US-based cis-hetero white man here. The data reinforce the impression you get glancing at the headlines or spending a day out anywhere in America observing other men. Dare I say it even reinforces what I know from painful firsthand experience as a man, at the lowest points in my life. I was lucky though, with a supportive family who helped me through the confusing years of early adulthood.
You can point to the decline of organized religion and with it traditional gender roles, but then what explains the relative stability in post-Christian Europe? The China Shock combined with America's threadbare social safety net starts looking more salient. We have inherited a much less trusting, much more alienated society than you are likely to find overseas.
Whatever the cause I fully reject the lazy conclusion this is somehow women's fault. The "Lump of Labor" fallacy is just that, a fallacy. Economic gains are not zero-sum.
> You can point to the decline of organized religion and with it traditional gender roles, but then what explains the relative stability in post-Christian Europe?
As far as I can tell, Europe isn’t all that post-Christian. Even countries that have low levels of people actively practicing religion still carry a strong cultural legacy from Christianity: https://www.europenowjournal.org/2019/10/02/the-catholic-nes...
Counterintuitively, America’s lack of a generous welfare system tends to destabilize traditional gender roles. Among women with children under 18, 56% would prefer a “homemaker” role if they were “free” to do either: https://news.gallup.com/poll/186050/children-key-factor-wome.... Contrast with just 26% of men. 39% of women without kids would also prefer to stay home if they had the choice. Even out of women who are currently employed, but have children under 18, the majority would prefer not to work.
Contrast say the Netherlands. It is an egalitarian, post-Christian place, for example, but 60% of working Dutch women only work part time, versus 20% of working Dutch men.
Note that 'cultural legacy' is completely different from 'organized religion'. Celebrating 'Christmas' as a family get-together is completely different from celebrating the arrival of the messiah and deriving your complete moral compass from that.
I think cultural legacy is more deeply intertwined with morals than people appreciate. It’s just hard to see it because you’re surrounded by it.
It’s easier to notice when you compare between countries and across religious traditions. My dad was raised very religious (Muslim) in Bangladesh. His grandfather was an imam. He is non-religious and I grew up non-religious, but I joined a Christian church after I got married. From that vantage point I was able to see how much of what I thought was secular American culture could be traced back to Christianity.
Consider, for example, the obsession in Christian countries with equality. They almost fall over themselves to welcome people from different ethnic backgrounds. I suspect this has something to do with Christianity’s origins as a Jewish religion adopted by the Gentiles. I mean, how many societies have a religion centered around some other ethnic group?
There’s so many aspects of society and culture that are the product of history, and of course history is deeply intertwined with religion. My atheist friend, who is white, was telling me how much she hated her uncle for being racist against Muslims. I pointed out to her that was an extremely Christian thing to say! https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010&ve...
> Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
By contrast, Islam is a religion that arose in Arab society, where kinship ties mean everything. In my home country, putting people you don’t even know over kin, based on some abstract notion of justice, would be unthinkable. It actually made me a little uncomfortable to think that people like me had caused strife within her family.
Yours is a really valuable perspective on this issue, and probably gives you more clarity than those of us who have grown up immersed in the values of the West like fish in water. I had a Muslim friend who used to comment on how "Christian" my country was, whereas I'd always seen it as highly secular.
The British historian Tom Holland is very good on this topic. His recent book "Dominion" is basically an examination of how Christianity so pervasively shaped the West. He's got some good interviews on YouTube if anyone wants a shorter introduction to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIJ9gK47Ogw,https://www.yout....
> Consider, for example, the obsession in Christian countries with equality. They almost fall over themselves to welcome people from different ethnic backgrounds. I suspect this has something to do with Christianity’s origins as a Jewish religion adopted by the Gentiles
My experiences are almost the complete opposite to yours, I suspect there are major differences between congregations that can't be applied to the nation at large. Churches in the US are weirdly segregated by ethnicity, at least in the south[0] where you find black churches,white churches, Korean churches, etc.
I am African, and had the misfortune of attending a church that's part of the Southern Baptist Convention. I got the distinct sense that they are warm and welcoming to people requiring charity or to rake on as a "project"; not equals. Almost everyone who saw me volunteer assumed I was a poor student at the affiliated Theological college, and would be very warm, but when I'd let them know I was a software engineer and much closer to them socio-economically than they had assumed, they didn't know quite how to act, it was weird,and it happened multiple times.
Trump's presidency was a bad time to be black in an SBC church. I never felt quite comfortable, and my faith intensely tested. It came to a head when I encountered incidents of passive and active racism[1],and I came to the conclusion that we could not possibly be worshipping the same God. Then again, the southern churches could reconcile Christianity and slavery, so perhaps all ethnicities are welcome, with the long-lived exception of blacks. YMMV
0. As a point of comparison: South Africa has more integrated churches, just 1 generation since the end of apartheid.
1. Why aren't you going to a black church? Oh, the other black member, he's intelligent and articulate, he's practically white!
Keep in mind, that the Southern Baptist church literally exists because the Baptist convention started asking thorny questions concerning slavery and Christianity. In light of that discussion, the southern congregations broke off to form a convention that would welcome African slavery[1] and have white supremacy as a bedrock principle. Sure, there are plenty of blacks in the Southern Baptist denomination, but they attend black churches for the reasons you've noted.
Without trying to detract from your experience, I would suggest that your experience as a Black person in Bangladesh, India, or China would have been a whole lot worse. Heck, even though most Muslims aren’t Arab, it’s pretty darn clear that the Arabs think that is south Asians are second class citizens in the Muslim world. And unlike white southerners they’re not passive aggressive about it.
Without trying to distract from your suggestions, I would like to state that I have never seen race segregated mosques anywhere in India, while these seem to be widespread in the United states.
Question. How would you suggest I square your claims about Arab society with the observed fact that every year thousands of girls die in Arab countries from honor killings. And the fact that, as https://www.statista.com/statistics/1019538/mena-arab-respon... shows, in many of these countries, significant minorities think that such killings are justified.
Killing your own child suggests to me that kinship means rather less than it does in Western cultures.
Honor killings happen because kinship ties are so strong. The individual becomes completely subsumed within the family. Anything that brings shame to the individual is imputed to the whole family. Moreover, controlling reproduction becomes extremely important because that is how kinship links between families are created.
I know that I am showing my cultural biases. But the entire way of thinking that you are describing strikes me as fundamentally evil. Subsuming the individual to the social unit is at the heart of the worst excesses of racism, nationalism, etc. If you look for the worst mass crimes in history, you will find this idea at the core.
Conversely, liberty starts with valuing humans for the individuals that they are. And not as mere appendages which serve a larger whole.
Nomadic desert life is brutally hard—I suspect that if a tribe of Arab nomads had the individualism of people from San Francisco they’d all quickly die of starvation. Independence of the individual from the extended family unit isn’t all that viable absent market economies, social safety nets, etc. Independence of women from men isn’t all that viable in an environment where survival requires physically demanding and dangerous work (herding animals, fending off intruders, etc). Even in modern western society, the old depend on the young for survival; the physical safety of women is underwritten by armed men, etc. We just have layers of abstraction (Social Security, police departments, etc.) that allow those things to be done at arm’s length. In a pre-modern society those social dependencies all collapse into the family unit.
I tend to agree that, as all these economic and technological predicates for individualism arose, Christian societies were better positioned to take advantage. On the flip side, my personal belief is that modern western societies have taken that too far, to the point where they’re no long even viable as societies. The future of Europe, for example, looks to be Islam. Maybe a moderated, more secular version, but probably still quite different than the culture that prevails today.
I agree that a number of Western countries did take advantage. But I wouldn't say that the divide was Christian vs non-Christian. There is a lot in Christianity which can be quoted to support very non-individualistic ideologies. It is that certain societies which happened to be Christian had did develop individualistic ideologies.
But Christian countries have our share of organizations such as the Mafia where family and ethnic group are paramount. Christian history is full of brutal totalitarian states and violent killing.
Separately https://www.pewforum.org/2017/11/29/europes-growing-muslim-p... suggests that rumors of an Islamic future for Europe are premature. And as Muslims integrate, their advantage in birth rate is likely to decline, and net conversions are away from Islam. As a result, long-term, I see no reason why Islam will grow to be more than a significant minority.
Some Christian societies are more individualistic than others, but almost no non-Christian societies are individualistic. And even the Christian societies that aren’t individualistic are still much more so than virtually anywhere else.
Even the ones that integrate are going to be far less individualistic than native born Europeans. Cultural legacy Carrie’s through for generations—and that’s likely to be especially true for European Muslims given how segregated they are.
This has to be sarcasm. You don't have to look that far back to know that this is just untrue. There are ethnic cleansings and organised genocides everywhere (regrettably), with very little evidence it has something to do with a specific type of culture.
Would the early United States be considered an "individulistic society"?
If so then consider the continental level genocidal practices which that society consciously adopted. Remember that all of North America was populated before the westward expansion. Feel free to extrapolate backwards in time.
The early United States was on the way to being an individualistic society, but hadn't arrived. In particular the natives who they killed they saw as part of a group, and not as individuals.
There is a long and complicated history in English speaking people of "rights for me, but not for thee" which started with the king, was broadened to nobles with the Magna Carta, was broadened to rich landowners with the establishment of Parliament, was in the process of being broadened to free white men around the time of the American Revolution and has piecemeal been given to other groups over time.
What today we consider "universal rights" were historically not universal. Our awful treatment of others is tied to our not granting rights to them. And our awful treatment of ourselves (for example in totalitarian societies) is tied to our being subsumed in something greater.
some of these countries have become so good at institutionalizing injustice via their privatized prison systems that this form of ethic cleansing is not even visible any more with the naked eye.
When a large group of your population is unable to financially afford justice that's a form of ethnic cleansing.
Genocide is horrible, but what could possible be more evil? Here is what: masterminding it so that a large group of your population no longer sees it for what it is and would rather point at another country for its concentration camps than solve their issues at home.
> but you don't tend to get ethnic cleansing or organized genocides.
How would you describe the US private prison system, or gitmo if not "organized genocide"?
You can find the idea of the individual being subsumed to the kin group to be disconcerting or strange (I do), without categorizing it as a "fundamentally evil" way of thinking. Honor killings are an extreme end of the spectrum of behaviors exhibited by people with this belief system; but there are equivalently extremes in the behaviors of people with Western, liberal-individualistic belief systems. Both belief systems are just survival strategies evolved by different groups of humans exposed to different historical and environmental contingencies. Both can be perverted to justify extreme evil acts, just as both can fairly point to the extremes, in themselves and the other, and declare them as evil. And note, this isn't cultural relativism: one can respect the sovereignty of the Islamic value system without excusing honor killings, just as one needn't cast Western liberal individualism as "fundamentally evil" because taken to it's extreme people have used it to justify mass shootings of strangers.
Killing strangers for minor violations of your property rights... killing multiple strangers in a rage of entitlement... calling police to kill or punish strangers who are having mental health crises for minor violations of public behavior ordinances... basically killing or punishing strangers for any old reason. I'd venture to guess we do orders of magnitude more of it per capita in the West than people in Muslism countries do honor killings of kin.
> Killing strangers for minor violations of your property rights
You give no examples. Also I'm in the UK and can't remember the last time anyone was killed for trespass or other minor violations (okay, one or two over a decade I think).
> killing multiple strangers in a rage of entitlement
You give no examples. Post some evidence, overall numbers of such cases, details please.
> calling police to kill or punish strangers who are having mental health crises for minor violations of public behavior ordinances
You give no examples - post summary details.
> basically killing or punishing strangers for any old reason. I
You give no examples.
> I'd venture to guess
so no evidence whatsover
> we do orders of magnitude more of it per capita in the West
The US is not 'the West'. Perhaps you'd like to consider the UK, Germany, Scandinavia....
I suspect you're right in thinking honour killings aren't common (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honour_killing_in_Pakistan#Pre...> "The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan lists 460 cases of reported honour killings in 2017, with 194 males and 376 females as victims"), but it's the extreme point of a pervasively oppressive/intolerant system which can ruin lives without actually killing people.
If you’ve spent some time outside of the west, and what the west conceives as “comparable with the west”, you’ll find that there are many cultures that are what you describe as “evil”.
And, for example, when you encounter things like Afghanistan's "dancing boys" (fathers literally sell their sons to powerful men as sex toys), are you inclined to shrug your shoulders and look the other way at such "cultural differences"?
Yes, there are many things that are accepted in other cultures as normal that I am happy to condemn. If you can't find it in you to condemn at least some of them, then I think that there is something wrong with you.
I've personally witnessed these "dancing boys" in Afghanistan, and no I didn't shrug my shoulders. I'm not sure why you think I disagree with you. I'm pointing out that this insistence on the principle of "equality of culture" is a western proclivity that is both naive and wrong.
Note that I don’t disagree with you in general. I’m no cultural relativist. I just think the post-1960s individualist secular liberalism is a civilizational dead end that’s already correcting itself.
> Subsuming the individual to the social unit is at the heart of the worst excesses of racism, nationalism, etc. If you look for the worst mass crimes in history, you will find this idea at the core.
Do you have anything other than the jordan peterson paraphrase to back this as a cause, as opposed to the actual dangerous ideologies? One could just as easily state as absolute fact that subsuming the individual to the societal unit is at the heart of the greatest accomplishments of humankind.
This idea is a straightforward false dichotomy presenting the only alternative to absolute individual liberty as complete subjugation of free will, and used to provide some truly absurd explanations for things, such as 'honor' being the actual problem in this case, not the 'killings'
> One could just as easily state as absolute fact that subsuming the individual to the societal unit is at the heart of the greatest accomplishments of humankind.
Do you have a benevolent dictator in mind?
> complete subjugation of free will
The fundamental problem of religion (politics, generally) is that you agree to submit to an all-merciful, all-benevolent, all-knowing entity. The reality of the deal is rather less satisfying.
Sure. If you read Enlightenment Now you'll find several chapters devoted to how many of the horrors of the 20th century can be traced back to ideologies which subsume the individual into groupings involving some subset of ethnic group, nationality, and social class. They are doubly dangerous if they are then paired with utopian ideals. Because if the ends justify the means, and the ends are a perfect good, you can rationalize ay horror.
You can find similar points of view in many previous writers from points as distant in the ideological spectrum as George Orwell and Ayn Rand.
This is sort of a tangential post starting from your phrases
"Killing your own child" and "honor killings". I eventually try to link it back to themes of loyalty to "family" vs. "nation" vs. universality.
1.
> Killing your own child
I can't hear this phrase without thinking of Abraham and Isaac. It's the story that the whole of the Old Testament revolves around.
(And then the New Testament goes to heroic lengths of reinterpretation? Or have I just gotten too much Girard in my head? I'm never sure how much to celebrate it as reformist (moving past the animal sacrifice cult of the Levites), vs. to detest it (continuing to worship the obscene god of the burning bush. But then how do you carve out that the Commandments are actually decent?). I'm also not quite sure that I'm really all that big a fan of Jesus himself; I may actually prefer the religion of Paul. But it was Jesus who was responsible for the Beatitudes, and for his famous and beautiful "whole of the law" summary. So I'm not sure. His radical anti-family message, combined with his urgency (and his apparent contempt for his disciples?) have never sat right with me. But maybe the urgency at least is essential.)
And supposedly the version we get in the Torah is the "Hollywood ending", whereas in the original (late neolithic?) story Isaac is simply killed and Abraham is rewarded. So the original is even worse.
(Or perhaps the fact of the "Hollywood ending" to Abraham and Isaac is itself an innovation to be celebrated, and we can view the Old Testament itself as part of that same Girardian process of reform, of yet-worse human sacrifice religions. A good thing about this is that it creates less of an Old Testament vs. New Testament binary/dualism; it expands the field of view.)
(There may also be a Yahwist vs. Elohist conflict I have yet to understand, which may help me tease apart good from bad parts of the Old Testament.)
2.
> honor killings
Not long ago I quoted Genesis 34, which disturbs me for several reasons -- that it celebrates an honor killing being one of them.
(Actually, maybe I'm wrong? Because they do not kill Dinah? More on that in a second.)
That the enemy clan is treated as a unit to be destroyed rather than the individual man is another. How can that possibly be justice?
(Some people will claim that Shechem raped Dinah. NIV translates it that way, but KJV doesn't. I don't believe the NIV translation. First, because those societies still exist and "consent" isn't really something they think about in judging these cases. And I mean, it says right there at the end that the Israelites kill the men and take their wives captive, presumably to be raped. Second, because Shechem is said to speak kindly to her and request her hand in marriage. And third because Hamor et al act as though good relations should be possible with the Israelites. KJV doesn't say "raped", it says "defiled" (more than once), and, given the rest of the chapter's focus on circumcision, I honestly think that the fact that he had sex with her with his intact penis is the thing they found offensive. Symbolic of course of his being an Other. A belief that comports with the rest of the Old Testament's repeated admonishments not to marry outside the Tribe (e.g., Samson and Delilah). I think it's much closer to a Black man being lynched for having the temerity to sleep with a white woman.)
...which brings us to, of course, the central role of genital mutilation to the story, which is another reason to be disturbed by it.
The complete rejection of an apparently good-faith effort towards peace and mutual assimilation is a fourth reason to be disturbed, but consistent with the particularism/separatism of the rest of the Old Testament.
And a fifth is the trickery involved. "Yes, yes, we can all get along! Undergo our painful and irreversible initiatiation!" ...and then be slain without mercy while you're still recovering.
I had the TV on the other day and saw a Rick Steves visit to Auschwitz/Birkenau, in which I was similarly disturbed by the amount of trickery involved. The victims were told to bring their luggage, so they would believe that they were being resettled to live good lives in another place. The sign over the gate famously said "Arbeit macht frei", another lie. All to avoid panic while their killing was planned. All like the promise of the sons of Jacob in Genesis 34:15-16.
All the more tragic because so many of those Jewish victims had assimilated into German society (not necessarily abandoning Judaism, but just treating it as another religion in the Liberal style, instead of as an ethno-nationalist thing), and they and the German gentiles they lived more-or-less peacefully among (until the Nazis riled them up) were essentially living as Hamor had promised,
> 9 And make ye marriages with us, and give your daughters unto us, and take our daughters unto you.
> 10 And ye shall dwell with us: and the land shall be before you; dwell and trade ye therein, and get you possessions therein.
which would have been the desirable outcome.
If it isn't clear yet, while Shechem may be a little dumb here (sort of a Romeo character), I think Hamor's the good guy, consistently trying to steer the situation towards a peaceful and mutually beneficial outcome.
We could really use Dinah's point of view here. I choose to interpret her as a sort of Juliet, stuck between these Montagues (Israelites) and Capulets (Hivites).
...
Can we bring it back to the themes of "kinship" and "Arab culture" (or, culture in the Middle East) vs. "Western culture"? To the themes of grandparent post?
Well, my interpretation of Genesis 34 is that it is anti-"miscegenist". Which would be, if not about kinship, then at least about nationality. And certainly not universalist.
And Abraham/Isaac is about sacrificing blood kin for the demands of a god who is arguably the personification of a nation.
So perhaps this is about nation vs. family -- dishonor to the nation outranking loyalty to kin.
Of course, this is all a bit inbred, so "nation" largely is "kin". Maybe then this is a meme that wants to create loyalty among genes at, say, the cousin-level degree of relatedness, at expense both of loyalty to specific children, and also of sympathy to outsiders. I'm thinking about ant colonies and cancer cells now. It's a choice to privilege a certain scale of "incorporation" -- what is the "body" we care about?
Sorry, but I call bullshit on this being Islamophobia. It might be a mistaken assertion of facts but there's nothing inherently Islamophobic in making specific criticisms of specific practices in Islamic society. They certainly exist, just as things worth criticizing or condemning exist in other societies. Moral relativism doesn't take away from the reality that some practices in some societies are indeed especially ugly and worth condemning by any widespread moral standard. This condemnation doesn't automatically deserve the label of "Islamophobic" when applied to Islam. The progressive left in the west and even some feminist groups have for decades turned a blind eye to repression of women in the Muslim world due to exactly these kinds of mental gymnastics and it's reprehensible considering their claimed moral postures in other contexts.
> Modern western countries with christian historical traditions do indeed welcome people from different ethnic backgrounds to a degree that no other countries on earth match.
i see you wrote that in another thread. now i understand why you’re claiming this university-led research is ‘bullshit‘: your eurocentric worldview is largely ignorant and naive and it doesn’t sound to me like you’ve had a chance to spend time in Muslim countries.
> The progressive left in the west and even some feminist groups have for decades turned a blind eye to repression of women in the Muslim world due to exactly these kinds of mental gymnastics and it's reprehensible considering their claimed moral postures in other contexts.
i hear what you're saying but i've spent too much time in the Middle East to know that most reporting in the west is intentionally deeply Islamophobic; mostly to manufacture consent for imperialist wars that allow the global north propertied/capitalist class to plunder and dominate.
> I mean, how many societies have a religion centered around some other ethnic group?
Plenty. Southeast Asia has religions centered around Indian or Arab religions. Same for Iran and much of Central Asia with Islam.
All these places have adapted the other ethnicity's belief system to their own culture.
