How can we show young, losery men that they have intrinsic value? Easy. We don't. Just look at the messaging that got women to conform to patriarchy. Sure, there was SOME 'there's value in staying at home, making husband happy makes you happy.....' but it was mostly just 'do it because you don't have any other choices'. That simple. Marry because that's the only path to securing resources, because men are hording it. Do what your husband wants or he hits you. And then women mostly did the work of convincing themselves they liked their lot. So, yeah, guys are losing their status in society right now because society is valuing and paying more feminine coded skills better than traditionally masculine ones. That trend is just going to increase. And women won't need to market to men why they need to get in line, the economy will do that for them. Men must choose to take on a more active parenting and domestic role, or get dumped. Younger boys will look at the men who take on more domestic and empathetic roles having better lives than men who live alone in the woods and gripe and younger boys will have better behaviors modeled to them. Right now, in this transitional period, there will be people who cannot evolve and are upset about that, but that was true in every generation since the beginning of humanity. Some men struggled to transition to the industrialized economy in the 1800s. Some struggled to integrate back into society post the World Wars. Some people will always wash out. There's only so much catering to those we should do, and in general it's simply not good policy to making 'aligning with the losers' a policy concern.
Women are over half of the US voting population. And over half the world. As modern tech and science gets better, the status of women globally will continue to improve. I don't think women need to focus on winning over loser men. We can out vote them, and they can evolve or expire. The thing I'm more interested in is how to deprogram the women who are still so male centered they will vote against their own interests and rights. The Handmaids. Those I think can be swayed through a conscious effort, those women are the more obviously illogical. Women need to adjust to the new world order of their increasing dominance, and a big part of it is spending less time thinking, 'but what do men want?'. That's subordinate's thinking. 'What do women want?' was mostly treated as a punchline in men's circles for hundreds of years. Because men in power knew they didn't need to persuade women, they could compel women. So I say the same to women now. Stop acting like you need to persuade men. Stop thinking you need to make an emotional appeal. To care about their pain. Stop being a bleeding heart for men who absolutely were not that for women's issues. Just continue to succeed, let the men who are butthurt about that be butthurt, and the chips will fall where they may.
Isn’t there a shortage of pilots,air traffic control controllers, electricians, plumbers truck drivers and construction workers , based on that alone, and the fact that those jobs pay 80 to 120k. I think Democrats would be better off selling that, than victimhood. Even Black Males are starting to reject victimhood even though there the main demographic that would appeal to.
“How can we show young, losery men that they have intrinsic value?”
At a high level, I think you almost answer your own question with:
“We should start by showing them how much we care about them.”
But to build on that: I think we should show male victims of patriarchy as much empathy as we show female victims. To me, that means letting men talk about their problems in progressive spaces, in good faith, without accusing them of “hijacking” or “decentering” women’s issues. But more importantly, it means *not mocking* men’s insecurities under patriarchy and confusing that with “punching up.”
A lot of men's struggles are rooted in fear of stigma or humiliation; in the trauma of emasculation during formative years; in the universal human yearning for our peers’ respect and approval. Right now, the only communities for men going through these things seem to be Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, and Joe Rogan. If we in the feminist movement sincerely want to pull men out of their trauma instead of pushing them deeper into it, we need to offer an alternative that *makes them feel safe from what they are fleeing.*
Right now, I worry the left does a very bad job of this, such that losery men do not sense we care about them at all. We make hand-wavy acknowledgments that patriarchy hurts men too, then go right back to talking to and about them in ways that show little concern for this reality.
I wrote about this recently in the context of the Barbie movie, and why I kind of get why so many men hated it. In short: men’s pain is still *funny.* They are the butt of every joke, even for innocent hobbies or mannerisms that don’t really oppress anyone. Feminism the ideology is simply correct, but feminism *the movement* is often just as tribal as the rest of society, which can manifest as an empathy gap for the people patriarchy traps.
