The Idle Wave // Hard As Nails // Pirates // Stormzy // Elvis & Dragons
Welcome to my occasional newsletter. I hope it's as useful to read, as it is to write. Please Unsubscribe below.
Essay: Idle Wave: 4 mins
Healthy Masculinity Experiment: 2 mins
Pirate Of The Month: 1 min
Four Interesting Fings: 2 mins
A picture of Elvis: Hooray!
The Idle Wave
Somewhere between a horror movie and a history lesson, events unfold that we were told could never happen. It’s why we studied genocide; only now, 13,000 Palestinian children have died. Facts are denied by Presidents who lie. If I could work out what to protest about, I might get put inside. And just when it couldn’t get more out of whack, Stormzy bends over for a Big Mac.
Just as chaos dials up to 11 when we should be in the streets fighting for a citizen-led revolution, fatigue kicks in. And instead, I put on the kettle. Again.
I tried to think through, sum up or work out this feeling of cowardly inner collapse by coining the phrase Idle Wave, and the DM’s I got showed it wasn’t just me:
“I wanted to like your post on Idle Wave, but I couldn’t bring myself to move”
“Washed away by this, can you finish the definition, even if I don’t get round to reading it?”
“This is my life, how do I get out?”
Thanks for these; I appreciate all of them.
Idle Wave:
(Ihy-dil Way-ev)
Noun: Def:
i) The overwhelming fatigue that crashes over you in response to life’s endless absurdity.
ii) A state of doom-scroll-induced dissonance—marked by an urgent desire to lie down or procrastinate perniciously in awe of the relentless, mind-boggling chaos of world events.
“Sorry I missed the deadline, but an Idle Wave hit me after reading about Trump’s latest bizarre tantrum with apocalyptic consequences.”
“The entire team seems to have been hit by an Idle Wave ever since we demanded they return to the office for their AI training.”
The current behind the Idle Wave
Attempting to coin the phrase was an attempt to help/amuse/distract me, but if writing about it can help someone else, then I can also justify my procrastination, so I looked into it further.
I found theories cleverer and clearer than my idiomatic invention, from the Covid-Era-defining discovery of Languishing to the Cognitive Dissonance I discovered in Uncertainty Experts.
But the one that resonated most was Psychic Numbing, a term coined by psychiatrist Robert Lifton to describe the emotional shutdown that follows large-scale tragedy. Initially, it was observed in survivors of Hiroshima and the My Lai massacre. Today, similar responses are reported by survivors in Gaza—horrifying scenes of mass death becoming too much to process.
Psychic Numbing is adaptive, it helps us keep moving through horror, letting us function—but at the cost of feeling detached.
When I first read about it, I felt guilty. My privilege is glaring—I am merely reading about this suffering, not living the experiences of anyone in Kyiv, Sudan or Gaza. But Lifton’s core point was this: “relentless exposure to suffering eventually makes action feel futile”
That’s where the twist comes in; the technology-driven compression rate brings this into all of our homes.
We witness more tragedy while waiting for a bus than most humans could process in a lifetime.
Lifton didn’t anticipate suffering interspersed with cat videos and targeted ads, podcasts processing the implosion of democracy listened on 1.5 speed and news notification alerts that belong in blockbuster movie plots, not my Monday commute.
But here we are, as Lifton says, with “relentless exposure to suffering, making the action feel futile.”
As a psychological construct, Psychic Numbing is "an adaptive response, i.e. it’s a short-term survival response, to “keep moving whilst the horror or trauma is still a threat, allowing us to continue communicating about it to others if needs be, but with a sense of unreal detachment.”
Which feels exactly like what I experience when I open Instagram.
But is that an appropriation of trauma response? I’m aware my privileged position of feeling emotionally exhausted by the unrelenting headlines in my own underfloor heated kitchen is nowhere near the same as being bombed shitless in Gaza, Kyiv or Sudan.
But what Lifton was getting at as he explains Psychic Numbing was the ‘relentless exposure to suffering that eventually made action feel futile” that took place after seeing so much suffering it no longer makes sense.
So it stands to reason that the magnified montage of atrocity, climate collapse, democratic implosion, nazi salutes on the nightly news and once beloved South London rappers selling out for a happy meal makes us want a passive aggressive nap.
The Catch-22 of Caring
It’s a cruel paradox: You want to care, but caring burns you out. You want to act, but “action feels futile.”
We are trapped in a loop where witnessing suffering fuels a moral obligation to do something, yet the scale of the problem is so vast that the only logical-seeming option is to collapse under the weight of it all.
That’s the Idle Wave.
What is to be done?
What helps me with writing is that it allows me to process things beyond the initial panic. I want to digest and absorb other people’s ideas, justify looking pensively out the window, and eventually, hopefully, have some original thoughts of my own.
And then, I feel like I can move again, and this small steps strategy is mirrored in advice on Psychic Numbing regarding slow-moving car crash tragedies that it’s less evolved for, such as the Climate Crisis.
Trying to get your head around the enormity of ecological collapse will lead to overwhelm. However, studies show local action, albeit river cleaning or woodland protection, leads to more ingrained and pro-sustainable behaviours.
You could argue that’s more avoidance, but the important thing is consistent actions compound, and anything is better than giving yourself a hard time for feeling feelings; it is far better to allow feelings to lead you to action, which they will if you hold on.
