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.
I tend to think it must be kids who got stuck in front of a screen and little to no facetime with their parents who were probably working relentlessly to try and provide for them. Capitalism has fucked parenting.
Well, a conservative would say feminism has fucked parenting! How dare women have jobs! But the truth is parents have ALWAYS had to make a living. Mine did. I still read books.
I think one of the key downfalls of society is young kids not being encouraged to develop a love of reading. Reading breeds empathy for other lived experiences. There are studies that show this. This is why the readers I know are mostly all good people.
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!
Those women in the sixties still did not have full citizeship. (Try opening a bank account!) In many states they STILL don't. (Try getting pregnant!) It's not analogous. At all.
It was obvious why women in 1960 should be in distress. My point is the response to being similarly told "it's all in your head" or "it's delusional" is likely to be similar.
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.
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I can think of reasons they should be distressed.