Of course, the internet exacerbates the problem. The single biggest driver of social media engagement and visibility is whether a post dunks on an outgroup. Feminism is not innately man-bashing, but much of what men see of it on their feeds is, because the algorithms reward extreme content. What tears men down goes much more viral than what builds women up.
“Showing them how much we care about them” requires overcoming that zero-sum instinct and building men up too. Patriarchy hurts men in different ways than it hurts women, but many of these ways overlap; for example, it creates impossible, contradictory expectations for how they must behave, just as it does for America Ferrara’s character in Barbie. Elevating this symmetry of men's and women’s experiences can be a powerful tool, not only to make men feel heard, but also to help them hear.
100%. Particularly loved this part: "Feminism the ideology is simply correct, but feminism *the movement* is often just as tribal as the rest of society, which can manifest as an empathy gap for the people patriarchy traps."
Ehhhhh......I fully support your points if you're talking about men being way more empathetic towards men. Absolutely. And more men questioning patriarchy amongst themselves. But your comment seems to frame it (and I could be interpreting you wrong here!) as these issues can be helped with women showing men more empathy and....nah. Nope. That has been a classic derailment tactic for women talking about women's issues since the start of the women's movement. Men are very used to being centered in patriarchy, their feelings, and empathy for their feelings, are considered more important than women. Any woman whose been in a long term partnership with a man knows she couldn't just 'empathize with him' enough to fix patriarchal entitlement. I mean, as much as I like Cathy and respect her opinions, this very post by her is an example of that time honored fact; the progress of the women's movement being framed as 'but, how do the MEN feel about it? Are they sad? Can someone just care about the men more?' The problem is not, and never has been, women systemically not showing enough empathy towards men. I do think there's a real problem of men not showing enough empathy towards others though, both other men and women, and even themselves. And lastly, you do the very thing I think is problematic with your Barbie example. Sir, it's a movie called BARBIE. A doll for girls. Marketed with pink plastic, sparkles, a female lead......and you think there needed to be more focus on the male characters? There was a surprising amount of focus on Ken, Ken's song was the only Barbie song performed at the Oscars....it is exhausting to have men look at media clearly marketed towards women and say they are not represented enough. Men have how many James Bond movies, Mission Impossible movies, WW2 movies, all but three best director Oscars.......Yeah, the issue is not that men don't get enough focus and empathy from women.
I guess my approach to empathy is pretty Marxist: "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need." I think that aligns pretty well with progressive intuitions about privilege and suffering. And in 2024, I don't think it aligns neatly with gender in the way you're suggesting. Many women are thriving, many men are floundering, and we who understand why patriarchy traps both sexes should try to liberate both sexes.
So yes: sometimes even women should empathize with men, whether or not some men use that empathy to derail discussion of women's issues. We are not them, so we can do both. It's not zero sum. If anything, it accelerates women's liberation, as it may be difficult to get men to empathize with women if they do not sense the feeling is reciprocal.
You are right that patriarchy centers men and male preferences in many important ways. But one thing it does not center is their feelings, other than the one feeling (anger) that patriarchy allows them to have. James Bond and Mission Impossible do not center the vulnerable, insecure, flawed men who actually exist: they center an invincible caricature of the male ideal, that's every bit as unobtainable as Barbie's body proportions. Isn't there a symmetry there? Isn't there is a comparable pain, insecurity, and stigma inflicted on anyone who doesn't meet the archetype? And doesn't that stigma deter men, in particular, from admitting or expressing that pain, or even learning how? Doesn't patriarchy hurt men too - and shouldn't we empathize with people who are hurting?
As my post on Barbie explains, the issue was not insufficient *focus* on male characters. In fact, it would have been better if there were no men in the movie at all, and Barbie only focused on women and women's issues - that's where the movie was superb. And because it's mostly about women, I still think it was a net positive.
