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Men Without Work (2016)

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221–230 of 471 posts

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if something like food service at McDonald's is automated, it's tough to argue that we should be getting humans to work on things that can be automated. Imagine working 40 hours a week then seeing that the machine both prepared more product and made fewer mistakes than you, or feeling like you're doing work just because someone (the government) pities you enough to force some jobs to remain non-automated. Workin…

The problem with that is that there are people that are more or less intelligent and more or less motivated. There's NOTHING wrong with the occasional menial task, and there's nothing wrong with being unmotivated, so long as it's not a net negative drain on society. Once everything is automated away, I suspect it won't be the Star Trekian Utopia we'd like.

> Once everything is automated away, I suspect it won't be the Star Trekian Utopia we'd like.

The Star Trekian utopia grew out of a 21st century devastated by a world war that saw a third of the Earth's population wiped out so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#222
post #8

I'm very far from a red-pilled anti-feminist but I do think this is a hugely overlooked problem. Perhaps too much of an aside but I was lucky enough to be able to take an extended parental leave when my child was born, being a "stay at home dad" for the best part of a year. It was incredibly hard work, incredibly rewarding but also a real eye opener at how society still doesn't know what to do with a full-time parent…

I had this exact experience as well. Returning to my career was strange. People were half glad to hear that I prioritized my family, and half disconcerted that I’d set my career aside. Our culture wants men to be extremely productive and committed to wealth generation. Women are increasingly treated this way too though. Women were shunned for choosing their career. Now if they choose family, their career still suffer…

> People were half glad to hear that I prioritized my family, and half disconcerted that I’d set my career aside.

People don't really know what to do when you demonstrate you don't have total devotion to an organization. Even if it's for a "higher calling," in the case of care, it still feels like they see it as not fully devoted. There's also this weird undercurrent that your career must be the focal point at all times in your life and that you must be constantly growing and fulfilled in it.

> In many parts of North America, it’s increasingly true that women don’t have the freedom not to work.

Yeah, this is really gross. And the norms are pushed by those who made the choice to not have a family, or to outsource/ignore theirs. In effect, it becomes a game of, "who can sacrifice the most to capitalism?" And games like that favor those who are broken/not smart enough to throw more of their lives away.

> Our culture wants men to be extremely productive and committed to wealth generation.

This drive objectifies men, and men are smart enough to realize they can't fight it, so they instead try to channel it. But it's not at all the same as an intrinsic motivation, it's an extrinsic threat of sorts. It dehumanizes men to see themselves primarily as providers rather than people. This makes it easier to prioritize their career at the expense of other things.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#223
post #8

I'm very far from a red-pilled anti-feminist but I do think this is a hugely overlooked problem. Perhaps too much of an aside but I was lucky enough to be able to take an extended parental leave when my child was born, being a "stay at home dad" for the best part of a year. It was incredibly hard work, incredibly rewarding but also a real eye opener at how society still doesn't know what to do with a full-time parent…

Being out with three young children, as a man, is the only time in my life I've had people go as far out of their way to hold a door for me as men commonly do for women (with or without kids). That was interesting. First time I was like "wtf is happening?" before it dawned on me. That only lasted a year or two, a window in which I had enough in the right age range to trigger that behavior, I guess. Wasn't because I had a stroller, since I usually didn't, and wasn't because my hands were literally full, since I usually had at least one free. Like, nobody goes that far out of their way if I'm just carrying a couple drinks or something. It was truly exactly how we (guys) behave when holding the door for women. Neat experience to see the other side of that, I guess.

I got a lot more comments about it than my wife did. I'd get several of the "wow, you must be busy!" sorts of remarks every time I was out. She'd get the occasional one, but nothing like me. Different expectations, I guess.

Never felt shunned or treated with suspicion at parks. Worried I might, but it was never an issue. I tend to dress pretty well, though, by the standards of my area, which probably helps.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just popular among the same sort of people. Which I think you'd have a hard time denying. I'd have a hard time denying it because I have no idea what that "sort of person" is even supposed to be. Is it just people you don't like? I went down the Men's Rights rabbithole because I got sexually assaulted by a woman as a teenager and didn't know how to deal with it. They were the only ones talking about it, and I assur…

> that "sort of person" I have a hard time believing you can't figure this out on your own, but briefly, the manosphere. As to the rest, I am truly sorry to hear about your sexual assault. But I'm also sorry that you, like so many of the "sort of person" I'm talking about, have turned a bad experience into a reason to bash feminism rather than a reason to fight things like rape culture. If even with your experience c…

> the manosphere

You're talking in circles here - you brought up what "sort of person" is in the manosphere, and your answer is people in the manosphere. Not exactly insightful.

