One of the reasons it's so hard to be yourself nowadays is that being yourself involves an element of abrasiveness. There are a few things that come together to make being yourself a 'bad' thing to do.

First is that communities are global now. The city of the internet. It's much easier to walk away rather than try and make things work. Cities emphasize those who can make a good first impression. Abrasiveness leaves bad first impressions.

Another result of having access to global information is that it widens the knowledge gap. A 6 year old with curated internet access may know far more useful knowledge than a 30 year old farmer in poverty or the 7 year old who accesses his parents porn.

the typical ritual of abrasiveness rubbing off on abrasiveness doesn't work when the two levels of abrasiveness are incomparable. You can't "work things out" as often

One kid can be more 'enlightened' than the other so the other kid comes across as a terrible bully. A one sided excess of knowledge can lead to large maturity gaps that prevent friendships and journeys learning together.

It can become an atomized zero-sum competition like in India/China. "How to deal with People in a World Full of People" isn't taught. Tests though, are passed with flying colors.

Summing up a bit:
- it's easier to accidentally draw blood
- wounds are ragged, like a dull rusty knife
- people can just ignore your forever

If you don't temper natural abrasiveness, the society we've created "rejects" you without mercy closing many doors in your future.

You know you can fuck up the politics within your company so bad that there's no way to go upwards anymore? It's like that, except for life.

In companies this manifests as a pressure to be professional and friendly all the time, even if it's fake. In society this manifests as constant fakeness, pretending, "losing yourself."

Ironically, this social isolation punishment is very 'yin' in nature rather than 'yang' which often deals w/ problems via open and direct conflict.

It affects boys more too since they're often more naughty/spunky/abrasive.

the Socratic Method of polishing a bunch of rough stones by tossing them together against each other no longer works b/c we're so bad as dealing with conflict.

Ironically this gets us into huge conflicts about how best to avoid conflict.

Yet the socratic method of just questioning things is a very core mechanism of finding truth. e.g. what quarantine work setups don't have are these random musing moments where random questions are asked.

Most lines of honest inquiry are mocked. Like that girl who said that 'math isn't real' until the crowd decided to rescue her and shift the narrative to praising her courage to think for herself.

As childlike innocence is lost the crowd is less and less inclined to do so. Boys lose it faster. Often it's stripped away from them by force. I suspect a teenage boy making the same claim would be mocked mercilessly.

All they have left in this world is to follow an authority who will tell them what to do so that they aren't rejected and can be of some use to the world. Even if that authority is just giving them a gun and telling them where to shoot.

When you have a cat as a pet there's a certain way to interact with it to minimize scratches. However this happens through experience and getting to know each other, not through a 10 thousand edge case step by step algorithm.

Without real world experience you have a bunch of kids playing fortnite/cs-go/valorant/etc.. raging at each other. This is the modern soldier or "Warrior" energy that goes into the Yang scaffolding of society. It's like building with pig iron rather than steel.

Instead of a 2-part epoxy that's mixed together and becomes strong, one part is expired making the whole mix worthless.

What makes me suspicious about Feminism™ that threat of social isolation, as well as pressure to conform by being fake are symptoms of toxic femininity, not toxic masculinity. (which is more direct in violence)

It would explain why there's both a crisis in masculinity as well as a crisis in femininity. The amorphous sludgeification of masculine and feminine traits comes from the paradoxical argument that there's a toxic patriarchy despite the symptoms indicating otherwise.

It's like the Occupy Wall Street movement. It doesn't have enough coherence and focus to actually manifest an actual change besides increasing the overall anger of the system. Instead of tempering steel it's just left into the crucible to melt into a blob puddle.

not really sure where i'm going w/ this so will end w/ a thought:

everyone started off in this world as little assholes and little bitches. yet here we are. The internet, nuclear technology, philosophy books, art, etc...

So maybe let's make a world where being an asshole or a bitch is ok and stop judging each other for being an asshole or a bitch and stop pretending to not be or never have been an asshole or a bitch.

I remember now how this thread got seeded. Was thinking about Cobra Kai as a metaphor for toxic masculinity and started thinking about toxic femininity.

The answer to "What's wrong with the world" usually isn't "Because we need *more* of you." but it's also usually not "Because we need *less* of you."