It's no different for Christianity. Bertrand Russell described it as the combination of Greek philosophy with Jewish mythology and Roman societal/power structures.
I want to add double emphasis on this. Christianity before and without the Greek philosophical influence is primarily a religion of itinerant ascetics and martyrs (without the abstract ideals added, almost all of the story in the Gospels boils down to an itinerant ascetic being martyred).
Some of the earliest extant texts in Christianity come from Justin Martyr, who, just a century after Jesus, was already workshopping the idea that Plato and Socrates were unknowing Christians that laid a philosophical ground for Christianity.
For an intriguing spin on this, look into Manichaeism, a 3rd-century religion from modern Iran which syncretizes Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Buddhism, and survived until the middle of the last millennium in China.
"think cultural legacy is more deeply intertwined with morals than people appreciate."
The cultural legacy of modern Europe is that of Renaissance, which is a partial rejection of many religious morals and practices we would find abhorrent today. Like burning heretics, astronomers and philosophers at the stake, witch hunts, etc.
People were put to death for translating the Bible into english from latin, mind you.
There was a re-discovery and embracement of great works antiquity, think ancient Greece.
This reads like Renaissance era propaganda. It was mostly a reaction to existing social pressures which used the notion of the classics to promote change.
People did not go out and restart republics (for a couple centuries, which is a long time), nor bring back Aristotelian astronomy (rather the opposite), nor rituals of the old gods, nor rediscover ancient works that hadn’t been intentionally preserved by centuries of medieval scribes (papyrus lasts < 500 years in moist Europe). They reinterpreted the past. It was no longer “copy the procedures of the great doctor Galen”, it was “copy the curiosity”.
Over 200 years after the end of the Renaissance. During the Renaissance, the French were too busy conducting the second deadliest religious war in European history after the 30 years war.
I can't help but feel like you've got a deep case of confirmation bias here.
> Consider, for example, the obsession in Christian countries with equality. They almost fall over themselves to welcome people from different ethnic backgrounds. [...]
This is true in anglophone countries, sure, but it's less the case in europe and in particular, say, eastern europe or the balkans: ignoring albania/kosovo/bosnia, you've got plenty of heavily christian countries there who are not so open to people of different ethnic groups (well, which deviate from ethnic groups common to the region). You'll be treated more or less well but still fundamentally considered an outsider, and may not be welcome depending on where you go. Consider otherwise the armenians who, while I'm heavily leaning on stereotypes, are still quite well known for being both 1. pretty deeply culturally christians, and 2. a pretty closed-off community that often intermarry (although I do know there's often intermarriages with greeks and georgians)
I would agree with your point, but I would warn you not to assume that everything true of americans and/or anglophone countries often follows closely in other christian countries.
> Consider, for example, the obsession in Christian countries with equality.
I think you are confusing “Western liberal democratic societies” with “Christian countries”. The latter are a subset of historically Christian countries (many are more accurately post-Christian, now), but plenty of Christian countries are not Western liberal democracies and those do not fit the mold you are trying to fit “Christian countries” into.
> Consider, for example, the obsession in Christian countries with equality.
Citation needed.
> They almost fall over themselves to welcome people from different ethnic backgrounds. I suspect this has something to do with Christianity’s origins as a Jewish religion adopted by the Gentiles.
Yet Christian kingdoms had zero qualms about persicuting Jews for centuries.
> I mean, how many societies have a religion centered around some other ethnic group?
You mean like Islam which has over 1.9 billion adherents and privileges a language spoken by 300 million Arabs?
Christianity in Europe has been historically the biggest source of social hierarchy, supporting the divine right of Kings, the notion of deference to the priesthood, and the priesthood's subservience to the Pope (or, in Eastern Europe, the Patriarch).
Even after the Reform, Christianity encouraged tight family groups, the wife's subservience to her husband, and similarly children's subservience to their father.
Equality only exists in Christian texts, it is not part of any common practice.
If you want to look for a historical source about modern ideas of equality between people that inspired the Enlightenment movement, then that source are the Iroquois (or Haudenosaunee), whose society didn't have the same type of rigid hierarchies that all European societies at the time had.
Obsession about equality as a central tenet in Christianity? You may want to read up on the crusades, slavery, the 30 year war, how even other Christian immigrants (Irish, Italian, etc) were welcomed into the US etc.
Also, just because some Christians share some of the morals of your humanist friend does not imply any relation whatsoever. There appears to be that desire from religious groups to often exaggerate and emphasize any such correlation as something more. When your friend meets with his family at the end of December and again at the equinox in spring - do you point out how Paganist he is? And, when you as a Christian presumably celebrate Christmas and Easter with your family - do you tell them they are just like Pagans as well? If not - why not?
> Obsession about equality as a central tenet in Christianity? You may want to read up on the crusades, slavery, the 30 year war, how even other Christian immigrants (Irish, Italian, etc) were welcomed into the US etc.
You may want to read up on slavery. Abolition in Christian societies was mainly a religious movement. Arab societies practiced it extensively as well, but kept going until the 20th century, and only really stopped because of international pressure from Christian countries.
The crusades? Both Muslims and Christians engaged in offensive military campaigns during the crusades. Only in Christian countries do any appreciable number of people feel bad about it.
Likewise, the speed at which Irish and Italians were integrated into American society is pretty much unparalleled by anything in any non-Christian society. I’m Bangladeshi on both sides back into the the dim reaches of history. But if I went back I would be “bideshi” (foreigner) because I was raised in American. My white wife and mixed kids would never be considered Bangladeshi, no matter how long they lived there. (It’s an ethnostate: a country for people of ancertsin
> You may want to read up on slavery. Abolition in Christian societies was mainly a religious movement.
Ah, so there were Christians who opposed it, which makes that the central tenet in Christianity. But there were also those Christians who practiced it - does that now make slavery a central tenet in Christianity instead?
You can't just cherrypick what you find most flattering for your group and then round it off with 'but the Arabs'.
Italians are still a protected minority in New Jersey, and Hispanics are still a protected minority throughout the US. Natives were forcibly Christianized and then killed or deported to barren lands no one wanted.
I think we need to factor in "Correlation is not causality" and the presence of confounding variables.
Slave abolitionists explicitly mentioned where they derived their morals from - clearly establishing causality.
Could there be something else common among slave practitioners apart from religion - like common materialistic greed and superior firepower to overpower and dominate others?
> Could there be something else common among slave practitioners apart from religion
Cherry picking again, are we? So now we are looking for an alternative explanation - but only on the evil side. The existence of Christians who opposed slavery does not prove that it is in any way central to Christianity, or exclusive to Christianity. That's not how logic works.
On the other hand, the humanist Enlightenment in France led to the French revolution, led in turn to laicist France granting citizenship to former slaves in 1792 on non-religious grounds.
So yeah, there was something else among both abolitionists and slave holders, which is my whole point.
Supporters of slavery, by contrast, often invoked the language of science and progress and condemned abolitionists as religious zealots. The famous Cornerstone Speech, for example, given by the VP of the Confederacy:
> This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics.
Think about this logically. Imagine you’re a white European looking around at the world in 1776. There is no systematic archeology, there is no science of genetics. What would cause you to look around at the civilization and technology Europeans had developed, compared to what Africans or Asians has developed, and conclude that all people were equal? Back then it was a moral premise you had to accept on faith without the support of science.
Consider Thomas Jefferson, who wrote about the Creator endowing all men with alienable rights. Even though he was probably a deist, he expressly incorporated Christian morality into his worldview (e.g. the Jefferson Bible).
Or consider German Americans, one of Lincoln’s core constituencies that pushed him toward emancipation. These were recent immigrants to the Midwest who had no historical beef with the south. Yet, per capita, states like Iowa contributed the most soldiers to fight and die for the union. Do you think they were driven by abstract enlightenment principles of equality and justice?
It’s widely accepted today that the Civil War was about slavery. That has a remarkable implication. 360,000 union soldiers died to end slavery in the south. Can you name another example of one ethnic group incurring that kind of casualties to fight for the freedom of a different ethnic group? Maybe there are other examples but I’m unaware of any.
> It’s widely accepted today that the Civil War was about slavery.
That's a bit too simplified. The South fought primarily because they wanted to keep slavery and thought Lincoln would abolish it, but the North fought primarily to prevent secession, and ending slavery was just a convenient tool they could use to help win the war. The "good north vs evil south" narrative is too often used as a political cudgel, and doesn't really accurately reflect the on-the-ground reality.
That there were slave holders who justified their view in science does not mean that it's central or exclusive to atheists (see citizenship rights for slaves in the laicist French revolution)
>Consider Thomas Jefferson,
I'll consider Thomas Jefferson who readily incorporated slavery in his business while formulating his Jefferson Bible.
>Or consider German Americans
Maybe recent immigrants were driven by a desire to contribute to their new home?
>Maybe there are other examples but I’m unaware of any.
Unclear how superficial or cynical this is meant. WWII could come to mind.
Really, yours is the first account I read of the Civil War as a religious crusade of the Christian North to finally bring god to the heretics of the South.
Liberalism is marked by comparison to abstract ideals. Whether and to what degree other areas of the world do worse in comparison to those ideals is not usually going to be something of paramount concern.
This idealisation and universalisation is not only Western of course. I'm a mixed kid like your kids, but South India rather than Bangladesh, and I would be and am rather unquestionably accepted as Indian when I am there. But a major driver in the split between India and (then-)Pakistan comes down to the (novel & idiosyncratic) liberal ideals we compare to.
As a final note re: the Crusades. I was not under the impression the Crusades were looked down upon because of war, but because they too often were incoherent raiding expéditions that sacked and subdued parts of Christendom even more than they won control of the Jerusalem.
> This idealisation and universalisation is not only Western of course. I'm a mixed kid like your kids, but South India rather than Bangladesh, and I would be and am rather unquestionably accepted as Indian when I am there. But a major driver in the split between India and (then-)Pakistan comes down to the (novel & idiosyncratic) liberal ideals we compare to.
Heck, my mom went to college and graduate school and had a white collar career in Bangladesh in the 1960s and 1970s. But she came from a wealthy, socially prominent family, and had British tutors growing up. It would be tremendously misleading to use her experience to talk about how "liberal" Bangladeshis are.
Equality isn't a central tenet of Christianity (for some sects, probably it is), and even if it were, many Christian socities have certainly not practiced that. Christian societies have tendencies to be militaristic and exploitative. I do think that is in part driven by their religion, to convert others.
You are are oversimplifying, cherrypicking, or getting the facts wrong.
Christianity subsumed some pagan traditions. It's hardly a secret "gotcha", it's open for all to see. In the same way that when I eat an apple, the apple becomes part of me, I don't become an apple.
There are critical differences between Paganism and Christianity. For example, the philosopher Rene Girard showed that many traditions had stories of mimetic desire and scapegoating, but Christianity showed the crucial end of that story, the fact that the killing of the scapegoat to save the community is a lie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSzF2OG2ejI.
GK Chesterton has a lot of interesting things to say about Pagans also http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/heretics/12/, and his book The Everlasting Man is worth reading for the way that it uses pagan tropes to point towards Christianity.
Sure. But do you go around claiming that the apple just sprang into your hand without a tree to grow from? That's the argument the post I replied to made.
And the common cherrypicking strawman again in this thread. No one claimed that Christianity is indistinguishable from Paganism, much like no one claims that the apple is indistinguishable from the apple tree.
I'm not sure I follow your apple/tree analogy.
But I would say that Christianity is true, and that therefore other truths, no matter what their source, would point in the same direction.
So ideas (such as dying/rising gods) could potentially arise in paganism, yet still have some truth, and then be subsumed by Christianity.
I highly recommend GK Chesterton's book "The Everlasting Man", its a short read and still worthwhile even for atheists or those of other faiths as the author is brilliant.
Right, but doesn't your analogy support my point? Just like people overlook the Indian legacy embedded in western mathematics, they overlook the Christian legacy embedded in secular western culture and morality.
How so? How does using similar notation than what was/is used in Indian/Arabic cultures make you affiliated with any notion of morals that coincided in those areas? Are you, using numerals, just a Muslim in disguise? Or a Hindu?
I don't see that connection whatsoever. If anything, Western culture, morality, and customs (such as Christmas or Easter) predate Christianity by hundreds or thousands of years.
>This is laughably wrong (I literally bursted our laughing). Tell it to the crusaders, to all the people who took part in pogroms for centuries all over the place, to the ethnic nationalists who are in power or close to post right now in Europe. Tell it to the refugees dying on boats in the Mediterranean as well...
Modern western countries with christian historical traditions do indeed welcome people from different ethnic backgrounds to a degree that no other countries on earth match. How is this wrong. Take even a brief look at demographic information from nearly any western european state or any of the anglo/saxon countries in the world. There's nothing at all laughably wrong about it. Pointing to boats in the Mediterranean is a case of finding the worst, extreme examples when they don't even closely represent the whole. What the crusaders and christians did centuries ago in the west is absurd as a criticism of TODAY'S western states.
It's first important to note that 'Modern western countries with christian historical traditions' are NOT for the most part Christian states [1], but secular ones. This is important. Secularism and the separation of church and state are relatively modern, Enlightenment values, not Christian ones.
Together with the idea that certain human rights are fundamental and inalienable, secularism has allowed quite a lot of states (not just Western ones) to progress, at least nominally, to a more inclusive and moral view of humanity.
GP mentioned that Christian (presumably secular majority Christian) states have an obsession with equality and are extraordinarily welcoming to other cultures. This is patently false. I provided a series of examples, both historical and current.
> What the crusaders and christians did centuries ago in the west is absurd as a criticism of TODAY'S western states
I addressed the claim that Christian (so not modern secular) states are extremely tolerant etc. For that historical examples are pertinent. Christianity, like all major religions, can be leveraged for good or bad, for tolerance or exclusion, for peace or war.
> Pointing to boats in the Mediterranean is a case of finding the worst, extreme examples when they don't even closely represent the whole
Tens of thousands of people have died in the Mediterranean in the past years, often with the complicity of EU or other national authorities [2] [3] [4]. Hardly isolated incidents.
> Take even a brief look at demographic information from nearly any western european state or any of the anglo/saxon countries in the world
Immigration, in reality, mostly has to do with the economic needs of the host country, not so much with their unimaginably charitable desire to allow everybody in.
Whether it's from the goodness of their hearts or from economic necessity, the fact remains that western countries with largely Christian historical traditions (I never claimed that they are today Christian states in the way that Islamic states are officially Islamic) are some of the most tolerant and open societies on Earth. No other cultural regions in the world match this level of tolerance or openness. That is absolutely worth considering in any discussion like this. It has a certain practical moral weight that it's dishonest to ignore.
As for what you mention about the migrants in the Mediterranean, bear in mind a couple points:
1. The governments of the EU are not killing these migrants themselves. Most of those that tragically die do so because of their own extremely dangerous efforts to desperately reach a continent that they know will largely treat them better than their own homelands do.
2. You mention tens of thousands. That's an awful number, but compared to the millions of immigrants that do reach and eventually get accepted by the continent through many programs and laws that later assist them, it needs to be placed in perspective, both morally and practically.
3. Even if a certain percentage of migrants suffer repercussions in their attempts to reach Europe, the states of the Union do have a basic right to make efforts at protecting their borders from unregulated entry. They can't be held responsible for this being dangerous to illegal migrants or even in some cases tragic. That their entry should be difficult is indeed part of the point. Much more blame should be assigned to the governments of the countries they came from, which made things so intolerant and economically/socially corrupt as to provoke mass flight.
Not completely different, the messianic morals are embedded in the ceremony by design: Sharing, caring, family, food, etc. These aren't incidental, they're the whole point. Sure the specific historical person, i.e. the messiah, blurs over time, as probably do the ceremonial activities, but surely they retain some of the original moral ideals.
You prove my point. You won't find many atheists (if any) that will take Jesus as in any shape or form a historical person. These are two different worlds.
Atheists don't derive their morals from these stories, that's the difference. That there is some superficial overlap (a tree? presents?) doesn't allow you to claim the morality of atheists as religion-derived. That's ludicrous. It's like saying the local butcher taking apart a pig is adhering to Aztec rituals and their morals because at some point in both 'ceremonies' someone holds a heart in their hands.
In fact, the source of morals among atheists seems to be a permanent puzzle for many people with religious background, simply claiming them as religion-based misses the point completely.
> You won't find many atheists (if any) that will take Jesus as in any shape or form a historical person.
Raises hand: Atheist here who thinks that a historical Jesus is at least plausible. Obviously not a son of god, though, that would have been embellishment by later generations.
This. The existence of Jesus says nothing about his divinity or the validity of Christianity. We have more evidence for the existence of Muhammad. Does that make Islam the 'correct' religion? We have even more evidence for the existence of Joseph Smith. Does that make Mormonism the 'correct' religion? We have video recordings of L. Ron Hubbard, along with many people still alive who have met him. Does that make Scientology the 'correct' religion?
Exactly. The possible existence of someone names Jesus ~2000 years ago gives zero validity to anything. But we don't even know that. It takes faith to believe in Jesus as a historical figure. There is as much evidence as for the existence of Harry Potter.
You're right, after looking it up it was Muhammed who we have records mentioning either during life or within ~30 years[1]. For Jesus it definitely came after.
> In fact, the source of morals among atheists seems to be a permanent puzzle for many people with religious background, simply claiming them as religion-based misses the point completely.
I don’t have a religious background and it’s still a puzzle for me. Best I can manage to explain it is through a combination of tradition and genes (“human nature”), and tradition is often indeed derived from historical religious environment. Moral is mostly universal but not completely - for one example the attitudes towards hard work at the expense of everything else vary greatly across different cultures and religious traditions.
You’re right of course - religion and tradition feed on each other. I’m imagining it as a dynamic system with feedback loops, etc. where organized religion plays the role of the mechanism that slows down change and provides stasis.
We’re only a couple generations into our “post-religious” society so the jury is still out on how this great decoupling will play out exactly.
I don't think moral is universal at all - 'You shall not kill' vs cannibal societies and honor killings, monogamy vs polygamy, eating animals vs vegetarianism, slavery vs abolitionism, democracy vs. tribalism, patriarchy vs. equality, mothers' rights vs unborn rights, etc.
It's not only not universal, but it's highly fluid (which it couldn't be if it was universal).
I always preferred to look at morals as survival strategies for societies. From this point of view they do not have to be universal to work - its enough that they skew the probablity a bit towards survival of given group and the rest is just some version of Darwins Game of Life.
Obviously they don't have to be universal to work, that's my whole post - they aren't, and humanity was pretty successful in settling every last piece of this planet.
I'd still suggest the overlap isn't incidental. Religions need stable or expanding societies to procreate. So ideology that leads to stable or expanding societies is strongly selected for. Religions with written texts have surprisingly low mutation rates in their ideology, but when conditions begin to favor different behaviors to promote stability, polygamy for instance, the ideology changes quickly.
As a reference to my biases, I'm a theistic agnost, I don't know, but I believe. The life of pie or secondhand lions explain the why pretty well.
>Atheists don't derive their morals from these stories, that's the difference.
The notion that atheists--or Christians, for that matter--ground their moral reasoning in first principles, completely free of unexamined assumptions and social convention, is so laughable that I'm amazed anyone here is seriously suggesting it.
Then what do you mean by your remark about how atheists "derive" their moral beliefs? rayiner's comment was about the religious origins of certain beliefs and their persistence in Western societies--not about whatever explicit justification contemporary atheists or believers might offer for those beliefs. In your comment you seem to be disregarding the former question to focus attention entirely on the latter.
I don't write at all about how Atheists derive their moral beliefs, I don't know what you are referring to - show me, if you can.
I also don't write about how Atheists would justify (religious) beliefs - and why would atheists have to justify religious beliefs? Now that is laughable. The whole point of Atheism is to no longer rely on beliefs, much less having or feeling the urge to justify other people's beliefs.
Also, rayiner doesn't write about that at all. What they claim is that the fact that certain cultural customs prove the original Christian origin and persisting influence of Christianity of these customs, ignoring that sitting around a pine tree with your family and celebrating that days are finally getting longer predates Christianity by hundreds or, more likely, thousands of years.
Rayiner in their reply to my post completely ignored that the whole point of my post was about 'cultural legacy' vs 'organized religion', so I don't feel particularly bad that you think I did not address their comment enough. Also, I can't change that they are hijacking the thread to praise Christianity over Arabs.
I should explain that I meant belief in a very ordinary sense of the word. As in, I believe capital punishment is wrong, or, Mike doesn't believe in the existence of aliens.
>What they claim is that the fact that certain cultural customs...
rayiner argued that the "cultural legacy" of Christianity is about more than just custom. They're saying that certain values--equality, moral universalism--are widely and deeply held throughout the modern, secular West, and that those values (or rather the great weight that Westerners assign to them) are a legacy of Christianity.
It's not a ridiculous position. Plenty of serious thinkers have argued along similar lines--Nietzsche, Weber, Foucault, Charles Taylor, Marcel Gaucher, Ivan Illich. No doubt there are lots more.
Oh a new thing in this thread, a bait-and-switch-appeal-to-authority-straw-man! But I'm glad you finally found the point you want to argue that doesn't even require reading the post you reply to and called 'laughable'.
