Here is something that I think ought to be of concern to women. In my generation, and I think it's been true of nearly all generations of men before me, we love women. Now, there may be particular women that we don't like, but that is only the case when said woman has proven themselves to be untrustworthy or unlikable. The generic woman gets the benefit of the doubt. I think we can agree that, over the course of history, this has been an important point.
I've spent a lot of time talking to today's young men. And what I've noticed is, although a GenZ man might love a particular woman, he has no regard for women in general. To him, they are just random people, who in general have no particular qualities worth appreciating. And this is no surprise when one considers that he has probably grown up in an environment where all of his role models were women -- mothers, teachers, political figures, even female classmates -- and they all regarded him as an insane, dangerous animal who must be caged and tamed. They taught him that his own judgment is not to be trusted, that he must defer to outside experts (preferably female ones) for every decision. And he's just tired of it. He's tired of being told that, from the day he was born, he was the cause of all the world's problems. He remembers that time in the sixth grade when the girls got to go on a fun field trip, while the boys had to stay behind and write apology letters to the world, because of some social infraction that one of the body in class (allegedly) committed. He looks at his older, GenX and Millennial male acquaintances, and observes that they've spent their careers being passed over for promotions and advancement, in favor of less qualified women, decisions probably made by female managers. And he thinks, "What do they see that is good in women in general? Because I haven't seen much of it."
And then people are surprised when he doesn't pursue career goals (because, as he sees it, there's no point). He spends his time with video games, because in games, success is proportional to talent, skill and practice. Games don't constantly tell him that his is a defective human being. He prefers porn because porn actresses don't accuse him of sexual harassment or rape for saying something she doesn't like. It's safer than dating real women, and the social rules are far less complicated.
In short, men's natural admiration of women has been beaten out of him. Even a rat eventually becomes adverse to repeated painful stimuli. And most of the women who think about the problem want to try to fix it by doubling down on what doesn't work, because their politics tells them to.
You just described the movie "Shane". They needed him until they didn't. Then they were ashamed by him. In my opinion, this is the best explanation of the entire Trump moment in America. Some people want him to overhaul the culture, some people can never believe that these kind of means justify the ends and they shun and insult his followers. The biggest group is the ones in the middle. Maybe they understand the "Shane" theory or maybe they can feel a pull they can't quite explain. They get pushed and pulled by the media into wanting the movement to do what's needed and being disgusted with themselves for falling for it. It's a type of political or cultural bipolar disease.
Excellent essay, MFW. I enjoyed how you linked three disparate and excellent movies from the 1990s into the theme of male disaffection. I want to bring up an article I read in The Economist in what would have been the late 1980s or early '90s, before it went down the drain you describe. The article said civilization needed men to create it. It needs women to maintain it.
Men have that duality of outstanding creators and destructors. (Of course, many men are lesser at both or even useless.) No matter what equity requires, if you want to compose a symphony to last 500 years or detonate an atomic bomb over the city of a recalcitrant enemy, you need a man. The problem is, once men have tamed the wilderness, fought the inconvenient people of other tribes (and eventually countries and ideologies), and designed and built the water projects and electric plants other infrastructure (and pyramids and moon landings), you need somebody to run the place. Women are supposedly better at this. Women are raised and willing men are feminized. The problem is, what to do with the men who once had a job taming and building and don't want to change attitudes?
Progressives assert we are in that "Run the Place" phase of human existence. Original men are not only obsolete, they are in the way.
Don't get me started on the new season of True Detective...
To clarify, a "New York Minute" was not sung by the Eagles. It's from a Don Henley solo album. (I'm not trying to give you a gotcha, but I thought you might want to correct that). :)
Spot on, sir. Regarding the pitiful David Hogg: one point you forgot to mention was that during the terrible Parkland shooting, the Piglet ran and hid to save his own ass, while better young men stood their ground to protect others. Some of those better men than Hogg could ever hope to be died in the effort, while others (far less lionized by the Left) were shot multiple times.
True but I think that it's not only unsavory types. They may be the ones driving it but it also attracts people who want to just go along or be seen as in with the in crowd. Sometimes people join mobs just to join other people in the mob. They don't really know or care what the mob is about or what it's for or against. They just want to belong in the group. Be in with the in crowd. Wet their finger, hold it up and go with every way the wind is blowing.
