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Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

city-journal.org

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Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#51

Post by phobosanomaly »

motohagiography wrote: post #36

As a man in my late 30s, I began to see older male relatives of my own and of friends dying of the usual things like cancer and some even of opioids, but the thing that struck me was how many of them depended on hiring the funeral home staff as fill-in pallbearers. I made it a priority to be sure that however things go, I'd like to be able to convene a party of six. One of the things I did was get involved with a fra…

There used to be 'sportsman's' clubs, ham radio clubs, sailing clubs, hiking clubs, bowling leagues, search-and-rescue, jeep clubs etc that have to an unfortunate degree just faded away only to be replaced by meetup groups that just seem to be trying a little...too...hard....

Fraternal organizations, hell, that's what they're for! Men of 30 and up to get together and drink beer and tell war stories.

It's not weird and anachronistic at all!

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#52

Post by r29vzg2 »

The most striking quote to me from this was:

> In 1960, the out-of-wedlock birthrate in the U.S. was 3 percent. In 2000, it was about 30 percent. Today, it is 40 percent.

No matter how you feel about it, it’s got to be said that change thing large has to have some sort of affect on the population. And those effects are still quite unknown.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#53

Post by alltakendamned »

r29vzg2 wrote: post #52

The most striking quote to me from this was: > In 1960, the out-of-wedlock birthrate in the U.S. was 3 percent. In 2000, it was about 30 percent. Today, it is 40 percent. No matter how you feel about it, it’s got to be said that change thing large has to have some sort of affect on the population. And those effects are still quite unknown.

Not being married does not mean the relationship is not a stable or long term one though.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#54

Post by dvtrn »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #44
ECA_stax wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I don't know where I was going with this. You'll have to excuse me.

I understood your question to be around the potentially commonly held belief (read: what I've heard) that city folk are generally brought up with less responsibility bestowed upon them than rural folks (and the scale that exists between those two extremes). Maybe not entirely "responsibility bestowed" but also the behavioural differences (distractions available, ability to deal with boredom) that come with the densit…

This is a “fact”, you say? Provably so?

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#55

Post by lotsofpulp »

courtf wrote: post #40

I expected some level of hand-wringing here in response to this article. Maybe it's something in the water in rural America, but none of this is unusual or extreme, and if this behavior is foreign to you, then you and I grew up in different circumstances. Getting together with the boys and breaking the law, pushing each other to go a little further each time, is a rite of passage all over the world. Maybe it's practi…

> Maybe it's practice for the kinds of risks adults sometimes have to take to survive.

Shooting pellets at unsuspecting drivers and bicyclists and racing blackout drunk in large vehicles are not risks that one needs to take to survive. They’re not even risks, they’re just blatant acts of disregard for others.

I hope my kids don’t live in a community where people routinely break laws that kill people.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#56

Post by SamPatt »

phobosanomaly wrote: post #51
motohagiography wrote: post #36

As a man in my late 30s, I began to see older male relatives of my own and of friends dying of the usual things like cancer and some even of opioids, but the thing that struck me was how many of them depended on hiring the funeral home staff as fill-in pallbearers. I made it a priority to be sure that however things go, I'd like to be able to convene a party of six. One of the things I did was get involved with a fra…

There used to be 'sportsman's' clubs, ham radio clubs, sailing clubs, hiking clubs, bowling leagues, search-and-rescue, jeep clubs etc that have to an unfortunate degree just faded away only to be replaced by meetup groups that just seem to be trying a little...too...hard.... Fraternal organizations, hell, that's what they're for! Men of 30 and up to get together and drink beer and tell war stories. It's not weird an…

Those clubs still exist. I'm in a table tennis league and ham radio club, or at least I was before COVID when my state effectively outlawed them.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#57

Post by sillysaurusx »

selectodude wrote: post #14
ECA_stax wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you grow up in a city?

I grew up right in the middle of a very large American city. Did plenty of stupid shit like smoke cigarettes on subway trains, go to parties in abandoned buildings in sketchy neighborhoods, threw up on the sidewalk. Never once have I decided to commit property or violent crimes.

You’ve never once decided to murder anyone either, but around 500k happen per year around the world.

I’m not sure why it’s worth pointing out that few of us have done what the author describes, but it’s probably not uncommon. Some kids egged my car at highway speeds, which could’ve cracked the windshield or caused an accident. Not too much difference between that and baseball bat + tail light.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#58

Post by aaron695 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #6

> This is how my friends and I treated one another, and others. There were other examples of stupidity. Taking baseball bats to taillights in parking lots. Driving around town shooting pedestrians and bicyclists with airsoft guns. Getting blackout drunk and racing down the freeway wearing a blindfold. At no point in my life have I ever wanted to damage someone else or their property for the fun of it, and I wouldn’t…

> At no point in my life have I ever wanted to damage someone else or their property for the fun of it

Their examples are extreme. I'm not sure if they did it on purpose.

But change it to throwing eggs at people, to baseball batting letter boxes and drink driving going home once or twice from a party and lighting fires for fun, and it'd be considered normal.

The point is young men see the value of the prank and the value of risk to them to exceed the damage to random people.

It's takes a long time to understand what the value of a letterbox might be to some people, that's very complex knowledge. Or how easily a fire gets out of control, or an egg can blind someone when thrown from a car.

The alternative to learning these things is an authoritarian rote learning rules. Free thinking societies have costs, we can try to minimise the costs but we also need to understand that is hard.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#59

Post by throwawaygh »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #44
ECA_stax wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I don't know where I was going with this. You'll have to excuse me.

I understood your question to be around the potentially commonly held belief (read: what I've heard) that city folk are generally brought up with less responsibility bestowed upon them than rural folks (and the scale that exists between those two extremes). Maybe not entirely "responsibility bestowed" but also the behavioural differences (distractions available, ability to deal with boredom) that come with the densit…

Hm. My experience is exactly the opposite. Shooting a sign with buckshot or taking out a mailbox are completely unthinkable in my city neighborhood, but totally normal back home.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#60

Post by tathougies »

55555 wrote: post #23
thaumasiotes wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we break out children who lost a parent to catastrophe vs children who lost a parent to that parent's decision to leave, do they have the same crime rates? "Having two parents" isn't what's generating the effect.

Very interesting. Have you seen stats showing that this is true? Do you care to speculate on the real causality?

Broken families and single parents are two separate issues. There are data showing children of single mothers by spousal death do better on lots of metrics. This is likely because the remaining parent arent antagonistic towards the deceased. No matter how you slice or dice it antagonism is necessary in a divorce.
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