The so-called manosphere is a wildly diverse grouping with different experiences, complaints, and conclusions. Lumping in Andrew Tate with Men's Rights is just nonsensical.

> bash feminism rather than a reason to fight things like rape culture

I can do both and it's served me very well. When feminists like Koss et al. downplay female abuse of boys, that is rape culture and I'll fight them all day long.

> If even with your experience can't figure out why serial rape victims might murder their attackers

This is a schizophrenic strawman. I understand that perfectly and I've said nothing that could lead someone of sound mind to think otherwise.

I've been called a feminist in real life (much to my annoyance) in arguments about abortion, or about behaviour online or at work. There's nothing about Men's Rights that requires taking legitimate rights away from women. I can be a good person without identifying as my own enemy.

If you were actually sorry about my experience, you might like to prove it by not making up lies, cut from whole cloth, about me and men like me, in what looks like a desperate attempt to paint yourself as One of the Good Ones.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#226
post #209
post #201

The book "Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men" by Leonard Sax goes into a lot of detail behind some of the underlying problems causing this.

For anyone else wondering what the five factors are: > Sax’s research found that the following five factors attribute to our society of underachieving, disengaged boys: (1) changes at school; (2) video games; (3) medications for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); (4) endocrine disruptors; and (5) the revenge of the forsaken gods. From this Amazon review which also goes into further detail: https://www.a…

Im sorry, but item (5) means less than nothing without context. Can someone who read it please add some?

I'll go looking for it & will edit this (if I make it in time, before the editing window closes)

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#227

My 2c. Society doesn't care about young men. They're pretty much left to fend for themselves. Hopefully they have a good family structure, and a few good male friends. Without that they're toally adrift. I learned this lesson when I got a flat tire driving across two states when I was 20. No one is willing to help. I guarantee a 20 yo woman would have no problem flagging down help, heck people would stop to help with…

I think most societies throughout history have had the same intuition about young men.

Quite recently the Ukraine was drafting young men. If they decided to check out en-masse, there would be no country called Ukraine anymore. Society is a fragile thing.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#228
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society (meaning gov't programs) doesn't care about you beyond your economic output. We offshored countless unskilled labor jobs that men would traditionally take in America and told them they needed to take out crippling loans in order to get knowledge worker skills that our industry is working overtime to make obsolete within 5-10 years anyway. Many just are giving up, they don't see an opportunity here, they just…

Actually, society varies. But social contract theory does point out that the contract goes both ways. And that society works, in the interest of self sustenance, by making the individual lives better than they would be outside of society. Otherwise a society won’t last long or diminish with time. Progress could be as simple as introducing or better funding employment programs. It’d clearly really help if there was so…

I’m not sure what your point is here. You seem to be saying ‘society will eventually collapse unless x happens’, but the parent was saying ‘x doesn’t seem to be happening in my experience’?

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>American society doesn’t know how to use low skilled men What's the solution though? I can think of 3: 1) Bullshit jobs (i.e. fake jobs or real jobs that exist only to support fake jobs. This is the current answer) 2) Universal Basic Income - Doesn't solve the problem of giving people meaningful work, but gives them some freedom to discover/create their own solutions 3) Artificially making life more difficult - For…

There used to be places for them but they were replaced with immigrants, women, automation and outsourcing.

Women have meaningfully been part of the workforce since at least the 70's. Both of my silent generation grandmothers worked outside of the home most of their lives.

Immigration has increased since the mid century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat... but I don't think many low skill jobs would exclude a native born applicant

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#230
post #55
post #8

I'm very far from a red-pilled anti-feminist but I do think this is a hugely overlooked problem. Perhaps too much of an aside but I was lucky enough to be able to take an extended parental leave when my child was born, being a "stay at home dad" for the best part of a year. It was incredibly hard work, incredibly rewarding but also a real eye opener at how society still doesn't know what to do with a full-time parent…

a lot of this, at least in the united states, is due to a deep-seated dichotomy of heteronormative gender roles in suburban life. new mums groups have learned to be welcoming, but not inclusive to newcomers and that may largely be due to puritanical influences present in a lot of the cultures that oversee these groups. one could go so far as to say such patronisation and strict gender conformity serve to ostracize an…

If welding paid, I'd be doing that rather than sitting at my computer dealing with corporate bullshit. I didn't get a degree but I'm still sitting here coding and not welding. I'm just saying I think there's more to the issue than that we sent people to college. The trades just don't pay well enough.
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