Sadly, some cliches are true, and feeling it is dealing with it.
This is why all therapy and development begins with awareness, admitting and embracing the problem.
It’s natural to numb because, at a nervous system level, fear and despair spell The End Of The Line, so we turn away. Avoidance is natural; numbing is tempting; who wants to embrace suffering and anxiety when I’m a scroll away from a funny video?
But awareness and acceptance of fear and despair are the steps before grief, where, annoyingly, we become grounded and things get better.
Fear and despair are never the end game; they are just the end-of-level baddie. Facing them leads to the scene where we discover the real endgame is grief.
And, fortune cookie-like as it may sound, the gift of grief is the way back to love.
The most sustained commitments to change I’ve ever seen never came from avoidance or fear. It’s a pain in the arse, but grief and acceptance lead to growth and adaption, love and connection, and that is worth riding the Idle Wave for.
So, if you’re feeling the Idle Wave,
A) you’re very human,
B) please avoid the natural tendency to give yourself a hard time,
C) if you find a safe way to follow those feelings all the way to grief, does it lead you to a place where a small, meaningful action becomes possible?
.
All of this has led me to a couple of personal conclusions for short-term fixes:
1. Make it Weekly: I’ve deleted the news and social media apps (again) got a subscription to a weekly physical journal of the news from various sources.
2. Walk and talk: I’ve booked a few walks with people instead of doom-scrolling and staying inside to feel the feelings in a safe space. Thanks for reaching out.
3. Meet Up: My Co Pirate Alex Barker hosts a Zoom call with a cup of tea, and I’ll ask if we can hijack one, to hear people’s reflections on the questions asked here:
A) How do we healthily handle the state of the world?
B) How do we take some action in meaningful but manageable ways?
If you’d like to join a Zoom call one evening to hear how each other tries to handle all this, reply with a: 🖤🏴☠️☕, and I’ll set it up with some suggested dates.
And with that invite made, I’ll give the final word to my new favourite psychologist, who it would also seem might be into this idea:
“Our biggest opportunity at this moment in history is perhaps a deeper connection with all human beings. That kind of connection, made possible by our various technologies, simply couldn’t exist before recent times. The connection guarantees nothing, but it does offer an opportunity for expressions or a species consciousness that is expanding. Perhaps it represents our greatest opportunity. Robert Jay Lifton.
Hard As Nails
In March, hundreds of men will participate in Hard As Nails groundbreaking experiment to explore healthy masculinity through the creative, positive act of getting their nails done, stimulating debate, increasing empathy and challenging conformity.
We’re a few brave blokes short of representative scientific samples, and need a few more men to join us, can you nominate someone to sign-up here.
The pilot study showed promising results; if this stage is as successful, these generous gents will be the foundation of a movement that creates:
To build on this strong start, we’re very proud to have the support of Dr Stephen Burrel, a specialist in masculinity, whose podcast Now and Men is well worth a listen.
Please, if you’re a chap and you’re interested in expanding the idea of healthy masculinity and willing to keep a short scientific diary and complete a couple of surveys about your experience, please sign up here.
All the evidence from the pilot research, FAQs, references AND the sign up form are here at Hard As Nails.com.
Pirate Of The Month:
Lee Chambers is a man who is rewriting the rules of equality, diversity, and leadership. Lee, who has had to learn how to walk again, has overcome a lot and now uses his experiences to help others overcome even more.
Lee is incredibly sharp, smart, enjoys colour-coordinating his suits and spectacles and maintains levity whilst discussing topics of utmost severity.
I’ve had several conversations around masculinity recently, and very few skewered the short-term urgency whilst balancing the long-term complexity in the way that Lee can.
Whilst identity can be sidelined, often as an avoidance strategy, or be argued that it’s woke, anti-woke or a distraction from more pressing matters, Lee eloquently presents gender stereotypes as a Red Thread through all of society's significant challenges.
And, as all good leaders must, he also outlines that by pulling hard on that thread, there’s a chance to benefit and be a valuable counterpoint to all those challenges.
Lee currently runs Male Allies UK. He is inspiring, positive, practical and lyrical, but it wouldn’t be surprising; it would be bloody inspiring if he ran the UK one day.
Four Interesting Fings
Stormzy Sell Out. The awesome Darren Cunningham, AKA, Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives, stickering south London McDonalds with Sorry Stomzy’s Sold Out.
The Anti-Snarf Manifesto: An inspiring (if not altogether clear) call to arms to resist and replace the attention/intelligent debate destroying nature of the news.
ManKeeping and the Male Friendship Recession: A bloody brilliant cartoon by @vulgardrawings that takes an expansive view on male relationships.
Max Hate: A Canadian campaign about how young men are being recruited to the arguments of ‘Toxic Masculinity’ inspiring me to double down on Hard As Nails.
Any Excuse for a Pic of Elvis
Me and Elvis, and a Dragon. My son was born in the year of the dragon, as was I, and I it turns out, so was my Dad who died when I was little, and my son makes me think of lots. By the time you get the next newsletter, I may well have a dragoon tattoo.
Many thanks for subscribing (or unsubscribing if this wasn’t up your street) you can see more about my work, topics, talks, and future and past projects (and book me for any upcoming events) all at www.samconniff.com
🖤🏴☠️☕
I love this. Kudos. Did you have any interactions with the chap that made the "Stormzy has sold out" posters?