So since the attack in Toronto yesterday, leaving 10 dead and many more injured, it has come out that the perpetrator was potentially a self-declared incel who praised Elliot Roger. Facebook confirmed that he made a post on Facebook minutes before the attack declaring an "incel rebellion."
A lot of this stuff is sort of only half confirmed right now, but there's no reason to believe it was an islamist attack or anything so the incel explanation is the most likely thing so far. Whether or not it turns out to be true however, I thought it would be a good opportunity to start a thread discussing mental health under capitalism.
How does capitalism and life under it effect people's mental health? How does it effect social cohesion? How does capitalism incite this sort of violence? How does it effect romantic relationships? Are there any good books that deal with how "late-capitalism" effects our emotional, mental, and social state? Discuss and possibly post/link relevant articles, literature, etc. As well feel free to share your own personal experiences to inform the discussion.
Competition and hierarchy creates losers and those who are unable to make money (including mentally and physically disabled) become burdens. Their self-worth is eroded because no matter how hard they try they can't compete with someone who was born differently than them.
Marx wrote on Alienation, which addresses the psychological problems that the worker faces.
Sadly communism would only make things worse. At least under capitalism guys like him can gather resources and overcome their looks or personality. Under communism (assuming there is a sexual free market), girls would be able to follow their instincts freely and Chads would monopolize human relationships, making cases like him more common.
You can't just appropiate and redistribute resources equally without taking into account that some people are born with vast genetic and intellectual capital also.
John Morgan
Ironically this phenomenon is exacerbated under communism where unfit awkward losers don't have capital and class to fall back on.
Evan Reyes
You're neglecting to incorporate the fact that within a communist society these "awkward losers" would be able to pursue their passions and interests without being subjected to the market imperatives that force all of us to sacrifice large portions of our lives to capital. When their self realization is tied directly to their labor they may find a place of belonging and a sense of meaning that exists outside of sexual conquest and economic growth.
This. Heroes and After the Future touch on this subject, OP.
Jonathan Bailey
They're unfit, awkward losers partly because they're regarded as worthless based on traditional estimations of "worth" as a human being, like how much money one has or their social standing or standards base upon media images and ideology that they can't possibly meet (and, in turn, most others can't meet the awkward loser's standards).
Mason Diaz
Seize the means of reproduction! Every man a state-mandated gf.
Brody Powell
We should provide and recommend more communitarian living options for people who feel socially alienated, maybe with people of the same age-group. It would do a lot of good avoiding cases like these.
Next to that we should rethink mental health entirely. Over the last few decades it has become very obvious that everyone in out society has their issues. So let's make therapy a more universal thing. Starting at school, give kids counseling sessions a couple of times a week. Then continue this when they're adults. Make sure nothing is hindering people to strive to actualize themselves.
Which in turn will be attractive to women, I would add.
James Garcia
This is what public schools are and they are hotbeds of bullying, mental illnesses, self-image issues and assorted traumas and incubators of mass shooters (also known as -school- shooters).
Nolan Watson
You think that has more to do with the disenchanting, nihilistic, alienated society they grow up in or because they are socializing with their peers?
Josiah Williams
Girls won't fuck you because you are an asshole that people cannot relate to. Sorry.
Kevin Murphy
Sex and relationships are literally a human need. If your only way to address this is "You aren't entitled to anything" you are no different from a libertarian social darwinist
Luke Rivera
You may be correct, this society is inherently alienating and if we changed it, we could find new and better ways of getting along.
But what I'm trying to say is that socialization, right now, under capitalism is so actively toxic that creates mass shooters and killers.
Juan Cruz
You would receive help, but it'll be a bit different than what you are hoping for. Most likely a free in-depth psychiatric treatment.
Wyatt Bailey
If it meant people as dumb as you were no longer born then that might very well be worth it.
Caleb Johnson
To do what? Medicate our sexual urges away? No thanks. The sexual free market will be abolished there are no ifs ands or buts about this.(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
Dominic Nelson
have you tried lifting
Daniel Adams
The sexual market place is zero sum. Kill every incel today so only chads can breed, they will only bring more incels into the world starting the cycle anew. Today's chads are tomorrow's incels.
y tho? I love his contributions to this board. He's been here for ages.
Christian Butler
Being a loser that defines himself by the pussy he can't get is much rarer than you seem to think. The "incel" worldview is founded on the idea that the entire world is a sleazy bar, something that is easy to think for narcissistic people that have sex with strangers for a hobby.
