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

robkhenderson.substack.com

241–250 of 1001 posts

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

#241
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-...

Rob went to Yale. He's literally a luxury columnist.

Right. He's someone that went from low to high class; he's writing about high-class beliefs from the perspective of someone who has first-hand knowledge of how they play out for the lower-classes.

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

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large supply of men who DGAF and don't have much holding them down is how you get really serious social instability. They might not be beating their wives but let it roll unchecked for 20yr and it gets bad.

It's not about "dont give a fuck". This is about intergenerational poverty, and the costs that we all will have to pay because the elites decided to destroy social mobility for the poverty-stricken classes. When you are born and live in poverty, hold jobs that amount to minimum wage or tiny bits above it, have no way to *see* a future of any sort of success; happiness, alcohol, drugs, and sex are the primary forms of…

That's an entirely separate, perhaps even more dire, problem. And it undoubtedly compounds for those men intersecting both categories. But the passive men phenomenon is not directly caused by intergenerational poverty. That is evident by how men in all socioeconomic classes are "affected."

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

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Defund the police" is merely an agitational short slogan for "we need some other way of governing the safety of our communities, because this is clearly not working." Like many short and pithy slogans, it may not be communicating that message effectively at all. It's not like police forces are an eternal attribute of all civilizations. Modern policing is actually pretty young.

This is the flip side of the “take trump seriously, not literally” argument that went around trying to normalize him in the last election. There are people who absolutely Believe that any police force is a slave enforcement force (or derived from one) and a tool of white tool to subjugate others. To them it must be eradicated.

(Off-topic, but...)

I recall an interview on KQED with an activist who absolutely was proposing to get rid of the entire police and carceral system. When asked how they would deal with, say, a murderer, their response was a) there'd be fewer murderers and b) there would be meditation between the murderer and the victim's family. I really wish the interviewer had asked, what happens if the victim doesn't have a family? Does this mean that rich murderers can pay their way out of any crime? Presumably it would!

It was fascinating, partly because what was being described is a premodern world, in which crime is a purely personal matter and not the business of the state. It's a world of vendettas, in which the powerful operate with true impunity. I don't think the partisans of _really_ defunding the police appreciate this.

(Note, I have a lot of sympathy with the idea that the police are doing too much, especially around mental health crises, and some funding could usefully be diverted, etc etc.)

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

#244
Perhaps there is a reason that historically, a lot of cultures (and religions) encouraged stable family units, and discouraged or even tried to outlaw breakage of that pattern (ie extra marital sex, which at the time was very likely to lead to kids out of wedlock, and divorce).

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

#245
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the US will look and operate more and more like wherever these people came from.

Is this a bad thing? The US was founded by immigrants. Immigration, diversity, and the US’ history with these topics (good and bad) is huge part of the national cultural identity. As a US citizen, I think as long as we can maintain the cornerstones of our national heritage (democratic traditions, constitutional freedoms, etc) it should be fine if things change to reflect the demographics of our population.

Immigration has a large history in the US, yes, but historically immigrants were encouraged (through social pressures) to assimilate part of their identity. Is that pressure for partial assimilation still there? Or do we encourage diversity so much now that anything goes?

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

#246
post #3

This is an important read, especially this part. > This highly educated and affluent person prioritized stability for her own children. But refused to publicly endorse this value so that less fortunate children could also benefit from family stability. I’m from a rigidly socially conservative immigrant family that professes fashionably liberal values in public—imposing a double standard between “us” and “Americans.”…

"The article is right on the mark talking about the importance of social expectations for men."

Those only really work if the opportunities are there for the person to succeed. If you have no hope of success, then people just give up.

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

#247
TL;DR: poor men will only do for women whatever is necessary to get laid, these days, almost nothing is necessary anymore so they do just that. Rich men need children who are aware of who they are and get decent upbringing, to pass down their wealth, so they care for their children a lot better. With poor men having nothing to pass on, and also realising their lives are a failure and it doesn't make their kids a good service to pass on their life habits to the kids, why would they bother?

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

#248
post #192
post #3

This is an important read, especially this part. > This highly educated and affluent person prioritized stability for her own children. But refused to publicly endorse this value so that less fortunate children could also benefit from family stability. I’m from a rigidly socially conservative immigrant family that professes fashionably liberal values in public—imposing a double standard between “us” and “Americans.”…

It’s weird. Society has tried to influence me that money, wealth, status, career are beneficial. I was raised middle class. But I’ve never quite seen the point in all of it. All it’s really led to is a lifetime of beating myself up and asking what’s “wrong” with me. So I’m not sure more expectations and guilt is the answer. It’s hard to see how that would have done anything more for me.

OP isn't talking about creating expectations of money, wealth, status for their own sake. The biggest thing he says his family expected of him was to provide a stable foundation for his own children. This is something which some amount of money is necessary for, but if you focus entirely on the money you've destroyed that foundation just as thoroughly as if you failed to provide for them at all.

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

#249
post #3

This is an important read, especially this part. > This highly educated and affluent person prioritized stability for her own children. But refused to publicly endorse this value so that less fortunate children could also benefit from family stability. I’m from a rigidly socially conservative immigrant family that professes fashionably liberal values in public—imposing a double standard between “us” and “Americans.”…

> America so thoroughly that the head of the “conservative” party is a three-times-divorced man of little character. I think that’s an interesting point. The political window has shifted further and further left in recent years. The fact is he’s not the head of the conservative moment, he’s the head of the Republican Party. There are differing factions and he promised something most in the party could support. For ex…

> The political window has shifted further and further left in recent years.

As an outside observer, I'm Canadian, this viewpoint of many Americans that their politics has shifted "left" is flabbergasting. The SC has definitely shifted hard right and Roe v. Wade is essentially overturned, or being, overturned in many states. "Don't say gay" and other anti LGBQT+ laws are being passed.

I feel you are using a very "true Scotsman" definition of Conservative in your world view in order to paint Republicans as "left".

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

#250
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rob went to Yale. He's literally a luxury columnist.

Where did this idea come from that we cannot see what exists outside of ourselves and our experiences? I can empathise with people who are nothing like me. I can understand silly things that people like me do, and how they must look to people who are not like me. It is only infant humans that can’t understand that anything exists outside of themselves. Are we all infants?

Psychologists recognize that a surprisingly large percentage of people have no little to no ability to visualize abstractions or engage in mentally taxing feats of empathy.

These people are more prone to believe that it’s only possible to obtain insight about a circumstance from only those individuals in said circumstance.

When people comment about this, it generates confusion for people like you. :)

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