But as you mention, the movie's creators went out of their way to make men's issues a prominent subplot. They told reviewers that Ken's arc was “a story that will resonate with men” too and “an invitation for everybody to be part of the party and let go of things that aren’t necessarily serving us as either women or men.” Millions of women dragged their boyfriends to the theaters to see it, and then left-leaning people on the internet spent weeks mocking the shit out of any man who didn't like it.
So to me, it seems like a bummer - a missed opportunity - that in the most mainstream piece of feminist art this century, every man in the movie is stupid, shallow, and selfish 100% of the time. That their emotions are exclusively comic relief: dopey, childish, stunted half-thoughts, presented in silly songs before a circus backdrop of men brawling with titty twisters and tennis rackets. That they are never a fraction as complex, relatable, or self-aware as the women’s emotions, and that they can never come to terms with those emotions until a woman is kind enough to enlighten them. That men's feelings are still a punchline: still deterred by the fear of social stigma. That may be cathartic to some subset of women, who are frustrated with some subset of men for perfectly valid reasons. But it does not credibly signal that feminists actually give a fuck about the ways patriarchy hurts men too, and it hollows the purported message of being "Kenough." We can do better.
Ummm, no, patriarchy places men at the top of the power structure. Under patriarchal thinking, every man, by virtue of their gender, has a more valid claim to power than any woman. That's just how patriarchy works. Unless you accept that simple fact for how the current structure of our world works, you really can't progress past 'go', my man. The majority of adults living below the poverty line has always been, and still is, primarily women. Some men are not doing as well as other men, but I simply will not accept the premise that as long as we still live in a patriarchy, successful women must waste their time fretting over unsuccessful men. They should focus on dismantling patriarchy first and replacing it with something more egalitarian.
But from reading your comment I realized something that people socialized as men perhaps don't grasp; 'likeability'. Women spend their lives being told that in order for any man, your Dad, your husband, your brother, let alone male strangers to care about your issues, you must be likeable. If you don't make yourself 'likeable', care is no longer given. Men apparently think they don't need to be likeable to women. They do. If they want the help of college educated successful women, be likeable. The mere fact you suffer does not make you worthy of attention.
It's telling that these empathy beggars are swarming women's pages, instead of men's. Women have been trained to respond empathically to a sad man....for their own survival. Even though the myth that men cannot access such empathy and emotional depth just makes me sigh. Who are the most famous poets who ever lived? Playwrights? Songwriters? Authors? Philosophers? You can not on one hand say men have no space in society for emotional range, when all the most famous displayers of every human emotion have been....men. The benchmark for even being considered an intellectual is still how eloquently you can talk about men's issues, that's why schoolchildren read male authors to become 'educated'. I half suspect that's subconsciously why writers and intellectuals like Cathy talk about this topic so frequently, to gain legitimacy in the eyes of men, to be seen as 'smart' and 'focused on the real issues'.
Sorry you didn't like the Barbie movie. Perhaps it just wasn't for you. :-)
To be fair there is a lot of degradation of men even in male media spaces like comic books, look at the anti woke backlash to some marvel movies, like Captain Marvel or how they make a lot of men look like idiots in old marriage sitcoms, and the woman look like super heroes, are White men marginalized in real life no,but I can see how a 12 yr old male could consume modern day woke media and feel attacked and marginalized. You can make pro female content without men feeling attacked or belittled, though the backlash to Barbie was over exaggerated, the world that Barbie portrayed was also over exaggerated Ex( Mattel’s board of executive is not all men)
This may sound banal, but for any group of people lacking meaning, regardless of age or gender, I would start by asking:
1. Who can we help them connect with?
2. What can we help them get good at?
given that human connection and skill are such central sources of meaning in everyone's lives. So I've just reduced the problem to solving modern alienation and deskilling... yay? :)
In all seriousness, one might ask what kinds of volunteer and make-work opportunities we could make more of. Think of the CCC in the Depression-- I was just reading a Times article about how American hiking trails need a lot more maintenance. Seems like a small thing, but it gets people out there building skills and collaborating with others.