Be fair, I fail to see how having idiotic opinions is in itself grounds for a ban. It's not like he is discussing in bad faith like the Reddit liberals that think we are obligated to toe their ideological lines.
Nathan Nguyen
kek someone's new to imageboards
Jordan Cox
I am a Japanese and here, Capitalism's very corrosive to mental health and relationships. The everyday struggle for money and survival stresses us out a lot. Some people's jobs are so worrying that they bottle up all these fears and frustrations, until they're like overfilled balloons ready to pop. Relationships collapse because lovers are so tired that they just don't have energy to be together. Youth who can't survive in competitive life lock themselves in their rooms. Sometimes their work is so tiring, businessmen must sleep on the streets. These problems are turning extremely bad.
Yeah, exactly. NEETs are alienated proletarians, we should maybe try understanding their issues instead of hating them
I would think so because it's usually cheaper there, and pace of life is slower. But I am a city boy, I never lived in "the sticks" so to speak and I lived in Saitama (city north of Tokyo) all my life.
Jason Davis
Just shoot us when the revolution comes. Everything is shit anyways
Brandon Nguyen
Do people in Japan work so much because wages are low? Or is there another reason?
He's very one-note.
Dominic Green
Read Mark Fisher. He knew a thing or two about capitalism and depression, considering he actually killed himself because of alienation.
Dominic Gomez
People work so hard because of work culture. In confucian-influenced cultures, the company is thought of as your family and the boss is an elder who you have to respect. Sometimes we stay at work until 9 pm because leaving early is rude. The boss is a tyrant, he can make you do whatever he wants. if you complain, you might lose your job, and more jobs are hard to find because companies hire new workers for life in waves when we graduate high school and college. So if you don't find a job early, or you get fired, "sucks to be you!", so to speak. We are also very materialistic, we have many things and luxury but the price is we sell our lives. Which is weird because we used to be a buddhist society, we didn't care about transient material things. Pic related is basically what happens
The stuff I've read from incels tells me they have internalized capitalism (and a weird kind of identity politics) so totally that they withdraw inwards. If you are a failure, and are totally self-absorbed, then an incel is one who has combined both of those things into an identity of … I don't even know the term for it. Negative self-affirmation? No wonder it ends up in violence and these pathetic, gruesome little apocalyptic crusades targeting sorority girls or random people on the street.
I mean, hell, since this is leftypol let's talk about Ioseb Jughashvili.
He at one point was stuck in a Siberian prison camp in his early 30s with no money and living in basically total obscurity. His beloved wife just died a horrific death one year into their marriage from bleeding out from tuberculosis that was exacerbated by chemicals from the Baku oil fields. He tried to throw himself into her grave. His dad, a penniless cobbler, also just died and was buried in an unmarked grave.
But Stalin was thinking dialectically and looking at the outside word, and dedicated his political mission to resolving his society's fucked up problems and to prevent those things from happening again. And he kept reading and trying to improve himself. Incels are incapable of doing that, because their own conception of self is standing in the way.
Yikes, that sounds terrible. Are there unions to counteract this?
Christian Morales
brief research indicates not really, the biggest union in Japan appears to be subservient to the LDP I suspect Japan is also similar to the US where white collar white is basically non-unionized
They've been starting to bring stuff like that over here to burgerland in the last decade or so, but they mask it with this whole "we're a fun work environment, see you get vending machines, also stay still 8 or 9 every night"
Elijah Green
Post-war Japan banned all communist backed unions under the US occupation and the Nikkeiren (Japanese Federation of Employers) founded a bunch of yellow unions.
Kayden Watson
Not that guy, but I read a book on japanese society and the answer is no. Countryside is aging more dramatically than even the rest of society and farming and farmers by average are becoming older and carry a larger work burden as their families have shrunken out of economic or cultural norms or because their children move to the city. Agricultural work as opposed to the past is looked down upon as a dirty mean profession undesirable to most japanese nowadays, to the point that WOMEN have no toleration for marrying farmers. As a result, huge amounts of Japanese farmers have looked for mail order brides from China, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, often going abroad or seeking them out on forums because these women desire the stability of living in a first world country with better security. And so ironically the so-called traditional heartlands of japan are becoming mixed race on account of this phenomenon
Andrew Sullivan
also I should mention japanese women don't want to marry farmers because indeed they don't want to have to run a farm and do menial labor with their husband to support the business, whereas third world asians have no qualms doing manual labor. Also the agricultural lobby is very powerful in japan and has been the electoral backbone of the Liberal Democratic party since the beginning and so there has always been vigorous protectionist policies protecting japanese agriculture. But as Japan continues to liberalize since the 1990s economic crisis, who knows?, agriculture might eventually be liberalized as farmer's political power wanes and reformers become ascendant. If this happens it will destroy the countryside even further.
