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

robkhenderson.substack.com

641–650 of 1001 posts

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

#641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 100% sure you're not part of such a community. Neither am I, of course :) When polled, poor black people want more policing, despite also agreeing with much of the defunder critique. Knowing both options, they prefer flawed policing to being ruled by criminal gangs.

I’m affluent but grew up in an inner city. I NEVER had a positive experience with the police. Neutral was as good as it got. Wanting more policing and wanting to defund the current system are not oppositional. I want more cops doing shit that matters and less of the current police department.

I feel like the "defund the police" slogan that was used as shorthand for radical reform and demilitarization has become an unfortunate focal-point in what should be a nuanced discussion of a very real problem. This seems to be a pattern. Americans seem to get stuck fighting at the surface level. It's amazing how much my conservative in-laws and I actually agree on if we remove any triggering key words from conversations.

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

#642
post #277
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.”…

> Watching and hearing about the family instability in these communities is heartbreaking. Half or more of everyone’s parents are divorced. The kids float around seeking stability and the adults can’t provide it. You seem to be attributing the cause of this to 'Telling men and boys it's cool and fine to divorce' and not attributing to say... declining material and social capitol in the lower four quintiles of wealth…

> For example, with the advent of no-fault divorce, divorces went up, but female suicide rates dropped by 20%. It wasn't all streamers and light when the 'guard rails' were on.

Did the female rate decrease more in married groups than unmarried groups? Without more data, this seems like a ripe candidate for https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

Suicide rates have been dropping across the board due to a variety of reasons. Attribution is very hard here.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2504425&page=1

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

#643
post #277
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.”…

> Watching and hearing about the family instability in these communities is heartbreaking. Half or more of everyone’s parents are divorced. The kids float around seeking stability and the adults can’t provide it. You seem to be attributing the cause of this to 'Telling men and boys it's cool and fine to divorce' and not attributing to say... declining material and social capitol in the lower four quintiles of wealth…

> And speaking of America specifically, dignity and respect were not equi-distributed if you were a simply a 'married man' in decades past. It was quite a bit stricter: white, middle class or higher, married men were the ones afforded government support and social protection.

You're conflating dignity and respect with government support. These are not remotely the same things. Some highly respected men were actively opposed by their respective governments because they stood up for what they saw as right despite the corruption of their governments, e.g. MLK Jr, Mahatma Ghandi, even Jesus. All dignified and respected by large numbers of people, all opposed by their governments.

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

#644
> men will do whatever is required in order to obtain sex

I wish there was some kind of pill without much side effects, that made you asexual. Then men could focus on science and other interests.

For Example Sir Isaac Newton's self proclaimed greatest achievement was his lifelong celibacy.

I wonder how sexual selection affects humans overall intelligence... Have human intelligence gone up in the last 200-20000 years or is it the amount of free time that is responsible for the technological boom the last 200 years ? Or does technology advance exponentially ?

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

#645

I don't understand why it is stressed that all of this is connected to marriage (or absense of). Parents walking away from responsibility is a cause for problems in children, no matter whether you are married or not. Also, I doubt that the degree of married parents is connected to class. We have both a PhD, a child, and live together for 15 years, failing both to see a reason for marriage.

Maybe there are some saintly principled people who will never walk away from responsibility no matter what, for whom marriage adds no value, and maybe there are some feckless unprincipled people who will walk away from responsibility at the slightest provocation, for whom marriage also adds no value, but maybe there is a large intermediate population who may occasionally feel a moderate urge to walk but are dissuaded by the added difficulty that breaking a marriage presents (stigma, cost, legal process), and thus decide to stick it out. Maybe marriage is for those people.

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

#646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Young men do need plenty more education and pressure on how to do it right. People in general need more education on how to do it right. Women aren't exactly free of guilt on this. >Anybody who doubts me should spend time reading Am I the Asshole. This only confirms men are more often outed as poor male partners. A forum full of anecdotes being labeled does not imply a large population of bad male partners. That's a…

Ah yes, think of the men! Single moms outnumber single dads 5:1. People in general need more education, but much more the men. Partriarchy left women holding the bag for a lot of things, so they were more prepared for a post-patriarchy world. Men will need more explicit support in learning to adapt to their new societal role. > This only confirms men are more often outed as poor male partners. Technically true, but u…

>Single moms outnumber single dads 5:1. People in general need more education, but much more the men.

How is this relevant to your point? You might as well turn it around and ask why single moms are selecting men who leave them to be baby mommies. Birth control is still accessible to many and rape isn't so omnipresent these women didn't have a choice in the matter.

>Men will need more explicit support in learning to adapt to their new societal role.

They seem to be doing just fine when society incentivizes them to "pump and dump", and they end up doing just that. Again, it takes two to tango. It's not just "teach men not to do this", which school has been doing for decades. It is also "teach women not to accept this".

