Big Boys DON'T Cry!

[Cema]

 

50 minutes ago, Psalam said:

Achilles wept over Patroclus in the Iliad (in front of the troops by the way).

Jesus wept is the shortest verse in the New Testament of the Bible.

There are countless historical examples.

Choose if you want to cry or not and when you want but don't blame it on biology (but rather, as others have said, on training).

 

Actually what made their tears valuable was because they were extremely rare. And yes that's the case for all your historical examples ...

 

59 minutes ago, Bazinga said:

But that won't be the way social "evolution" will continue in the future. At least I hope so. Mankind should conquer the stars, not fight petty wars over imagined truths or centuries old feuds.

And we should use all the potential there is, meaning gifted women should be able to be more than fertile and pretty.

I really hope that technological progress won't be through blood and iron like in the first half of the 20. century, that would be a shitty future for our children to live in.

 

Replace this part with "since the beginning of mankind". Historically the best stimulant for technological progress has ALWAYS been crisis and conflicts. It's not even difficult to explain. It's when your life is at risk that you struggle the most and that your brain tries the most to go through all the possibilities to save your ass. That's also the reason why Europe and Mediteranea has been the place where most technologies were created. Because there were so many different people in such a small area that they spent their time waging war against each other.

 

And someone else replied to your idea of neverending progress and going to the stars :

 

13 minutes ago, Wachtergeist said:

If we're judging what the future may be like in the future I would say that there will be a great deal of regression in the way of social advancement. The present that these "superpower" nations exist in is one that will prove to be completely unsustainable after a certain amount of time. Too many people, too much consumption of material, not enough arable farmland, no feasible alternatives to petroleum based energy and it's industrial uses, etc.

 

It's probably a bit extreme but yes we won't be able to continue living like we do today. Especially north american people. Too much consumption, too much pollution (try to imagine that half of your waste are simply buried ... yeah buried). Natural selection is going to come back and it's going to hurt. A lot.

 

1 hour ago, Wachtergeist said:

or it will be total anarchy with the only law being that of who is strong enough or ruthless enough to survive. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjfSBFOtuD8

 

[Psalam]

10 minutes ago, Cema said:

 

 

Actually what made their tears valuable was because they were extremely rare. And yes that's the case for all your historical examples ...

 

Yes and no. See verse 4.

There is, was and always will be a time for everything (including crying).

Ecclesiastes 3 New International Version (NIV)

A Time for Everything

3 There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

²     a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³     a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶     a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷     a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

[Psalam]

And just so this doesn't look like I'm preaching a religion here (the oldest texts we have are religious, so they are best for making this point).

Krishna is a god incarnate.  He gave Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna,
and wanted him to be a Stita-Prajna.  However, on the evening
of the war, when Abhimanyu was killed, Arjuna wept inconsolably.
Krishna was looking at him, wondering, "What a fool he is!  What
is the use of giving Gita to him?"  He became thoughtful for a while.
Then, Krishna started weeping with a huge cry.  Arjuna was dumbfounded.  "Why this chap weeping?"  He told Krishna: " Alright, I am Abhimanyu's father, so I was weeping.  You are only his uncle.
Why are you weeping more than me?" 

[LukeDuke]

I don't need anybody to tell me what I need to do or not, I just do it when I feel it, so it goes all naturally and I don't care!

 

But mostly I only cry when I'm alone and I miss somebody or some good/sad situations from the past.. I don't cry when I'm hurt physically.

[StevePanker]

2 hours ago, Bazinga said:

But that won't be the way social "evolution" will continue in the future. At least I hope so. Mankind should conquer the stars, not fight petty wars over imagined truths or centuries old feuds.

And we should use all the potential there is, meaning gifted women should be able to be more than fertile and pretty.

I really hope that technological progress won't be through blood and iron like in the first half of the 20. century, that would be a shitty future for our children to live in.

 

We are absolutely on the same page!

 

If we pool our collective intelligence and ingenuity as a species, regardless of skin color, gender, religious beliefs and all the other stupid excuses we employ to distance ourselves from each other, we could become an interplanetary species within the next two to three decades and possibly even an interstellar species within the next millenium.

 

For all we know, Earth may be the only planet in the entire Universe that harbors life (unlikely, but we have no proof otherwise). As the most advanced species of that planet, I believe it's our duty to be the custodians of life. To make sure it isn't wiped out for good. The only way of achieving that is by spreading life out across the Universe and to do that, we need to put our petty, outdated differences aside and ensure that every man, woman and child on this wet rock is given the best possible opportunity to realize their potential and contribute to that mission with whatever they can.

 

That all begins with each and every one of us agreeing that history (including millenia old religious doctrines and cultural norms) is history and it's not worth fighting over anymore. It's something we write down, so we can learn from past mistakes, but that's it. Let the past be the past and focus on the future. From there, we move forward together as one species with the collective mission of ensuring that as long as this Universe exists, life will be thriving somewhere within it.

