. Your car analogy is more like "Sometimes car crashes happen because someone was transporting ducks in their car and the ducks got loose and caused the driver to lose control of the car; therefore, ducks are a threat to traffic safety."
I've already said we should should try to ameliorate the issue, because I genuinely do feel sorry for sexless men living lonely, miserable lives, and not because I am afraid of them becoming mass murderers. My point is that what you are posting is incel LARP. And also that you seem to put 100% of the blame on "society" for not providing pussy to every man who wants it.
I did not assert that there aren't many lonely men these days. I asserted that they are not a threat, or really, something we should be concerned about threatening society in a major way.
Read more carefully.
The men with a capacity for violence and change are mostly not in the category of "can't get laid."
Yeah, kind of. There have been societies in the past where men without wives were a rounding error (and often were true lunatics, though with even many true lunatics still having wives too), so it's not impossible. If a future society had significantly less availability of information technology, I would also put the blame on that society for not being capable of providing something that is ubiquitous nowadays (unless they were capable of it and not providing it was some deliberate and well-informed philosophical choice about how they wanted people to live).
Sure, but you also seem to be paradoxically reluctant to grant that this might also reduce to any degree the propensity to violence of people who are already affected by it. And I don't see why.
???
In literally your last post on the subject in response to me you wrote:
So again: ???
Yes, perhaps you should read your own posts before making them.
Alright. If 63% of men between 18-29 not being a possible threat at all is what you want to hang your civizational and historical reasoning credibility on, then so be it. I simply happen to disagree.
I think pretty much any man has a capacity for violence and change. You don't have to be appealing to women to operate a gun, bomb, etc. You don't have to be appealing to women to have a high IQ (and often the opposite is true). You don't have to be appealing to women to have strength in the numbers (as the 63%) number proves. I mean, as the classic OKCupid survey shows, most men aren't particularly appealing to women. But if they still didn't have a capacity for violence and change, history would look vastly different.
Would you consider that you're within the realm of claiming that the only men with the capacity for violence and change are those who are already considered desirable by society (and thus again have very little reason to want to change it)? Would you consider why history makes this obviously wrong?
What exactly do you think "society" should do?
What is the source of your confusion? I said there are not enough sexless men to form a disrupting force. You were talking about hordes of young angry males forming some sort of incel army. There are "lots" of lonely men, yes. I don't think there are that many as demographic.
"Being single" is not the same as "can't get laid," or "being involuntarily alone." That 63% figure you're pointing at includes guys who are banging a different chick every day of the week. As well as guys who aren't interested in a relationship right now but have had relationships in the past and want one in the future.
Sure, but realistically, the threat you are proposing, of angry young men rising up to destabilize society because they can't get laid, will not be posed by the sort of men who actually can't get laid.
I'm not sure what "within the realm of" means. If you're asking if I think only chads have a capacity for violence and change, no.
What historical examples of a large population of sexless men rising up and changing society because of it do you have in mind?
Take a serious look at the relationship norms that in the past put almost every person in a civilizational stabilty-enhancing traditional marriage and consider readopting them.
My confusion is you explicitly saying that aren't that many lonely men, then saying you never said that and I'm not a careful reader for thinking you did, and now saying that there are "lots" (?) of them but not "that many as demographic".
How about let's try this: What percentage of men total, and what percentage of men aged 18-29, do you think suffer from a significant degree of romantic loneliness? (We'll define "a significant degree" such that it decreases their perceived quality of life by at least 20%.)
This is somewhat of a fair point at least as a general objection. Though we know that at least 20-30% of men in the same age group are sexless in the last year (varying based on the year of course) from other surveys (and based on modern norms probably only a small part of those are in a happy pre-marriage relationship where they're abstaining from sex for moral reasons). We also know from other partner count surveys that the demographic of men who are "banging a different chick every day of the week" is incredibly small and that these men often aren't even single, so they're unlikely to constitute a significant percentage of that 63%.
But let's steelman your viewpoint. Let's assume that even half of these single young men are actually perfectly happy and not lonely at all. That still leaves us with 31.5% of men aged 18-29 being unhappily single, which is still insane, still a complete indictment of modern societal romantic norms, and still a serious problem that could represent a civilizational threat (again, smaller cohorts than that have severely disrupted society). (And I would argue it does by its very existence quite likely automatically represent a civilizational threat/problem, even for people beyond the men themselves, even if not necessarily in the form of any explicit "revolution".)
Ultimately, 63% is just too large of a number to handwave away by appealing to exceptions to the obvious general case of "People who are not in a stable romantic relationship are probably in general more romantically dissatisfied than those who are." I highly doubt it is even 50% who fall into these exceptions. I doubt it's even 10%.
Alright, this is another case where I think you're either contradicting yourself or you're not but I'm not understanding you. Either way we're talking past each other. So again let's try this:
On a scale from 0 (totally irrelevant) to 10 (highly relevant), how relevant is sexual/romantic desirability to a man's capacity for violence and change?
For sexless/romantically lonely men, none as far as I know, because the amount of male sexlessness and romantic loneliness present today is unprecedented in human history as far as I'm aware of. But as far as revolutions go, I think 100% of them fall into the category of "almost entirely men taking up violence against society because they have shared needs they feel aren't being met". I see no reason why going unfulfilled romantically/sexually would be some special case that couldn't be slotted into that same general pattern. People can rebel over religion, bread, ideology, taxes, etc. Why not romance/sex?
