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The data are clear: The boys are not all right

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#801

Post by flippinburgers »

awaythrow483 wrote: post #359
paulpauper wrote: post #111

The crisis, if there is one, is that society has less use for males who have IQs between 90-105 or so, who cannot cut it in STEM, and who are finding it hard to cope with increasingly competitive economic conditions and higher overall costs like rent, and is why many men are delaying family formation or moving back with parents (but also due to careerism for women). Men are just dropping out rather than doing low-pai…

I'm 33, Ive got a fairly high IQ, make $340k in a STEM field and enough to retire tomorrow, I'm not unattractive, and put a huge amount of effort over many years into online dating. I've pretty much given up on dating. I have a total inability to find anyone I'm interested in that is interested in me. When I was younger and I wanted to go to bars and get drunk and be an idiot I had plenty of attractive sexual partner…

The obvious problem is: what are you "interested in" when it comes to women?

The way you are killing it in your career, I suspect that your female companionship objectives are a tad bit too demanding. At the least, you should try to find a women you can trust and enjoy in small moments of life. Start there.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#802

Post by rpmisms »

skinkestek wrote: post #798
rpmisms wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, Jordan Peterson didn't fix my mental health, but I had a good dad and a sense of direction growing up. He's seriously helped my friends who have absent or abusive fathers. Teaching men about their duties in society and to themselves is crucial.

Another anecdote: Jordan Peterson helped my brother too. Went from being raging mad at his family and others to start taking responsibility for his own life. I still disagree with him but we can now speak together.

It's because JP is right, at some fundamental level.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#803

Post by pcmoney »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #785
javajosh wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Women, on the other hand, haven't been given the same advertising on the American dream that men have There is a documentary, "Born Rich" [0]. It's interviews with the children of very rich people, done by one of their peers. I noticed that in the film there is stark difference between the girls and the boys: the girls were all well adjusted, enjoying their wealth, happy, satisfied, seemingly well-aware of their goo…

It's a uniquely American thing. I studied abroad for a semester in England, and in one of the classes I took there the (Australian) professor asked us what socioeconomic class we thought we belonged to. It was a good university, but most of the British kids answered "working class." When he asked "Why?" they answered, "Because our parents work." That always stuck with me. In England, the aristocracy is alive and well…

They also haven’t invented or built anything meaningful in several hundred years…

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#804

Post by pcmoney »

throwaway46jt7 wrote: post #794
mbfg wrote: post #695

I think a big part of the despair is the obvious difference between what children are taught is the american dream vs what the american reality is. We are told america is the best place on earth with all the doors open to you to be rich. That all other forms of government are flawed and we have excellence here everywhere you look. And then you look at reality and see something else. Sure there are pockets of excellen…

> We are told america is the best place on earth with all the doors open to you to be rich. That all other forms of government are flawed and we have excellence here everywhere you look. What other countries are great compared to America? With all its flaws America is the only country where you can dream of building spaceships, create multi billion dollar tech companies in less than a decade. Any ideology that forces…

No post body was provided.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#805

Post by alephnan »

throwaway46jt7 wrote: post #794
mbfg wrote: post #695

I think a big part of the despair is the obvious difference between what children are taught is the american dream vs what the american reality is. We are told america is the best place on earth with all the doors open to you to be rich. That all other forms of government are flawed and we have excellence here everywhere you look. And then you look at reality and see something else. Sure there are pockets of excellen…

> We are told america is the best place on earth with all the doors open to you to be rich. That all other forms of government are flawed and we have excellence here everywhere you look. What other countries are great compared to America? With all its flaws America is the only country where you can dream of building spaceships, create multi billion dollar tech companies in less than a decade. Any ideology that forces…

I was collecting FANG salaries in the states. I was in the 1% for my age, and most people would consider this the "American dream".

I was miserable.

I moved to Japan with a much lower income, but my standard of living is so much more higher.

> you may not realize how powerful America's culture of individual freedom has impact on other countries

Does individual freedom include not wearing masks? Does individual freedom include feeling unsafe from crime?

Japan feels much safer than any urban center in America, especially during this pandemic. This feeling of taking public transit without anxiety throughout the pandemic alone is already worth forgoing those FANG salaries.

I grew up in Portland, Oregon. That place has deteriorated. Parts of San Francisco is more dangerous than Vietnam or Egypt. NYC is filled with confrontation for all sorts of minor problems, none of which you would ever face in Tokyo.

> Any ideology that forces individual to be less ambitious for the prosperity of the group only gives more power to the enforcer's of the ideology.

This is not inherently unique to America or individual liberty. In fact, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is based on the idea that the whole benefits because the individual is acting in their own self regard, not altruistically for society at large.

Asian countries are collectivist with much less individual freedom.

> What other countries are great compared to America? With all its flaws America is the only country where you can dream of building spaceships, create multi billion dollar tech companies in less than a decade.