Joseph Campbell
reee I wanted to hear it from a real gook and now I've got four gajin wikipedia experts
Like I said I read a very comprehensive book on it. I also find it annoying you're desire to get an "authentic" view as though a japanese person understands all the nuances of his society. You realize how complex modern society is? As the japanon even said all he knows about the countryside is memes that it is slow paced and undesirable, to paraphrase him. If you asked any of us here from the West about our rural regions we'd probably come up with the same dreck because most of us have no familiarity with the countrysides of our respective countries. Most of us will never understand all the fine gradations of class, geography and government structures in modern capitalist countries
Luke Stewart
Seems superfluous.
Your whitesplaining is triggering me.
Samuel Johnson
I see nothing wrong with this. Especially when it means that capitalists are no longer able to buy young girls in Thailand. The commodification of women and children is one of the most disgusting crimes capitalism has caused.
Leo Nguyen
Calm down you sad little roundeyed creature, user is right. I obiously don't know everything about my country, it is okay if someone who is not japanese explains. Probably, foreigners understand my culture more objectively because they weren't raised in it and so they see it as it is. Lol
I really hope youre a troll or false flag. I gave you as good an explanation as probably most japanese are able to give. Your view is explicitly anti-intellectual and contrary to the spirit of this board. What do you want, sensationalized, tendentious and subjective accounts from the perspective of some anons who have lived all their lives in urban contexts? They'd be just as contemptuous of their rural societies as you'd expect a liberal to be who denounces all yokels as redneck racist savages
Colton Richardson
Thank you. I don't mean to give the impression that I don't appreciate your views in my post either though. I spoke generally about attitudes that many japanese "might" have about areas of their society theyre not entirely familiar with
Alexander Ortiz
Calm down, it's a joke.
Fair enough. I just wanted to use the opportunity to hear out someone Japanese, I can't do that every day.
Edgy garbage for middle class rejects who like to act like dandies
Kevin Nguyen
Elliot Roger was a mongrel.
Brayden Price
Nonsense. If anything he fetishizes the vulgar. You clearly never read him.
Nathaniel Moore
With 'loser' men masculine gender roles are also a part of it. Hence disproportionately higher rates of autogynephilia and other not-quite-"innate" transexualism. like the higher proportion of trans in the /jp/sphere, or that thing with hormones on /r9k/(which I emphasize is a very different community from the former, and from other communities with lots of 'losers'. "betas" arent a monolith). Feminism the political label, twitter hashtag and social identity never really addresses this though, preferring a simple vulgar narrative of "all problems are the fault and responsibility of men in general excepting intersections with other officially recognized oppression classes, and women do not play a role in this". Even though feminism the theory very much does. so the ideas(which often come from self described 'feminists') that might provide a bit of an answer and help them just a little reject the standards they're judged as less-than for not living up to rather than just hating themselves for not living up to them are locked away behind mainstream 'feminism', which just uses those ideas as a club to demonize maleness in general,e specially these men who are most hurt by the need to adhere to these standards.
Colton Smith
Thats basically slavery/prostitution which existed way before capitalism.
Josiah Cruz
Your analysis is interesting but getting rid of gender standards would do nothing to alleviate the basic needs of the losers for love and intimacy. Those guys are unneeded and would still be unneeded under socialism, especially with automation. The resources they could provide in pre-capitalist societies to make themselves appealing to women in spite of their lack of social and physical graces are simply no longer relevant.
Carson Robinson
Name 1 (one) thing he was wrong about.
Nolan Wright
k how do i sage btw? unrelated question
Matthew Miller
He was too conservative in his predictions of capitalism expanding in the private sphere through the sexual revolution. He failed to predict direct corporate involvement in it such as Tinder.
Adrian Foster
You sound very nice. Im sure you're lovely to spend time with. I really want your standards of evaluating other human beings worth implemented as law after the revolution. People wouldnt look down on them for failing to live up to said standards and would be more likely to treat them like equals, (more)women would be more likely to go out with them for the same reason, not rejecting them becasue they arent strong or charismatic enough. A major source of psychological turmoil and self loathing would be alleviated, allowing them to cope with their preexisting problems better(As the worst of these almost always have other issues), and to get more empathy and help for those issues. and of course, with the abolition of capitalism, this compounds with people no longer being measured by their wealth, easy access to free therapy and meds, and less alienation and more organic communities making rehabilitation and reintegration much more viable. of course, elliot rogers and whoever this guy is arent the worst examples of this, but they're to some extent products of the same problems and certainly influenced heavily by communities of people a lot of whom are the worst of it. they probably wouldnt have happened if not for this, even though they arent personally the most sympathetic and victimized by it, who moreso tend to kill themselves than anyone else.
