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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

#61

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

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…

Honestly everyone I know that was like that, that broke the law when they were young, turned out to be unsuccessful. Many are addicted to opiates. Very few have real jobs. None of them are educated beyond high school. Frankly, they're all harshly considered "losers."

It doesn't surprise me these things happen in rural America. Small towns, your dad knows the local sheriff, you doing something "illegal" and getting arrested is them taking you to your dad.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#63

Post by kyleee »

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…

That roughly sums up my feelings and experience as well. I found it curious that another commenter suggested such behavior is unique to America, which I strongly doubt.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#65

Post by tathougies »

inamberclad wrote: post #21
kp98 wrote: post #3

Everybody already knows this, so it has become a moot point. Nobody really cares, but they should. The deconstruction of the male's role in society will contribute to the downfall of the west, and that's coming from one of these mistrusting, nihilistic, 4chan contributing males

I don't see the "downfall" narrative in real life. It seems like it's meant to provoke a defensive response from people the same way certain political language does. I, as a stereotypical guy, have more freedom now than ever to do what I want. No doors have been closed on me by recent societal changes. Yes, maybe cultural attention is elsewhere but that doesn't mean that anything has really changed. In fact the relat…

Of course you don't. Rome never fell that's why the czars of russia were named for caesar. The roman empire never fell by all estimations. It just kinda... Went away.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#66

Post by reallynever »

I think the comments here reflect a crowd that doesn’t see the reality of this world. For those without purpose, or those that don’t feel the love from society or that they’re creating value for society, these types of scenarios definitely take place. And then these young people are given records and never get the opportunities that others have because once you have a record that’s the end of everything. And it stems from the lack of exposure to the infinite possibilities life provides that a good parent or mentor could foster. Try to put yourself in the shoes of these people for a second and stop judging. This judgement leads to the punishment vs rehabilitation we take towards these people when we lock them up in the US. Understand the root cause...to some people who’d read this (apparently not on hn) this is quite normal. Instead of criticizing, the better questions would be how to solve challenges like these that are rampant.

Oh yea, I used to live int he bay with some programmers who were paid hundreds of thousands a year. Every Friday night they would come home with red bull and jager and get hammered. These were guys in their 30s. And needless to say, they would do some pretty destructive stuff without fail...years later, one of them told me, I’m bored with my job, I feel like I want to contribute - no shit...

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#67

Post by MiroF »

frenchy wrote: post #26
dx87 wrote: post #9

This post resonates with me, but I definitely don't think it's hopeless. I'm in my early 30s, and have "no friends". There are people I would consider my friends, but as we grew up, we got adult responsiblities like jobs and family, most moved to different states for work, so I haven't actually been able to see them for years. Recently I've been working to improve my life, so I've been going out for walks around my n…

I think this experience is surprisingly common. Modern society affords us a lot of mobility, but I don't think we realise how much it costs us in terms of stable friendships. I have a young kid, and he's still too young to really have "friends" (when you're young enough, any stranger is a friend), but eventually we'll either have to decide to live in the same place for a long time, or he's going to have get used to c…

Hot take: Maybe this is less about modern society and more about what stage of life you're in? I think that urban professionals have been moving around a lot for decades and that settling down in a community as you get older is the pervasive norm.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#68

Post by Fricken »

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…

I don't understand the point of this comment other than to virtue signal that you're better than a bunch of teenagers from a decade ago. Whoop-de-fucking do, aren't you special.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#69

Post by lotsofpulp »

aaron695 wrote: post #58
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 v…

> It's takes a long time to understand what the value of a letterbox might be to some people, that'd very complex knowledge.

It’s not as soon as they are forced to earn and pay or work to reinstall one. And I guess I hung around exceptional people, but I didn’t think it takes genius to recognize the value of a life or limb, especially someone else’s. Anyone past toddler years should be able to comprehend that if they don’t want random violence inflicted on them, they shouldn’t do it to others.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#70

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

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…

On the one hand society expects people to be "just, upright citizens".

And on the other hand society expects the military to fill the ranks of infantry and enlisted sailors, including the reserves.

From at least some perspectives this is confusing: we're all only here because our, overwhelmingly male, ancestors went to war and won.

Conjecture: a society that doesn't foster risk-taking behaviour in young males may soon find itself extinct.

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