I'll humor you anyway and just refer to [1] that thoroughly debunks the position that those values originate in any way as a legacy of Christianity. You're welcome.
I don't cite those names as authorities whose views on the historical influence of Christianity--which differ greatly in their particulars, by the way--demand acceptance. I'm presenting them as evidence that the subject is worth reading up on, whether by you or by someone else who happens to read these comments.
Thank you, that's an interesting paper. Looking at the "morality-as-cooperation codebook," though, I see a great deal that contradicts orthodox Christian doctrine--for example, Giving preferential treatment to (members of) your group. Assuming that the opposite belief--that you should "love your enemies, bless them that curse you," etc.--has gained any adherence in the West, that ethic must have originated in something else (maybe a religion?) besides the code of reciprocity your paper's authors have assembled.
I really dislike religion claiming monopoly on morals.
Even tribes of cavemen cared for each-other. We have evidence of people being cared for and living for years with crippling iniiries. They could not care for themselves let alone help the tribe.
Even animals care for each-other and protect each-other, can't claim culture or religion there - its a basic feature of evolution.
If there was actually a correlation between religion and morality, then we would see less crimes like murder/ robbery /rape in religious societies. If anything, the opposite is true.
> I really dislike religion claiming monopoly on morals.
Where's the monopoly? A discussion on the moral values of religious rituals doesn't preclude anything. I don't even belong to a church.
It seems you think (perhaps subconsciously) that religion has a monopoly on morals. Why else are you bringing that into the discussion and arguing against it?
> Even animals care for each-other and protect each-other, can't claim culture or religion there - its a basic feature of evolution.
Religious morals are an instance of mutual care emerging through social evolution in an animal - the human, specifically. And humans call it "culture", because humans like to invent words to describe specific instances of phenomena.
To be fair, you can interpret “cultural legacy” as “celebrating the same holidays” or as “having similar morals even if they are divorced from religious faith”.
You’re not alone. Many religious people cannot fathom that something outside of and independent of their moral system exists. Take the old discussion of atheists as satanists. What is that joke again? “No, we don’t believe in any of your imaginary friends.“
Yes because you still interpret the similarity of morals as a causal direction (‘legacy’, ‘divorce‘) from religion. You’re giving religion way too much credit there.
Fair enough. Then yes, it’s hard for me to believe that the west’s wholesale adoption of Judeo-Christian ethics was unrelated to it steeping in Christianity for a thousand years—the gradual but significant ethical transition just happened to coincide with the Christian era.
> Many religious people cannot fathom that something outside of and independent of their moral system exists.
Well, this isn’t exactly an unpopular theory among Atheists either. Never mind that Atheists can go toe to toe with religious people with respect to dogmatic faith, tribalism, etc. Perhaps it’s not an issue of categorical superiority?
Again, what you consider "Judeo-Christian" was there before Christianity. Look no further than ancient Greece. Christianity was very successful in hijacking existing ideas and customs (Christmas, Easter) to be more easily adopted, and now claims to be the origin and cause of all (the good) that comes with it - which is the topic in this thread.
>Well, this isn’t exactly an unpopular theory among Atheists either.
What part? You think Atheists cannot see that religion exists and that people derive their 'morals' from that? Dogmatic faith? That's absurd, and sounds again like Christianity imposing their worldview onto others when faced with different worldviews. It's the same 'Atheists=Satanists' again, in which Atheists are only understood in the framework of Christianity.
> Again, what you consider "Judeo-Christian" was there before Christianity. Look no further than ancient Greece. Christianity was very successful in hijacking existing ideas and customs (Christmas, Easter) to be more easily adopted, and now claims to be the origin and cause of all (the good) that comes with it - which is the topic in this thread.
I think you're deeply mistaken on many counts. First of all, Christianity didn't "hijack" Christmas or Easter--those were patently Christian concepts; however, the medieval Church did dress up those concepts with superficial pagan trappings. That said, if you reduce Christianity to its holidays, then of course you would look at modern Western Civilization and feel that Christianity's effect was superficial. You have to have a modicum of understanding of Christian theology and ethics to see how those have influenced western civ.
> What part? You think Atheists cannot see that religion exists and that people derive their 'morals' from that?
I mean that I don't think "modern Western morals were significantly derived from Judeo-Christian values" is particularly controversial among Atheists.
> Dogmatic faith? That's absurd, and sounds again like Christianity imposing their worldview onto others when faced with different worldviews.
It's really not, you're just conflating "faith" with "religious faith". Atheists have faith in lots of things from various political ideals to the belief that God doesn't exist, and with respect to zeal the faith of Atheists can absolutely rival that of anyone else. Indeed, even your apparent belief that religious minds are feebler than those of Atheists is an article of faith. At the end of the day, people are just people and "religious" vs "atheists" isn't a useful taxonomy for virtually anything.
>Christianity didn't "hijack" Christmas or Easter--those were patently Christian concepts;
You're arguing that no culture celebrated that days are finally getting longer in winter (e.g. complete with family gatherings and evergreen trees), and that no culture had spring/fertility (rabbit!) rituals, millenia before Christinity? Don't be ridiculous. Christianity came, hijacked those established celebrations, and rebranded them. Simple as that.
>I mean that I don't think "modern Western morals were significantly derived from Judeo-Christian values" is particularly controversial among Atheists.
Well, you think wrong then.
>Atheists have faith in lots of things from various political ideals to the belief that God doesn't exist,
You have a very loose unreligious view of 'faith' then. Do you need 'faith' to trust that you won't just float away when jumping, do you need faith that the sun will rise again tomorrow? I don't.
Not believing that God exists is not in any way a larger leap than not believing in Santa Claus or Harry Potter. I wouldn't call that 'faith'.
>even your apparent belief that religious minds are feebler than those of Atheists is an article of faith.
I never said that. But now we're getting closer: At the core, are you saying that your 'faith' then is nothing but insinuating and lying?
> "religious" vs "atheists" isn't a useful taxonomy for virtually anything.
You're barking up the wrong tree then - religious people should simply stop doing that. Why do they feel so threatened and keep bringing it up again and again? I've never heard of an atheist crusade that goes around giving people the choice between not believing or being killed. That's just ridiculous. No atheist goes around banning and burning books. Why do I find bibles in every hotel room, but not 'A brief history of time' or 'On the origin of species'? The only true religious freedom is freedom from religion.
> You're arguing that no culture celebrated that days are finally getting longer in winter (e.g. complete with family gatherings and evergreen trees), and that no culture had spring/fertility (rabbit!) rituals, millenia before Christinity? Don't be ridiculous.
Oof, I don't think we can have this conversation until you familiarize yourself on a basic level with even the most superficial aspects of Christianity (the holidays).
> Well, you think wrong then.
Lol.
> You're barking up the wrong tree then - religious people should simply stop doing that. Why do they feel so threatened and keep bringing it up again and again?
Lol, you're the only one in this thread bringing it up :)
Anyway, I'm not getting baited into your holy war. You can have the last word. Enjoy your weekend.
> 60% of working Dutch women only work part time, versus 20% of working Dutch men
I would attribute this more to cultural aspects (there's something of a ravenmuter [1] issue in the Netherlands as well), but even more importantly, to basic economics. Kindergarden is very expensive, women get some maternal leave while men basically get none, so there's significant pressure on the mother to stay at home with the kids for longer.
When they return to the workforce after some years of childcare, they do so to lower salaries than they would have had otherwise, hence part time work becomes more attractive.
I don't deny that there's a natural tendency for women to be more nurturing, but I don't think that's the main force driving this disparity.
To what extent is this just people not liking their current job? That is, what percentage of homemakers would rather be employed, and how would the opinions of employed women change if their choices in the poll were current job/appealing alternative job/homemaker?
Women generally report more job satisfaction than men do; you'd expect a higher proportion of men preferring homemaking to their jobs if that was the dominant factor.
I suspect it’s a sliding scale—working is probably relatively more compelling if you’re a cancer researcher than if you’re writing up the paperwork for home mortgages. But way more people do the latter than the former, right? And most people doing the latter aren’t qualified to do the former (and that’s okay).
I think that often people with remunerative, intellectually stimulating jobs overlook the perspective of women who have (and are realistically only qualified to have) jobs we would probably regard as more mundane.
Polling is one thing but the economics on this are extensive and they mostly reject your suggestions here. Female labor force participation is U-shaped with regards to GDP (https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w4707/w4707...), once you reach the middle part of the curve it starts to increase again as GDP increases, probably because employment becomes more lucrative to women than raising children or staying at home.
If there is an effect here it can't be all that significant, if you look at wealthy countries with larger welfare states than the US most have a female labor force participation rate at least as high.
> Counterintuitively, America’s lack of a generous welfare system tends to destabilize traditional gender roles.
I don't think that's so counterintuitive. Generous welfare systems give more people the opportunity to pursue the work lifestyle they would like to rather than the one they would have to to make ends meet if the generous welfare system didn't exist.
That's a totally different scenario than gender roles being enforced by religious or cultural restrictions. That also promotes traditional gender roles but doesn't give individuals a choice in the matter.
> 56% would prefer a “homemaker” role if they were “free” to do either
I would imagine approximately everyone would prefer a homemaker role if it was possible.
I had the fortune of taking multiple years off to spend with my child at home, it was the best time ever. Unfortunately savings don't last forever so eventually had to go back to the soulless grind of daily status report standups and endless useless meetings.
What's is the desired conclusion of your comment? That women prefer to be homemakers more than men do so we should go ahead and do that and leave men to work? Please explain because I have no idea where you're going with this.
I think he’s pointing out the irony in conservative views. They bemoan the erosion of traditional gender roles, but undermine those roles by opposing a generous welfare state.
But, I mean, obviously it would be good if most workers made enough to support a family with a single income.
Gender roles are driven by more than just religion or tradition. It's not clear that they're good for society (if anything, open societies which don't coercively enforce these norms tend to be more creative and innovative) but what they are is good enough for the many, many people, including women (might even be a majority) who prefer them. Any ideal of freedom of choice for all genders should absolutely include these 'old-fashioned' choices.
I suspect it’s a coupled system—tradition and religion both shape and reflect preferences. I think it’s bad for society when women have gender roles forced on them. But I think it’s also possible—especially for the self-selecting group of highly educated people who tend to think and write about these issues—to overlook how many women would simply rather take care of their kids, at least while they’re young, compared to the work they’re qualified to do.
Who wouldn’t prefer to stay home if they had the choice? I could spend my days traveling, hiking, going to the beach, reading, working on hobbies, learning new skills, cooking, etc.
I think you misspelled changing diapers, doing laundry three times a day, spoon-feeding broccoli puree, scraping dried broccoli off the floor, shopping while trying to contain a squealing octopus, etc.
Or watching and helping form your own child into him/herself, meeting your friends for casual lunches in the park while your kids play, playing goofy games, having time to make nutritious meals instead of heating frozen foods, etc.
Grandparent was responding to the ridiculous notion that being a homemaker is like being on vacation with kids. No one is disputing there can be benefits to being a homemaker or having one in the family.
It's... really not that bad? Actually, it's pretty fun.
I work from home, wife doesn't, that makes me the defacto stay-at-home dad. It's definitely playing the startup game in "hard mode" but I love not missing a thing.
All of these are orders of magnitude more pleasant than daily standups etc.
As a man, I had the fortune to stay at home for several years with my child and it was the most wonderful time ever. Sure it's a lot of work, but also a lot of joy.
>> Among women with children under 18, 56% would prefer a “homemaker” role if they were “free” to do either: https://news.gallup.com/poll/186050/children-key-factor-wome.... Contrast with just 26% of men. 39% of women without kids would also prefer to stay home if they had the choice.
> Who wouldn’t prefer to stay home if they had the choice? I could spend my days traveling, hiking, going to the beach, reading, working on hobbies, learning new skills, cooking, etc.
"Homemaker" does not mean "staying at home, doing whatever you want."
Most people do not care about their jobs. And they have jobs, not careers. They work because they get paid. Occasionally they get a brief flicker of satisfaction. More often they enjoy the company of their co-workers. Occasionally they hate their jobs so much that they engage in unhealthy behaviors s as a coping mechanism, like alcoholism, or they quit.
Basically everyone who doesn’t stay heavily involved in their professional field after retirement was doing it almost solely for money. There are better and worse jobs, more and less enjoyable ones. But a huge majority of people have jobs, not careers.
Well, sure, but take a few years off of your "job" and you'll find that your prospects for another job are far fewer and for less pay. I think that's generally what people mean by a career even if they aren't particularly chasing advancement.
I'm sorry to hear you feel that way, but those are pretty extreme and sweeping claims. Where do they come from? Here's some data from Gallup, which seems to strongly disagree with at least some aspects of the parent. It shows that every year, going back to 1993, over 80% report being completely or somewhat satisfied with their jobs.
On the Internet these days I often see contructed claims of extreme despair - about finding a partner, jobs, war, democracy, crime, etc. etc. In a way it matches an older rhetoric of making brazen, extreme, baseless statements that frame the conversation (around the baseless claims rather than the issue at hand), inflame it, and disrupt people who disagree. It's time to think about whose interests the despair serves.
If you have low standards for what you want out of your job being completely or somewhat satisfied with your job is easy. I enjoy the company of my colleagues, have long holidays that allow me to spend a lot of time with my family and occasionally have engaged and diligent students. I’m somewhat satisfied. Would I do this for free? No. But most people have much worse jobs than I do. They get less respect, have less autonomy, less money and work longer hours than I do. They have less intellectual stimulation. Jobs that lots of people find very satisfying are badly paid, incredibly competitive or both. Actors, artists, professors, many people spend a decade or more of their life chasing that dream and never get it.
If you think this is despair I suggest talking to some depressed people. Most people work for money.
I don't understand the reasoning there. It describes your view of your job, but what does that tell us about other people? It states several claims and theories about other people's jobs, but where is any basis? It also says little about their job satisfaction, only what you think of their jobs. Finally, it conflates 'willing to work for free' with job satisfaction, which I don't understand.
I think I do understand your personal view of working, which you are entitled to, but I see no basis for why you think (or I would think) others agree. Also, I have evidence (in the GP) that they overwhelmingly don't and my experience of people also disagrees.
If you get joy from your job that’s great. Good for you. Most people work for money. We can tell because most people stop working when they don’t have to. Their job is not where they get joy in their life. You believe a survey showing people are (somewhat) satisfied with their job shows they get joy from their jobs. I believe it shows they mostly don’t hate their jobs.
As a former homemaker this comes across as tone deaf. From my experience, you might as well have just said, "You can always hang out at a PTA meeting."
Being a homemaker can be incredibly isolating. Homemakers need meaningful adult interaction and relationships that are not centered around their children or exclusive to their spouses.
I’m not talking out of my ass here, it’s based on my experience being a stay at home dad for the past few years, we started seeing the same people over and over as we kept to a routine. I guess your mileage has varied from mine, though.
And yeah, it’s not supposed to be your only social outlet. Catch up with people who you’ve known from other parts of your life.
I apologize if my tone was inappropriate. My mileage definitely varied. I also found myself living without a car in the suburb of a new city with an absentee wife that didn't appreciate any of my sacrifices or my hard work (and I also consulted part time). She couldn't be relied upon for anything other than a paycheck. Obviously these things also played a role.
No worries, and yeah, most of US suburbia seems almost intentionally designed to stifle community formation, it’s pretty bad. We’re lucky that ours seems better than the average in that regard.
Sorry that experience was rough for you, I hope you've gotten to a better place.
> Homemakers need meaningful adult interaction and relationships
So go out and make them? My 2 year old goes where we are, if that activity isn't kid centered that's too fucking bad and kid is gonna have to deal; I have a life too. It's not like having all conversations centered around work at the office is especially meaningful either.
Depends on the kid. I did plenty of quiet waiting on my single mother when I was five, and portable entertainment has gotten a lot more engaging since the mid-90's.
Nannies are of a different social class. Most middle class people are much less likely to have real relationships with people who can’t relate to their problems. Same as rich people tend to have rich friends.
“Talking to someone” isn’t community. Colleagues provide an ersatz community for people who don’t have a real one in their life. You need a steady cast of characters and ideally repeated, purposeful interaction.
If the people employing nannies didn’t have more money than their employees the relationship wouldn’t exist at all. The only way I’m familiar with middle class young women nannying is as au pairs, in other countries. But there are people who nanny for decades. They are not the same social class as their employers.
My own experience of living in Europe is confined to Germany but middle class German girls mostly don’t even work part time jobs in university, never mind taking a year off before university to work as an au pair, in a foreign country. They do not nanny. Spanish friends made it sound like the same was true in Spain too. Students do not have jobs at university.
If you keep to a routine of going to the park daily and spending a couple hours there playing, you’ll almost certainly start seeing the same people over and over.
Having no career advancement is sometimes like not having cancer: a net positive. Most people have no career at all, they retire on the same job (just more "senior") they started with. For them, there is no loss.
Also a stay at home wife was traditionally not isolated from society; in my family one generation ago almost everyone was in that situation and I can tell that social interactions were much stronger and more frequent than my generation.
Recognition? That stuff people look for in Facebook likes, Twitter shares and LinkedIn "achievements"? That is attention seeking, not recognition.
> Having no career advancement is sometimes like not having cancer: a net positive.
I have never heard anyone express or imply that. I don't doubt you feel that way, but is there any evidence that it's widespread?
> Most people have no career at all, they retire on the same job (just more "senior") they started with.
That is almost certainly not true. I believe the evidence says that the great majority switch jobs many times and switch careers several times.
> a stay at home wife was traditionally not isolated from society
I've heard otherwise from homemakers of prior generations - the isolation was one of their primary complaints. And I'm pretty sure I've read about research showing the same. What makes your narrative true?
Note: This is a rough mix of reading Jonathan Haidt's books and my own thoughts.
What America is seeing is basically the result of a culture that only uses one moral value. Jonathan Haidt believes there is a set of moral primitives that all our brains support[0]. All other moral values or rules can be explained in terms of these. He also says that the US (potentially excluding the south) is the most single moral on earth. Particularly the "Liberal Cities" and particularly Universities. That one moral is care vs harm.
Some people want to be particularly moral. In societies the various morals have balanced usage, people will pick different morals to exemplify. Since different morals can give contradicting judgements on the same issue, this results in the net effect of these people being fairly neutral.
In a society with just one moral, all these people end up pushing in the same direction. If society is moving in one direction, then these people need to keep advancing in order to remain particularly moral. Given some specifics of US history, we see this result in the social justice movement we've seen in the last 10 years.
> what explains the relative stability in post-Christian Europe?
Europe, with a few exceptions, hasn't gone as hard at being focused on just a single moral value. They are largely biased towards care vs harm, but still use the other moral values.
> The theory proposes six foundations: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation, and Liberty/Oppression;
I'm curious to learn more about how he concludes that most of the US has coalesced on care/harm, as intuitively I would assume at least fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, and liberty/oppression would also apply as I see them come up a lot in the discourse here in the US.
Could you share some other links about how he concludes that?
I am in agreement with you that Care/Harm is probably not the moral axis most at play in the US.
Liberty/Oppression is the primary axis (see gun control debates, state rights, mask mandates, neo-liberalism, etc, etc) with Fairness/Cheating (billionaires paying more tax, public healthcare for all vs excessive hospital bills, etc, etc) corresponding as the secondary political axis. Nearly all arguments portrayed in media, government, etc, orbit along one or both of these dimensions.
I guess I don't see a particular primary moral axis. I've run workshops on responding to emotional attacks and I would imagine all 5 they listed would apply to most Americans in different ways, so I'm curious why he woukd say there's one and why he said it was care/harm.
A few days late in my reply but I found your response very interesting. I feel that I have fallen into the very glib reactionary narrative I was trying to avoid. Thanks.
It's ok, I'd say it happens to most of us. I wrote an essay (or recorded a podcast episode, I can't remember) the other day that I titled "Blinded by the fight," as I've seen how easily I can lock into a perspective based on the emotions I'm feeling in the moment. Eg, feeling fear of being too public on the internet and getting cancelled/stalked/manipulated can make me blind to the fact that many people on the internet may help me and support me in ways that I would love.
So, maybe a long way to say I'm grateful for what you said and glad we interacted here. Thank you :-)
And pointing to the decline of religion isn't very helpful for us atheists.
I can't really buy into a religion I don't believe in for the sake of making society better. I'd rather try to make society better directly, I don't want to do a "noble lie".
I'll gesture vaguely at "the suburbs". Low trust and alienation describes my childhood in a place where you needed a car to do anything and even when my parents let me wander, there was almost nowhere fun to wander _to_.
I don't have data to back this up, though. Maybe it's just resentment at how my childhood turned out.
> I'll gesture vaguely at "the suburbs". Low trust and alienation describes
I agree with this for sure, and such zoning issues have been pointed to as the root cause of other societal ills dating back to (at least) Jane Jacobs' 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities.[1]
I'm 100% with you on being athiest and not wanting to support religion in my life
but, one thing many religions provide is a social club. Every Sunday and for some religion even more days, you meet up with people socially. Churches have festivals, dances, classes, even singles events that you're encouraged to attend regularly and at which you'll likely make friends and possible more
Vs outside where sure I can join a club or go to a Meetup but some part of that just doesn't seem to hit the same levels as church type stuff. Maybe it's a stronger feeling of obligation to participate. Maybe it's shared beliefs ...
