10 ms·

The Boys Are Not All Right

91 points by tysone 9y ago

alacombe 9y ago
> We will probably never understand why any one young man decides to end the lives of others. [...] Actually, there is a very easy answer and precisely why men join armed forces, or a biker's club / gang / ISIS: power. [and to follow up on this, the same "will to power" that our societies have deprived them of.]
- hoodoof 9y ago
  Adult men joining gangs just seems so childish. I remember wanting to be in a gang when I was 15 years old but I grew out of it.
  - alacombe 9y ago
    Exactly, this is generally going to happen before 25 years old, when the frontal cortex is not yet fully developed. Which is another pattern: most are below 25 years of age.
    - harry8 9y ago
      [citation needed] I can think of as many examples of wanton killers from all ages, genders, races etc. But now I've said that I'm not sure I want to look at those stats.
  - colechristensen 9y ago
    Humans form social groups. If you have a segment of the population that has nowhere to be part of a group, they'll find a place to be part of a group.
  - shard972 9y ago
    Did you grow up in the lower class though? You would never expect someone from the upper class for instance to join a street gang and rare for people from the middle class in general. You might think it is childish, but if it's presented to you as the ticket to success in your otherwise unsuccessfull world, why would it be childish?
    - hoodoof 9y ago
      That's a reasonable counterpoint.
    - harry8 9y ago
      joining the golf club? Cliques are not unknown in middle class life. We may heap scorn upon them by naming them gangs in conversation. Organisational rules being more subtle does not make an organised group less effective than disorganised individuals. Management "teams" are a thing most of us have to deal with.
  - debatem1 9y ago
    Gangs are fascinatingly effective and persistent social structures. I suspect that they and the three/four man squad form the minimum viable products for defensive and offensive operations, respectively. The conclusion from that is that it can be rational to want to join a gang when in a situation where larger forms of political or military organization are undesirable or ineffective, and particularly when they're suppressed or are active adversaries.
  - redleggedfrog 9y ago
    You forgot political parties. That's the tribalism for the masses.
- harry8 9y ago
  “Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” Yeah its a quote, Mencken if you need source. Yeah quotes are not a substitute for thought. Yes. I don't pretend to have all the answers but I'm pretty sure one answer does not fit every single individual in finding their motive to do or not do any one thing. We all need the humility to note that what I think I may do in a certain set of circumstances is not what another person might do, they may well just be better than I am, for example. What I will say is that in this topic there is fear (and rightly so). This fear will bring out the salespeople who may even believe 100% in the ideas they're pushing. So we should be mindful of that as we listen to it all.
  - txt 9y ago
    Bravo, took all the words out of my head!
- telesilla 9y ago
  This is a good overview of the topic of youth violence in schools: https://books.google.be/books?id=XYAFC3vmPmcC&dq=%22will+to+power%22+columbine&source=gbs_navlinks_s https://books.google.be/books?id=XYAFC3vmPmcC&dq=%22will+to+... A young killer supplants "his lost, confused, and unstable self-image with an actively nihilistic will to power." (A reference to Nietzschean nihilism)
  - giardini 9y ago
    telesillla says>"A young killer supplants "his lost, confused, and unstable self-image with an actively nihilistic will to power." Is this possibly also how normal teens become political science students?
- redleggedfrog 9y ago
  You forgot political parties. That's the tribalism for the masses.
shard972 9y ago
> But to even admit our terror is to be reduced, because we don’t have a model of masculinity that allows for fear or grief or tenderness or the day-to-day sadness that sometimes overtakes us all. Is this really the big issue? It seems the current "model" of masculinity while recently undergoing heavy debate has historically been pretty consistent. If it was a serious issue that men couldn't cry a few times a day it should have been an issue throughout history?
- wwalser 9y ago
  > it should have been an issue throughout history? Has it not been an issue throughout history? Honest question.
- zachkatz 9y ago
  > If it was a serious issue that men couldn't cry a few times a day it should have been an issue throughout history? Hypothesis: Men have always been able to "take their frustration out" on women (sexually or otherwise). Now that women are becoming less tolerant of that dynamic, it's affecting men in unforeseen ways.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
joe_the_user 9y ago
The total number of high school shooters is a minuscule number, much small than the number of teenage murders. The US murder rate hasn't increased significantly over the last twenty years, in fact, it's decreased. We should be concerned with school shooters, of course, but taking them as a chance to generalize about most boys or even a small percentage of boys seems incorrect. Oddly enough, Malcolm Gladwell has some trenchant comments on the dynamics behind school shootings and the role media and culture play in this. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/thresholds-of-violence https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/thresholds-of-...
- wwalser 9y ago
  You're responding to points that the author hasn't made. Any time you're writing, you can absolutely not afford to explain to readers all of the things which you are _not_ talking about. You have to rely on a reader's ability to discern that there may well be other valid points besides the one(s) that you're writing about. > but taking them as a chance to generalize about most boys or even a small percentage of boys seems incorrect. This points was made in the article. The author points that that boys committing mass killing is extremely uncommon. That most are okay. That nearly all will turn out fine. That doesn't seem to me to be the point. > We should be concerned with school shooters, of course That (it seems to me) is the author's point. That all of the mass killings are committed by men. And since we are concerned with school shootings, masculinity in the context of modernity is one topic worth discussing. Yes, it's only one topic amongst many. This article isn't about those topics. It's about one of the many topics. We can discuss how the world is getting better all the time (a statement I agree with), in some other article.
