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Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

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Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#81

Post by zozbot234 »

triceratops wrote: post #78
andersonpico wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (especially women) It's always about that isn't it? Not getting the reaction you want, vilifying your interlocutor, then run crying with fingers in your ears screaming "lalala I didn't want it anyway" and declaring yourself a stoic is really indicative of the type of people who in the present day call themselves stoics. This whole thread is just a long-winded version of redpill discourse, people who can see past mi…

I didn't see any vilification of women. Women value sharing and emotional vulnerability. It's how they bond with other women, who make up the bulk of their friends. Men's experiences with other men, the bulk of their friends, often make them wary of being emotionally vulnerable. Hence, naturally, a disconnect when a man and a woman are establishing a relationship.

Women value sharing and emotional vulnerability, but typically not from the males in their lives. There is a significant disconnect between average women and genuine male emotions, and males are expected to show emotional resilience and self-control first and foremost precisely to bridge that gap and then allow the 'sharing' to occur unimpeded, though still in a somewhat controlled way.

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#82

Post by FridayoLeary »

mosura wrote: post #75
niemandhier wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Britain was a very repressed culture at the time and for a long time after this. An Englishman’s proverbial “stiff upper lip” came to be a cliche for a reason. “Boarding school syndrome” would be the term coined for the emotional damage that was an educational ideal for a long while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_school#Psychological_...

Yet the UK was most successful when led by people from that system.

Was?

The old boys network and class still plays a big role in UK politics. I'm convinced that the behaviour of Boris Johnson and even Starmer is incomprehensible without that unspoken element.

Is it a bad thing? perhaps. Is it a recipe for disaster? I would say the historical evidence is pretty clear that no, not really. It worth pointing out that the US where class is much less important is more successful.

In my head Holmes is descended from minor nobility while Watson is solidly upper middle class.

Now, Labours envy based attacks on the private schools that gave them all their advantages in life helps nobody. It won't matter to rich kids and is just a barrier to success for middle class kids. When you consider the quality of state education, at least there should be some educated people to run the country, even if it's a bad system.

Ot but hogwarts is a great parody of the British boarding school system. A drafty, dangerous castle full of dangerous animals, homicidal, abusive and incompetent teachers, serious injuries are a fact of life and complacent staff. Add in the most incompetent and negligent headmaster in all literature, who hardly does anything throughout the series and thinks that soul sucking demons are an acceptable security measure to protect his students and runs the school as his personal domain. Throw in class based bullying in the student body and you have everything. I always found it striking that the most hatable character in the series is a school inspector (Umbridge).

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#83

Post by krapp »

mosura wrote: post #73
watwut wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Previously you said they are basically traditional masculinity and what men always were. Now they are result of modern society?

A man lives by himself in the woods: is he lonely or depressed?

It's entirely possible.

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#84

Post by mosura »

FridayoLeary wrote: post #82
mosura wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the UK was most successful when led by people from that system.

Was? The old boys network and class still plays a big role in UK politics. I'm convinced that the behaviour of Boris Johnson and even Starmer is incomprehensible without that unspoken element. Is it a bad thing? perhaps. Is it a recipe for disaster? I would say the historical evidence is pretty clear that no, not really. It worth pointing out that the US where class is much less important is more successful. In my he…

Starmer or Reeves boarded?

The boarding is the point.

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#85

Post by jacquesm »

mosura wrote: post #73
watwut wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Previously you said they are basically traditional masculinity and what men always were. Now they are result of modern society?

A man lives by himself in the woods: is he lonely or depressed?

Are those the only two options? If you think the answer is yes then that suggests a moment of reflection.

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#86

Post by chuckadams »

delichon wrote: post #71

> [Holmes] battles with drug addiction, loneliness and depression. His genius thrives in part because of these vulnerabilities, not despite them. If there was a pill for that, how many masterpieces like the Sherlock Holmes books would never be made? The products of misery have always been the devil's advocate's best arguments. If Doyle had not sympathized with Holmes' afflictions, he could not have written him. Or if…

For every tortured genius whose passion comes from pain, there's a hundred who never get started because they lack the energy to get out of bed half the time, are slowly killing themselves with alcohol and other substances, and so on. But a pill alone doesn't fix that -- hell, current research shows most of those pills do no better than a placebo -- so the mythology of the nobility of suffering will continue for some time hence.