They drivers don't see the system as morally bankrupt. They see the system they are rebelling against as the morally bankrupt one. They turn a blind eye to what their system does or is doing. There was a British historian who shortly before he died gave an interview. He was a curious combination of someone who believed in communism but was not blind to the damages it had done. Asked if Communism had "worked" or succeeded in it's goals of creating a new man and sort of a perfect country if it would have been worth all the death and destruction he replied yes. (too lazy to look up the name)
The genius of the Founding Fathers is that they realized that they were dealing with real people, the good, the bad, the so-so. That's why the system has or maybe had, checks and balances. Not sure so anymore. The USSR's Constitution was great on paper. In real life, not so much. Ditto Nazi Germany. Great if you were a pure blood Aryan and at the top of the food chain. If you weren't didn't really work out well for you. Everything looks good on paper. See Net Zero, EV's and all the other Climate Change plans. Great on paper, Real World, not so much.
I think that a lot of what's happening thas a religious feeling to it. Religion is a belief. You cannot prove God or Gods exist. You cannot prove they don't exist. You can believe either but it's a belief.
People mostly work on Assumptive Knowledge. They assume they know something and that something is correct.
There are what I refer to as The Three Major You Knows:
Things you believe you know
Things you think you know
And Things you know you know.
Each set is smaller than the one above it. Yet each set is inversely held or ranked. You can't convince an atheist to believe in God. You can't convince someone who is deeply religious to not believe. Each will insist that they "know" God does\does not exist.
The problem arises when you cross over to things like The Holocaust. People will believe it didn't happen regardless of any amount of evidence. The reply will be: "That's not true or I don't believe that." it becomes a belief "you know" and not a I think or I know "you know."
Belief in Equity is the same thing. No matter how much evidence that you can produce that Michael Brown did not have his hands up and way saying Don't Shoot or that the autopsy of George Floyd did not show death by strangulation or that the moon landings were not faked or that 9/11 wasn't an inside job there will be : I don't believe that or That's not true. They will jreject all of the evidence. You can show all the proof you want that blacks are not murdered by police at a higher rate than whites or the wage gap between men and woman is virtually nonexistent and you will get "I don't believe that' or "that's not true.
Equality is something that can be shown to a large but probably not 100% degree.
The problem is they don't really want equity of outcomes. They want their "group" or "tribe" or clique to be higher and have a higher outcome. The don't want more woman in power, they want less men. They don't want more gay and trans people in positions of power and influence they want less straight people. They want the non-equity of outcomes but on their side.
Problems arise when the equity is between gay woman and trans woman or blacks vs. other minorities or blacks vs immigrants, legal or otherwise. What's ours is ours, what's yours is open to debate. We deserve more than you because....well we just do, that's all. So there!
As for the Shane reference. Shane choose to leave. It wasn't that they didn't want him to stay, it's that he knew he wouldn't fit. Plus the whole triangle thing. He understood it. The boy who cried out come back Shane didn't. Shane was the adult in the room. I
t's what's wrong with High Noon. In real life Kane would have gone down to the station with a shotgun and when the bad guys stepped off the train, just cut them in half. But that would have been a different picture.
I am gobsmacked at this critique of men losing their way in modern life. Men are made to feel sorry for their privilege of having two parents that were married and raised them. A school that taught them how to think and not programming them with what to think. The allure of the easy victory in the Me Too movement, a gaze equals rape, and words commit violence alienates the type of men that I believe that we are going to be forced to need due to bumbling and ineffective leadership in our politics and military. I am saddened how the state of men in the equity society are degraded to girly men and criminals in our time. I fear that the planned (It’s my theory and I own it) emasculation of the modern man will hurt us, and hurt us bad in the next five years.
The frustrating part about this is it seems like there are no role models or leaders who are offering anything other then commiseration and self-work in isolation. Where are the leaders who are promoting community (in real life, not on the internet)? Who is offering concrete solutions for disaffected young men to connect and improve their lives by taking action?