  - changchuming 9y ago
    > That all of the mass killings are committed by men. Should that honestly surprise us? Most killings are done by men. This has been true since time immemorial, going back to the time when we first stepped out of Africa.
graeme 9y ago
The topical thesis of this article is extremely weak, considering: 1. Male underachievement and lack of identity is happening elsewhere. Certainly in Canada. 2. Mass shootings are not happening everywhere I think there is a much simpler explantion for male mass shooters: men commit vastly more crime. America has a cultural tendency for mass shooting crime, so it shouldn't be surprising men dominate that crime like they do the rest. Maybe fixing male identity would do it, but that's far from a given, and given international experience it doesn't seem to be the direct cause. (Men committed most crime even when they were confident in their identity) The more likely cause is the legal structure around gun ownership in the United States.
- SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
  >The more likely cause is the legal structure around gun ownership in the United States. And what are your qualifications on the topic? What do you actually know about the laws starting at the founding and hitting the popular milestones of 1934, 1968, 1986, 1994, 2008, and 2010? If someone doesn’t know why those years are significant but still has strong opinions on the topic... well, it’s just that the USA has been having this “conversation” for 200 years and these people are just new to it, being unaware of the facts is a bad position to start from.
  - wwalser 9y ago
    This isn't an argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority See also reddit.com/r/iamverysmart
    - SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
      Asking someone to be educated on a topic is not an argument from authority.
  - mpweiher 9y ago
    The simple fact is that (a) the US has a 10x higher gun homicide rate and ~5x higher homicide rate than other comparable countries (b) the big difference between the US and these countries is vastly higher gun ownership in the US What could the relationship be between guns and deaths from guns? Nope, too hard.
taneq 9y ago
> No commensurate movement has emerged to help them navigate toward a full expression of their gender. It’s no longer enough to “be a man” — we no longer even know what that means. Worse, it's no longer OK to "be a man". You can posture all you want about "toxic masculinity" but physical aggression and ambition are intrinsic parts of the masculine psyche. We need to stop pretending that a man is just a woman with a penis and some cultural influences, and find healthy ways to express these traits.
- wwalser 9y ago
  I felt this was well covered in the OP. > Many feel that the very qualities that used to define them — their strength, aggression and competitiveness — are no longer wanted or needed… Makes the point but is subtle enough to avoid using hyperbole.
  - taneq 9y ago
    It's not the same point. I didn't say that "many feel that" those qualities are no longer wanted or needed, I said that in modern 'western' civilisation they are explicitly disparaged. And I wasn't saying that those qualities "used to define [males]", I was saying that they are inherent qualities of a male human, and that trying to redefine the social interpretation of masculinity is not going to change that.
    - detcader 9y ago
      Why not explicitly define strength, aggression and competitiveness as measurable quantities and provide reproduced studies proving males would be stronger in these qualities even without socialization in childhood, rather than leave people guessing?
    - wwalser 9y ago
      I think the reason that I feel that the authors points is the same as yours but better made is that the author's doesn't lean so heavily on hyperbole. > I said that in modern 'western' civilisation they are explicitly disparaged. In parts, sure. In other parts. Not at all. Anyone who feels that disparagement of traditionally (or genetically) masculine qualities is a universal in the west spends too much time in the wrong filter bubbles. Go watch some sports ball. Please understand that I don't think it's a bad point either. I'm not disagreeing with the point. I'm saying your can have you point and make it more charitably, carefully and accurately.
davesque 9y ago
That was a nice read and there's a lot of truth there. I've always thought the US's ideals of masculinity are untenable.
detcader 9y ago
> the complexities of womanhood, its many forms and expressions. > help [boys] navigate toward a full expression of their gender > outdated model of masculinity What kind of framing of the problem is this? There is no such salvageable thing as any objective "womanhood" or "the male gender" or "masculinity". We have biological sex and we have a power dynamic of which roles and socialized behaviors are the main properties. Take away men's social power structure of over women, and "womanhood" "gender" "masculinity" refer to nothing, or very clinical medical things.
- alacombe 9y ago
  Argument could by made as to whether or not power dynamic is directly linked to biological sex (in general) at the biological level.
  - detcader 9y ago
    Then the questions obviously become "how do we prove that?" and then "how do we work against the crippling effects that condition obviously has on civilization?" Who has gotten past the first within the scientific community? Until they appear, I'll assume the less extraordinary claim that gendered behaviors are socialized
tribby 9y ago
> Boys are broken, and I want to help. I haven't seen michael ian black perform or on tv in many years, but if "isn't it funny what a vicious and petty jerk I am" still makes up a majority of his act/screen persona, maybe he can start by changing that.