But it's not a the social aspect that does the work. While important, we have social clubs already. NFL on Sundays, adult sports leagues, workplace. We do yoga, pilates, CrossFit, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It's not the social aspect that will save society. It is the moral order pointing a group towards a common source that doesn't just give meaning to one's own personal journey, but that gives a lifelong context and meaning to one's life in relationship with humanity and the cosmos. Otherwise a group is just something members enter and exit at will. This is similarly why family is so powerful. It is governed by an intrinsic relationship that can't be altered. When we call someone "family," regardless of biological status, we are inviting them into a permanent place in our lives unlike more recreational social groups.
The bad suburbs theory sounds plausible, but it has a big problem: it predicts that cities will be less dysfunctional than suburbs, but in reality they are anything but — things are way worse in the cities.
reduced social interaction in a suburban setting could simultaneously explain both the psychological harm to young men and the elevated 'way worse' things in cities.
Aren’t there secular clubs that can have a large social element like rotary clubs or book clubs or even some sports like golf for example?
I guess you could also try joining a church where it’s basically acceptable to be an atheist like the Unitarian Universalist church although that would maybe be too spiritual.
UU, mainline Protestantism, Reform Judaism. Religions that ask for nothing but attendance one day a week and don’t believe in anything uncomfortable for nice university educated people have been collapsing since the 60s.
> Whatever the cause I fully reject the lazy conclusion this is somehow women's fault.
Of course! The problem is not women!
The problem is media, schools, companies, everyone buying into this in a collective delusion.
Men also think this, but unlike women we are even encouraged to strengthen these insane ideas that we are somehow inferior (gets imprisoned more often, less academic success despite supposedly being extremely privileged.)
Right. It’s our fault, that is, men’s. We live in a society in which we we have disproportionately had the power. And this is the result.
But I don’t think it’s really a gender thing, I think it’s a power and money thing. That is, I don’t think mainly white, rich and powerful men set out to disadvantage other men. I think they were more focused on advantaging themselves to the exclusion of everyone else.
What I find interesting isn’t so much why men are doing poorly. Why are women doing better in certain areas? Although progress has been made towards institutional equity, men still have the advantage in most places. Why are women succeeding despite that?
> Right. It’s our fault, that is, men’s. We live in a society in which we we have disproportionately had the power. And this is the result.
I find gender blaming conversation to be reductive. The decline of men and boys is not men's fault nor is it women's fault. Dare I say there's little data to show either way, nor is it really helpful in healing from a dysfunctional society that has failed you on a systemic and individual level.
Even worse, the way some people will wave their hands and use the word "power" to justify why men should be successful is pure misandry and a misunderstanding of the availability and avenues of power. A boy that grows up with an undiagnosed learning challenge is not afforded power or privilege, despite blanketly being regarded as powerful due to their gender. Parallel examples to this are countless.
> Why are women doing better in certain areas?
Easy. Feminism. It's the societal block for the broader representation of a spectrum of views that are women-centric that has significant force in society. They provide programs that are often woman-exclusive, advocate and raise alarms on issues, etc... There is nothing like this for men because modern rhetoric opposes the idea that men can be a victim to much of anything.
The point of the post seems to be, "Maybe stop treating men and boys like the villains in their own story, don't make scarecrows out of other groups as has been historically done, and use positivity to create a culture that men want and strive to be a part of."
Women as an "interest group" have been incredible at PR this last century. Men, on the other hand, have yet to realize that they can't coast on the existing historic momentum and have to start speaking up.
It doesn't help that folks who attempt to represent men's rights are instantly smeared as either pathetic incel losers, or as alt-right oppressor misogynists. There's no in-between that I'm aware of. From what I can tell, shame is the main weapon used against men who claim that men's rights have a justifiable place in society.
No healthy "meninism" exists as of today the same way it does for women, and I suspect this is causing all sorts of problems.
Why do you say that? He's careful in his speech not because he's trying to subtly mislead anyone, but the very same people who attempt to smear him would love to have the opportunity to criticize an incorrect word choice.
Using the term "acolytes" is intellectually dishonest here and shows poor faith. Its conjures images of blind, zealous followers. No one who espouses hate can also truly be his "acolyte". He's publically denounced such individuals multiple times.
Because he seems to spend no time correcting what he'd claim are massive misconceptions among his fans.
Ultimately, Peterson is famous because of reactionary politics. He got attention for opposing legislation protecting trans people and has been riding the "anti-woke" train ever since. That he also has written self help material is just happenstance.
> Because he seems to spend no time correcting what he'd claim are massive misconceptions among his fans.
I don't understand... Are you saying he's already claimed that he's been misunderstood (which seems like the opposite of what you're accusing him of) or are you assuming that this is how he would defend himself if pressed?
FWIW, In his GQ interview he quite clearly rebukes these types of "acolytes".
The anti-woke train has a lot of steam because humans are great at recognizing patterns over time, and are evolved to do this, which is why this stuff eventually reaches WaPo, NYT, et al.
Regardless of whether that is true, I'm not talking about the merits of Peterson's "anti-wokeness". Instead I'm pointing out that it is the foundational component of his following and he actively cultivates this.
I think Peterson would say he is simply the beneficiary of handling it correctly when Woke Culture attacks him, and his public persona with respect to wokeness has been shaped more by their actions than his. Personally I'm not sure - is there a clear action of his that you'd point to as cultivating an anti-woke bent or is your assessment based more on outcomes?
Feminism isn’t about putting women ahead of men though. It’s about creating equity. Feminism is needed because of the ongoing power imbalance between the sexes. There are still very few arenas in which men do not enjoy the advantage.
The men’s rights stuff is toxic because it’s about conflict. It’s about pushing back against feminism, which is essentially fighting against equity. With that said, I see nothing wrong with fighting for the interests of boys and men. I, too, want to see boys succeed (I have a son!) But it’s not about his rights. It’s about his opportunities and the support and so on, that he gets.
It isn’t feminism that is holding boys and men back, it’s that we live in an inequitable society. That makes feminists allies, not enemies.
I agree with your parent commenter, kodah, that gender blaming is reductive. I recognize that the way I phrased my views could have been better: perhaps a more constructive way of putting it is to say that the present situation is one that men have both the responsibility to improve, and the power to do so.
This post pretty much perfectly reflects their point.
"Arguing for men's rights is bad because it's all about squashing women, otherwise they'd be arguing for women's rights, which is actually just arguing for everyone's rights." This just isn't a reasonable way to frame it at all.
There aren't many places where men have a clear and systematic disadvantage in society, but there are some and arguing that there shouldn't be is not all about conflict.
Feminism is never about equity or equality between sexes. The most straight forward and correct definition of feminism is women wanting to be equal to or surpass rich and powerful men. Women never wanted to be equal to average men. Average men are disposable. Women had it better than men almost everywhere since the beginning.
Feminists are out rightly man hating. They are not allies of men/boys. They start killallmen trend, they started endfatherday, feminists support not jailing women for anything, NOW, the largest feminist org in the us oppose shared parenting, feminists in Canada shut down male dv centers....
Some of them. Many are reasonable. I even have one to thank for doing as well as I have done.
The problem is I can't see many of them distance themselves from the toxic elements you mention below.
I'm squarely in the camp that women and men are born with equal worth but different abilities.
I also think society and every human has a duty to protect the weaker ones from abuse by the stronger ones, but unlike many others I won't tolerate abuse of men and especially young boys as a punishment for what other men have done long ago.
I don't really agree with you except I do think pop culture "feminism" is becoming much more of "man hate" club in the last couple years due to social media amplifying our worst impulses.
The killallmen trend ESPECIALLY is the reason I don't like calling myself a feminist anymore.
As the mother of two young children, a boy and a girl, it scares me to think to think people would hate my son just because he's a boy.He's 13 and is struggling with depression. It's become very clear to me that many young girls his age really enjoy repeating that horrible horrible slogan as a form of bullying.
I've been really thinking about enrolling him into a private school over this madness.
>Feminism isn’t about putting women ahead of men though. It’s about creating equity.
This is demonstrably incorrect. In our society, men are underrepresented in all kinds of quality of life metrics. They die younger. They comprise the vast majority of the homeless. The vast majority of workplace death and injury. They work much longer hours. They commit suicide at much higher rates. They have much higher rates of unemployment. They're failing, relatively, at every level of the educational system. They're far overrepresented in endemic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes; as well as mental health problems like depression and addiction. I could go on for a long time.
This isn't to say women don't have their own unique issues - like sexual assault. Feminism advocates for only issues in which women experience issues, and none of the issues I listed above. The net effect is observable today: areas in which women underperformed are now normalising at that "equity" level. But all of the many ways in which men are underperforming are getting worse. Any movement which purports to aim for equity cannot only focus on one side of the equation. Feminism doesn't aim for equity or equality. It is an advocacy movement for women. And that's okay. Just don't lie and say it has anything to do with equity or equality. Don't try to prevent men from having their own movement to try to improve some of the horrific ways in which men are suffering today in Western nations.
I'm having trouble understanding if you are arguing in good faith here. Surely you are not suggesting that men die younger than women because women have worked to create a society with greater gender equity? Of the list of factors for why men die earlier than women in this article [1], not a single one can reasonably be attributed to that.
> The vast majority of workplace death and injury.
Where do you see gender inequity in this? The top 10 professions dominated by women are occupations like preschool and kindergarten teachers, dental hygienists, childcare workers and hairdressers. [2] We can agree that these occupations are less likely to kill or injure you than construction, aviation and firefighting. But it's certainly not the case that feminism has worked to keep men out of the safer jobs dominated by women. If you want to start a meninism movement that works toward creating more male preschool teachers or personal care workers, good luck to you.
> They commit suicide at much higher rates.
Women are much more likely to attempt suicide than men. But men are "better" at getting the job done. This seems to reflect what we tend to see, which is that men are more likely to be violent and to kill things than women. Again, is this because of gender inequity? And are you not concerned that so many more women want to kill themselves?
> They have much higher rates of unemployment.
This is just flat-out not true. In the US, right now, the unemployment rate for men is 4.10%, for women it is 3.90%. In December, it was 3.90% for both sexes. [3]
> They're far overrepresented in endemic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes; as well as mental health problems like depression and addiction.
True for heart disease and diabetes, not true for depression. Women experience depression at twice the rate of men! [4]
The broader point I would make here is that equity != equality. Equity is about creating equal opportunity, not equal outcomes. The measure of gender equity isn't that we have the same number of female fighter jet pilots as male. It's whether a woman faces structural difficulties that prevent her from becoming a fighter pilot if she wishes to pursue that career.
That is still not the case in today's society. You wrote, 'areas in which women underperformed are now normalising at that "equity" level'. In the US, women earn about 20% less than men do. [5] How is that "normalised"? Think about how much money that is across the entire workforce! It's a damn shame that men are dying of addiction and heart disease, but show me how that is the result of gender inequity. I think it has far more to do with class and race.
You're performing a sleight of hand with your point about so-called "equity": effectively, you define worse outcomes that happen to women as the results of a lack of equity, and thus worthy political consideration, but worse outcomes that happen to men are just the natural state of the world and thus treating them as political is inappropriate or even misogynistic.
Holding a bunch of other factors constant, men would live the same length of time as women do: monks have comparable lifespans to nuns. Men die earlier because we work longer hours at shittier jobs and are socially punished for asking for help from others and aren't given the space for self care.
As far as men dying earlier on the job because they're choosing to be firefighters instead of kindergarten teachers, you simply ignore the discrimination male teachers face. In your "equity" framework, you'd demand men to just buck up and accept it and even deny it's social as opposed to a series of coincidental discriminations by individuals. The fact that you can't even see how your categories don't map to reality is a key tell for being captured by an ideology, in the social/Gramscian sense.
Lastly, you repeat the "wage gap" myth: women earn less than men because men work more hours than women. The rallying cry used to be "equal pay for equal work," but it seems to now have shifted to "equal pay for less work." (Despite that same excess work being what's killing men and destroying their bodies.)
The other user accused you of a sleight of hand, but I'm going to accuse you of outright duplicity. You argue that men's issues are just the way of the world, while women's issues are the fault of men or society. If you'd like to engage in an honest discussion you have to apply the same logical framework to both sides of this problem. If you will not, what is the point of even attempting such a discussion? Everyone in attendance will understand you to be facetious.
> "The men’s rights stuff is toxic because it’s about conflict. It’s about pushing back against feminism, which is essentially fighting against equity. With that said, I see nothing wrong with fighting for the interests of boys and men. I, too, want to see boys succeed (I have a son!) But it’s not about his rights. It’s about his opportunities and the support and so on, that he gets."
See the thing about this is even if you genuinely try to not make it about conflict in my experience people project conflict on to you. I once wrote an article about men being disadvantaged when it came to access to resources when escaping domestic violence, despite making up a significant proportion of victims according to data gathered by the Australian bureau of statistics (I'm Australian and was writing about the situation here).
A lot of government sources also presented domestic violence data in a way that was straight up misleading i.e. "31% of women experiencing assault experienced it from a partner vs 4.4% of men", totally ignoring that men were vastly more likely to be assaulted by strangers and a better comparison is the total number of men and women (73,800 women vs 21,200). Which works out to a little over than 1in 5 people surveyed who were assaulted by a partner being men, which despite still being significantly less certainly doesn't seem as minimal as the numbers when presented as a proportion of total assaults suffered. (note this happened nearly 10 years ago so these numbers are from a survey done in 2006).
My article discussed this kind of presentation and how it made male victims of DV more invisible than they should be, and how services for them weren't present (including some government services having "for men" pages which only had advice for how abusers can stop being abusive).
I legitimately had editors at places argue with me and suggest I was ignoring facts to have an anti woman agenda by quoting some of the numbers I was criticising in my article. That's how pervasive some of this stuff is. That you can say "hey look, this place is using very selective language when when framing the data, look if even using their own sources you can see how this creates an unfair comparison to minimise male victims" and then have someone use the exact numbers being discussed to tell you that you are being anti woman.
This is a sore spot for me because as a child I suffered domestic abuse, and I find the idea that there wouldn't have been resources for me if I had suffered it as an adult scary.
And I especially object to the idea that men's rights stuff is inherently about conflict. It certainly is for some people, but I made a genuinely constructive attempt to discuss a problem that in no way blamed women (my sister suffered the same abuse I did, I certainly wouldn't want her to not have resources!) and I had multiple people accuse me of being sexist.
It’s true feminism provides a second set of safety net for women that does not exist for men. Also the rhetoric in media as part of feminism is that women are better than men at everything and a large percentage of people believe it.
Might have something to do with women (speaking very broadly) being more social than men. Social connection provide a framework for cooperation and competition, without which some men drift aimlessly.
This is just an off-the-cuff hypothesis, though, not researched in any way (at least by me).
> But I don’t think it’s really a gender thing, I think it’s a power and money thing. That is, I don’t think mainly white, rich and powerful men set out to disadvantage other men. I think they were more focused on advantaging themselves to the exclusion of everyone else.
> What I find interesting isn’t so much why men are doing poorly. Why are women doing better in certain areas?
You answered you own question. The """men in power""" spend more time helping women like them than helping men different from them (in terms of money and power).
In my opinion, women have a better sense of survival than men.
I know that if I hit a rough patch in my life, I will certainly make myself miserable and would not care what happens to me. I know it by is not rational, but that would explain also probably why wars are fought by men.
Add the fact that society are blaming men for pretty much everything going wrong, it does not surprise me that men are getting loose
You have the power? Break the law, you get more jail time than women. Get a divorce, women automatically get the children and half of your assets and you pay alimony. They cry rape and you are instantly guilty. But you are right, women aren't the problem. You are.
> what explains the relative stability in post-Christian Europe?
Politics is the new religion insofar as it develops moral frameworks and makes people abide by them while convincing them they are making the "rational" choice. This is informed substantially by Enlightenment-era philosophies and is the major component in modern consent manufacturing.
"Rational" in scare quotes because good luck converting questions of morality into questions of rationality.
Yep. A total lack of belief to the point of nihilism is a crisis of meaning, to be sure, but it tends to collapse towards either hedonism or depression rather than monomaniacal infliction of harm on the rest of the world. True determined harm usually requires ideological zeal.
> True determined harm usually requires ideological zeal.
That's not what I think motivated all the US school shootings in the last 25 years.
Ideological zeal that pursues actively harming others is something I don't think the US has much of, culturally speaking. No one preaches "those people need to die" or "we need to harm those people".
It's certainly worth considering mass shootings. They're unsettling and the apparently growth in frequency is alarming, and I think you could fairly attribute them to personal crises in meaning that lead to a path of resentment ("if I'm suffering, why shouldn't others suffer too?") that does germinate into a plan to inflict arbitrary harm.
Still, as far as I can tell, even with the increase in frequency these are not common events. ~600 per year. No number of them is rare enough, but imagine if even 1 in 1000 of the estimated number of Americans who suffer from major depression (around 16 million) did a mass shooting. Running amok may be the exception that proves the rule.
I'd also point out that ideological zeal may play a role here. Ideology seems to underly policy of not only refusing to examine potential further restrictions on access but to broadly increasing access to arms/gear that make them easier. Characterizations of these events as mental health crises don't seem to lead to social policy supporting mental health. Certainly not the whole story, but probably plays a role in paving the way for harm.
I would argue mass shooters do, more often than not, believe strongly in something. It might not be religion or even a traditional ideology and the shooter might not even really understand themselves what they are experiencing but I bet if you dug in deep you would see some pretty extreme views on the world, themselves or their fellow man.
Mass shootings are a horror that the US is unwilling and unable to confront. Far too many people would simply prefer to listen to Alex Jones and imagine that it's all fake.
> No one preaches "those people need to die" or "we need to harm those people".
.. yes they do? It's not usually spelled out in those words, at least not on the "respectable" side of the preaching, but when there's a mass shooter manifesto the shooter usually makes clear their influences and sometimes gives them thanks and citations.
It's also often done in the past tense. Whenever there's a controversial shooting, hundreds of commentators will turn up to say "that person deserved to be shot".
Well there's no such thing as 'morality', there's mostly power and sometimes law.
The golden rule is a pretty easy starting point for determining which rules are fair.
> The "Lump of Labor" fallacy is just that, a fallacy. Economic gains are not zero-sum.
Frankly, I'm very tired of debunking the zero-sum trope.
Not only are many things in the economy zero-sum, in the case of labor, even if the economy is humming at 150%, it's trivial to imagine a scenario where the man and the woman are both earning 75% of what they would have without the other sex in the labor force. Both are worse off, yet the capital owners are better off and it gives the illusion that everything is going great.
The illusion is so good that we've divorced productivity from wage for 50 years, made tons of women miserable and no one so much as batted an eye.
And in many places, housing has effectively become zero-sum, due to pressure from large capital investors and zoning restrictions on building new housing. In these scenarios, even modest increases in demand can skyrocket the housing/rental prices beyond what is sustainable by the young population.
> Whatever the cause I fully reject the lazy conclusion this is somehow women's fault.
You're right to reject it, but the zero-sum argument is absolutely orthogonal to the issue. It's also completely incorrect and trivially debunked by anyone with a shred of economic common sense.
> Not only are many things in the economy zero-sum, in the case of labor, even if the economy is humming at 150%, it's trivial to imagine a scenario where the man and the woman are both earning 75% of what they would have without the other sex in the labor force. Both are worse off, yet the capital owners are better off and it gives the illusion that everything is going great.
> The illusion is so good that we've divorced productivity from wage for 50 years, made tons of women miserable and no one so much as batted an eye.
Pop-feminism is too carefully-enshrined to speak openly about this, but I'm pretty sure it's absolutely correct.
> Not only are many things in the economy zero-sum, in the case of labor, even if the economy is humming at 150%, it's trivial to imagine a scenario where the man and the woman are both earning 75% of what they would have without the other sex in the labor force. Both are worse off, yet the capital owners are better off and it gives the illusion that everything is going great.
Can you elaborate further on this please, I'm not sure I understand your point (genuinely).
It's a valid point, but I have at least three objections:
1) Everybody starts out as single, so young men start out with a sharply reduced salary due to higher supply, which makes it harder for them to become financially secure and find a partner (which would then decrease their costs).
2) There are many extra costs associated with a two-income household, and many more negative effects from a two-income-as-the-default economy. Elizabeth Warren write The Two-Income Trap on this very subject.
3) It's quite possible that it did halve prices, or came surprisingly close! Have you seen those productivity vs wages graphs? Productivity increased by about 245%, wages increased by 110% (since 1950). That means wages are now at 60% of what they were, relative to productivity. That's not quite half, and the switch to a two-income expectation can't be the only factor, but it's close. Then again, there is still a significant workforce participation gap between men and women, even in the USA (69% vs. 57%), so even in ideal circumstances I wouldn't expect a perfect halving.
1) I don't quite understand, what does being single have to do with anything and why do men start out with a sharply reduced salary? Or do you mean relative to the men only workforce?
2) I'll check it out.