Here is something that I think ought to be of concern to women. In my generation, and I think it's been true of nearly all generations of men before me, we love women. Now, there may be particular women that we don't like, but that is only the case when said woman has proven themselves to be untrustworthy or unlikable. The generic woman gets the benefit of the doubt. I think we can agree that, over the course of history, this has been an important point.
I've spent a lot of time talking to today's young men. And what I've noticed is, although a GenZ man might love a particular woman, he has no regard for women in general. To him, they are just random people, who in general have no particular qualities worth appreciating. And this is no surprise when one considers that he has probably grown up in an environment where all of his role models were women -- mothers, teachers, political figures, even female classmates -- and they all regarded him as an insane, dangerous animal who must be caged and tamed. They taught him that his own judgment is not to be trusted, that he must defer to outside experts (preferably female ones) for every decision. And he's just tired of it. He's tired of being told that, from the day he was born, he was the cause of all the world's problems. He remembers that time in the sixth grade when the girls got to go on a fun field trip, while the boys had to stay behind and write apology letters to the world, because of some social infraction that one of the body in class (allegedly) committed. He looks at his older, GenX and Millennial male acquaintances, and observes that they've spent their careers being passed over for promotions and advancement, in favor of less qualified women, decisions probably made by female managers. And he thinks, "What do they see that is good in women in general? Because I haven't seen much of it."
And then people are surprised when he doesn't pursue career goals (because, as he sees it, there's no point). He spends his time with video games, because in games, success is proportional to talent, skill and practice. Games don't constantly tell him that his is a defective human being. He prefers porn because porn actresses don't accuse him of sexual harassment or rape for saying something she doesn't like. It's safer than dating real women, and the social rules are far less complicated.
In short, men's natural admiration of women has been beaten out of him. Even a rat eventually becomes adverse to repeated painful stimuli. And most of the women who think about the problem want to try to fix it by doubling down on what doesn't work, because their politics tells them to.
You just described the movie "Shane". They needed him until they didn't. Then they were ashamed by him. In my opinion, this is the best explanation of the entire Trump moment in America. Some people want him to overhaul the culture, some people can never believe that these kind of means justify the ends and they shun and insult his followers. The biggest group is the ones in the middle. Maybe they understand the "Shane" theory or maybe they can feel a pull they can't quite explain. They get pushed and pulled by the media into wanting the movement to do what's needed and being disgusted with themselves for falling for it. It's a type of political or cultural bipolar disease.
Excellent essay, MFW. I enjoyed how you linked three disparate and excellent movies from the 1990s into the theme of male disaffection. I want to bring up an article I read in The Economist in what would have been the late 1980s or early '90s, before it went down the drain you describe. The article said civilization needed men to create it. It needs women to maintain it.
Men have that duality of outstanding creators and destructors. (Of course, many men are lesser at both or even useless.) No matter what equity requires, if you want to compose a symphony to last 500 years or detonate an atomic bomb over the city of a recalcitrant enemy, you need a man. The problem is, once men have tamed the wilderness, fought the inconvenient people of other tribes (and eventually countries and ideologies), and designed and built the water projects and electric plants other infrastructure (and pyramids and moon landings), you need somebody to run the place. Women are supposedly better at this. Women are raised and willing men are feminized. The problem is, what to do with the men who once had a job taming and building and don't want to change attitudes?
Progressives assert we are in that "Run the Place" phase of human existence. Original men are not only obsolete, they are in the way.
Don't get me started on the new season of True Detective...
To clarify, a "New York Minute" was not sung by the Eagles. It's from a Don Henley solo album. (I'm not trying to give you a gotcha, but I thought you might want to correct that). :)
Spot on, sir. Regarding the pitiful David Hogg: one point you forgot to mention was that during the terrible Parkland shooting, the Piglet ran and hid to save his own ass, while better young men stood their ground to protect others. Some of those better men than Hogg could ever hope to be died in the effort, while others (far less lionized by the Left) were shot multiple times.
True but I think that it's not only unsavory types. They may be the ones driving it but it also attracts people who want to just go along or be seen as in with the in crowd. Sometimes people join mobs just to join other people in the mob. They don't really know or care what the mob is about or what it's for or against. They just want to belong in the group. Be in with the in crowd. Wet their finger, hold it up and go with every way the wind is blowing.