Liam Brooks
After the revolution third-wave feminist proposals will be implemented and only the top 10% of desirable men will be kept. The rest will be culled.
From the few books I've read that seems pretty fair
Angel Watson
Yeah chads monopolized sexual relations in the USSR and blueballed incels went on killing sprees every other day. Do you even listen to the shit you spew?
If anything exactly the opposite was true and people tended to bond at work or over common interests instead of vapid reasons. Watch some Soviet movies sometime, pasty but smart nerd who gets the girl was a pretty popular archetype.
The very concept of "chad" - the perfect consumer, of dating culture etc. is shaped by capitalism. It wasn't and it won't always be like this. You are an undialectic /r9k/ fag who tries to coat his pathetic faggotry in some oppression olympics bullshit.
Relationships in the USSR worked very much the old way since it wasn't really socialist. Settling into a marriage was very much needed for income security.
Evan Clark
Pasty but ultimately attractive nerds? If so, that wouldn't be too different from a lot of American media. I dunno I don't actually watch movies.
instead of 'mental illness' we should adress the real causes ie. male entitlement and white privilege. if the killer had been a PoC he'd get called a terrorist and not a poor, mentally ill person
Jeremiah Williams
don't take the bait.
Wyatt Powell
houellebecq is clealy anti-marxist though, probably more in line with communitarian or catholic reactionaries
Adam Wood
Yeah I've noticed this in Soviet movies. A lot of the heroes were geeks.
Anyways I think incels have a really warped idea of what makes a man attractive. I'm no pussy slayer and I'm actually gay as hell, but women seem to like men who (a) have their shit together or are at least working on it (b) apply themselves (c) are improving themselves. At least have a decent personality and some confidence.
I saw some incel posts going around some forum where they couldn't believe people thought Elliot Rodger was handsome, because one of their moms thought "well he's cute, what was wrong with him? Why couldn't he get a girlfriend?"
They have in their minds the idea that to be attractive is to look like a Far Cry protagonist or the DOOM guy with a giant square Chad face. Their brains are fucked up from consumerism and they don't realize women won't screw them because they have toxic, entitled, self-loathing (and self-defeating) personalities.
No wonder they liked Trump. But Trump has fuck-you money and got women to marry him because he's going to croak soon and he is useful as career advancement. But he has the mind of a child and you can tell Melania is miserable, and there is no love there.
It seems to me that under socialism, without the stress and alienation of a precarious shitty job, and with a culture changed out of the whole "you need to fit this stereotype of a successful rich attractive man like you see in all the ads and media you digest" these incel types might have a better opportunity to self-actualize. They can do something they care about and stop having to use women as an escape from the life they hate.
One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is the effect that capitalism has on our cities and life within them. This isn't anything new of course, but really the more and more i look around at cities (in north america mostly, i live in Canada) i realize how utilitarian these cities are, firstly, how they're designed to basically function economically. But as well i notice the social culture is not very communal. A communal living design would help people with alienation, coming home to your own house all alone every day just to wake up and go to work again… not communal as in actually living in the same house but you know little park areas for your building or something. I live in a 4 story apartment and I do not know my neighbours at all for example. Seems to me like we have a very seperated city structure, does anyone else have thoughts on this?
looks matter to an extent obviously, but generally once you meet a girl in your ballpark of looks it all comes down to your confidence as a person and whether you have a good personality. What keeps these incels down isn't that they're "ugly" because there's someone out there for everyone. It's that they have horrible rotten personalities because they can't handle rejection.
And your average woman's isn't? The problem is that incels have the exact same outlook on the world as women WITHOUT any of the privileges that are bestowed on their gender counterparts. Women are superficial and vain as fuck, it's ridiculous to think that centuries of capitalist indoctrination has left women unscathed.
Lucas Sanchez
No, i vomited because """have your shit together""" "apply yourself" and "self improvement" is pure porky ideology. Some people are shy, insecure, or literally autistic This is "commies are just jealous of the rich" level analysis.
Xavier Gonzalez
"Personality" has to be the most nebulous nonsense word there is. It's so fucking subjective and any incel put underneath the microscope will be deemed to lacking in "personality" to fit with the observers just world theory.