Speaking of great, how about China? China's bullet train networks span longer than the rest of the world combined. All of that was built within a decade. They have spaceships and unicorns too.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#806

Post by bangkoksbest »

rayiner wrote: post #716
nautilius wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obsession about equality as a central tenet in Christianity? You may want to read up on the crusades, slavery, the 30 year war, how even other Christian immigrants (Irish, Italian, etc) were welcomed into the US etc. Also, just because some Christians share some of the morals of your humanist friend does not imply any relation whatsoever. There appears to be that desire from religious groups to often exaggerate and e…

> Obsession about equality as a central tenet in Christianity? You may want to read up on the crusades, slavery, the 30 year war, how even other Christian immigrants (Irish, Italian, etc) were welcomed into the US etc. You may want to read up on slavery. Abolition in Christian societies was mainly a religious movement. Arab societies practiced it extensively as well, but kept going until the 20th century, and only re…

Liberalism is marked by comparison to abstract ideals. Whether and to what degree other areas of the world do worse in comparison to those ideals is not usually going to be something of paramount concern.

This idealisation and universalisation is not only Western of course. I'm a mixed kid like your kids, but South India rather than Bangladesh, and I would be and am rather unquestionably accepted as Indian when I am there. But a major driver in the split between India and (then-)Pakistan comes down to the (novel & idiosyncratic) liberal ideals we compare to.

As a final note re: the Crusades. I was not under the impression the Crusades were looked down upon because of war, but because they too often were incoherent raiding expéditions that sacked and subdued parts of Christendom even more than they won control of the Jerusalem.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#807

Post by paganel »

antisthenes wrote: post #438
ytwombly wrote: post #150

US-based cis-hetero white man here. The data reinforce the impression you get glancing at the headlines or spending a day out anywhere in America observing other men. Dare I say it even reinforces what I know from painful firsthand experience as a man, at the lowest points in my life. I was lucky though, with a supportive family who helped me through the confusing years of early adulthood. You can point to the declin…

> The "Lump of Labor" fallacy is just that, a fallacy. Economic gains are not zero-sum. Frankly, I'm very tired of debunking the zero-sum trope. Not only are many things in the economy zero-sum, in the case of labor, even if the economy is humming at 150%, it's trivial to imagine a scenario where the man and the woman are both earning 75% of what they would have without the other sex in the labor force. Both are wors…

And there's also the immigration fallacy. At least in their last issue The Economist has the decency of mentioning the "de facto lack of incoming migrants" as one of the main 3 (I think they were 3) causes behind the US's current privileged position for its workers, but that definitely wasn't the case until very recently. In other words, no matter how mocked it was, there was a definite truth behind "Dey took 'er jerbs!".

The Economist quote:

> Immigration, which plunged during Donald Trump’s nativist presidency, has sunk further, to less than a quarter of the level in 2016

source here [1]

[1] https://archive.fo/qOPe9

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#808

Post by Dracophoenix »

worik wrote: post #110
csa wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Legal marriage also leads to pathological complications in terms of seperation in some states. This cannot be overstated. True even with a prenup.

In civilised jurisdictions these rules apply to unmarried couples too. The amount of economic violence, historically, perpetrated by men over women has been huge. The worm has turned

What do you mean by "civilized jurisdictions"? I don't know any place that explicitly adjudicates the separation of unmarried couples as though it was legally equivalent to a formal divorce. You'll have to be more specific.

Unmarried couples may fall into one of two types: common-law marriages and meretricious relationships. In the US, the former is approved by a vanishingly small number of states. The latter has no legal rights to property division or palimony without an explicit cohabitation contract. Even then, many states don't recognize palimony at all.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#809

Post by unmole »

rayiner wrote: post #682
nautilius wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that 'cultural legacy' is completely different from 'organized religion'. Celebrating 'Christmas' as a family get-together is completely different from celebrating the arrival of the messiah and deriving your complete moral compass from that.

I think cultural legacy is more deeply intertwined with morals than people appreciate. It’s just hard to see it because you’re surrounded by it. It’s easier to notice when you compare between countries and across religious traditions. My dad was raised very religious (Muslim) in Bangladesh. His grandfather was an imam. He is non-religious and I grew up non-religious, but I joined a Christian church after I got marrie…

> Consider, for example, the obsession in Christian countries with equality.

Citation needed.

> They almost fall over themselves to welcome people from different ethnic backgrounds. I suspect this has something to do with Christianity’s origins as a Jewish religion adopted by the Gentiles.

Yet Christian kingdoms had zero qualms about persicuting Jews for centuries.

> I mean, how many societies have a religion centered around some other ethnic group?

You mean like Islam which has over 1.9 billion adherents and privileges a language spoken by 300 million Arabs?

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#810

Post by bangkoksbest »

danans wrote: post #712
rayiner wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think cultural legacy is more deeply intertwined with morals than people appreciate. It’s just hard to see it because you’re surrounded by it. It’s easier to notice when you compare between countries and across religious traditions. My dad was raised very religious (Muslim) in Bangladesh. His grandfather was an imam. He is non-religious and I grew up non-religious, but I joined a Christian church after I got marrie…

> I mean, how many societies have a religion centered around some other ethnic group? Plenty. Southeast Asia has religions centered around Indian or Arab religions. Same for Iran and much of Central Asia with Islam. All these places have adapted the other ethnicity's belief system to their own culture. It's no different for Christianity. Bertrand Russell described it as the combination of Greek philosophy with Jewish…

I want to add double emphasis on this. Christianity before and without the Greek philosophical influence is primarily a religion of itinerant ascetics and martyrs (without the abstract ideals added, almost all of the story in the Gospels boils down to an itinerant ascetic being martyred).

Some of the earliest extant texts in Christianity come from Justin Martyr, who, just a century after Jesus, was already workshopping the idea that Plato and Socrates were unknowing Christians that laid a philosophical ground for Christianity.

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