3) 1890 to 1950 has also seen big productivity growth and I doubt the wages kept pace.
And there's also the immigration fallacy. At least in their last issue The Economist has the decency of mentioning the "de facto lack of incoming migrants" as one of the main 3 (I think they were 3) causes behind the US's current privileged position for its workers, but that definitely wasn't the case until very recently. In other words, no matter how mocked it was, there was a definite truth behind "Dey took 'er jerbs!".
The Economist quote:
> Immigration, which plunged during Donald Trump’s nativist presidency, has sunk further, to less than a quarter of the level in 2016
Relative stability might be too presumptuous. Far right politics in Europe is playing better now than it has in generations, AFAIU. Largely for the same socio-economic reasons it has in the U.S. and elsewhere. The rise of conservative populism is a global phenomenon, which is strong evidence for it having a shared origin, such as trade-induced labor dislocation, the rise of social media, etc.
I feel like at least being allowed to state that things are as bad as they are (outside anonymous forums like this) would be a great step towards getting closer to solving things. Right now we're still in a state where we have to keep a faked optimism everywhere we go which is suffocating.
An economy that increasingly gets worse and worse for newer generations? The destruction of the planet? The decline of Western Democracy? I guess if you bury your head in the sand and never pay attention to anything then I guess it's not that bad.
You are talking about broad trends that, first of all, we have all the tools to fix, and second, probably don't affect you much individually right now (and maybe not ever). Again, don't sit home thinking about how terrible it is, just get out and start moving.
> if you bury your head in the sand
Conversation doesn't need to be so bad either; we could have a constructive one.
If you are American then you are living in one of the richest countries in the world at a time of amazing abundance. People really don't know how good they have it in developed Western countries.
Do you mean for white people? Last I checked, no one else's interests were ever substantially represented until very recently. And it still needs a lot of work.
I appreciate this. I've worked for the last 10 years in helping us get better at saying how we're feeling and yet we still hold so much in. Projecting one thing yet feeling something different on the inside.
> The China Shock combined with America's threadbare social safety net starts looking more salient.
The threadbare safety net is definitely a huge driving force on that.
However, what we need to get past is "Your job is your worth." This needs to end. There are simply not enough "good jobs" to go around.
We have changed from the primary employers being US Steel, GM, etc. (manufacturing) to the primary employers being WalMart, Amazon, and UPS (logistics). The quality of job loss in changing from manufacturing to logistics is gigantic. And no matter how much manufacturing you bring back (which I think we ought to do as well), you will not easily reverse that.
Mmm, what stability are you referring to? I'm 34 and pretty much all men I know is in pretty bad situation.
I bet here in HN most people has a somewhat functional family, some savings and decent wages. It's not my case or the case of most of the people that I know.
And yes, in general men seem to be doing worse than women, although Spain may be a bit of an outlier here.
By my own account, I've grown poor. Meaning, that there has been times where I didn't have to eat. Not like I couldn't afford food that I liked, just that there was nothing in the fridge, no money to go buy anything, and I was queued for help (which by the way, it was almost all the time provided by NGOs...).
In the long way of getting out of poverty, I was offered barely any help, and, in hindsight, pretty poor guidance and counseling. I should have been told to study IT-related stuff given my predispositions or some trade, but oh well, it is what it is.
Now, of course I also had female friends in a similar situation. I'd say they had better counseling, better opportunies and above everything, which is a taboo here in Spain, there where more resources for them AND they had an easier time finding low-wage jobs, which is fairly important when you're at the botton of the society.
Now some of them are public employees. Which is kind of surprising given that I can't see how I would be able to study about two years full time (it's pretty difficult to get a position) or any of my friends. I mean, I know how that happend, they've got money that I can't qualify for because I have a penis. There are plenty of places where being a female gives you extra points by law, so I guess some of that benefited them too.
The major difference between me and my male friends is that I've got an stable contract in a telco contractor when I was about 24 (HelpDesk). I kept costs low and saved as much as I could. This saved my life. Liking computers saved my life. If it wasn't for that, I'd be who knows where, maybe homeless or in jail.
And I'm here now with 34 learning programming (thank you so much of all the volunteers that make this possible, in particular for the folks of Stanford Code in Place and The Odin Project).
Does this sound bad? Well, I know, I think 2 guys that are better off than me. One had a working class but functional family, and went to study physics, so good guidance and enough money. The other one had a hard time but eventually did the equivalent of community college and works as a consultant for wireless solutions. Everyone else is fucked up, and if look at the numbers in Spain I bet it will back up my observations.
While a lot of the west is “post Christian” in that very little actual worship happens, the mythology which is the lens people view reality though is very much pervasive.
The biggest examples are Christian sexual morality and the separation of things into good vs evil. Look at all of our popular culture or politics and find examples of struggles which aren’t some form of a struggle between good and evil, good guys vs bad guys. It might strike people as odd that in many other religions and cultures this idea is much much less dominant.
You focus on sexual morality, but I don't think Christian sexual morality is particularly unusual. (Confucian sexual mores look a lot like Christian sexual mores). To me what makes the cultural background of Christianity unusual is that it focuses on individuals striving to follow abstract virtues. 'Sinners' recognizing that they have done harm and then seeking to do less harm. The lazy believer is slothful, and so confesses their faults to the priest (acknowledging personal faults), repents (promises to act differently) and expects their god to hold them accountable (feels obligation to follow through). Repeat once per week for ten years and they will either become industrious or neurotic. Same thing with all the seven deadly sins. So the cultural focus is on individuals adopting pro-social abstract virtues. It seems to me that in other cultures there is less focus on abstract virtues, and more emphasis on social heirarchies (son obeying Father) or specific actions that must be taken (one must pray 5 times per day and follow a specific diet). One might also argue that the history of belief in personal sin makes European cultures more self-depreciating, but I feel the Japanese are more self-depreciating than the Europeans.
> One might also argue that the history of belief in personal sin makes European cultures more self-depreciating, but I feel the Japanese are more self-depreciating than the Europeans.
I think that has more to do with collectivism vs individualism, which itself may be to do with hierarchy and community. Those values may have been endowed through religion over time, but I don't know enough about Shintoism or Buddhism to comment on if it influenced Japan into becoming a collective focused society.
>The "Lump of Labor" fallacy is just that, a fallacy. Economic gains are not zero-sum.
One of the consequences of women entering the labor force is banks will lend on the basis of two salaries instead of one. In a world of constrained housing supply (which seems to be most of the west) this means prices will be bid up to match the joint income.
The purpose of a man's life is meaning and the search for it. For years, centuries even, this meaning in a man's life was provided by being a provider. This order was enforced through society. And you can use society and religion interchangeably here because the distinction between the two is only a century or two old. And this order enforced the role of a child-bearer and nurturer to women. Obviously, such an order was very restrictive (especially to women) and that people would rebel against is easy to comprehend.
This state of affairs continued till the 1980s. Since then, multiple forces have led to a perfect storm - where men have no meaning/purpose in their life, and the desire to have meaning often signals that you want to go back to that older society.
But that's wrong. The people who desire to go back are actually who are rebelling; the rest of the men are either locked up in prison, or overdosing on opioids, or being incels or numbing themselves with video games. The failure of modern liberalism to acknowledge this is basically being an ostrich while the forest is on fire.
Why do you get to say what someone's purpose is? Why is being a provider necessarily the purpose in life? People might have done it before (I'm dubious of sweeping, golden-age claims like that), but for almost all of human history we lived short, brutal, illiterate lives as hunter-gatherers. I don't feel that is necessarily my purpose in life.
Find a meaning that is important to you; be a provider if you like. IMHO, people are spending a lot of time getting wrapped up in these questions, debating what is possible, participating in trendy despair - it's all a parlor game, like worrying about whether your car will start because you don't understand the physics and some people online say it can't possibly. Just stop talking to them and they will fade quickly; get up, turn the ignition, and go.
> The people who desire to go back are actually who are rebelling; the rest of the men are either locked up in prison, or overdosing on opioids, or being incels or numbing themselves with video games.
There are a lot of males - most of them, really - doing other things.
> Why do you get to say what someone's purpose is? Why is being a provider necessarily the purpose in life?
Because this was the case for the last 10,000 years and you cannot change it overnight, unless you are in Soviet Russia and send people to Gulag for re-education. It is built into men's biological nature to be provider (like most mammals in the nature), you cannot change it because society decided less than a generation ago that this is no longer needed.
And also because many, if not most women are still expecting men to be the provider. Biology dictates that women need a provider (resources and security) to bring a child to this world and that provider should not be the government (which destroys the idea of family and the society with it).
I asked someone up thread, but what's stopping males being a provider? The original suggestion was a change from traditional roles is the issue, but I don't think that's it.
Economics. There's not enough jobs for men in society. Women are preferred for most entry level office jobs, industrial jobs were always the go-to for uneducated men, but those have been mostly eliminated. High achievers will always do well, but by definition not everyone can be a high achiever.
I think this is a more significant factor than the suggestion of changes in traditional roles (upthread) or decline in religion (mentioned elsewhere).
Another one might be a sense that getting ahead from the lower class is harder given wages versus house prices. I imagine that works against any motivation some people have.
Yes. This is the key. Provider jobs have disappeared for a huge section. Also, implicit in this is that the man is the higher earner. Rage against it, but a man's attractiveness to a woman does notch up a lot of points if they are the higher earner. Basically, if you can provide. And the chances for that have gone drastically down due to a confluence of multiple economic and cultural factors.
Women who earn more also are more popular, IME. We all are familiar with the 'provider' stereotype for males, but that could be an artefact of the fact that more males were providers. That is, the fact that it happened in the past doesn't mean it is somehow necessary or inevitable (like being a hunter-gatherer, which is most of our evolutionary past).
It would be interesting to see evidence that compares the affect of wealth/income on the popularity of males and females, and also to control for social conditioning, especially of older people. Remember that part of the claim (which I am dubious of) is that it has something to do with biology.
> Rage against it
Please stop raging against whomever you are imagining and talk with me.
It's more of a dead-end job, in offices that still use administrative assistants (many fewer), and it was women back when they couldn't get better jobs. The entry level job for being a CEO, attorney, software developer, etc. isn't administrative assistant!
My mother became an accountant by being a secretary (administrative assistant) first. Her path went from secretary -> doing data entry -> employer paying for her to take accounting classes at night -> becoming a certified accountant. I know many other similar stories.
> The entry level job for being a CEO
Very few people are CEOs, it's not relevant when talking about jobs that uneducated people can do with potential upwards mobility
> attorney
A female assistant going from secretary -> paralegal -> attorney is definitely a thing.
> software developer
Is a rather specialised job in the grand scheme of things.
The point is, there IS NO entry level white collar work available to uneducated males. And all white collar work offers potential socioeconomic mobility.
It's not really. I've seen multiple admin assistants go to something in the HR Associate level. Once you're at the HR associate level, you have the whole HR/Talent org career ladder available to you.
It's not always the case, but if someone is organized, professional, and helpful, there are a lot of roles that will fit them and smart organizations move them around internally and hire a new assistant.
That's what's hindering males on dating apps. I'm asking what's stopping people being a provider, because I'm guessing the decline in education level, job motivation and whatever else isn't just single men. Upthread was the implication that "providing" was a near-biological urge (I disagree) so it should be an option providing for family or for community or whatever else.
I think the issue is motivation and there are other causes, personally.
What's stopping these men being a provider for themselves, their partner, family or children?
I'd agree that meaning/purpose is part of this puzzle, but there are still children needing a provider and partners who either expect a fulltime breadwinner or find some other balance.
My guess is the perceived opportunity of improving your lot in life has declined and males, on the whole, have struggled with motivation as a result. I suspect housing affordability is part of that.
So my family is very liberal. When I mentioned to my trans-brother that my goal in life is to be a well-earning father who is able to provide for my family, I got called 'priviledged', told I have an outdated mindset, and demeaned as a wannabe patriarch. I didn't say anything about limiting the opportunities of my wife, but bigoted sentiments were read into my desire to support a family. This despite the fact that my father was very much the supportive and calm leader, and we turned out very well as a result.
It seems to me that in one generation we have gone from fatherhood and motherhood being high-status to being low-status. But maybe that is part of this very liberal bubble.
They're not giving you a very charitable reading. Easy enough to ignore. And their response doesn't stop you from putting yourself into that position - to provide for yourself, for a partner, for parents, children, etc. Just remember that money isn't the only way you provide, so maybe "well-earning" is what gave them the wrong impression.
> They're not giving you a very charitable reading.
Good point. I hadn't noticed before, but that has been a repeated problem with my brother. When he transitioned, my parent's difficulty changing pronouns was interpreted as a sign of their lack of support. Well no, they're just trying to break 25 years of conditioning ...
Let's split out your "purpose" vs "role" statements more precisely.
You say the purpose of a man's life is meaning and the search for it. Do you use "man" to mean both men and women there, or are you simply ignoring women?
You say historically the role of being a provider provided (ahem) that meaning to men. You say the role of being a child-bearer and nurturer was forced on women and don't comment on what this meant re: purpose or meaning there.
So I have a lot of questions I don't see answered in your claims:
1) What is stopping men today from providing? I'm surrounded by male coworkers who (in)famously make more than many women, including most of their own spouses. Some of those partners are not employed, even. So clearly this is not a universal, but specific to a subset of men.
2) Are those men who are not doing "traditional providing" being provided for or are they simply solo? Being a bachelor is of course not new; living off your parents is also not new, but maybe more common today (?), being provided for by a woman would be relatively newer.
3) What is preventing men who are not providers from finding other meaning while being provided for?
4) If we want to go back in time, wouldn't the answer just be "man the fuck up and get over it"?
I'm pretty sure "modern liberalism" acknowledges that there is a problem (at the extreme level, incels who go on mass shootings are obviously seen as a problem), I think your diagnosis is just in a minority.
What data point supports your claims that society has broken men versus something like "the problem is that today many men have adjusted poorly to lessened dependence on them, and increased competition with them, and this is made worse by self-reinforcing downward-spiral bubbles like the "incel" wing of the internet." That the societal failing is actually "toxic masculinity," etc, which gives boys ridiculous expectations and standards to meet in order to feel successful. Not everyone can excel! Only 5% of people will be in the top 5% by definition! Pushing boys towards achievement and material success if doomed to failure.
That's not even getting into e.g. how suicide/opiod addiction/etc are hardly restricted to un-or-underemployed men who aren't in traditional gender roles!
Or how a major complaint of young women today in the dating world is "young men are fuckboys who have no interest in a long term thing" which is quite the opposite observed behavior from "trying to be a provider"...
Not 100% sure, but the fact that you specified cis and hetero is part of the problem. These 2 terms are a strong indication of some recent changes that are probably having a big influence in this problem.
> are probably having a big influence in this problem
Or maybe they're orthogonal. Or maybe the influence is going in the other direction. Or maybe it's a feedback loop (most likely). Or maybe they're both caused by overlapping upstream causes.
In any case, a return to a society that acknowledges and appreciates gender and sexual minorities is probably a positive. (A return, in that at least one ancient civilization had a place for these folks, namely the Sumerians).
My observation is that we are going to have a radical rebalancing of who reproduces and who doesn’t.
Lot of men and women who are generally not too motivated to seek out a companion, lose weight, put in the work to make it happen just…won’t pass on genetics.
Children are a lot of work and energy.
I’m highly introverted and high earning. My wife was the aggressor in my case. She pretty much made it all happen.
I think the ball is firmly in the woman’s court now. Women have most of the advantages (education, societal promotion, fit in better with our institutions) yet i see so many women who are generally apathetic about getting into a relationship at all.
There is also a massive obesity problem. If people have trouble getting attracted to each other versus the alternatives, makes it really challenging to find the motivation.
I wonder what all these effects will have over the next 200 years? If you play out the changing “relationship market conditions,” it seems like men and women with different personalities and dispositions towards seeking out relationships in order to reproduce will have a significant effect on the species.
Will people who were genetically predisposed towards being thin, hard working, open minded to approaching members of opposite sex and forming deep attachments resulting in children become more frequent?
On a genetic and evolutionary perspective I’m super interested - we know that IQ has been rising, but what else will change?
In some societies such as Korea I am told, women are sometimes or more frequently the aggressor. I wonder if this becomes more common.
> Lot of men and women who are generally not too motivated to seek out a companion, lose weight, put in the work to make it happen
I don't think you need these things to find a partner and have children.
Just go to a maternity ward. It sounds like you think everyone there is highly motivated, physically fit, and dedicated to working on relationships. They aren't. They're just normal people with a range of human flaws and a regular cross-section of society. Fat, thin, lazy, hard-working, professional, unemployed, etc.
IDK starting the baby making process isn't terribly difficult once one has a partner. It's the carrying to term and everything after that is a lot of time, money, and energy.
Some folks will struggle more with the partnering aspect than others. Or mustering the will and resources to begin parenting.
Spend some time reading about infertility at the start of the baby making process and I think you’ll find that it can terribly difficult. Especially as you progress into your mid/late 30s (women). And it is that starting process that can also cost lots of money, time, and energy.
As two-kid dad, I definitely agree that the time, energy, and cost of delivering and raising kids is HUGE. It's not something that you should undervalue at all.
But I think we have this unfortunate habit of severely underweighting the start process and things that aren't obvious.
You probably experience lots of stress over the span of raising a kid (or more). Other people see that in the classic screaming-kid seemingly-helpless-parent visual. You may also experience that same stress, perhaps cumulatively more, just from the start because it's (1) VERY stressful when it doesn't work, and (2) a situation that can drag on for what feels like forever.
So, everyone commiserates over work it is to raise a kid but few people talk openly or at all about how hard it is to start the process of having a kid.
That's why I mentioned boarding schools, you don't have to live there to send your kids to it and also it might be good for them, nurture independence and a lot of experience with a foreign culture while also giving you flexibility and easing the burden of child raising.
> The selection process is on Tinder, not the maternity ward, and the bar is brutally high there for men.
I’ve been seeing this exact trope repeated more and more on HN lately: Some vague assertion that Tinder is the only place for matchmaking and that only a tiny number of men are getting all of the matches.
It’s an objectively ridiculous claim for anyone who has experience in the real world where, yes, even “normal” men can find partners. It doesn’t even stand up to the most basic tests of logic.
Are only attractive people getting married and having kids? Of course not.
So what is actually going on here? Is this some talking point being repeated on some corner of the internet that resonates with a subset of people who view the world through their cell phones instead of getting out and interacting with real other people? It’s an objectively absurd assertion, yet it gets repeated with great confidence in a lot of online discussions.
Genuinely asking, roughly how old are you? I'm in my early-mid twenties and of the ~100 people I keep in touch with my age range from high school, there has been one child born (by accident if the rumors are true) and zero marriages. Of the dozen or so people I keep in regular contact with I've gathered that this is not for lack of trying, either. Obviously there is bias here as this is all anecdotal, but I'm very curious as to how unique this situation is.
That was the same for me in my mid-20s. By my mid 30s, vast majority are married with children. People are waiting a little longer than the last generation, but it's still happening as normal.
I'm close to your age than some of the other commenters, but I also find that marriage/child statistic unsurprising, not least given the events of the last two years, and the assumption of a vaguely affluent, coastal peer group.
Mid-20s is nothing, especially if your peer group is college educated. My wife and I married at 25 a bit over 20 years ago. Even at that time, we were the first of our friends group to marry. We had our first child right about the time I turned 30. We were only the 2nd of our peer group to have a child. Today, all of our friends from back then are married (a few divorced) with kids.
The trend has been only towards waiting longer in the 20+ years since we were ahead of the curve.
If you're from an affluent background - being married in your 20s is weird. If you're single in your 30s - you should be worried but it's too late. By then - most of your friends will likely marry.
It actually matches the real data and studies which have been done on the topic. When men ranked photos of women on a scale of 1-10, the majority of woman were ranked in the 5 category which would indicate the average person is seen as average. While when woman ranked photos of men, the majority of men were ranked bellow 5. The data that has come out of online dating is pretty damning and says a lot more than some anecdotes about some normal men finding partners.
I wish I remembered the exact study from a few years ago because there are more details which were even more depressing but I'm less certain on.
The idea that only the most attractive people are entering relationships with each other while everyone else, regardless of gender, is staying single is ridiculous.
> It’s an objectively ridiculous claim for anyone who has experience in the real world where, yes, even “normal” men can find partners. It doesn’t even stand up to the most basic tests of logic.
> Are only attractive people getting married and having kids? Of course not.
Have you considered that men are just having less partners than women? Many more men go childless (25%) than women (14%). As far as we can tell - men are having less sex overall. It's obvious that the majority of men eventually get a partner and settle down with someone but that's generally less than the number of partners a woman has before she settles down.
I find it weird that you didn't think about that. Men and women generally have very different journeys to their destination. One is usually more consistent in sexual experience whereas the other is wildly varying. The amount of men who have 50+ sexual partners completely dominates the amount of women who do. This doesn't mean that men are having more sex than women though. This means that a few men are having more sex than most women.
This is what feeds into the whole online discussion. It's obvious to anyone who has done online dating or talked to the women. They'll be like, "Oh yeah, I matched with that guy too." It's clear that many women are sleeping with the same select group of men. I don't know how this is a surprise to anyone...
