psychology Archives - Home For Fiction

psychology

“It Smells like Cock Here”: Warmongering, Masculinity, and Repeating History

October 7, 2024

The title probably sounds entirely ridiculous and out of place, yet there is a connection with the subtitle. Indeed, when it comes to warmongering and masculinity, historical examples abound.

Inspiration behind this post came after I read the excellent nonfiction book The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, by Christopher Clark. Among the many intriguing details, a chapter aptly titled “A Crisis of Masculinity?” proved eye-opening.

So let’s dive deeper into the connection between warmongering and masculinity (here clearly meant as toxic), and see how dangerous it can become to ignore the lessons of history. But first, let’s begin with a hilarious anecdote – which gave the title its name…

Warmongering masculinity. Image of — This car (Museum of Military History, Vienna) is associated with the events that precipitated the Great War. It’s the car where “a bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich ’cause he was hungry”. For the more official version, see here

(more…)

Santa Is an Emotional Abuser: On Modern Authority Structures

December 18, 2023

Society

children, emotional iq, ignorance, modernity, psychology, society

Yeah, OK, I know; Santa isn’t real (oops; spoiler alert?) but as Picasso ostensibly said, everything you can imagine is real. That is, Santa Claus might not be a real being, but the persona and the associated actions are. And Santa, as an emotional abuser, has some very real repercussions.

To be clear, emotional abuse doesn’t rely on Santa Claus alone. Parents have six ways to Sunday to emotionally abuse their children, threatening with repercussions, bribing them, gaslighting them, manipulating them. But Santa, besides a very efficient weapon of emotional abuse, is also a remarkably apt personification of the phenomenon itself.

Santa Emotional Abuser - AI render of an angry Santa sitting in a chair — Not quite the corporate Santa…

(more…)

Accumulating Cringe Theory (or, why It Sucks Growing Old)

June 5, 2023

Experiencing, Society

experiencing, life, psychology, society

If you think you’re about to read some grand existentialist revelation, let me stop you right there – or redirect you to Giacomo Leopardi. Accumulating Cringe Theory might sound fancy, but it’s just something I came up with in the middle of the night while trying to fall back asleep.

To be fair to my brain, the “what if” behind it was intriguing. The basic premise is: If we are embarrassed by our past behavior – think of the silly things you said as a teenager – doesn’t it follow that the older we get, the wider the expanse of this past?

In other words, as we get older and have more of a past to recall (often in a flawed manner), doesn’t it mean we have more embarrassing moments, too? I decided to call this accumulating cringe theory just to have a name for it. Is there anything valuable to discuss there? I’m finding out myself as I’m typing this very post.

Perhaps this not-to-be-taken-too-seriously cringe theory of mine could contain a clause for doing embarrassing stuff when you’re old

(more…)