And of course, our wonderfully hyperoptimized modern technologies-- social media and video games-- function as the "junk food" versions of connection and skill for a lot of these folks, giving them the short-term psychic rewards without the long-term health benefits. I don't know what to do about that; simplistic restrictions certainly won't work, not least because plenty of people actually get healthy connection and skill from those things too! But it needs consideration as an aggravating factor for the phenomenon you describe.
Agree. One thing I'm curious about is how do we get people to digitize existing information that's currently in analog formats? It doesn't take much skill. Just some equipment and many, many hours of tedious work. But it's for a very important cause. I wish more people would put some of their free time toward this.
Great post. I have seen with younger men, what used to be 'playing sports in the park' has transitioned to 'playing a multiplayer video game at home with other boys sitting in their homes'. This can feel like 'hanging out with friends', but all the studies say it's not as satisfying or as good for mental health as in person time. Of course, some boys do indeed still get together in the park, and I think those boys are more well adjusted. I think parents can encourage this more, but a problem with some modern parents is they have been convinced that staying home online is 'safer' than going outside and away from the parent's eyes.
This is much older than the Protestant work ethic. This gets to Aristotle's point that we are social animals and we are only fully human in the polis--finding our value as human beings rather than any other animal through our worth to each other.
We can debate whether this is a good thing or not, but the idea that your value is dependent on what you provide to your fellow human is so ancient that I doubt it could be tossed aside. Christian morality allows for it and was probably the first moral tradition to find value inherent to all individuals, but then even it gave way to the Protestant work ethic.
Education and guidance about entrepreneurship (but not from the Supply Side Jesus perspective)? All this ginned up angst about DEI and the like depends on feeling resentment that they’re unable to climb established institutional ladders, whether that’s academia, public sector jobs, or private sector jobs. Solo entrepreneurs and small business owners sidestep all of that and so should these guys. But channel their energies into work that addresses real needs and solves problems for people, not into pseudo entrepreneurship like MLMs, drop-shipping schemes, life insurance sales, and the like
How can we show young, losery men that they have intrinsic value? Easy. We don't. Just look at the messaging that got women to conform to patriarchy. Sure, there was SOME 'there's value in staying at home, making husband happy makes you happy.....' but it was mostly just 'do it because you don't have any other choices'. That simple. Marry because that's the only path to securing resources, because men are hording it. Do what your husband wants or he hits you. And then women mostly did the work of convincing themselves they liked their lot. So, yeah, guys are losing their status in society right now because society is valuing and paying more feminine coded skills better than traditionally masculine ones. That trend is just going to increase. And women won't need to market to men why they need to get in line, the economy will do that for them. Men must choose to take on a more active parenting and domestic role, or get dumped. Younger boys will look at the men who take on more domestic and empathetic roles having better lives than men who live alone in the woods and gripe and younger boys will have better behaviors modeled to them. Right now, in this transitional period, there will be people who cannot evolve and are upset about that, but that was true in every generation since the beginning of humanity. Some men struggled to transition to the industrialized economy in the 1800s. Some struggled to integrate back into society post the World Wars. Some people will always wash out. There's only so much catering to those we should do, and in general it's simply not good policy to making 'aligning with the losers' a policy concern.
Women are over half of the US voting population. And over half the world. As modern tech and science gets better, the status of women globally will continue to improve. I don't think women need to focus on winning over loser men. We can out vote them, and they can evolve or expire. The thing I'm more interested in is how to deprogram the women who are still so male centered they will vote against their own interests and rights. The Handmaids. Those I think can be swayed through a conscious effort, those women are the more obviously illogical. Women need to adjust to the new world order of their increasing dominance, and a big part of it is spending less time thinking, 'but what do men want?'. That's subordinate's thinking. 'What do women want?' was mostly treated as a punchline in men's circles for hundreds of years. Because men in power knew they didn't need to persuade women, they could compel women. So I say the same to women now. Stop acting like you need to persuade men. Stop thinking you need to make an emotional appeal. To care about their pain. Stop being a bleeding heart for men who absolutely were not that for women's issues. Just continue to succeed, let the men who are butthurt about that be butthurt, and the chips will fall where they may.
