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Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

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Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#91

Post by boomboomsubban »

127 wrote: post #72
boomboomsubban wrote: post #37

This entire thing is based off the ridiculous premise that the "family life" used to be some universal great bedrock. Have you ever talked to your parents generation about their family life? It often seems pretty shitty too, even if the accident of their birth forced a marriage.

Ridiculous to you, based on your own experience. Completely rational and common sense to others.

Then provide some compelling non-anecdotal evidence supporting your claim. Out of wedlock births seems like a poor measure, and it's the only one presented in the article. "Common sense" sounds like something you believe without evidence to me.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#92

Post by undersuit »

jariel wrote: post #82
motohagiography wrote: post #36

As a man in my late 30s, I began to see older male relatives of my own and of friends dying of the usual things like cancer and some even of opioids, but the thing that struck me was how many of them depended on hiring the funeral home staff as fill-in pallbearers. I made it a priority to be sure that however things go, I'd like to be able to convene a party of six. One of the things I did was get involved with a fra…

Nothing anachronistic about it at all though.

A tiny bit. My father will be carried by his friends, my uncle, my brother and I. My mom will be carried my uncles, my cousins, my brother, and I

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#93

Post by jkepler »

SamPatt wrote: post #56
phobosanomaly wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be 'sportsman's' clubs, ham radio clubs, sailing clubs, hiking clubs, bowling leagues, search-and-rescue, jeep clubs etc that have to an unfortunate degree just faded away only to be replaced by meetup groups that just seem to be trying a little...too...hard.... Fraternal organizations, hell, that's what they're for! Men of 30 and up to get together and drink beer and tell war stories. It's not weird an…

Those clubs still exist. I'm in a table tennis league and ham radio club, or at least I was before COVID when my state effectively outlawed them.

Wait, but you can still radio the folks I'm your ham club, right? Or has government overreach stretched to new lows?

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#94

Post by jkepler »

tyrust wrote: post #50
hindsightbias wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same author waxes how his adoptive parents made him conservative: https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/Column-Why-being-a-... I guess this was in-between the baseball bat wielding wildings...

At least that one is obviously just an opinion piece. I donno how they arrived at the conclusion that having a stable family made him conservative, but that's his business and that's fine. I'm pretty sure both sides of the aisle are aware of the value of a stable family.

Your point is well made in David Bahnsen's book, Crisis of Responsibility, where he cites multiple studies indicating that higher education and income levels correlate with stable families on the right or left of the political spectrum. I assume that would also hold true for libertarian/independent/3rd party types as well.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#95

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #81
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand society expects people to be "just, upright citizens" . And on the other hand society expects the military to fill the ranks of infantry and enlisted sailors, including the reserves. From at least some perspectives this is confusing: we're all only here because our, overwhelmingly male, ancestors went to war and won. Conjecture: a society that doesn't foster risk-taking behaviour in young males may so…

This doesn't make sense. The losers of those wars were risk takers as well - and they lost. In fact, for an EXISTING nation, risk taking males are more of a threat to social order. Risk taking, non-conformist males make terrible infantrymen - that's why they beat out the risk taker and make you follow orders. The military doesn't want a cosplaying rambo cocking everything up.

Hmm, yeah that seems like a reasonable perspective too. Interesting.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#96

Post by lotsofpulp »

Taek wrote: post #78
lotsofpulp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's takes a long time to understand what the value of a letterbox might be to some people, that'd very complex knowledge. It’s not as soon as they are forced to earn and pay or work to reinstall one. And I guess I hung around exceptional people, but I didn’t think it takes genius to recognize the value of a life or limb, especially someone else’s. Anyone past toddler years should be able to comprehend that if they…

When you are a teenager you feel invincible and you value life much less. It feels more expendable while also feeling more robust. Have you spent time with kids? They love kicking eachother in the balls well past the age of toddler. Things that seem obvious to adults are not obvious at all to 16 year olds, and often even counterintuitive.

Yes I have, and I remember kicking each other in the balls too. But kicking each other in the balls does not have a high probability of life long or any major injury (as a small child).

My original point is still that a twisted nipple or graffiti or egging a house is not in the same class as racing black out drunk and shooting pellets at people on bicycles.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#97

Post by lotsofpulp »

Fricken wrote: post #68
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 don't understand the point of this comment other than to virtue signal that you're better than a bunch of teenagers from a decade ago. Whoop-de-fucking do, aren't you special.

The point of the comment is it’s not run of the mill stupidity, contrary to what the author implies.

Is it controversial that people who don’t race drunk and blindfolded are better than people who do? Just because they are teenagers doesn’t mean there are zero standards.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#98

Post by Fricken »

jariel wrote: post #80
Fricken wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the point of this comment other than to virtue signal that you're better than a bunch of teenagers from a decade ago. Whoop-de-fucking do, aren't you special.

The point is to illustrate that those 'freewheeling actions' are not normal and not just part of 'teenage rebellion'. All of them could cause major harm to oneself or others that's not normal, signs of serious underlying problems. 'BASE jumping' or 'stunt plane piloting' is dangerous but that's something altogether different than 'driving down the freeway blindfolded' - which is quasi suicidal and very dangerous to o…

So you believe doing bad things is bad, and things that bad are not things that you would ever do, as you are normal. Interesting. I had never considered it that way before.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#99

Post by jariel »

Fricken wrote: post #98
jariel wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is to illustrate that those 'freewheeling actions' are not normal and not just part of 'teenage rebellion'. All of them could cause major harm to oneself or others that's not normal, signs of serious underlying problems. 'BASE jumping' or 'stunt plane piloting' is dangerous but that's something altogether different than 'driving down the freeway blindfolded' - which is quasi suicidal and very dangerous to o…

So you believe doing bad things is bad, and things that bad are not things that you would ever do, as you are normal. Interesting. I had never considered it that way before.

That's not what I said at all.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#100

Post by banmeagaindan2 »

rhacker wrote: post #79
lotsofpulp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's takes a long time to understand what the value of a letterbox might be to some people, that'd very complex knowledge. It’s not as soon as they are forced to earn and pay or work to reinstall one. And I guess I hung around exceptional people, but I didn’t think it takes genius to recognize the value of a life or limb, especially someone else’s. Anyone past toddler years should be able to comprehend that if they…

And it's the golden rule. I bet few people even know that.

I don't want to snipe but sometimes it's irresistible.

The Golden Rule should be abandoned as an ideal. It's a Christian ideal, it's a Western ideal - I support the general effort but I think we've made a mistake. It is the sort of heuristic that works well in a smaller society but does not scale.

People treat themselves badly all the time don't they. If they are motivated to do this it puts a big hole in lots of social ideas about how humans work. .

The drive to set rules to govern behaviour might be because people are control freaks - or it might be the rules are made by people to moderate their own actions because they correctly believe they can't control them otherwise. A high agency society doesn't need rules - they are developed for low agency societies.

This is another version of why political Liberalism seems to be getting unhealthy in the United States and the United Kingdom - the assertion all equal before the law would have better results in a homogeneously high agency society.

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