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No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

robkhenderson.substack.com

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Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#42
post #17

Rob Henderson also coined the term "luxury beliefs" which is one of the most apt name for something we've been witnessing lately ("defund the police" or "healthy at every size" or "marriage is just an oppressive institution of the patriarchy"). I highly recommend that other essay too https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/luxury-beliefs-are-the-latest-...

Defund the police blew up because certain communities' only experience of police is of being harassed, beaten and robbed.

It's hardly an attitude that's dripping with privilege.

The backlash, on the other hand...

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#43

This has been a really good read! Thanks for sharing, the only place where I had a strong disagreement was this, which could definitely be based on cultural differences: > The people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping culture and customs—ensure that their children are raised in stable homes. But actively undermine the norm for everyone else. I am not from the USA but I don't beli…

Criminality and education are not distinct. Better-educated people commit crimes at roughly the same rate, they are just far less likely to be caught. Either the nature of thier crimes does not lend itself to reporting (embezzelment v. bank robbery) or they recieve different treatment by the legal system.

> they are just far less likely to be caught

Perhaps, but I wonder how you get reliable statistics on the demographics of the criminals which don't get caught?

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#44
Do people find this stuff compelling? Rank speculation and confident assertion with minimal substantive backing?

I’d find this statement equally compelling (which is to say, not at all):

> Since we stopped using horses as a primary means of transportation, men’s sense of self worth has diminished. Riding a horse carried a lot of high status connotations: drive, masculinity, towering above the land, and man’s domination over nature. Now, we drive metal cars, low to the ground, and driving one is seen as commonplace. All of men’s low sense of self worth stems from this.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Some of them call themselves that.

Who cares what they call themselves? That's theres to decide. Do you want them in or out? If you want them out, call them incels, if you want them in, give them the dignity of any other human and call them men.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#46

This has been a really good read! Thanks for sharing, the only place where I had a strong disagreement was this, which could definitely be based on cultural differences: > The people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping culture and customs—ensure that their children are raised in stable homes. But actively undermine the norm for everyone else. I am not from the USA but I don't beli…

Criminality and education are not distinct. Better-educated people commit crimes at roughly the same rate, they are just far less likely to be caught. Either the nature of thier crimes does not lend itself to reporting (embezzelment v. bank robbery) or they recieve different treatment by the legal system.

> Better-educated people commit crimes at roughly the same rate, they are just far less likely to be caught.

While controlling for income? Or without considering confounders?

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#47
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to find a better reason why this happens. I don't believe it's liberal social values which are not lived by. First of I would believe it's an educational problem and second it's a 'who cares' problem. There are plenty of areas/ghettos of low income and low education around. The blog also contains the following: "The people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping culture and cu…

> How do they undermine the norm? Richer people have kids in their thirties, so the media is full of people in their twenties living it up. Poorer men have kids in their twenties and then they feel like losers for living the boring lifestyle of a responsible breadwinner. They want to copy the carefree lifestyle shown as "normal" by our culture.

That’s an interesting point, one I wish the article had made explicitly.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#48
> basic general principle that men will do whatever is required in order to obtain sex, and perhaps not a great deal more. (One of us characterized this in a previous work as, ‘If women would stop sleeping with jerks, men would stop being jerks.’)

This makes it sound like it is just men who need sex and have to do things to get it. One would think that everybody needs sex and thus women need it too. And it would stand to reason that the less fortunate women would need sex and be not able to get it easily and thus have to resort to sleeping with jerks and raising kids as a single mother.

So just saying women should stop sleeping with jerks is not really a practical thing. If anything good men should be expected to sleep with not so fortunate women to cut the jerks out of the equation ;)

Kidding aside this is a very complex problem and the article trivializes it - education, assistance to kids in need(mental/physical health, financial, foster care), providing compatible opportunities and then setting expectations will make a dent in this problem. And then there are just incompatible people doing stupid things that should be left to their devices and outcomes - there is no fixing willful idiocy. But what social policies need to do is provide a way out for anyone who wants it.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#49
post #19

It’s interesting to read these (plausible, far from absurd) analyses from the Anglosphere when we have an alternative to compare, to whit the northern European democracies where marriage is in steep decline across all social classes yet the societies are more successful (at least if your metrics are things like poverty rates, lifetimes, nutrition, stress, etc).

Curious to see the source showing European democracies are more successful, controlling for socioeconomic status.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#50
post #19

It’s interesting to read these (plausible, far from absurd) analyses from the Anglosphere when we have an alternative to compare, to whit the northern European democracies where marriage is in steep decline across all social classes yet the societies are more successful (at least if your metrics are things like poverty rates, lifetimes, nutrition, stress, etc).

First off the article says nothing about marriage it speaks of “two parent households”, so an unmarried couple raising kids would fit the author’s thesis entirely.

Second, pretty sure I’d argue the recent riots in Sweden would back up exactly the author’s theory around poorly behaved young males.

But hey, your nutritional rate is high!

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