Isn’t there a shortage of pilots,air traffic control controllers, electricians, plumbers truck drivers and construction workers , based on that alone, and the fact that those jobs pay 80 to 120k. I think Democrats would be better off selling that, than victimhood. Even Black Males are starting to reject victimhood even though there the main demographic that would appeal to.
“How can we show young, losery men that they have intrinsic value?”
At a high level, I think you almost answer your own question with:
“We should start by showing them how much we care about them.”
But to build on that: I think we should show male victims of patriarchy as much empathy as we show female victims. To me, that means letting men talk about their problems in progressive spaces, in good faith, without accusing them of “hijacking” or “decentering” women’s issues. But more importantly, it means *not mocking* men’s insecurities under patriarchy and confusing that with “punching up.”
A lot of men's struggles are rooted in fear of stigma or humiliation; in the trauma of emasculation during formative years; in the universal human yearning for our peers’ respect and approval. Right now, the only communities for men going through these things seem to be Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, and Joe Rogan. If we in the feminist movement sincerely want to pull men out of their trauma instead of pushing them deeper into it, we need to offer an alternative that *makes them feel safe from what they are fleeing.*
Right now, I worry the left does a very bad job of this, such that losery men do not sense we care about them at all. We make hand-wavy acknowledgments that patriarchy hurts men too, then go right back to talking to and about them in ways that show little concern for this reality.
I wrote about this recently in the context of the Barbie movie, and why I kind of get why so many men hated it. In short: men’s pain is still *funny.* They are the butt of every joke, even for innocent hobbies or mannerisms that don’t really oppress anyone. Feminism the ideology is simply correct, but feminism *the movement* is often just as tribal as the rest of society, which can manifest as an empathy gap for the people patriarchy traps.
Of course, the internet exacerbates the problem. The single biggest driver of social media engagement and visibility is whether a post dunks on an outgroup. Feminism is not innately man-bashing, but much of what men see of it on their feeds is, because the algorithms reward extreme content. What tears men down goes much more viral than what builds women up.
“Showing them how much we care about them” requires overcoming that zero-sum instinct and building men up too. Patriarchy hurts men in different ways than it hurts women, but many of these ways overlap; for example, it creates impossible, contradictory expectations for how they must behave, just as it does for America Ferrara’s character in Barbie. Elevating this symmetry of men's and women’s experiences can be a powerful tool, not only to make men feel heard, but also to help them hear.
100%. Particularly loved this part: "Feminism the ideology is simply correct, but feminism *the movement* is often just as tribal as the rest of society, which can manifest as an empathy gap for the people patriarchy traps."
Ehhhhh......I fully support your points if you're talking about men being way more empathetic towards men. Absolutely. And more men questioning patriarchy amongst themselves. But your comment seems to frame it (and I could be interpreting you wrong here!) as these issues can be helped with women showing men more empathy and....nah. Nope. That has been a classic derailment tactic for women talking about women's issues since the start of the women's movement. Men are very used to being centered in patriarchy, their feelings, and empathy for their feelings, are considered more important than women. Any woman whose been in a long term partnership with a man knows she couldn't just 'empathize with him' enough to fix patriarchal entitlement. I mean, as much as I like Cathy and respect her opinions, this very post by her is an example of that time honored fact; the progress of the women's movement being framed as 'but, how do the MEN feel about it? Are they sad? Can someone just care about the men more?' The problem is not, and never has been, women systemically not showing enough empathy towards men. I do think there's a real problem of men not showing enough empathy towards others though, both other men and women, and even themselves. And lastly, you do the very thing I think is problematic with your Barbie example. Sir, it's a movie called BARBIE. A doll for girls. Marketed with pink plastic, sparkles, a female lead......and you think there needed to be more focus on the male characters? There was a surprising amount of focus on Ken, Ken's song was the only Barbie song performed at the Oscars....it is exhausting to have men look at media clearly marketed towards women and say they are not represented enough. Men have how many James Bond movies, Mission Impossible movies, WW2 movies, all but three best director Oscars.......Yeah, the issue is not that men don't get enough focus and empathy from women.