Did you date during Covid? I did. Every possible avenue to meet partners was closed except...apps. i am extremely active and extroverted, but yoga classes went online, the gym shut down, the bars closed, concerts were cancelled. Dance studios shut their doors. How exactly were your expecting dating to work for the last few years?
I would not underestimate how much the process of dating and meeting romantic partners has shifted because of that, even as we re-open. the stigma is mostly gone and there is little reason not to at least be present there.
I used to think that. I genuinely did. I thought that the bar was all the way up in space and that it’s impossible to reach it. I was pretty lonely.
Of course, I used to also think that my value was in my net worth and you could have seen all the way from space the “I’m an asshole and I don’t know why nobody will date me” vibes radiating off of me.
Then I grew up, I chilled out, and I put conscious effort into things other than my career and being Good At Tech Stuff. Stuff like listening, and exercising my capacity for empathy, and trying to be pleasant to be around. You can project being likeable or interesting for a bit, but I found that it’s easier to be likeable and interesting instead. And suddenly I stopped finding it so difficult at all to find matches and find dates.
I met my previous SO of three years on OKCupid and my current SO on Tinder, and it wasn’t until we’d been dating for quite a while that what I did for a living, all that Is This Man A Provider nonsense, even came up.
The difficulty is between the ears of one party in this selection process. It’s a mix of getting over oneself and understanding that it’s all a numbers game besides, but one of those things doesn’t work without the other.
I have zero experience with online dating, but I've watched a friend give it a crack after divorce. A brutal appraisal would be: struggling freelancer, doesn't own a house, overweight, mental health issues, greybeard. On the other hand: smart, good sense of humour, etc. Yet he's had a solid number of dates and he puts it down mostly to not putting a picture of him catching a fish in his profile, and holding a decent conversation.
To be fair, this is the 40+ age range. It's possible that 18-25 year olds of both genders haven't yet honed in on what makes for a good partner.
It's exactly like marketing, but the product is you: understand the customer you want, understand the market dynamics, understand the product. Carefully position the product to ensure you are reaching the right customers, and be willing to iterate. I literally A/B tested profile descriptions and pics yo improve my response rates on apps.
And now i have a wonderful SO and don't have to deal with those awful apps for the time being.
Continuing to believe that may be what's holding you back. There are less- and un-attractive females that are looking for a partner as well. The "bar being too high" works in both directions.
Also, in regards to longer-term relationships, if this is true:
> You have to be attractive for girls to swipe right on you and start a conversation in the first place.
Then they're probably not the right ones to be starting a conversation with.
Odd thing to but-for him about. About one in five American mothers have children from more than one father, and that includes Very Upstanding(tm) folks who divorce and remarry and not the women falling for those absolute chads of your projection.
A bit of a sidetrack, but that seems like a pretty high number to me. At least in my part of the world, the numbers are at least an order of magnitude lower.
It’s actually not that bad if you get out from behind the keyboard and practice. But it’s work and it could take a few years off practice 2-3 times a week.
This is the line peddled by MRAs and similar dirtbags, yes, when they need you to be righteously angry about your situation. And yet, somehow one can muddle along and do alright for oneself--and I am not ugly but I'm not particularly attractive.
As 'rdtwo notes, though, it does take practice and commitment and it does take time.
Tinder isn't for relationships, it's a disgusting people market for hook ups. Every profile is basically an ad for a person.
Online dating is toxic, most people I know that used it years ago are still there safe for few unicorns. How could it possibly be? Weren't they lookimg for someone?
Maybe because it distorts relationships and people as commodities thus making meaningful relationships harder to initiate, maintain and commit.
Most serious relationships and marriages that I known of (including mine) that started within the last 7 years or so originate in online dating. I'm in my 40s. You might want to be a little less sure of your opinions.
Damn near every profile I see says "not here for hookups, no FWB/casual" and people are almost so allergic to any form of flirtatiousness you practically need to keep it "business casual" or you get silence/unmatched. If you're over your mid 20's, you're not using it for hookups, at least in my (US) city.
A note on fitness. Any pressure I've had to lose weight or whatnot has come from me. All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight, and some actually like some belly to rest on. That said, they have commented favourably on other physical features, and I'm not particularly overweight.
I say all this just to try and fight the idea that crops up that if you're male and don't fit some jacked or "Chad" ideal that there's no one out there for you (who you'd have an awesome time with). When I look at the incel subculture, it's doubly sad because these boys are being fed a model of how attraction, sex, and dating works that is just flat out wrong. It's like a self-harm club based on false premises.
Forget the incel subculture, media - traditional, social, or otherwise has been feeding us that for decades as well. If you're not thin and "beautiful", your romantic prospects are zero so why even try. Admittedly, it's also partially one's own fault for buying into it, but being fed a continual stream of the best looking people from a young age seriously alters one's perspective.
I spent my entire teenage and young adult years thinking that no one could possibly be attracted to me because I was overweight. Yet, I never could seem to pull myself out of the habits that got me there in the first place and I just kept getting larger - from somewhat overweight in high school to morbidly obese by the end of college. No one has ever randomly talked to me in a bar or out in public. The only time I ever experienced that was when I was abroad. I've not made a single non-work friend since college. I don't know where to go to "meet people my own age", etc. Here I am about to turn 29 and my social life is talking over the internet with the people in knew in college and I just feel ... lost. I have a high paying tech job, but that's about the only thing I feel is going well in my life. I recognize that never having to actually worry about money is most people's dream, but I envy those with diverse social lives.
Figured I'd start with actually getting my weight under control. 3 months ago I started religiously tracking calories and I've done a reasonable job of keeping my eating within my goals. Managed to lose 30 pounds so far. Would love to be half way to my target by my 30th birthday. Maybe try a dating app and make sure I'm honest about my looks. I'd love to be able to ride roller coasters again.
Just from a fellow friend trying to lose wait that is awesome how much you have managed to lose and I think that is great. Congratulations on that, keep up the good work. You've inspired me!
Please don't take anything I wrote as an attempt to dissuade you from what sounds like a good idea. As others have pointed out, perhaps a lot depends on just how "overweight" one is. Also, do it for yourself -- the rest is incidental.
I'm 6'3"; was 190 lbs at age 19 (university); was 210 pounds at age 21 (could afford to eat out for lunch); was 245 lb at age 40 (depressed + about to be divorced); now back to 220-230 lb at age 46. Would like to be consistently 210-215 ish.
Have dated a number of 30 to 45 yo women who explicitly like a "Dad bod".
EDIT> I have never picked anyone up off the street, at a bar, club, whatever. I pass for sociable, but am actually a big introvert. Like, it bothers me when other people are in my home, with a very few exceptions. But I'm told I have "dork game". So my experience is biased -- only seriously dated in my 40's
Met my true love on Tinder, and she's more of an introvert than I am, yet fun and relaxing / no-maintenance / no-drama to be around.
To be fair though, you're in the top 5% of a massively important trait which women select for with greater precedence than any other physical attribute. 'Dad bod' almost always implies someone of above average height. Women tend to imagine more of a Norm McDonald than a Jason Alexander when they think of 'dad bod'.
Why would you start dating in an environment where you are most disadvantaged? In person dating plays to your strength as opposed to online where you are fighting your weakness
Just wanted to say good for you and keep it up re: 30 pounds lost!
What's your exercise regimen? I know there's lot of stuff out there that tells you what to do. Not all of it easy to understand or even effective. Happy to keep replying here to give you some thoughts.
Exercise regimen isn't much at the moment. I'm still 400 lbs, and my doctor said I needed to be careful what I try to do right now because I could easily hurt myself. So for now I've been trying to stick to a 3 mile walk every day, which takes about an hour. Work still being remote has been helpful in that regard. It took a bit to find shoes that didn't cause my shins to hurt when walking every day.
> All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight, and some actually like some belly to rest on. That said, they have commented favourably on other physical features, and I'm not particularly overweight.
What women say and which partners they choose in reality are 2 different things. You should always keep that in mind when discussing these issues.
This isn't meant as a critique of women, rather than of people in general. Stated and actual preferences are not the same (it seems obvious once you give it some thought, yet still has to be repeated, since some people just don't get it).
If you look at male-oriented fitness subcultures, they’re almost never motivated by sexual attractiveness. The idea of “lifting for women” is typically a taboo that will get you ridiculed in most communities. The ideals of these communities typically revolve around some model of self-improvement, and if the participants are pursuing any type of social status, it’s typically in the form of praise from other men.
100%. I am an avid lifter (not competitive) and love the camaraderie that inevitably pops up at the gym, and elsewhere. I like those comments from the trainer! I like exchanging videos with friends and praising and giving feedback. Now friends with a neighbor of mine almost entirely because I told him that his Crossfit-like home gym looked awesome the second time we met.
As a 5'3 guy in pretty good shape with a nice apartment, six-figure job, and socially savvy, I agree. Almost all women taller than I am love coming to my parties and genuinely like me. But they are usually unable to see me as a romantic partner because of height. Forget dating apps or bars.
"Any pressure I've had to lose weight or whatnot has come from me. All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight, and some actually like some belly to rest on."
Same.
I work out as a hobby and for psychological hygeine, i.e. to keep myself disciplined and just feel better.
Oddly when I started dating my current girlfriend she thought my lack of a 'dad-bod' might be too much of a red flag.
Doesn't seem to be the case almost 5 months later.
> All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight, and some actually like some belly to rest on.
Contrary to popular belief by men, women are very visual. They say things to each other like 'How do I get the guys I am attracted to to notice me?' The problem we have is that when guys ask why we reject them we can't give any sort of honest answer because the men will start to debate our answers. Combine that with the fact that they are stronger and can physically assault us and many men don't get this important signal and are left with the impression that how they look doesn't matter to women.
Some men do eventually realize that their looks do matter when it plays out in the office.
If you want to look at it from an evolutionary perspective who should I choose for a mate: Someone I can see is strong, fit and in shape or someone who isn't? The lack of muscle definition hints of possible low T in the same way that overweight women hint that they are possibly already pregnant to men. Is that skin issue genetic or from lack of care? Who could better help and protect me and my offspring?
Sidenote: The fact that men don't take care of their skin is such a weird societal issue. Taking care of your skin at the basic level is an aesthetic choice like taking care of your teeth is. It shouldn't be gendered. Everyone should take care of their skin and wear sunscreen, it is your largest organ.
A man that is not overweight, has some muscle definition, showers and wears clothes that actually fit his body is instantly more attractive than the countless men that don't.
To add one final little bit to your original statement:
> All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight
We never want you to say that you care about our weight. We want you to care for who we are, not for what we looked like when you met us at 19. One day we will be 60. We also will not tell you what you have to do with your body. We have had a lifetime of men telling us what we should do with ours and know how negative that is. You can weight what you want and if you are our special someone we will not care, but we will be more attracted to you when you are not obese.
The very rich by ability and the very poor by inability to attain family planning, and everyone else in TX.
I maybe in a skewed population (FAANG) but women are much more aggressive here in urban areas. While I was walking downtown, a woman pulled her Mercedes over in traffic and shouted an offer at me. I thought she was hilarious and bold but not attractive enough.
In the past, this was sometimes a thing too: in 1943, my grandmother (15) decided to have my grandfather (21 - war vet at 17 by lying). Their 70-year marriage was technically illegal too.
i mean, there are a certain subset of intelligent, highly competitive women who move to urban areas and are also kinda ugly, so they know they have to be aggressive to have a shot since most men judge women heavily based on appearance. I have been approached and asked for dates by two women in my life, both were intelligent but both were not very attractive.
> My observation is that we are going to have a radical rebalancing of who reproduces and who doesn’t.
I think the idea that everyone has the option to settle down and have kids is a relatively recent phenomenon. It used to be that most men never had kids. Nowadays most men do have kids. That said - 25%+ of men will never have children. Kinda wild when you think about that. 1/4 of all men will never have children. Whether this is a choice or not isn't clear (I'm going to go with - not a choice overwhelmingly). The interesting part though is that the number is less than 15% for women. That means that there are ~70% more men than women who will never have children. These stats are usually taken for men who are age 45+ - where the gender balance is more equal.
Shit sells products. Straight men are a vulnerable audience to sell to. They want sex as much or more than most women and yet they have the least access to it of all people. Sell an image - get them invested in it and sell products that aim to get them somewhere. Yet - it ultimately does nothing.
I think Japan is a pretty decent model of where most of the US is going. Anime weebs and what not with waifu pillows will become much more normalized and other various forms of NEETs. But with more violence, unfortunately. I think shootings, suicides, and “accidental” deaths are going to stay the course or get worse. We’ll find ways to skew the statistics to cover this up so that we never have to address it (cause that’s require a different way of thinking about capitalism) but I don’t think this problem is going away for a few generations.
We've already seen a few outbreaks the last six or seven years:
* The Santa Barbara shooter angry at women
* The El Paso, TX and Miami, OH shooters angry about the end of white genetic pool dominance or something
* The guy who tried to go on a shooting spree in Harlem and got caught after killing an elderly Black man as practice because "Black men are taking all the White women"
Unfortunately, there are many many more examples of real world violence. If you peer into the abyss that is the online world - it seems like there are an endless amount of shooters waiting to happen in the US. It's no surprise that it happens so often. A lot of men in pain who want everyone else to experience the pain they've been feeling before they themselves commit suicide. With access to guns - it makes it so easy to do.
The biggest surprise for most women out here might be this tidbit: most men are incels until they're not. It's that some men never get out of that horrible rut and a small amount of those are the ones you see end up doing the shootings. The rest suffer silently or just kill themselves.
It's sad. Most of my female friends are completely unaware. All of my male friends are painfully aware because almost every man who ever went through that phase to any significant degree will do almost everything but forget it. Someday we'll get to the point where we acknowledge this but part of me thinks we don't ever want to. If we did - then we'd have to really change things and no one likes to change shit.
Eh, saying "they're mentally ill" (since obviously these aren't hoaxes) merely obfuscates the sociological etiology of 'mental illness', see Thomas Szasz. Brains are responding to environments largely and for the most part, brains themselves being non-uniform, unless you can demonstrate extreme pathological divergence in the individual case.
You are generalizing your stable situation and values far too much.
The population stats are something like 60% of men will be fathers but 90-95% of women will be mothers. Most women who can reproduce will but a huge percent of men who can will not.
40% of births are outside of marriage in the US.
I would think the only real generalization that can be made is that an introverted guy with money is more likely to get married.
I would bet money on that stat that women being the aggressor in Korea is simply not true in a statistical sense.
Not sure what stats you're looking at. In the US it's about 80% of women [1] and 60% of men [2]. More interesting to me is the overall downward trend in fertility rates.
You guys are mixing up numbers. 80% of women have a child at some point in their lives, and 60% of men age 15+ currently are fathers. A lot of those 40% who are currently not fathers yet will become fathers at some point in their lives.
I don't know. It seems like the middle to upper class is having fewer kids, while the lower middle class and poor are having more kids. This could be a bunch of different factors like most needing dual income to do well but not having time with the kids, assistance programs increasing and targeting kids, etc. The ability of people to connect via dating services is high, including the people you categorized as not passing on genetics to be able to meet others in the same category.
> while the lower middle class and poor are having more kids
Most statistics show indeed lower middle class and poor are having more kids than higher income families, but in time the number is decreasing for them too
> Will people who were genetically predisposed towards being thin, hard working, open minded to approaching members of opposite sex and forming deep attachments resulting in children become more frequent?
These are not the people right now having more children - it's those who (often at least partly for reasons of disadvantage) have relatively less impulse control and are poorer at long term thinking/planning.
And/or those who are part of a culture that encourages fertility and discourages contraception.
I don't see how current trends point to this changing in the direction you mention. Being young has more to do with thinness than genetics, and most babies are born outside of marriage.
> Got anything a little more widespread/recent to back up that claim?
The Norwegian study cited to "Dutton E, van der Linden D, Lynn R (2016) The negative Flynn effect: A systematic literature review. Intelligence 59:163–169". Here's the HN thread on that paper specifically: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13723859 (Haven't read it myself; was just curious.)
>I wonder what all these effects will have over the next 200 years?
Well with a birth rate below replacement level there will be less and less people with each generation if the birth rate stays at that level, so in 200 years there's virtually no one left or something like that.
> There is also a massive obesity problem. If people have trouble getting attracted to each other versus the alternatives, makes it really challenging to find the motivation.
Nobody wants to talk about this "elephant in the room" but I agree with you. Even obese people don't find other obese people attractive. Young people are dating (and having less sex) today because the majority of them are obese or overweight.
Birth control has created favor for less masculine men.
When women are ovulating, they are statistically more likely to select men with higher testosterone levels and of course the physical qualities that go along with that (bigger/more muscular, stronger jawline, more aggressive, etc...).
When women are horny, they are statistically more likely to select men based on appearance.
"When horny, men are statistically more likely to select women with big tits" is banal and adds nothing to the conversation. I don't understand why these references to ovulation get a pass.
>> Ovulation generally corresponds to periods of increased randiness in women.
Which doesn't mean women only fuck when they're ovulating.
>> can't resist
I'm not sure how you've implied that from what I've said. You sound awfully defensive and angry. I haven't stated any opinions here, in case you didn't notice.
This is such a weird take. You really don't need to be all that special or beautiful to find a partner, I've always been a stocky guy all my life and I never had a real issue finding sexual partners and now I'm happily married with kids.
Get yourself a personality, don't be weird, dress decently and talk to people. That's really all you need, no matter what you look like there's someone out there that's into it.
At the height of a loneliness epidemic, it's hard to get a personality and talk to people.
Don't get me wrong, your conclusion is spot on. Getting there is the hard part.
Another factor is we live in a period in time where we have so much choice on how to spend our time, products that are personalized to each of our own tastes, that creates sparsity of shared experiences.
No longer is there a movie like Star Wars, that you could throw a stick and find someone who shares that experience. Now unless you're suckling from the teat of mainstream media, you need to go out of your way to find someone who shares your taste in film, music, art, games and ideas.
I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been an experiment adding a social component to Netflix.
> you need to go out of your way to find someone who shares your taste in film, music, art, games and ideas.
You may as well just be with yourself at that point. Someone else bringing new experiences that you don't share, to learn and involve yourself in going forward, is where interest is found.
This really is it - all you have to do is consistently be around the opposite sex while being generally likeable and care about your appearance. Eventually SOMEONE is going to find you attractive.
200 years(maybe even 30-40 years) from now the process of creating babies will probably not be the biological one that it is now. Artificial wombs and genetically selected babies would probably be the norm. You select the traits of the baby you want, share your dna, fill some forms and boom your baby is ready to be installed and delivered in 9 months.
People have been finding partners and having children ... for the entire history of homo sapiens, and our homo ancestors, and their ancestors back to the dawn of sexual reproduction. In fact, there is probably nothing we are better evolved to do than find a partner, make babies, and raise them.
I think the trend is in the opposite direction - the more we advance as a society, the less evolutionary filtering is applied to the population. That means genetic regression over time.
> I think the ball is firmly in the woman’s court now. Women have most of the advantages (education, societal promotion, fit in better with our institutions)
I don't think we at all can define what individuals should do based on their gender; that is sort of the point. They can be who and what they want to be.
Maybe by some theory women have most of the advantages, but the outcomes clearly indicate otherwise. Look at the successful and elite in almost any field.
You can look at the elite in society and see an over-representation of men, but it's important to also look at the most downtrodden and worse off in society. The homeless; people who are the victims of violent crime; people who die in wars; people who die working shitty jobs; people who are so hopeless that they commit suicide. Perhaps even looking at things like lifespan.
Men's results are bimodal: if women are forced to break through a glass ceiling to reach the elite, men are similarly forced to walk on a glass floor that might collapse at any moment. And when it does, they're fucked.
Are men’s results bimodal or just much higher standard deviation? I feel like there are way, way too many men living a “normal, unremarkably good nor bad” life to sustain a bimodal conclusion.
Yes? At least as far as all the individual points about men dying earlier in general, having higher suicide rates, greater risk of homelessness, worse educational outcomes, etc.
I suppose the point of contention people would make is that men deserve it/have it coming so it's not worth discussing or treating as a political topic.
> the individual points about men dying earlier in general, having higher suicide rates, greater risk of homelessness, worse educational outcomes, etc.
We certainly can find some ways in which the male population is worse off - though that doesn't establish any correlation or causation, inevitably in some ways it's true. But we need to look at the overall picture.
> I suppose the point of contention people would make is that men deserve it/have it coming so it's not worth discussing or treating as a political topic.
That's a pretty incredible strawman. Can you find one person saying that?
I can list lots of ways that men are worse off, and I have done exactly that. You don't even acknowledge them besides writing them off as perhaps minor inconveniences, and ask us to look at the "overall picture" instead without even bothering to try to paint that big picture. Why is the fact that men face significant discrimination in education not part of the big picture?
> Can you find one person saying that?
Let's be explicit about this, since you seem intent on evading the discussion: why shouldn't we treat male-particular suffering, discrimination, and death as important topics for society to address? What possible explanation is there for you to write those issues off as not part of the big picture except for thinking that men deserve it?
