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Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

city-journal.org

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Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#21

Post by inamberclad »

kp98 wrote: post #3

Everybody already knows this, so it has become a moot point. Nobody really cares, but they should. The deconstruction of the male's role in society will contribute to the downfall of the west, and that's coming from one of these mistrusting, nihilistic, 4chan contributing males

I don't see the "downfall" narrative in real life. It seems like it's meant to provoke a defensive response from people the same way certain political language does. I, as a stereotypical guy, have more freedom now than ever to do what I want. No doors have been closed on me by recent societal changes.

Yes, maybe cultural attention is elsewhere but that doesn't mean that anything has really changed. In fact the relationships described in this article with kids pulling dangerous pranks on each other sounds more old school than anything I've experienced in my life.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#22

Post by tw04 »

noozirul wrote: post #19
lotsofpulp wrote: post #6

> This is how my friends and I treated one another, and others. There were other examples of stupidity. Taking baseball bats to taillights in parking lots. Driving around town shooting pedestrians and bicyclists with airsoft guns. Getting blackout drunk and racing down the freeway wearing a blindfold. At no point in my life have I ever wanted to damage someone else or their property for the fun of it, and I wouldn’t…

in a society where parenting is letting your children do whatever they want or be accused of being violent guess what they end up doing?

Exactly which society is that? There's a middle ground between a grown ass man telling his child to cut a switch off a tree only to beat them with it repeatedly and "doing whatever they want".

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#23

Post by 55555 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #12
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #7

Having two parents greatly reduces the change of a young adult committing a crime.

If we break out children who lost a parent to catastrophe vs children who lost a parent to that parent's decision to leave, do they have the same crime rates? "Having two parents" isn't what's generating the effect.

Very interesting. Have you seen stats showing that this is true? Do you care to speculate on the real causality?

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#24

Post by RickJWagner »

I saw in the news today where 8 kids were arrested for breaking windows in the Flatiron district in New York.

All are white, apparently from families that had a substantial amount of wealth.

I totally agree with the author, broken families lead to broken lives. Broken families aren't necessarily broke.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#25

Post by ideals »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #20
dx87 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're the exception, not the rule. I've never done anything like what the author wrote, but being involved in mischief is something every male I know did. You can even see it in animals, where the young males try to push boundries with authority figures.

My point was those examples weren’t mischief. Waking up their friend with firecrackers is mischief. Shooting people with airsoft guns and driving blackout drunk easily putting them in harms way is not mischief, at least not in the “kids will be kids” way.

Maybe it's a difference in location, that quote was all stuff myself and my shitty friends did growing up, and most other people I went to school with. Also in a large midwest city.

It's interesting to read these bad hot takes on why while plugging your ears

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#26

Post by frenchy »

dx87 wrote: post #9

This post resonates with me, but I definitely don't think it's hopeless. I'm in my early 30s, and have "no friends". There are people I would consider my friends, but as we grew up, we got adult responsiblities like jobs and family, most moved to different states for work, so I haven't actually been able to see them for years. Recently I've been working to improve my life, so I've been going out for walks around my n…

I think this experience is surprisingly common. Modern society affords us a lot of mobility, but I don't think we realise how much it costs us in terms of stable friendships.

I have a young kid, and he's still too young to really have "friends" (when you're young enough, any stranger is a friend), but eventually we'll either have to decide to live in the same place for a long time, or he's going to have get used to constantly switching friends.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#27

Post by golergka »

dx87 wrote: post #18
lotsofpulp wrote: post #6

> This is how my friends and I treated one another, and others. There were other examples of stupidity. Taking baseball bats to taillights in parking lots. Driving around town shooting pedestrians and bicyclists with airsoft guns. Getting blackout drunk and racing down the freeway wearing a blindfold. At no point in my life have I ever wanted to damage someone else or their property for the fun of it, and I wouldn’t…

I think you're the exception, not the rule. I've never done anything like what the author wrote, but being involved in mischief is something every male I know did. You can even see it in animals, where the young males try to push boundries with authority figures.

> I think you're the exception, not the rule.

Yes, but HN is not a good representation of society at large.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#28

Post by Barrin92 »

>Many pundits and commentators focus on economic deprivation or sociocultural factors—above all, racism—to explain the recent wave of urban anger, triggered by Floyd’s awful death. But the data show that American society has fewer people in poverty and less bigotry compared with decades past; and police use of force is far less pervasive than it was during higher-crime periods

This I think is a really bad argument to disregard those causes. What's relevant for discontent is not deprivation in absolute terms, but treatment in relationship to expectations.

Yes, racism is arguably not as bad as it was decades ago, but the expectation of how to be treated, and the voice that common people have now, is much, much larger.

The clearest example of this is the MeToo movement. Women obviously have gained a lot of rights and are in many ways much better off than they were merely a few decades ago. But that does not mean progress has been made as fast as people think it should have, and that's what matters, together with the capacity to speak up.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#29

Post by jancsika »

> But the data show that American society has fewer people in poverty and less bigotry compared with decades past; and police use of force is far less pervasive than it was during higher-crime periods.

Nonetheless, it could very well be that poverty, bigotry, and excessive force are still high enough to remain a threat to social stability.

And that threat is certainly increased by ubiquitious video evidence of bigotry and excessive use of force which didn't exist in decades past.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#30

Post by wow_no »

taneq wrote: post #11
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #7

Having two parents greatly reduces the change of a young adult committing a crime.

Even when controlled for income? I'd imagine single parent households are strongly correlated with lower socioeconomic status, as is antisocial behaviour.

Of course not, this is classic white supremacy and heteronormativity
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