I guess my approach to empathy is pretty Marxist: "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need." I think that aligns pretty well with progressive intuitions about privilege and suffering. And in 2024, I don't think it aligns neatly with gender in the way you're suggesting. Many women are thriving, many men are floundering, and we who understand why patriarchy traps both sexes should try to liberate both sexes.
So yes: sometimes even women should empathize with men, whether or not some men use that empathy to derail discussion of women's issues. We are not them, so we can do both. It's not zero sum. If anything, it accelerates women's liberation, as it may be difficult to get men to empathize with women if they do not sense the feeling is reciprocal.
You are right that patriarchy centers men and male preferences in many important ways. But one thing it does not center is their feelings, other than the one feeling (anger) that patriarchy allows them to have. James Bond and Mission Impossible do not center the vulnerable, insecure, flawed men who actually exist: they center an invincible caricature of the male ideal, that's every bit as unobtainable as Barbie's body proportions. Isn't there a symmetry there? Isn't there is a comparable pain, insecurity, and stigma inflicted on anyone who doesn't meet the archetype? And doesn't that stigma deter men, in particular, from admitting or expressing that pain, or even learning how? Doesn't patriarchy hurt men too - and shouldn't we empathize with people who are hurting?
As my post on Barbie explains, the issue was not insufficient *focus* on male characters. In fact, it would have been better if there were no men in the movie at all, and Barbie only focused on women and women's issues - that's where the movie was superb. And because it's mostly about women, I still think it was a net positive.
But as you mention, the movie's creators went out of their way to make men's issues a prominent subplot. They told reviewers that Ken's arc was “a story that will resonate with men” too and “an invitation for everybody to be part of the party and let go of things that aren’t necessarily serving us as either women or men.” Millions of women dragged their boyfriends to the theaters to see it, and then left-leaning people on the internet spent weeks mocking the shit out of any man who didn't like it.
So to me, it seems like a bummer - a missed opportunity - that in the most mainstream piece of feminist art this century, every man in the movie is stupid, shallow, and selfish 100% of the time. That their emotions are exclusively comic relief: dopey, childish, stunted half-thoughts, presented in silly songs before a circus backdrop of men brawling with titty twisters and tennis rackets. That they are never a fraction as complex, relatable, or self-aware as the women’s emotions, and that they can never come to terms with those emotions until a woman is kind enough to enlighten them. That men's feelings are still a punchline: still deterred by the fear of social stigma. That may be cathartic to some subset of women, who are frustrated with some subset of men for perfectly valid reasons. But it does not credibly signal that feminists actually give a fuck about the ways patriarchy hurts men too, and it hollows the purported message of being "Kenough." We can do better.
Ummm, no, patriarchy places men at the top of the power structure. Under patriarchal thinking, every man, by virtue of their gender, has a more valid claim to power than any woman. That's just how patriarchy works. Unless you accept that simple fact for how the current structure of our world works, you really can't progress past 'go', my man. The majority of adults living below the poverty line has always been, and still is, primarily women. Some men are not doing as well as other men, but I simply will not accept the premise that as long as we still live in a patriarchy, successful women must waste their time fretting over unsuccessful men. They should focus on dismantling patriarchy first and replacing it with something more egalitarian.
But from reading your comment I realized something that people socialized as men perhaps don't grasp; 'likeability'. Women spend their lives being told that in order for any man, your Dad, your husband, your brother, let alone male strangers to care about your issues, you must be likeable. If you don't make yourself 'likeable', care is no longer given. Men apparently think they don't need to be likeable to women. They do. If they want the help of college educated successful women, be likeable. The mere fact you suffer does not make you worthy of attention.