Again, I agree with you thinking it's probably not going to happen. I just don't see how you can entirely dismiss it so strongly. Way weirder and less likely things have happened in history than 63% (or 30%, or 50%, or whatever the number actually is, but we know it's probably not like only .5% or 3%) of men taking up arms against society because it's not providing them with something they want.
I don't actually object to this on a purely abstract level, but concretely, most people who propose this seem to think we should "reset" to some point in the distant past before whatever reforms and changes they don't like happened. I mean, if you want to abolish feminism or whatever your personal bete noir is, good luck with that, but proposing we should return to the golden age of Christianity and no gay rights, etc., etc., is larping. Do you have a serious proposal for social change, or just longing for a past age? Because "Hey ladies, maybe you should consider being a tradwife" is demonstrably something with limited appeal. On the other hand, if you're one of those people we've had in the past who thinks the Ret^rn should be more... forceful, well, I don't wish you luck with that. (And it's certainly not going to happen with modern Western incels.)
I don't know. Too vague (probably most men have felt that way at least at some point in that age range - I certainly did). Let's say it's in the ballpark of 50%. And?
If you reread that poll you cited, it further breaks down the "not in a relationship" group into those who are looking, those who aren't, those who are interested in a long-term relationship, etc. I think 50% is too high and 10% is too low, but we can argue about numbers all day - again, say it's 50% of young men in the West today who aren't getting laid as often as they'd like. And?
I am really not trying to be evasive, but I find these questions silly. I am not a sociologist and can only make up a number based on vibes. Let's say there is a positive correlation. What are you trying to get at?
Maybe true.
This rounds to "all wars are started by men who aren't happy about something," which seems to be so banally true as to make me wonder, again, what your point is? Since you admit that it's highly unlikely that a bunch of lonely, sexless men are going to start a revolution over it, perhaps we should discuss more productive solutions.
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Which societies? In the US in 1900 apparently 39% of adults were unmarried, and that was certainly a society in which sex outside marriage was universally discouraged and certainly much more rare than it is today.
39% of adults in which age group? Or 39% died being unmarried and/or never having been married? And if we go back to 1800 or 1700 or 1200, how do those numbers look? (It might seem bizarre by modern standards to consider 1900 particularly progressive, but if you compare it to the general trend of history it mostly is.) Also what about particular subsets of society who almost constitute their own society? How many Mormon adults in 1900 were unmarried? Or Muslims? How about in the middle Ottoman Empire (as the late one actually did have reported increasing amounts of romantic instability, being in decline and all)? Or pre-Meiji Japan? (Just random examples off of the top of my head.)
Plus, at the very least, 39% (assuming the age group involved is relatively young) is still a lot better than the modern numbers.
This survey from 2015 shows 66% of Mormons married, better than your general population numbers from 1900, and they enjoy all of the benefits of modern technology/society while being pretty heavily integrated with it and without much insulation from its general romantic/sexual rot and decline. So while they're not anywhere close to almost universality, that number still suggests that getting a lot closer to there isn't even necessarily that difficult if you have the institutional will.
(For more specific historical examples, it's worth noting that exact kind of traditional societies that had nearly universal marriage would have likely existed before the advent of modern demographic statistics. It's also worth noting that if you have nearly universal marriage, even if you have modern statistics, the concept of marriage rate as a statistic wouldn't seem to make much sense/have much relevance, same as we don't particularly put much emphasis on the rate of people who have two thumbs, even though some don't.)
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Cigarette smoking, by and large, does not do shit. The vast majority of smokers will not develop lung cancer; cigarettes are not some sort of existential threat whose danger anyone needs to fear.
When you are consistently creating the sort of circumstances that lead vulnerable/damaged men to snap, go berserk and then go on killing sprees, "Most of them just go masturbate instead" does not even reach the level of being wrong. Yes, the majority of these men will just waste away living lives of quiet desperation you are free to not care about, but as that population grows the minority who do in fact snap and go crazy will grow as well.
I have yet to see any causal link between whatever it is that society is supposedly doing to prevent sad men from getting laid, and spree shootings. If an incel goes on a rampage and says society made him do it, should we believe him?
And I don't know what that causal link is. My theory is that society is no longer properly socialising young men in healthy ways, and while some men can handle this just fine, some cannot. For a slim minority, this leads to them acting out in incredibly nasty ways.
To use a metaphor, if I fill a house with flammable rags soaked in gasoline, there's no direct causal link between that and the fire (it was the lit match thrown in the window)... but there's very clearly a relationship between the creation of those conditions and a massive conflagration, even if it wasn't the direct cause.
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what are the stats on this? Im' curious...
EDIT: looked it up, and wow yeah it's a 7.7% chance if you smoke 1-5 cigarettes a day. That's WAY lower than I'd imagined, and maybe the stats there are even cooked since anti cigarette is now the culturally accepted stance.
This ignores increased risk of heart attack and stroke. There's a reason it's the first question insurance companies ask.
Though it is undoubtedly exaggerated, and there is a puritan hatred for any nicotine product as a result.
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