Chinese culture has the concept of ‘eating bitterness’ and it is universal. It’s about being able to take the suffering, loss, pain, humiliation, and all the other bitter stuff that life can throw at you, enduring it, and building character, strength, and resilience out of it. It’s a virtue. It’s a universally admired trait.
North American culture is not great at eating bitterness. The culture here is more about eating sweet, or living the good life, and when people have to eat bitterness, especially those expecting to eat sweet, it is viewed as shameful and castigating rather than normal, and it easily turns a person towards grievance and a sense of injustice that makes them bitter inside instead of resilient and optimistic.
This is why I think men in North America, especially white men, have turned to characters like Jordan Peterson, or in worse cases, Andrew Tate. Jordan Peterson at least tries to help these men develop a sense of responsibility and strength that can be constructive and meaning- making. Guys like Tate, on the other hand, exploit their grievance to make them socially nihilistic. One is obviously much better than the other, but neither is a substitute for having a common social value place upon eating bitterness.
The “manosphere” gives aggrieved, frustrated, disappointed, and angry men stories to help them process their emotions, but they still rely upon self-centered and egotistical tropes like the hero’s journey or misogynistic worldviews. These don’t address the deeper and more universal reality that none of us (male or female) are heroes from Marvel movies, that deep, painfully-bitter experience is part of the common human journey, and that eating that bitterness with humility and without expectation of any award for being special, is a virtue that helps you develop character.
I’m not from NA and I don’t think that’s specific to NA, I saw this in people from Western Europe, Northern Africa and Japan. Also whatever positive aspect of traditional culture there may be, everything seems to get crushed by the social media bulldozer consumeing hours a day from childhood.
Chinese culture has the concept of ‘eating bitterness’ and it is universal. It’s about being able to take the suffering, loss, pain, humiliation, and all the other bitter stuff that life can throw at you, enduring it, and building character, strength, and resilience out of it. It’s a virtue. It’s a universally admired trait.
North American culture is not great at eating bitterness. The culture here is more about eating sweet, or living the good life, and when people have to eat bitterness, especially those expecting to eat sweet, it is viewed as shameful and castigating rather than normal, and it easily turns a person towards grievance and a sense of injustice that makes them bitter inside instead of resilient and optimistic.
This is why I think men in North America, especially white men, have turned to characters like Jordan Peterson, or in worse cases, Andrew Tate. Jordan Peterson at least tries to help these men develop a sense of responsibility and strength that can be constructive and meaning- making. Guys like Tate, on the other hand, exploit their grievance to make them socially nihilistic. One is obviously much better than the other, but neither is a substitute for having a common social value place upon eating bitterness.
The “manosphere” gives aggrieved, frustrated, disappointed, and angry men stories to help them process their emotions, but they still rely upon self-centered and egotistical tropes like the hero’s journey or misogynistic worldviews. These don’t address the deeper and more universal reality that none of us (male or female) are heroes from Marvel movies, that deep, painfully-bitter experience is part of the common human journey, and that eating that bitterness with humility and without expectation of any award for being special, is a virtue that helps you develop character.
I’m not from NA and I don’t think that’s specific to NA, I saw this in people from Western Europe, Northern Africa and Japan. Also whatever positive aspect of traditional culture there may be, everything seems to get crushed by the social media bulldozer consumeing hours a day from childhood.