It's telling that these empathy beggars are swarming women's pages, instead of men's. Women have been trained to respond empathically to a sad man....for their own survival. Even though the myth that men cannot access such empathy and emotional depth just makes me sigh. Who are the most famous poets who ever lived? Playwrights? Songwriters? Authors? Philosophers? You can not on one hand say men have no space in society for emotional range, when all the most famous displayers of every human emotion have been....men. The benchmark for even being considered an intellectual is still how eloquently you can talk about men's issues, that's why schoolchildren read male authors to become 'educated'. I half suspect that's subconsciously why writers and intellectuals like Cathy talk about this topic so frequently, to gain legitimacy in the eyes of men, to be seen as 'smart' and 'focused on the real issues'.
Sorry you didn't like the Barbie movie. Perhaps it just wasn't for you. :-)
To be fair there is a lot of degradation of men even in male media spaces like comic books, look at the anti woke backlash to some marvel movies, like Captain Marvel or how they make a lot of men look like idiots in old marriage sitcoms, and the woman look like super heroes, are White men marginalized in real life no,but I can see how a 12 yr old male could consume modern day woke media and feel attacked and marginalized. You can make pro female content without men feeling attacked or belittled, though the backlash to Barbie was over exaggerated, the world that Barbie portrayed was also over exaggerated Ex( Mattel’s board of executive is not all men)
This may sound banal, but for any group of people lacking meaning, regardless of age or gender, I would start by asking:
1. Who can we help them connect with?
2. What can we help them get good at?
given that human connection and skill are such central sources of meaning in everyone's lives. So I've just reduced the problem to solving modern alienation and deskilling... yay? :)
In all seriousness, one might ask what kinds of volunteer and make-work opportunities we could make more of. Think of the CCC in the Depression-- I was just reading a Times article about how American hiking trails need a lot more maintenance. Seems like a small thing, but it gets people out there building skills and collaborating with others.
And of course, our wonderfully hyperoptimized modern technologies-- social media and video games-- function as the "junk food" versions of connection and skill for a lot of these folks, giving them the short-term psychic rewards without the long-term health benefits. I don't know what to do about that; simplistic restrictions certainly won't work, not least because plenty of people actually get healthy connection and skill from those things too! But it needs consideration as an aggravating factor for the phenomenon you describe.
Agree. One thing I'm curious about is how do we get people to digitize existing information that's currently in analog formats? It doesn't take much skill. Just some equipment and many, many hours of tedious work. But it's for a very important cause. I wish more people would put some of their free time toward this.
Great post. I have seen with younger men, what used to be 'playing sports in the park' has transitioned to 'playing a multiplayer video game at home with other boys sitting in their homes'. This can feel like 'hanging out with friends', but all the studies say it's not as satisfying or as good for mental health as in person time. Of course, some boys do indeed still get together in the park, and I think those boys are more well adjusted. I think parents can encourage this more, but a problem with some modern parents is they have been convinced that staying home online is 'safer' than going outside and away from the parent's eyes.
I have so many thoughts, but I'll just leave it at, this is the first post of yours on this subject I completely agree with.
This is much older than the Protestant work ethic. This gets to Aristotle's point that we are social animals and we are only fully human in the polis--finding our value as human beings rather than any other animal through our worth to each other.
We can debate whether this is a good thing or not, but the idea that your value is dependent on what you provide to your fellow human is so ancient that I doubt it could be tossed aside. Christian morality allows for it and was probably the first moral tradition to find value inherent to all individuals, but then even it gave way to the Protestant work ethic.
Education and guidance about entrepreneurship (but not from the Supply Side Jesus perspective)? All this ginned up angst about DEI and the like depends on feeling resentment that they’re unable to climb established institutional ladders, whether that’s academia, public sector jobs, or private sector jobs. Solo entrepreneurs and small business owners sidestep all of that and so should these guys. But channel their energies into work that addresses real needs and solves problems for people, not into pseudo entrepreneurship like MLMs, drop-shipping schemes, life insurance sales, and the like