 

In spite of what your religious texts or tribal stories tell you, the Universe DOES NOT CARE whether it has life in it or not! There may be a creator - a grand architect of everything - and there may not be. Believe what you want when it comes to that. I'm good either way. But know this:

 

Over the entirety of history there is not a single shred of evidence that some devine being has ever or will ever come to our rescue. Whoever or whatever may have created our Universe, he/she/it has no vested interest in keeping us safe. You can pray all you want, but there is abolutely nothing to suggest that anyone is listening, let alone intervening on our behalf. In the history of life on this planet, more than 90% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct.

 

Take that in for a moment...

 

It's not just "90% of all living creatures are now dead". It's 90% of entire species that are now completely extinct! As in, there were once millions upon millions of these things roaming the planet for thousands of generations and now there's not a single one of them left!

 

As individuals, as a species and as life in general, we are at the mercy of a heartless cosmos that does what it does, whether there are living creatures in it or not. The existence of life is of no importance to the Universe at large. It DOES NOT CARE! No one is coming to save us. We have to do it ourselves.

 

That's the bad news.

 

The good news is we actually can do it ourselves. But we have to work together.

[carnifex]

Crying being seen as a sign of weakness is a modern conceit. Achilles cried when Patrocles was killed, Priam wept for his son Hector, Gilgamesh for Enkidu. I can cite examples of warriors and heroes crying and otherwise expressing grief throughout the Middle Ages and at least as recently as the seventeenth century with nobody thinking less of them. 

 

If anything, it was actually seen as manly, because it meant you cared passionately about something, and being passionate is the difference between a hero and a simpleton. 

 

Ironically, I myself almost never cry, though this has less to do with machismo and more with the fact that I just never feel like crying. Not even when my mother died, though I was certainly bummed by that. I just don't process grief like most people. 

[Cema]

33 minutes ago, carnifex said:

Crying being seen as a sign of weakness is a modern conceit. Achilles cried when Patrocles was killed, Priam wept for his son Hector, Gilgamesh for Enkidu. I can cite examples of warriors and heroes crying and otherwise expressing grief throughout the Middle Ages and at least as recently as the seventeenth century with nobody thinking less of them.

 

Just one question

 

Did those people win their kingdoms or their fights in a contest of "who weeps the most" ?

[SimpleSpectre]

15 hours ago, Cema said:

It's probably a bit extreme but yes we won't be able to continue living like we do today. Especially north american people. Too much consumption, too much pollution (try to imagine that half of your waste are simply buried ... yeah buried). Natural selection is going to come back and it's going to hurt. A lot.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjfSBFOtuD8

 

Nice reference 

 

In such a situation a person won't have much use for crying or worrying about such social constructs. You'll put yourself to work doing something necessary for continued survival, someone will put you to work, or someone may perhaps kill you and your entire family for a jar of peanut butter just because they have a sweet-tooth. Humanity can be rather impulsive like that.

 

Edit: In any case if I was too subtle or just flew off on a tangent like I most likely do on occasion, the thought that boys are not only conditioned or raised with the notion that crying is a sign of weakness among other things is pretty twisted in a modern society. May even contribute to unstable emotional states or possibly the high suicide rates of men, who's to say? But in the terms of the future if society ceased to continue the way it does be it by catastrophe, shortage, or some nationally crippling event I wouldn't put it past our wonderfully intelligent and adaptive species to simply regress to a more barbaric state of existence to cope with the new (old) world order.

 

At that point I'm pretty sure there will be yet another period where starving masses and massive urban population centers evacuate due to violent conflict and riots. Wouldn't put it past anybody with a previously shady demeanor to do whatever it takes to persist in that kind of world by any means. But it would be interesting to think what kind of social constructs that people would force on one another when there is hardly any semblance of order to be found if still a bit macabre. What would be expected of Men and Women on a regional level? How would they conduct themselves? 

 

But, yeah. That men should never cry under any circumstance is complete crap unless you need a warrior to go fight and die in a foreign war or in a defensive action, otherwise it's no more useful in most other occasions.

[ToJKa]

Nonsense unfair gender stereotypes. They're not just for women

 

16 hours ago, carnifex said:

Ironically, I myself almost never cry, though this has less to do with machismo and more with the fact that I just never feel like crying. Not even when my mother died, though I was certainly bummed by that. I just don't process grief like most people. 

I'm like that too. I was a real crybaby as a kid, but these i can't even if wanted to. No clue why, it's just the way i work.

However laughing is easy for me, so it could be worse.

[KoolHndLuke]

11 hours ago, ToJKa said:

I'm like that too. I was a real crybaby as a kid, but these i can't even if wanted to. No clue why, it's just the way i work.

However laughing is easy for me, so it could be worse.

Buried in the subconscious. It becomes habit like opening doors or something. The strange thing for me is that once in awhile, I feel like crying and I don't even know why. I'm not really sad or anything, the urge just hits me out of the blue. Maybe I'm going crazy! Probably allergies or something. Though I do think burying things down for a long time will maybe cause them to bubble to the surface again when you least expect it later on in life.

 

I had a cousin who was somewhat prone to crying in emotional situations. I guess he just had a harder time "hiding" his emotions than other people. Drove my uncle fuckin nuts! Though my uncle learned to put that aside when the "crying" son started handing him substantial sums of money when he finished college and got a great job. Go figure.