I think the obesity problem is linked to the fact that many people have to work 60 hours a week to survive and don't have the time/energy to get in shape.
Capitalism has taken a large swath of people out of the dating game just due to working to survive.
People work 10% fewer hours now than in the 1960s, but the obesity rate has gone up from 13% in that time period to 36%. The obesity crisis is IMO more related to what we eat, and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle.
This may be true, but people are probably commuting for vastly more time per day to their suburban wasteland house that can only be driven to, than fewer minutes worked would compensate for, and the money doesn't go as far—possibly because they felt spending $60k on a dumb car, and 9 hours a week in it, was more sensible than spending 2 hours a week in a physical hobby.
Total hours worked by people who are being paid. If you’re working on a farm but you’re a farmer’s wife you’re not being paid. Female liberation resulted in a very large increase in the labor force, a much less drastic rise in hours worked than in paid labor hours.
Being overweight is overwhelmingly related to eating habits. As the sage advice goes: “you can’t outrun a bad diet”
You may have an argument with the absolute bullshit that people eat in our consumerist society but the fact of the matter is, if your calorie needs are 2000/day and you eat 14000 calories per week of grains, pulses, veg, fruit, meat, etc in the ‘right’ amounts, you’ll stay trim if you’re trim, you’ll stay fat if you’re fat, and any changes need you to adjust the calorie balance accordingly through eating more, eating less or exercising more.
Obesity is largely linked to economic incentives and urban design. The USA for example is dead set on building car dependent cities, which has an knock on effect on both the amount of free time available to leisure and the activity.
In some countries people are slimmer without making a real effort cause there's a higher percentage of people walking to work, and there's less time spent in traffic so that can be redirected to leisure and exercise.
The obesity problem is overwhelmingly because of the amount of sugar/HFCS pumped into our foods. We are working less today than 50 years ago, yet those times no one was morbidly obese. Obesity is caused by food, not by the amount you exercise or move.
Ehhhh... I don't know that capitalism can be blamed for personal irresponsibility. I'd say it's more of a motivation / knowledge thing. You don't have to live in the gym to get in shape. I spend about 4.5 hours per week total. Even when I've been in the very rare 70-80 hour/week death march, I could take an hour out of my day to go to the gym and lift.
Similarly, dieting is not an activity, more so the absence of one (shoving food in your mouth). When I'm cutting weight, I have more time because I'm not cooking eating food all the damn time. Eat a carrot rather than a Pizza to lose weight is not super rare knowledge. It IS uncomfortable, though.
Okay. And now add any of the following, or a combination, to that situation:
* Ill partner or family members to take care of
* Child(ren)
* Studying
* Long travel times
* Irregular working times
* Poor upbringing food wise
* Stress
* Sleep deprivation
* etc
Is it still so easy then? That pizza tastes good and is real comforting.
But to get obese..you actually need to eatmany more calories than you need for a lot of time. If obese people cannot stop eating unhealthy food the problem is mental.
step 0: if you’re single and think you NEED to work 60 hrs/wk to survive, quit BS’ing yourself. get a roommate and split the rent.
step 1: gather some savings and take an honest (3mo+) break from work.
step 2: take note of which of your habits actually change when freed from the work-imposed time restrictions.
my personal experience: good habits don’t just spontaneously occur out of the vacuum. and social connections don’t just come knocking on your door. you have to decide these things are important to you, motivate yourself, and build your life in support of them.
to the extent that we don’t teach non-job skills in school, that’s a societal failure. if by “capitalism” you’re referring to how much we shape schooling to focus on making you a productive worker, then sure. but this is as much a failure of our democratic systems (which govern schools) and our social norms around child raising (wherein it’s acceptable to believe that govt schooling is the only learning/wisdom a child needs to be given).
“capitalism” is a boogeyman and — without admitting anything of its merits/faults — using it in such a way only serves to keep yourself from understanding the problems you face more concretely.
Capitalism has taken more people out of poverty than anything else on planet earth and produced incredible abundance and flourishing in the past 200 years. Socialism has failed every time it has been tried. (Also stop describing everything you don’t like as “Capitalism”, it is intellectually lazy, instead describe what aspect of Capitalism caused the thing you don’t like directly and provably and with a clear alternative that wouldn’t have had worse downsides)
Good critiques of Capitalism are important to help it continue to evolve, compete, and win in a competitive marketplace of ideas.
I have increasingly noticed this general trend (here, on Reddit, and elsewhere) to just blame a myriad of societal ills on “Capitalism”. Sometimes it’s related to economics or whatever, but more often it’s really a non-sequitur. Some of the problems blamed on Capitalism, it’s not at all clear how communism or socialism or any other system would result in a different outcome. It’s become a thought-ending cliche.
Agree, just tribal signaling, “thing I thoughtlessly think is bad is bad”
I feel the same about every bad weather event being “caused” by climate change in the media. The models predictions are so vague people could blame anything on climate change. Not saying climate change isn’t happening, it is, but blaming everything on it is intellectually dishonest, costs legitimacy, and can lead to poor policy.
> Capitalism has taken more people out of poverty than anything else on planet earth and produced incredible abundance and flourishing in the past 200 years.
That's not wrong, but it came at the cost of massively depleting the oil reserves and polluting the ecosystems.
The same Would have happened with communism or any other economic system, unless we were kept at a pre-industrial level of tech. Collectivist systems don't particularly take better care of their environment.
I think a big part of the despair is the obvious difference between what children are taught is the american dream vs what the american reality is.
We are told america is the best place on earth with all the doors open to you to be rich. That all other forms of government are flawed and we have excellence here everywhere you look.
And then you look at reality and see something else. Sure there are pockets of excellence and the dream still lives in fits and starts, but for the general person, they are likely shut out from any real hope of this grand vision.
You add in COVID and the lockdowns, and economic turmoil, and then people start realizing that the whole race is kind of pointless. I can be poor busting my butt at a crappy job i hate, or i can be poor moving in with family and being 'unproductive' (for some definition of societal unproductivity).
Women, on the other hand, haven't been given the same advertising on the American dream that men have, which obviously is a terrible thing, but in this one sense probably helped them survive and prosper even when life sucks in a modern world.
I'm supposing the sell-job of an equivalence of the 'american' dream in other countries is not nearly so commercial, and blaring. And so kids are likely not so shocked at the difference between expectations and reality. Throw in that many other countries are flat out better in many social structural ways, and i think that explains why, it's especially troubling in America.
>Women, on the other hand, haven't been given the same advertising on the American dream that men have
There is a documentary, "Born Rich" [0]. It's interviews with the children of very rich people, done by one of their peers. I noticed that in the film there is stark difference between the girls and the boys: the girls were all well adjusted, enjoying their wealth, happy, satisfied, seemingly well-aware of their good fortune; but for ALL the boys wealth meant having a full-blown existential crisis.
This is oblique support for your claim: the classic American dream for women results in being taken care of by a wealthy man in a nice house, maybe with kids, where even house duties become negligible if he's really rich. But men and boys are supposed to work, first at learning then finding something you like then getting good at it. Your work defines you in a very profound way - a profundity that is reflected in our last names. If you're a rich boy, it's like you've been denied an identity. (I recall one of the young men who, to save his sanity, disavowed his inheritance to take a job as an oil field worker. And he seemed the best adjusted of the boys.).
I studied abroad for a semester in England, and in one of the classes I took there the (Australian) professor asked us what socioeconomic class we thought we belonged to. It was a good university, but most of the British kids answered "working class." When he asked "Why?" they answered, "Because our parents work."
That always stuck with me. In England, the aristocracy is alive and well. They don't have to work, and they don't pretend to. They do live comfortably, but they're highly educated and reasonably well adjusted. They don't have to partake in the charade that they pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, and they generally don't blow their family's fortune over a debauched decade in Vegas like their American counterparts either.
Isn't this because British people see class a bit differently? Like you can win the lottery but don't consider yourself upper class because you weren't born in the right family/attended the right schools/whatever? Same as you can be down to your last penny, but you are from the Duke's family or whatnot and still consider yourself upper class?
That must have been a former polytechnic. I'm willing to be most university students in the UK would say they are middle class. Oxbridge is full of the upper class (although that is slowly changing).
The definition of "middle class" in the UK is different... Unintuitively middle class denotes a social standing well into the top decile - members of the middle class would be typically educated with a graduate or professional degree, top-5% salary, multiple properties, children in private schools. (Whereas in the US, any white collar person - so basically half the population - is "middle class".)
Yes, the UK middle class is over-represented at Oxbridge, but the definition is so narrow that they are outnumbered by the lower classes - state school kids and other riff-raff constitute two-thirds of Oxbridge classes, especially outside the upper-class signal subjects like Classics.
It's not the median but not intended to be - it is in the middle between the upper class (<1%) and the lower class, which used to be more than 90%; it's a description of all the professional jobs (doctors, lawyers, merchants) which are neither serf/farmer/servant/laborer nor the upper class.
If the former, it might be worth remembering that ARM, which many consider the be the next big leap in computing (there was a thread saying it just yesterday) is an English company. Of course I could give many more examples, the technology you're using to post this comment for one, but I think I've made my point.
If the latter, I imagine thats too generic a group to say
The aristocracy. The staleness at the top has made Europe globally weak and bordering on irrelevant. (Not that the US in its current trajectory is all that far behind)
Well thats depressing, I saw a similar documentary that didnt really have anything stark across gender lines, but did show how some private high school students in NYC had trouble reconciling their circumstance with the public housing across the street. The most apt similarity being how one boy took his life after pushing the school administration to lower admission costs for needy.
> We are told america is the best place on earth with all the doors open to you to be rich. That all other forms of government are flawed and we have excellence here everywhere you look.
What other countries are great compared to America? With all its flaws America is the only country where you can dream of building spaceships, create multi billion dollar tech companies in less than a decade.
Any ideology that forces individual to be less ambitious for the prosperity of the group only gives more power to the enforcer's of the ideology. As an insider you may not realize how powerful America's culture of individual freedom has impact on other countries.
I was collecting FANG salaries in the states. I was in the 1% for my age, and most people would consider this the "American dream".
I was miserable.
I moved to Japan with a much lower income, but my standard of living is so much more higher.
> you may not realize how powerful America's culture of individual freedom has impact on other countries
Does individual freedom include not wearing masks? Does individual freedom include feeling unsafe from crime?
Japan feels much safer than any urban center in America, especially during this pandemic. This feeling of taking public transit without anxiety throughout the pandemic alone is already worth forgoing those FANG salaries.
I grew up in Portland, Oregon. That place has deteriorated. Parts of San Francisco is more dangerous than Vietnam or Egypt. NYC is filled with confrontation for all sorts of minor problems, none of which you would ever face in Tokyo.
> Any ideology that forces individual to be less ambitious for the prosperity of the group only gives more power to the enforcer's of the ideology.
This is not inherently unique to America or individual liberty. In fact, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is based on the idea that the whole benefits because the individual is acting in their own self regard, not altruistically for society at large.
Asian countries are collectivist with much less individual freedom.
> What other countries are great compared to America? With all its flaws America is the only country where you can dream of building spaceships, create multi billion dollar tech companies in less than a decade.
Speaking of great, how about China? China's bullet train networks span longer than the rest of the world combined. All of that was built within a decade. They have spaceships and unicorns too.
With all its flaws America is the only country where you can dream of building spaceships...
Pedantically, literally anyone anywhere can dream of building spaceships. But let's examine that claim on the basis of people who have actually done it.
- Musk has, but he's South African.
- Bezos crossed the Kármán line so he's done it, but he hasn't reached orbit yet so calling New Shepherd a 'spaceship' is a slightly dubious claim.
- Branson hasn't either and he's British anyway.
- Carmack isn't in the news for space stuff any more, so maybe he's given up?
Looking at the evidence of 'billionaires and their space toys', I think 'not Americans' are a little ahead.
> the only country where you can dream of building spaceships, create multi billion dollar tech companies in less than a decade
And all you need is hard work, persistence, and a couple tens of millions burning a hole in your back pocket... and a legion of people, like you, who don't have that kind of capital to do the heavy lifting.
What percent of top tech companies were funded by multiple millions in personal or family money? We're on YC's website, which invests $500k in startups ($125k until just recently). I thought most startups were venture funded.
Many startups get a lot of family and friends funding. On top of this - a lot of startups are having someone do unpaid work before they get funded. This usually means someone had support to pay rent, food, insurance, etc.
Varies a lot but all the people I know who are relatively young and doing startups come from pretty wealthy families.
> With all its flaws America is the only country where you can dream of building spaceships, create multi billion dollar tech companies in less than a decade.
Why are these top priorities? Metrics like happiness seem like much more valuable metrics than number of spaceships or massive tech companies.
> "What other countries are great compared to America? With all its flaws America is the only country where you can dream of building spaceships, create multi billion dollar tech companies in less than a decade."
--to be honest, the vast majority of people just don't care, because it is completely detached from any experience they have, and is in fact kind of obnoxious to them. To them, your evidence is a category error.
How do countries treat their poor->lower middle class, is more salient for a judge of societal excellence, for them. Is a country interested in raising the ceiling or the floor? America has always been focused on raising the ceiling.
Why can't you dream of that in other countries? I come from Sweden and I don't see why swedes baby have those dreams (or realize them in Sweden). Example multi billion dollar companies; Spotify, Klarna (to name a few). We do have SAAB Aerospace and we do have launchpads for rockets. Then, we're less than half the inhabitants of NYC so our course it's less chance that we at any moment in time have any people building rockets than the US (with 30 times more people).
I'm not surprised he said it on a throwaway. For one thing there are a lot of people from the rest of the world here. We all roll our eyes and sigh a little when we hear "America is the greatest nation on earth".
FYI I am not a native American. I am aware Americas foreign policy is evil and it goes to war with any nation for selfish purpose. But with all its flaws it promotes individual freedom and that like most of Asian country citizens I admire.
I also understand some of the European countries are great in terms of quality of life, safety net e.t.c. But they are weak and can not protect themselves in case of war and everything can change in a short period of time. America's strength lies in its founding principles based on freedom and that is something every nation looks up to.
The lack of emphasis, in both this and the article's comments section, about the cultural messaging we send boys is very alarming. As a kid, we were told to sit down and be quiet when all our psyche was limitless energy and activity. Now it seems like just slap on a medical addiction and drug young boys into inactivity. Girls on the other hand are told "you can do anything", "break the glass ceiling", and flourish in a social environment (which is good!).
It's time we focus more on how do we appeal to boys, and how do we get the most potential out of them. The cultural messaging is "girl power" while the counterpart is "toxic masculinity". The great heroes of the past (even the present, see how Arnold Schwarzenegger was cut down for the affair with his maid) have been merely reduced to "misogynists" or "terrible fathers" rather than reflecting on both their merits and weaknesses.
Liberal philosophy does not even try to understand what motivates and drives young men to success: it's building, exploring, and accomplishing. Instead it blindly assigns any flaw as a result of "toxic masculinity" while also ironically applying the same "toxic masculinity" it preaches against: "you need to grow up and get over yourself, things are so easy for men because we are in a patriarchy". And then when studies like the above are cited, we go around in the same circle: "men are so pathetic, they need to stop embracing toxic masculinity" while being blissfully unaware that we are the least "toxically masculine" that we've ever been in society, and yet men are suffering emotionally far more than they ever have in the past. Hint: it's the culture. We are driving innocent young men into depression, purposelessness, and masochism -- and it's shameful to see such a lack of care or empathy for it. Seriously, shame on everyone in this and the orginal article's comments that are pointing fingers and blaming this on men, rather than trying to root-cause why this is happening and working towards helping innocent young boys.
“We should raise boys like we raise girls.” — Gloria Steinem
“—Boys are going from female-dominated home environments to female-dominated school environments, back to female-dominated home environments—where boys are being told to behave.
—In our culture today, “boy energy” is at best not valued and at worse demonized.”
I recently made a post here trying to decode my ADHD diagnosis. Unfortunately my post got flagged. Somehow a lot of people have internalised the “ADHD” label without ever sincerely questioning if it’s the environment that’s the problem.
I'm a white straight male, grew up middle class near Seattle. I'm now in my mid-30s and have 3 kids. Semi-recently I had an (maybe my first?) experience where I wasn't the favored party in a situation. My kids have made focus more difficult, and I work in an industry (tech consulting) where focus is a big deal, and the idea that I'm not the perfect person for the job was a foreign feeling. I no longer felt "I was made for this" or "I'm perfect for this".
While I hate that things are getting worse for anyone (and want to fix it!), these findings are good reminders for me that almost everyone else has dealt with similar circumstances much more often than I have. Often the cause is out of their control and that they are just trying to make the best of it, with varying results. It gives me good perspective and reminds me that peoples choices / actions include inputs that I'm not exposed to.
That all being said I hope we can find a way to make these situations less common for everyone. I'd settle for quick fixes (adjust taxes, better welfare, etc.), but I'm excited for the societal changes that I hope are the eventual long-term fix.
> Semi-recently I had an (maybe my first?) experience where I wasn't the favored party in a situation
You're mid-30s and you might have just experienced your first thing like that? Man or woman, that's hard to believe. And more importantly, I'm not sure your experience can be generalized to all men.
As someone who has experienced situations like that frequently, and knows other men who have, it's a bit frustrating to see the implication that we all feel like "we're perfect for this" or "we're made for this" all the time.
The degree is irrelevant. I don't doubt that men have privilege — but the "but women have it worse!" comment often shows up on articles like these, and since it's just whataboutism, it feels like it's suggesting that we shouldn't care about these issues.
Shouldn't we care about how society is treating people, no matter who they are, instead of getting into a pissing contest about who society is _really_ screwing over the most?
Not to mention, frankly, it's ridiculous to imply that a 35-year old male software engineer's experience is at all representative of that of the average male (who is far, far worse off).
> Shouldn't we care about how society is treating people, no matter who they are, instead of getting into a pissing contest about who society is _really_ screwing over the most?
This is a great point that often gets overlooked in discussions around gender, race, sexuality, class, or any other issue surrounding equality. I think people often hone in on the latter and it becomes counter-productive to fixing these issues. Thanks for bringing it up.
You're jumping to a bit of a conclusion here. Most people seem to be reading this comment as re recognition that this particular guy is privileged compared to most people, not a blanket argument that women have it worse. Consider why you reacted so defensively to such an anodyne self-reflection.
He absolutely is, "but women have it worse", is not implied anywhere in the comment at the start of this thread. It's a claim GP invented. See how a fairly similar argument can be raised respectfully and without defensiveness in the sibling thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30278864.
Respectfully, this is kind of a privileged take, both economic and intellectual. For the majority of men who aren’t going to college, they’ve spent a lot longer than a couple of years feeling like they’re not “the favored party” in a situation.
I'm older than you, living in a third world country. I've been reflecting on this since I discovered my privileges like you did. I feel like the poor state of my society comes from the fact that a large part of the population is constantly trying to survive. That state of survivorship is what makes a person make poor choices, harm other people and lose respect for themselves. Which makes those persons untrustworthy and explains the low level of trust in my society.
It's strange to me that most of the comments here seem to be focused on gender relations rather than what the article was talking about - educational and occupational attainment. I don't think romantic aspirations have anything to do with why young men are not achieving. Rather, we have grown up in a fearful and repressive society, with 9/11 and the wars, 2008, Snowden, and now Covid. Many have grown up being drugged and told they are broken for behavior that was considered normal once. The broken economy that rewards only capital and resigns the rest to drudgery offers no incentive to participate or care. On top of all this, we are still expected to be "men" and never complain, never mention a feeling that isn't lust or grand ambition, and never show weakness. Faced with all this, why not drop out and find refuge in a bottle, pipe, or needle?
Well, partly it's because discussing that means discussing the causes, and the most robust claims out there about what's going on boil down to "it's the fault of female teachers".
For example why are boys being diagnosed with ADHD so much more than girls, why are they on so many more drugs, well, supposedly it's because female teachers - who have very clear and proven biases towards girls - are much more likely to react to normal boyish energy by getting frustrated and being unable to handle it. So once the psychiatric world gave them this neat excuse-in-a-box that let them blame boys, and even better, an off switch for children, instead of learning how to handle boys they started just telling parents their children were neurotic and broken.
A related issue is grading. Girls get better grades than boys. There's a neat experiment out there that appears to show this is caused by teachers having a built-in bias towards children of their own gender, but, the bias is much more extreme in women. This would be totally expected - feminism practically insists that female-female loyalty is a a moral virtue and to NOT give the sisters a helping hand makes you a bad woman. Women routinely discriminate in all sorts of ways against men and in favour of women, so much so that feminism is currently ripping itself apart through debates on whether trans women should be treated as women or not (often, for the purposes of allocating perks!). That it happens in education too is only to be expected. Until people start routinely classifying feminism as an unacceptable form of hatred, boys outcomes won't start improving. Going back to gender segregated schools might even help, although I'm a bit shocked to see myself typing that, because I never supported such schools before. It's just so unclear what can be done about these sorts of cultural problems except keeping vulnerable boys away from places where women can discriminate against them.