They drivers don't see the system as morally bankrupt. They see the system they are rebelling against as the morally bankrupt one. They turn a blind eye to what their system does or is doing. There was a British historian who shortly before he died gave an interview. He was a curious combination of someone who believed in communism but was not blind to the damages it had done. Asked if Communism had "worked" or succeeded in it's goals of creating a new man and sort of a perfect country if it would have been worth all the death and destruction he replied yes. (too lazy to look up the name)
The genius of the Founding Fathers is that they realized that they were dealing with real people, the good, the bad, the so-so. That's why the system has or maybe had, checks and balances. Not sure so anymore. The USSR's Constitution was great on paper. In real life, not so much. Ditto Nazi Germany. Great if you were a pure blood Aryan and at the top of the food chain. If you weren't didn't really work out well for you. Everything looks good on paper. See Net Zero, EV's and all the other Climate Change plans. Great on paper, Real World, not so much.
I think that a lot of what's happening thas a religious feeling to it. Religion is a belief. You cannot prove God or Gods exist. You cannot prove they don't exist. You can believe either but it's a belief.
People mostly work on Assumptive Knowledge. They assume they know something and that something is correct.
There are what I refer to as The Three Major You Knows:
Things you believe you know
Things you think you know
And Things you know you know.
Each set is smaller than the one above it. Yet each set is inversely held or ranked. You can't convince an atheist to believe in God. You can't convince someone who is deeply religious to not believe. Each will insist that they "know" God does\does not exist.
The problem arises when you cross over to things like The Holocaust. People will believe it didn't happen regardless of any amount of evidence. The reply will be: "That's not true or I don't believe that." it becomes a belief "you know" and not a I think or I know "you know."
Belief in Equity is the same thing. No matter how much evidence that you can produce that Michael Brown did not have his hands up and way saying Don't Shoot or that the autopsy of George Floyd did not show death by strangulation or that the moon landings were not faked or that 9/11 wasn't an inside job there will be : I don't believe that or That's not true. They will jreject all of the evidence. You can show all the proof you want that blacks are not murdered by police at a higher rate than whites or the wage gap between men and woman is virtually nonexistent and you will get "I don't believe that' or "that's not true.
Equality is something that can be shown to a large but probably not 100% degree.
Equity can't. It's a belief system
The problem is they don't really want equity of outcomes. They want their "group" or "tribe" or clique to be higher and have a higher outcome. The don't want more woman in power, they want less men. They don't want more gay and trans people in positions of power and influence they want less straight people. They want the non-equity of outcomes but on their side.
Problems arise when the equity is between gay woman and trans woman or blacks vs. other minorities or blacks vs immigrants, legal or otherwise. What's ours is ours, what's yours is open to debate. We deserve more than you because....well we just do, that's all. So there!
As for the Shane reference. Shane choose to leave. It wasn't that they didn't want him to stay, it's that he knew he wouldn't fit. Plus the whole triangle thing. He understood it. The boy who cried out come back Shane didn't. Shane was the adult in the room. I
t's what's wrong with High Noon. In real life Kane would have gone down to the station with a shotgun and when the bad guys stepped off the train, just cut them in half. But that would have been a different picture.
I am gobsmacked at this critique of men losing their way in modern life. Men are made to feel sorry for their privilege of having two parents that were married and raised them. A school that taught them how to think and not programming them with what to think. The allure of the easy victory in the Me Too movement, a gaze equals rape, and words commit violence alienates the type of men that I believe that we are going to be forced to need due to bumbling and ineffective leadership in our politics and military. I am saddened how the state of men in the equity society are degraded to girly men and criminals in our time. I fear that the planned (It’s my theory and I own it) emasculation of the modern man will hurt us, and hurt us bad in the next five years.
See Rudyard Kipling's "Tommy".
Great job, George. Great writing and topic!
The frustrating part about this is it seems like there are no role models or leaders who are offering anything other then commiseration and self-work in isolation. Where are the leaders who are promoting community (in real life, not on the internet)? Who is offering concrete solutions for disaffected young men to connect and improve their lives by taking action?