I mean, "self-induced" is maybe reductive; fantasies are complicated things. But in the simplest terms yeah, absolutely! The idea that they're in more "distress" than any other group is patently absurd, so making it a central idea is based in fantasy.
The levels of delusion among the younger men is very confusing. I don't know what media they've been consuming that has led them to seeing hero worship but that seems to be what a small vocal percentage seems to crave with reckless abandon. I'm not sure what has normalized the attention seeking...
Big subject! And out of my wheelhouse as an OLD man lol. But everyone needs to be inoculated against bad ideas early, ideally by absorbing a lot of GOOD ideas! And it's clear many never get there.
You can say they were SOLD this fantasy by other actors, which means it's not entirely SELF-induced. But we're all ultimately responsible for what we believe, true or false.
I mean, yes. The human condition is ultimately tragic. Entropy. Linear time. The cruel paradox of being a conscious being in a mortal shell. Nothing particularly "young man" about THAT, though. We're ALL in distress!
I'd characterize it as an inability to find joy & meaning in anything other than a very masculine coded perception of success ("good" job, "good" wife, "good" family), which is at the very least societally reinforced in the spaces that these men frequent & would, of course, not ease their distress.
for instance, let's say your problem is "you are a 20-year-old guy without many romantic or career prospects" and your self-diagnosis is "women are conspiring against Real Men like me"
Throwing away their fantasies may open them to receiving help in the form of therapy, education or direct aid which should eventually resolve their distress.
or just to finding ways of being that are content and ordinary. there is a very good study of economic distress in a rural californian community ("those who work and those who don't") that found that the men who adjusted best to a genuinely bad economic situation were the ones who became caregivers
but caregivers in ways that often also matched ideas of fatherhood and protection. But those were also generally older men who didn't have the choices open to them that younger men do like 'leaving the distressed rural community' in the first place
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I can think of reasons they should be distressed.
1. Wrong diagnosis of problem, right answer for wrong diagnosis
2. Correct diagnosis but wrong answer.
Which do you think applies here?
for instance, let's say your problem is "you are a 20-year-old guy without many romantic or career prospects" and your self-diagnosis is "women are conspiring against Real Men like me"
As wise doctors we hear the patient’s interpretation but we may set it aside to determine true cause.