>Reddit is 2/3rds male [1], so if anything we would expect more stories to be about bad women.

This implies there is an in-group bias. Can you prove that? Furthermore, can you extrapolate such an in-group bias towards the select few communities which label these men?

>But in the real world, women initiate the bulk of divorces [2]

This doesn't say anything on its own except "women initiate the bulk of divorces". Something as simple as "there is a financial incentive for women to divorce men" or "men are more attached to their relationships than women" can just as easily counteract the premise and require further investigation.

>And men are more likely to be the kind of bad partner who, say, turns murdery [3]

And filicide is rising among women while dropping for men, with women being the primary offenders[0]. See, it's pretty easy to pull a statistic from a site which supports your PoV and paint a broad stroke. Just teach those darn girls not to kill their kids!

But really, just look at your source: what does it say of the total population? How many cases are there? How many "male perpetrators" are there in the total male population? Do I think as well of the source I randomly pulled? Of course not, it is so extremely superficial it says nothing of why this is happening.

The premise rests on some "look, men are most on X, so this needs to be educated on!" despite the actual numbers and reflection in the whole population. If that were really the problem, you could teach women to practice less filicide, less bullying, and more.

Worse, by focusing on men alone, you're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that men are inherently bad or worse, instead of treating them like people. How someone who supports "dismantling the patriarchy" in name of having women be seen as people advocates this, is beyond me.

>So I think my inference that men are on average the worse partner and need more help is reasonable.

I think it's more reasonable to infer you're pressing an agenda by presenting information and then retroactively fitting your rationality into it. These things aren't saying what you think they are, and to come to such extreme conclusions is diminutive to men, women and humans as a whole. Nor do I believe you're helping women as much as you think you are by spreading this information.

>Ah yes, think of the men!

And everyone else. There's no need to be this reductionist. Again, it takes two to tango.

[0]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-08/mothers-murdering-the...

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

#647
post #132

I can appreciate this perspective because I used to have it. I even wrote a similar blog post 10 years ago - it was on the top of HN and the comment section was a beautiful shitshow. For me, this perspective was a good story to tell myself - it justified why I was only investing my time in “work”, and validated me for having “come so far”. Over time, I have reflected and shifted this perspective. That reflection cent…

who creates these expectations? It’s always some loose definition like “society” or “elite”, or some other handy wavy grouping of people.

I suggest reading the book "Manufacturing Consent" to get an understanding of how expectations are shaped by mass media.

Just like there was a concerted effort to create public support for war (WW1/WW2/Vietnam/etc.), there are concerted efforts to shape public opinion and create expectations within our broader culture about morals/values/etc. Sometimes it's explicit, and often times it's implicit and picked up via signaling cues (i.e. high status reporter says X, to go against X would mean no more invites to fancy dinner parties)

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

#648
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-...

I find his overall argument that it is "trickle down values" that are responsible for many of the overall social ills of the poor extremely lacking in evidence, and if anything I think he's confused cause and effect.

Especially since the argument seems to be that ‘elites’ actually live by one set of (good) values while somehow imposing ‘bad’ values or expectations on the lower classes. How exactly are these bad values communicated from the elites if they don’t live by them? How do the elites enforce the ‘good’ values among themselves without transmitting them to lower classes?

I agree there is doublespeak about values among some elites, but I disagree that is the major source of single parent families.

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

#649
post #449
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Watching and hearing about the family instability in these communities is heartbreaking. Half or more of everyone’s parents are divorced. The kids float around seeking stability and the adults can’t provide it. You seem to be attributing the cause of this to 'Telling men and boys it's cool and fine to divorce' and not attributing to say... declining material and social capitol in the lower four quintiles of wealth…

Agreed. real satanic-panic vibes here. I can’t be the only one who grew up seeing how little is expected of affluent men. The ideal is someone “brilliant” who gets others to do what’s expected of him. And then you can afford to be divorced and retain respect.

I think you're making an attribution error by suggesting they are able to get others to do anything, that would imply that the person first realized that something needed to get done beyond establishing their brilliance.

At this point I think my sons may accomplish more in life if they remain unemployed as adults.

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

#650
post #82
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.”…

I hate to be "that guy", but you guys have this whole thing backwards. What men do is based on what men want. What men want is sex. If sex is free then you can have all the liberal or conservative values you want, but it won't cause those men to work harder. Why? Because sex is free. Full stop. If sex costs more than most men will ever have, then you can have all the liberal or conservative values you want, most men…

>What men do is based on what men want. What men want is sex.

I think you are close, this is probably mostly true for the 16-24 yr old crowd. But I think that the actual drive is to produce kids who make a family that he can provide for/care for.

The primal urge is steering the ship, but it's a step (or two) deeper then sex.

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