(Fun fact, you know that "lorem ipsum" text that's used as filler? It's not nonsense Latin, it's from a speech by Cicero where he denounces the stoic ideal of suffering being good for the soul, or at least "pointless" suffering anyway)

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#87

Post by vintermann »

squigz wrote: post #43
akimbostrawman wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right I forgot we are on HN where we even need a scientific paper on "do women like weak vulnerable or strong confident men?" because nobody ever goes outside.

Not really, it's just that most of us are adults who have experiences with healthy adult relationships. "Is my partner going to leave me if I display emotional vulnerability" is not really a concern in healthy, adult relationships.

Differences between men and women are down to the situation.

Sometimes the long situation. When a situation has lasted a long time, it sticks, and turns into culture, gender roles.

When a situation has lasted a really long time, it sticks hard, and becomes biology.

But most of the time, it's neither culture or biology which decides what men and women do. It's the immediate situation.

And even if you think it's culture, even if you think it's biology, if you don't like how men are (or how women are) you have to start with changing the immediate situation. The others will follow - eventually.

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#88

Post by FridayoLeary »

mosura wrote: post #84
FridayoLeary wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was? The old boys network and class still plays a big role in UK politics. I'm convinced that the behaviour of Boris Johnson and even Starmer is incomprehensible without that unspoken element. Is it a bad thing? perhaps. Is it a recipe for disaster? I would say the historical evidence is pretty clear that no, not really. It worth pointing out that the US where class is much less important is more successful. In my he…

Starmer or Reeves boarded? The boarding is the point.

I reject that. It's the network that's more important. I always found the concept of boarding school odd but that's neither here nor there.

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#89

Post by paganel »

dmos62 wrote: post #24
paganel wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'd be surprised if the people I worked with would think twice before working with someone that's been in psychiatric care, though I can't be sure, because I don't know that any of them did. I know that I wouldn't care. I have friends that stayed in hospitals for psychiatric reasons: they'd be great to work with, I think.

> because I don't know that any of them did

This is telling in itself.

Re: Arthur Conan Doyle explored men’s mental health through Sherlock Holmes

#90

Post by Tarks »

andersonpico wrote: post #38
Tarks wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take is you've got the right reasoning but the wrong conclusion, I agree with your contextless definition of vulnerability and with the use of it in this context, vulnerability makes people vulnerable, by definition. From my experience, the reason you'd risk being vulnerable is there are some things you can't achieve without doing so, it'd be like trying to do surgery with a scalpel on someone wearing platemail, o…

> I think it's sad that performative emotions & vulnerability seem to be a popular thing to have to signal for acceptance. You only think it's performative because you think people are signaling. They're not and performative anything is not required for acceptance, but people are not accepting of others who deal with their social interaction in these terms and your very language betrays where you stand. These imagina…

> You only think it's performative because you think people are signalling

You're correct that I think something because I think something else. You're assuming I'm unwilling or unable to tell the difference.

I don't see a betrayal to state that I think it's a shame that people that have copied a performative action, gotten nothing out of it and are then hesitant to try again because they feel they've already tried that avenue and had bad results. It's the same feeling of sadness I get when people have tried therapy, for whatever reason haven't gotten much out of it and then write it off as a sham.

I do get that you're saying 'aha ! I've detected your true intent through my clever analysis of your language' - consider your assumption "You only think it's performative because you think people are signaling. They're not"

They're not? You can state absolute facts with confidence about the people I've experienced in my life that you don't know anything about? That is either some amazing superpower or regular old conjecture.

It might help you to notice how many times I said I think or in my opinion, and how many absolutes you're willing to state.

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