The crisis, if there is one, is that society has less use for males who have IQs between 90-105 or so, who cannot cut it in STEM, and who are finding it hard to cope with increasingly competitive economic conditions and higher overall costs like rent, and is why many men are delaying family formation or moving back with parents (but also due to careerism for women). Men are just dropping out rather than doing low-paid work and having to deal with political correctness at the office and other inconveniences.
I'm 33, Ive got a fairly high IQ, make $340k in a STEM field and enough to retire tomorrow, I'm not unattractive, and put a huge amount of effort over many years into online dating. I've pretty much given up on dating. I have a total inability to find anyone I'm interested in that is interested in me.
When I was younger and I wanted to go to bars and get drunk and be an idiot I had plenty of attractive sexual partners.
So I don't buy this at all. The guys I know who have an easy time dating are 1 or 2 points more attractive, make minimum wage as yoga teachers or selling crystals or dumb stuff like that, and tell Women painfully stupid stuff they want to hear about their quantum vibrations matching and other new age nonsense.
So I can say this narrative empirically doesn't feel true for me.
> anyone I'm interested in that is interested in me.
Perhaps this is your problem? I've seen this with folks at work. They're middle aged, successful, extremely bright and they want to find a mate. The problems as I see it:
1. They insist on living in "Man Jose" aka SiValley. There is a serious lack of demographic diversity here.
2. They want to find a bright, attractive woman with an amazing career, 10/10 body who is wowed by their lack of life balance, an obsession with career and status, and lack of fun/joy in their lives.
If these guys would live practically anywhere but the valley and accept that, even though they make a lot of money and are great at their tech jobs, they are just average in terms of what a woman looks for in a mate, well, they might get somewhere.
Lonely nerds: you've got to accept that in all likelihood your mate will disappoint you in some way and vice-versa. Don't just marry the first girl you find, but consider lowering your standards to match with reality.
> I had plenty of attractive sexual partners.
This sentence is a serious red flag. If you think your ability to bang hot women who hang out in bars bears any relation to your fitness as a mate then you need to check your beliefs about what women want in a relationship. I'd like to hope this is just an insensitive way of you telling us that you're not a hideous monster and hopefully that's all it is. If not, I don't know, maybe stop trying to date, take a break from the tech world, and just work on your social skills for a while.
> tell Women painfully stupid stuff they want to hear
Jesus... so many red flags. Really man, you have a condescending attitude towards women and you wonder why you can't find a mate?
> tell Women painfully stupid stuff they want to hear
If you are looking for a reason for your travails, here it is. If you started out with this level of contempt, it’s no wonder you’ve been unsuccessful. If you became embittered due to your challenges, then I’m sorry. That is a hard path. But if you want it to change, I think you have some work to do. And I wish you luck with it.
The core conceit of their post is that women want to hear stupid things, and won't partner with them because they will not say them. This is essentially a misogynistic point of view and there is nothing wrong with pointing that out. Refocusing the argument on some peripheral part of what was said is not useful, because it doesn't address the core issue.
The typical women are wonderful counterargument. Dime a dozen in threads like these.
I suggest you take your own advice and work on your issues that make you respond in a knee-jerk manner, blaming them like that, instead of assuming that OP may be correct in their assessment about the dating scene.
If you're so smart to observe what the problem your facing is, and have the money to retire tomorrow and be a yoga teacher and find a partner, go do it?
>huge amount of effort over many years into online dating
My god I hope you aren't talking about tinder are you? You are totally clueless about women and dating if that is what you are talking about.
Go out to bars, talk to people, do activities and meet lots of people. stop doing 'online' dating (of any kind)
Seriously, myself and everyone I know found that upon reaching 33 the interest from women in their 20s sky rockets. You are definitely doing something wrong, not society.
Literally everyone I know who is around my age (~34), if I ask them how they met their partner, the will say they met their partner online, myself included.
"go out to bars" is advise that's about 20 years out of date, mate. However, being successful at online dating is non-intuitive and takes skill.
Of course, if you're in your mid 30's and you want to bang college chicks half your age with daddy issues, maybe "going to bars" is the way to go...
I would tell you to take that with a pinch of salt.
I've met people online and dated them. I've also met girls in other ways and dated them, now marrying one. Once or twice, well, we didn't quite want to tell other people how we met. So we didn't. We just said we met online. It's the perfect blow-off justification when you don't want to get into a perhaps complicated and messy story.
People meet in all sorts of ways. I used online dating for years but it was never the most successful strategy. What did work - meeting girls at events, in bars, ideally at events in bars, one or two less conventional ways, and never giving up.
People in their 30s should be avoiding college bars if they're actually looking to meet people and have some kind of connection.
It's pretty easy to strike up conversations with people at bars and events. I know people who met their long term partners on overseas tours, at work and at music festivals. Not everyone uses dating apps, not every person at a bar is ancient or has daddy issues.
> Seriously, myself and everyone I know found that upon reaching 33 the interest from women in their 20s sky rockets. You are definitely doing something wrong, not society.
Huge YMMV. A lot of us are physically similar to what we were in our 20s but I definitely peaked when I was around 25. It’s been a steady downhill trend since then and the interest from women has gone completely downhill. Mind you - I’m not exactly surrounded by many women I’m interested in but at least in the past I might’ve had someone I wasn’t into express some mild interest in me.
In my 30s though? Nope. Definitely not. Haven’t even lost hair or gained a bunch of fat. Yet - from the results one would think I have.
So, I’d say… grain of salt as far as your experience and your friends goes. I know many men who have basically given up in their 30s because they feel completely undesired and have managed to keep up their physicality.
It seems to be a generational thing. Women over 40 are so much easier to date than early thirties and under. I'm 38 and it seems my generation or the ones younger just do it differently. I don't get it. I can't get them to go out in public sooner than 2 months of chatting, but late 30s and early 40s it's usually a few texts and we meet up. It seems the younger generation is more comfortable being virtual. And keeping it that way. Or something. I can't quite put my finger on it but I've stopped even trying to date people in their 30s. 40s+ seems to still live in the physical world.
The younger women aren't actually interested in you. They're just using you as entertainment and keeping you around as a backup option. It's a common online dating strategy for people who are in high demand.
No surprise that women in their 40's are more responsive. There are less men alive at their age and less men interested in dating their peer age. Many men in their 40s want to date someone in their 30s. Men in their 50s want a 40s, etc. It's uncommon for men to want to date someone in the same age bracket as they get older.
And note that this says "online dating" not specifically tinder. Statistics show that 80% of women sleep with 20% of men on Tinder. Tinder is a place women go when they are interested in having sex with men based on nothing other than their looks. That is fine, if you are in the top 20%, if you aren't, it is a real fools errand.
39% in 2017. I'd be very curious to know the numbers over the past two years as in 2017 bars/restaurants were at 27%, school/college at 9%, and work at 11%.
I'm not sure if it's the cities I've been living in but bars seem to have relatively few women in them. Going to a bar in search of a partner almost seems not so different than swiping on Tinder.
Do bars really work? I keep seeing this advice, but I never see it happening when I'm in bars. People usually show up and leave as a group, especially now with social distancing measures.
Depends on the bar. Certainly when I was young there where certain bars that where known as places you go to be social and meet girls and certain bars that where known as places where you sat and drank with your mates and got left alone. By selecting which bar you went to you could greatly influence how your evening went.
Is it instead that some of these folks who have an "easy" time actually don't care that much about the process? Not ignorance, but not spending much time over-analyzing everything. Instead, they're out and they're drawing people to them because they're not thinking about having a good time, but just doing it?
It really is that simple in some ways. Focus on enjoying yourself throughout your day to day and especially in social situations and perhaps someone will find their way to you instead.
PS: those crystal sellers don't sound to me (generalizing) like good long-term matches for most people. So, stop comparing yourself to them.
Please don't put yoga and crystals into the same category. While what most people in the west are doing has little to do with the actual thing it's still probably the most important discovery made by humanity.
If you have 340k and have put huge efforts into online dating and failed, it would be trivial economically for you to hire a professional photographer to get you a better dating profile (most people have shit photos, and you likely do too), it would be trivial to book some sessions with a dating coach (mainstream, not red pill style / PUA stuff) to give you feedback on your profile or real world interactions. You could also afford a personal stylist to do a wardrobe revamp.
Put those monetary resources your brain has afforded you to work.
If you were able to get laid at bars in the past, you are good looking enough. Your profile is just likely bad / has poor photos. And I know that sucks but its the real world.
The obvious problem is: what are you "interested in" when it comes to women?
The way you are killing it in your career, I suspect that your female companionship objectives are a tad bit too demanding. At the least, you should try to find a women you can trust and enjoy in small moments of life. Start there.
You want a 1% female? I mean you sound like you are only 1% on income alone so that’s probably not enough. You probably have also gotten quite difficult at your age. At some point people get old and really set in their ways and are hard to merge into a marriage unit
As a mid-20s male I can completely relate. Have spent way too much time trying to optimize the amount of matches I can get on these apps.
You might feel like your achievements and positive qualities are not being valued by women and you've worked so hard to improve yourself for nothing. Trust me, this is not true. There are other factors at play that make online dating unreasonably unfair for you.
1. If you are in the Bay Area, you are at a distinct disadvantage. The male-female-ratio, homogeneity of interests and credentials make stand out far less than you would in the general population. It is also natural for women to form negative stereotypes about men in tech if they've been on bad dates. There's no way to tell that you won't be the same from your profile. I've experienced this first-hand where every woman I managed to go on a date with responded positively and complained to me that the guys they meet are immature, entitled or lack social skills.
2. If you are not white and live in the USA, your odds are slimmer even among your racial group. There are studies to confirm this and you can compare yourself to your peers.
3. Physical attributes like height, fitness and facial attractiveness matter but to a way lesser extent than people think. I've been skinny as a rail and ripped with a substantial amount of muscle and the number of matches were still about the same and women I met in person didn't seem to care either way though I would rate myself as considerably closer to the generally accepted male standards of attractiveness when jacked.
4. By far the quickest hack to get more matches on dating apps is to improve your pictures. Bite the bullet and do it, the bar is pitifully low.
5. No matter how many matches you get, the vast majority of them will act the same way. They'll not respond, stand you up and ghost. Most people are incapable of dealing with the pressures of interacting with other and will choose to do what's easiest for them instead of what's right. However, the more matches you get, the less you'll care about this.
6. Your point about appealing to the lowest common denominator sounds attractive when you feel like you have no prospects but you'll realize it is a sheer waste of time once you learn to value yourself appropriately and stop degrading yourself because of the feedback you're getting from the apps. This is difficult to do unless you really deeply understand the dynamics of these apps so the typical suggestion is to get off them and just date in person.
7. You were pretty much sold a lie growing up that everyone is entitled to love and the average guy will have an easy time finding a partner. When you understand the evolutionary pressures placed on women to select the best partner and today's world where women feel like there are many more high value men due to social media, it is easy to understand why they find it repulsive to settle for someone who's average. Most women grow out of this kind of thinking and seek real connection at some point though.
TLDR; You're probably undervaluing yourself but its not really your fault. Move out of the Bay Area. Get better pictures for your dating apps. Don't expect to have an easy time dating if there is nothing extraordinarily exceptional about you.
> If you are in the Bay Area, you are at a distinct disadvantage. The male-female-ratio
This is just true in the entire USA under age 35. If you're a man - you have a distinct disadvantage. More men (107:100) are born than women. This evens out around age 40 because men killed themselves at a much higher rate than women have. (Think about that - women kill themselves too but 7% of men have to off themselves to just even it out if all the women lived)
Practically speaking, you're going feel the gender ratio of your geographical region/metropolitan area. Sure, men will be at a ratio disadvantage more often than not in the US, but there are definitely zones where the ratio is inverted. I spent half my 20s in NYC and half in SF and the wow was the difference glaring.
I’m just letting you know that even in NYC the ratios are still not in mens favor. 18-35, there are still more men in NYC than women. You’ve been sold a lie for a long time - lol.
Every source I can find in a cursory search only shows the overall ratio, not age group segmented - whats your source?
And regardless, even if it was somewhere between slightly favorable and slightly unfavorable in NYC, it is strongly unfavorable in SF, which accords with my subjective experience dating in the two places.
First Google search result. Census data contains all the info you desire. It’s not highly publicized because no one likes to admit that men might be struggling with something - lol. It doesn’t sell well in the media.
I will agree that the gender ratio of SF and SV are wildly worse for men than NYC. Just saying that it isn’t some holy grail that people like to sell it as. Men outnumber women in this world from birth. It’s only because men kill themselves that we have less men than women by age ~40.
In NY I could easily get matches/dates... in SF it was much more difficult. And when I did get dates in SF, 2nd dates were much less likely, I got ghosted more often, etc. In terms of the silly reductive attractiveness scale, I went from feeling like an 7 or 8 to a 3 or 4.
> having to deal with political correctness at the office and other inconveniences.
I think there is room for another look at this (without condoning it):
men have careerism out of necessity for stability - or at least conveying stability - and made environments that were comfortable for them to make it tolerable
women have careerism out of choice for stability and are finding pursuing this choice out of pride enters them into an environment that was never really about professionalism
so the two audiences are exploiting themselves in office and corporate environments for different reasons or pressures
I'm all for making environments comfortable for a greater population to be productive and sustain their lifestyle, I think acknowledging why an environment is uncomfortable for new entrants can help that
Automation will essentially keep the top percentiles of intelligence employed while everyone else suffers immensely. 80% of the country is going to be fucked in the coming decades while we automate everything. It's why UBI is so crucial in the future.
I believe "who cannot cut it in STEM" is a very dangerous thing to say. How many theoretical physicists or golang developer positions are available? By definition only a minority of men can hold them. And the government is importing foreigners to compete for the same positions too. But a society is much larger than that. And if you don't support those alleged "90-105"s from your society pretty soon you'll be a minority in your own country. Which incidentally is going to happen to Americans in my lifetime.
When was the last time your heard politicians talking about it? Ross Perot and DJT?
This kind of withdrawal seems to be happening in many cultures. In Japan it's called hikikomori. I forget what it's called in Italy, but I know I've read about it. Here it's the same, except ours tend to be more violent.
I don’t know enough about Japan to say anything on this matter but at least in Italy, unlike America, it’s fairly common for adults to live with their parents until married, without social stigma (well, if they have a job).
Regarding manufacturing jobs I really loved this freakonomics podcast[1]
> Interviewer: Ah, the lovely language of economics once again. “Costlessly reallocate to their next best opportunity,” meaning that some American who loses his manufacturing job just hops over to the next good job, which just happens to be available, near where he’s already living, and for which he just happens to be perfectly qualified for…
> Economist: That’s not what we see. We see those falls in manufacturing employment correspond to about equally large falls in overall employment rates over the first 10 years in those trade-impacted locations. So every half a point that manufacturing falls, we see a total decline of about a half a point. So some people are leaving the labor market, some people are going into unemployment. Some people are going on to disability. And so the reallocation process seems to be slow, frictional, and scarring.
Well if your looser your job will your wife and kids follow you to the next one? Mine probably won’t so what do I do? Live alone and send money home or do I hop Between low wage jobs?
It gets bad. In Janesville, Wisconsin when the GM plant closed:
>The fabric of hundreds of families unravels, as an itinerant class of fathers — “Janesville Gypsies,” they call themselves — start commuting to G.M. factories in Texas, Indiana and Kansas, just so they can maintain their wage of $28 an hour. Those who stay home invariably see their paychecks shrink drastically. One of the men Goldstein follows, Jerad Whiteaker, cycles through a series of unsatisfying, low-paying jobs, finally settling in one that pays less than half his former wage and offers no health insurance. His twin teenage girls — to whom I’d also like to send awed notes — share five jobs between them, earning so much money for their family that they compromise their eligibility for student loans.
>>Median wages for men have declined since 1990 in real terms. Roughly one-third of men are either unemployed or out of the workforce.
I wonder how much of this is because more women are joining the workforce. If men are leaving the workforce by their own free will because their wife is working and they are staying home with the kids, both of these facts could be true, but seems like a win in both gender equality terms and allowing men to have the life they want. This seems better then having two working parents.
I don't really like how "out of the workforce" is coupled with unemployed. "out of the workforce" implies they don't have to and don't want to work, as opposed to unemployed
> More U.S. men ages 18 to 34 are now living with their parents than with romantic partners.
and
> Research shows that one significant factor women look for in a partner is a steady job. As men’s unemployment rises, their romantic prospects decline. Unsurprisingly, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from 1960 to 2010, the proportion of adults without a college degree who marry plummeted from just over 70 percent to roughly 45 percent.
Seem to imply that this isn't a case of men choosing to stay at home with the kids. I'm curious what the actual data is though.
As the father of 18 year old who is not going to college and instead working as a carpenter, I don't think lumping 18 year olds with 25+ year olds makes much sense. Perhaps I have an antiquated view of family, but I don't feel his "independence" has everything to do with where he lives. I'm more than happy to have him around the house if it allows him to save money and live a better life at, say, 21.
It absolutely makes sense. The idea that an 18 year old would start their own household is an artifact from a small period in our history when 18 year olds could easily get an unskilled job that would afford a decent modest lifestyle. But that only really started in the late 40's and was over by the 70's.
You know one thing I find interesting is you specifically call out "unskilled job", which I think has a point but the OP mentions specifically his son studying to be a carpenter that I would consider a "high skilled" job, even if it is blue collar, and then you suggest there was a small period of time when an 18 yo could provide for a family with unskilled labor.
I then realized that for much of history up until recently by the time a young man was 18 years old he was already a skilled craftsman at his craft to a large extant. The young man would've been training with his father at his craft from the time he was ten years old and so by the time he was 18 would be proficient in what he had to do.
I wonder then is part of the issue we face due to the fact that we spend so much time trying to instill a modern education into youth until they are adults that they have to spend an additional 4-8 years acquiring an actual skill in order to be able to provide value in the workforce?
Yep. And we do it largely because we started from a schooling model built to shape factory workers, and then tried to develop it by aping what the upper classes did - regardless of whether their models could actually scale or were at all desirable in large numbers.
Sadly, doing so also stripped dignity from vocational / blue-collar work - even when it pays (very) well, kids are told that a life in the trades is for the uneducated, ignorant swines.
Ironically, part of this development is led by emancipation of the lower classes themselves: "I break my back every day but my son will study and be a doctor". A sentiment we all admire, but ends up reinforcing the idea that the father's blue-collar work is crap - and that's not how it should be, all workers should have equal dignity and value.
I'm all for equal dignity and value, but I think you are misunderstanding the situation here.
The fact is that money buys better health and familial outcomes. The parents want that for their kids. Manual labor, regardless of how well it pays takes a toll on your body and generally pays less than a lot of the highly sought after knowledge worker jobs.
I really think the rising cost of living is whats driving these kinds of ideas. The parents want their kids to make more money so they can have a better life - a reality in america. Others see this and assume that the blue collar job is bad or something.
If we had an adequate healthcare system that didn't favor the super rich with good outcomes, I would agree. Until then, my kids are going to be encouraged to go into a career where they can make lots of money sitting in an air conditioned office.
I've worked the blue collar tough as fuck jobs, and now I work in an air conditioned office making 15x as much. Objectively, which one is the better job?
I agree, not how it should be, but you gotta get yours.
Also, if you've ever worked in the trades you would know that a large portion of them are ignorant and uneducated. That stereotype exists for a reason. Its just a fact, and they have a tougher time navigating life because of it. I've lived it.
> Also, if you've ever worked in the trades you would know that a large portion of them are ignorant and uneducated. That stereotype exists for a reason. Its just a fact, and they have a tougher time navigating life because of it. I've lived it.
I agree with you there, I think there is a tendency to romanticize the life of a blue collar worker, and thing of them as the noble simple idealized "proletariat", when as you point out the stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason.
But I have to wonder is part of that because of the brain drain in the trades that resulted from everyone going to college and feeling they had to do white collar work. Before a smart, observant, hardworking young man could become an electrician and by virtue of being observant and quick witted could succeeded and excel and become an outstanding electrician that could bring about innovation and elevate his work team. Nowadays though the same hardworking intelligent young man is being told that the trades are for stupid people, and he is too smart for that and wouldn't it be much better to go get a college degree so he can get a "real job". Then twenty years and $50,000 of student debt later he finds himself as a project manager trapped in a standup meeting at 8:00 on a Wednesday morning, hating his life, drowning in unfulfilled despair and wondering what went wrong with his life.
I just think that part of the stereotypes about the trades has become a self fulfilling prophecy.
I have hopes that the invisible hand will provide some corrective feedback. Because at the end of the day, someone has to do the electrical work and the construction work etc. If it can't be done without some amount of IQ the market will adjust for that.
This is already coming to pass in hot real-estate markets where it's almost impossible to get any sort of trade help. It feels like most of the skilled tradesmen (and women) have a plethora of job choices and they by far prefer to build new housing instead of dealing with nitpicky rich people for the same money.
You can point to the decline of organized religion and with it traditional gender roles, but then what explains the relative stability in post-Christian Europe? The China Shock combined with America's threadbare social safety net starts looking more salient. We have inherited a much less trusting, much more alienated society than you are likely to find overseas.
Whatever the cause I fully reject the lazy conclusion this is somehow women's fault. The "Lump of Labor" fallacy is just that, a fallacy. Economic gains are not zero-sum.