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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 othe

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.

throwaway212135 5y ago
Gareth321 5y ago
>Whatever the cause I fully reject the lazy conclusion this is somehow women's fault. What a jarring non-sequitur. The article doesn't mention anything about women being to blame, and I don't think anyone is raising this as the cause.
- ytwombly 5y ago
  That part was in response to some of the other comments here
skinkestek 5y ago
> 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.)
- adriand 5y ago
  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?
  - indigochill 5y ago
    > Why are women succeeding despite that? 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).
  - _ktx2 5y ago
    > 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."
deleted 5y ago
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uoaei 5y ago
> 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.
- diordiderot 5y ago
  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.
- etempleton 5y ago
  Americans by and large want to be believers in…something. There is nothing more frightening than someone that really and truly believes something. There is no end to what they will do.
  - wwweston 5y ago
    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.
    - TimTheTinker 5y ago
      > 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".
      - wwweston 5y ago
rayiner 5y ago
> 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-ness-of-secular-france/ 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-women-desire-work-outside-home.aspx 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.
- deleted 5y ago
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- irrational 5y ago
  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.
  - npip99 5y ago
    "Who wouldn’t prefer to stay home if they had the choice? I could spend my days traveling" It's not travelling... If you're staying at home...
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    >> 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 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."
wahern 5y ago
> the relative stability in post-Christian Europe 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.
N1H1L 5y ago
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.
- prawn 5y ago
  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.
  - ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
    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.
hwers 5y ago
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.
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  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.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  What is so bad? IME, you can easily ignore all the fatalism (popular to feel on every topic) - pretend it isn't there - and do what you want.
  - fuzzer37 5y ago
    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.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      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.
    - boppo1 5y ago
      > The decline of Western Democracy? 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.
colechristensen 5y ago
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.
- ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
  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.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    > 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.
ReactiveJelly 5y ago
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.
- dan-robertson 5y ago
  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.
  - sjtindell 5y ago
    Bowling Alone is a great book about the complete collapse of these sort of groups in America.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    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.
- SECProto 5y ago
  > 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] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Am...
- 5y ago
ukie 5y ago
antisthenes 5y ago
> 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.
- boppo1 5y ago
  > 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.
- paganel 5y ago
  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 source here [1] [1] https://archive.fo/qOPe9 https://archive.fo/qOPe9
medo-bear 5y ago
> US-based cis-hetero white man here ?
- CodeGlitch 5y ago
  Yes I agree - "cis" is a made up word invented to try and win arguments.
bsder 5y ago
> 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.
spaniard89277 5y ago
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.
AdrianB1 5y ago
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.
- bckr 5y ago
  > 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).
cuddlybacon 5y ago
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. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  > 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?
  - monkeydreams 5y ago
    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.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
>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. This looks awfully like a zero-sum outcome to me.

throwaway212135 5y ago

Gareth321 5y ago

>Whatever the cause I fully reject the lazy conclusion this is somehow women's fault. What a jarring non-sequitur. The article doesn't mention anything about women being to blame, and I don't think anyone is raising this as the cause.

ytwombly 5y ago
That part was in response to some of the other comments here

skinkestek 5y ago

> 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.)

adriand 5y ago
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?
- indigochill 5y ago
  > Why are women succeeding despite that? 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).
- _ktx2 5y ago
  > 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."

deleted 5y ago

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uoaei 5y ago

> 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.

diordiderot 5y ago
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.
etempleton 5y ago
Americans by and large want to be believers in…something. There is nothing more frightening than someone that really and truly believes something. There is no end to what they will do.
- wwweston 5y ago
  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.
  - TimTheTinker 5y ago
    > 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".
    - wwweston 5y ago

rayiner 5y ago

> 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-ness-of-secular-france/ 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-women-desire-work-outside-home.aspx 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.

deleted 5y ago
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irrational 5y ago
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.
- npip99 5y ago
  "Who wouldn’t prefer to stay home if they had the choice? I could spend my days traveling" It's not travelling... If you're staying at home...
- tablespoon 5y ago
  >> 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 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."

wahern 5y ago

> the relative stability in post-Christian Europe 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.

N1H1L 5y ago

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.

prawn 5y ago
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.
- ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
  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.

hwers 5y ago

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.

jimkleiber 5y ago
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.
wolverine876 5y ago
What is so bad? IME, you can easily ignore all the fatalism (popular to feel on every topic) - pretend it isn't there - and do what you want.
- fuzzer37 5y ago
  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.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    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.
  - boppo1 5y ago
    > The decline of Western Democracy? 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.

colechristensen 5y ago

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.

ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
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.
- ehnto 5y ago
  > 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.

ReactiveJelly 5y ago

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.

dan-robertson 5y ago
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.
- sjtindell 5y ago
  Bowling Alone is a great book about the complete collapse of these sort of groups in America.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  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.
SECProto 5y ago
> 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] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Am...
5y ago

ukie 5y ago

antisthenes 5y ago

> 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.

boppo1 5y ago
> 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.
paganel 5y ago
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 source here [1] [1] https://archive.fo/qOPe9 https://archive.fo/qOPe9

medo-bear 5y ago

> US-based cis-hetero white man here ?

CodeGlitch 5y ago
Yes I agree - "cis" is a made up word invented to try and win arguments.

bsder 5y ago

> 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.

spaniard89277 5y ago

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.

AdrianB1 5y ago

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.

bckr 5y ago
> 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).

cuddlybacon 5y ago

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. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory

jimkleiber 5y ago
> 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?
- monkeydreams 5y ago
  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.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

>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. This looks awfully like a zero-sum outcome to me.