You are not insane

There are many people who read what we write, who interact with us on various social media sites, and who report the same thing- that while they agree they feel like they can’t do anything about it because they feel depressed and powerless to affect any change.

I first encountered this attitude during the Brexit campaign, and every British person I spoke to reported to feeling depressed, powerless and unable to relate to others. This made me very seriously wonder how come there was such an epidemic of untreated mental illness in the UK, and then I realised

This is happening everywhere across the West.  Men feel alone, powerless, unable to relate to women or to each other, blamed for being themselves, treated as potential predators, shamed for their very existence and unable to live life the way they expected it to be.

When they get into relationships, many notice that they are almost unable to connect to their female partners because they kept expecting things to go bad. That anything they would want to do can and will be interpreted against them, that women are being educated and indoctrinated to  believe that men are their enemy.

When the initial infatuation waxes off, these men come to find that not only do the women have unrealistic expectations of what a man should do and behave like, but also that any attempt to establish their own position and view that would contradict the women’s opinions will be encountered with arguments and emotional manipulation.

And Dog forbid the man tries to argue his point- while it’s OK for her to shout and accuse him, if he does it he’s an abuser, and any attempt to solve this via the oh so famed counselling services etc results in the man being invariably blamed for everything wrong.

So why would the average Joe not be depressed when he notices that relationship after relationship he gets into end up badly, that he can’t do anything right by any woman, and that everything is always his fault?

He’ll get traumatised, and develop very serious trust issues. Any new relationship he’d get into will be marred from the start by the fact he’d be afraid to actually trust his new partner because each and every woman he’d ever gotten close to done that. Even if they do find a woman who doesn’t do these things, how could poor Joe even begin to trust her when he’s too afraid to open up because he’s certain he will get harmed again if he does?

It happens a lot more than you’d think. One reaction is the MGTOW movement. Another is drinking. Another is suicide, and men kill themselves a lot more than women do.

Unless you found your sweetheart as a teenager and have been with her for the past 20 years? This is probably your experience , if you’re an average man in the West.

On top of that everywhere you look there’s a symbolic or overt message to your inadequacy-  in all of the media you see the men are pictured as bumbling incompetents, who can do nothing wrong, doomed to divorce and see their kids on weekends only while falling deeper and deeper into depression and alcoholism and despair.

Even if by accident you see a movie or TV character who’s competent while male, this is immediately being countered by him being somehow damaged, almost always alcoholic and invariably divorced.

Life imitating art? Or a campaign of constant normalization of the sidelining and demeaning of men, specifically white men?

I say the second. Because the things we see in the media have an impact on our psyche- they move the public norms towards what was absurd and depraved for our parents, and the real life follows.

But, you’ll say, our parents were backwards and closed minded.

Were they? They were also happy, having fulfilling relationships and hanging together, raising good kids and supporting balanced communities.

We aren’t.

In the past 50 years we’ve seen an interesting course in human manipulation, and the purpose has been the destruction of the nuclear family.

The media depiction of the family followed an amazing manipulation curve.

In the late 50s early 60s the fathers were no more the patriarchal authority figures, providers and protectors, but mumbling buffoons who were getting played about by their kids or cunning wives. Remember “I Love Lucy”? Lucy, an empty braindead waitress kept getting away with being deceitful, lying and manipulative to her husband, and she kept getting away with it because everybody loved her.

Remember “Leave It To Beaver”? A kid who is constantly manipulating his parents and making a fool out of his father.

This is how it started. This is how the media normalized disrespect and abuse and manipulation. The kids who saw that on TV went out and talked up to their dads, and were surprised when dad smacked them.

Women got told that men were bumbling buffoons who could be easily fooled, so they went and did that and got surprised when their husbands had enough and divorced them. And since the TV had ingrained it into their brains that the men were bumbling buffoons, they believed they were right and who needs a man anyway?

After the men were turned into incompetent useless buffoons – with the last visible exemplary being Al Bundy in Married With Children, it suddenly became OK to openly talk about divorce as if it was not a tremendously painful experience but as if it was normal. More and more TV and movie characters were divorced, and it was always the man’s fault- he was an alcoholic or abusive or just distant, and the mother was always left to manage the kids and be competent and cool.

So how’s that going to act for the men raised on this media, combined with messages from everywhere telling them that not always they weren’t good enough, but they weren’t ever going to be good enough for the women, for any woman? They’re all going to be depressed, have serious issues, and be unable to relate to women or even to other guys.

Guys… you’re not bad people. You’re not insane. You’re not incapable, you’re not less.

You are not insane.

You have just been living through a lifetime of gaslighting.

You are not insane. You just suffer from cognitive dissonance induced depression, because while you keep being told you are bad and less and inadequate, you KNOW you’re not a bad guy and you deserve better.

You are not insane. Insane is thinking this situation is right.

Your reaction is sane. But everything you’ve been told is wrong, and its purpose is to make you feel like this.

And before you ask, it is being done to women as well. We get raised being told we are only adequate if we look like models, and that we can only be that if we starve ourselves and wear about 500 grams of makeup every day just to look human.

At the same time we got told we deserved more than men, that we didn’t need them and that men are inferior. That we were inherently right and deserved everything and if we didn’t get everything it was out fault.

At the same time, we got told we were psychos who casually tortured our partners, stalkers and bunnyboilers. It got to the point where we’re afraid to tell someone we love them because we’ve been told that’s what stalkers and crazies do.

So why would any man want to be with a woman? Why would I want to be with a bumbling fool?

We aren’t insane.

We just had a culture war waged on us whose purpose was to destroy our civilization by destroying its foundation- family and love and care.

We have been raised to be neurotic and unhappy so we’ll buy our way to happiness and stop having babies and die alone in our empty homes because someone decided at some point we should be wiped out.

This is what we are seeing now.

You are not insane.

But someone has been carrying a war on your perception of reality. And you need to acknowledge it.

You need to accept and understand everything you see in the media is a lie. You need to extract the poison from your mind and allow yourself to believe you are a good person, you are worthy of love and kindness.

You need to take your TV and throw it out the window right now. You need to look at yourself and find the good about yourself.

You are not insane, you’re being driven insane.

And you need to just remove yourself from the toxic environment the media created for you, and allow yourself to be a decent human being.

Figure out what harmed you and why, and that everything you’re being told is a lie.

Fix yourselves up, and fight back.