In fact it's so bizarre that if you were to take an observer and have them watch an incel approach, and that incel did everything right yet was STILL rejected - the observer would conjure some weird abstract bullshit as to why he failed. Like approaching women is some precise science where if you're not standing at a 63 degree angle to her then you've failed.
Why do people suddenly dump all materialist analysis when it comes to relationships? Why must they go into the mystic realm of "personalities" and "soul mates".
Ian Thomas
Most incels either exude craziness or else have massive social anxiety. Deal with it.
its a vagery used to reinforce mainstream cultral norms about relationships and judging partners and deflect any criticism therof.
Eli Carter
mate if you act like an asshole to other human beings then they will not want to be around you, there's no need for "material analysis" here other than looking at how these individuals enthronements effect the way they behave (perhaps alienated from material conditions for example causes them to be shaped a certain way.)
you're literally just making an incel argument about "personality doesnt mean shit women just want to fuck chads" lol
Isaiah Foster
But they don't just act like assholes to people though.
Kayden Williams
Most incels are teenagers. Most will grow out of it if they stop feeling sorry for themselves.
Incels don't act like assholes IRL, do you honestly think people are exactly as they present themselves online? The biggest dealbreaker for incels is that they're LOSERS and exhibit severe inhibition. You can tell that an incel is filled with self-doubt and insecurity, nothing to do with being an asshole.
Elijah Cook
pseudo incel here, I dont pursue meaningless sex (if I did I could just hire a prostitute or something) im just looking for someone to love problem is I am a total shut in with basically zero social skills, im taking steps to go out there and meet people and talk with them but I am very conflicted about it I dont really like talking with strangers because we dont have anything known to be in common, so all the conversations are these vapid flighty things and I fucking hate it, I wish I was just already friends with someone so I could skip the "getting to know them" step because its fucking hard for me
Hunter Brooks
fair enough i wasn't trying to generalize and say the only reason they are rejected is because they're mean. they are often shy or anxiety ridden and are "losers" like you say. i was just responding to the other user saying it has nothing to do with anything.
Daniel Cruz
This basically. If you don't believe me go to any nerd gathering and see legit hot women make out and hang with their "soyboy" looking boyfriends. Also, look up the story of that chad-looking guy who killed himself cuz no gf. I mean robots really need to just fucking get out there.
Tyler Edwards
Do you think women can't smell the sweaty desperation these guys carry around with them? If anything they're worse in real life because the fat rolls, bad skin, dirty teeth and lack of social skills are more apparent. Generally they are in denial about these things and complain about it online where they are less likely to be called out for being fat greasy unkempt neckbeards.
Cooper Moore
thats not what he said at all. he said "personality" is a meaningless buzzword, which it clearly is if you can collapse "being an asshole to people" and "social anxiety" into the same explanation of "bad personality". and, what, being bad at socializing means they're shit people who deserve to be lonely and frustrated? Its just a thought terminating cliche used to justify whatever courtship memes are being implied.
What Ｗ Ｈ Ａ Ｔ ？
Benjamin Myers
Yeah see you can't just deal with acting like this
for over five years until you eventually snap
Sebastian Scott
Anecdotally I've met one, who ended up being drummed out of an academic program later (I heard) because he aggressively approached younger students as a teaching assistant.
Before that happened, I wound up getting trapped in a conversation with him as a bar where he went on a dialogue about how he was actually a really nice guy (he said "nice guy") and that women are not attracted to nice guys like him and words words words. There was just something off about him. It's hard to explain but just creepy with an undercurrent of resentment and a bit of menace.
My advice (for what it's worth, which is about a nickel) is to get involved in something that is social but also involving shared interests that are meaningful for the people involved.
If you're in Burgerland like me you'll know how atomized life is generally. Not saying join a socialist club to hook up with strangers. That's a very bad way to go. It is more about just being a person who does good things with other people doing those things.
I think where incels go wrong is thinking of social engagements in this highly programmatic way, which is how they overlap with these pickup artist types that try to engineer social relationships with the result of coming across as creepy. If you fall in love with someone, you will not really see it coming and it will just "happen" very suddenly and abruptly. It's hard to explain. The romantic part of the brain is not a rational part of it.
Samuel Robinson
Are we still doing this? Really? I don't think that stereotype has ever been true? In fact most incels are either underweight or go to the gym yet still have terrible looking bodies (because of genetics).
Why are you so adamant to box in everyone who fails with women as some monstrous lot? This weird double think where every victim of capitalism is an undeserving innocent yet every victim of the sexual MARKET (yes market, because capitalism percolates every human relation and perverts it to its own end) is some villain.