Bitcoin_McPonzi 9y ago
Girls aren't pulling the triggers? The "modern" school shooting was invented by a girl in San Diego when a Brenda Spencer shot up an elementary school: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Elementary_School_shooting_(San_Diego) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Elementary_School_sh... There was even a pop song written about the incident. And more recently, Tafsheen Malik, shot up a San Bernadino workplace along with her husband. And a woman along with her husband went on a shooting rampage in Vegas in 2014. http://abcnews.go.com/US/las-vegas-cop-killers-husband-wife-team/story?id=24052877 http://abcnews.go.com/US/las-vegas-cop-killers-husband-wife-... Women were persons of interest in the most recent Vegas shooting, and the wife of the Pulse gunman was arrested in connection with the murders (http://abcnews.go.com/US/wife-pulse-nightclub-gunman-omar-mateen-arrested-san/story?id=44808948 http://abcnews.go.com/US/wife-pulse-nightclub-gunman-omar-ma...). Women can and do pick up guns and murder.
- detcader 9y ago
  You named one woman who was a lone shooter. All arrested people aren't violent criminals in the United States. Maybe in Saudi Arabia?
- reitanqild 9y ago
  As has already been hinted to by others it's not that girls don’t: It seems that as usual boys just do more. Win more. Fail more. Fail more spectacularly. Etc.
Iv 9y ago
One of the biggest health progress in the 20th century was hygiene. I believe that the 21st century will introduce us to mental hygiene. I was watching cartoons recently with my little boy and was amazed at the focus that some put on emotions and how to react to them. That some have a discussion over stress or impulsive behaviors. I did not remember such discussion in my childhood cartoons. I was surprised (and slightly ashamed) to actually learn some stuff from these.
- shard972 9y ago
  When the term is already used mostly by government when talking about radical individuals, i'm not sure im so keen on the new century.
- moultano 9y ago
  Which cartoons? Any to recommend?
  - Iv 9y ago
    I got this thought while watching Steven Universe but this is a general trend. A friend told me that Inside Out got her kids starting to talk more about their emotions too.
ReinholdNiebuhr 9y ago
Christina Sommer's "The War Against Boys"* is pretty relevant. * Not "The War on Boys", it's the "The War Against Boys", my bad.
- totalZero 9y ago
  Philip Zimbardo, who ran the Stanford Prison Experiment, has written and spoken on this topic too. TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/zimchallenge https://www.ted.com/talks/zimchallenge Man, Interrupted (Why Young Men are Struggling & What We Can Do About It): https://www.amazon.com/Man-Interrupted-Young-Struggling-About-ebook/dp/B01BZLTBCA/ https://www.amazon.com/Man-Interrupted-Young-Struggling-Abou...
  - ReinholdNiebuhr 9y ago
    thanks for the amazon link, it's now bumped up to my next read.
kbrwn 9y ago
In my own experience the modern American young adult male is overcome with an intense feeling of powerlessness. Powerless to change the direction of his own life. Powerless to provide for himself and future family. Powerless to effect anything beyond the virtual world without violence. There's no easy fix. It's the result of a combination of economics, culture, power structures, and parental disinterest in the lives of their young adults.
- heurist 9y ago
  The social issues are real. Water quality probably plays a larger role than anyone wants to admit. Beyond that, the puberty hormone cocktail does plenty of damage on its own. Most of the factors are out of any individual's control. However, nutrition, exercise, and creating are the answers I found for myself. My family paid little attention to any of those and my few friends were like me so I didn't have enough exposure to the benefits to give them the effort they require. Fortunately in college I made friends with some powerlifters and art students, then a couple years after graduating I lived with a crazy artist very much unlike the art students I knew, who helped me loosen up and find the artist in myself, largely through psychadelics. I took weekly art classes from there. Hints for any struggling young men reading this: starting strength and whole foods (not the store). Get fit and life gets better. Rebel against conformity by becoming the best human you can be.
rvo 9y ago
> Girls aren’t pulling the triggers. It’s boys. It’s almost always boys. One could argue that it is the abundance of guns thats the issue. Why not consider repealing the 2nd Amendment? Do something like what Australia did. 2nd Amendment seems to be too masculine anyway. > It’s no longer enough to “be a man” — we no longer even know what that means. "Toxic masculinity" is a phrase that seems to be thrown around a bit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity). And it seems to be mostly applied to western (white) men. I would argue that western white males are more 'broken' compared to other males. > Too many boys are trapped in the same suffocating, outdated model of masculinity, where manhood is measured in strength, where there is no way to be vulnerable without being emasculated, where manliness is about having power over others. Possibly. As the author says, the lack of focus on men / boys hasn't given them a fresh way of channeling their masculinity in the 21st century. > I would like men to use feminism as an inspiration, in the same way that feminists used the civil rights movement as theirs. Not sure how he means it. (Western) men are having less sex, watching more porn. The testosterone levels have plummeted. Special programs are being held for females, LGBT, etc but not for men due to unquantifiable broad points about "history of patriarchy" and "white male privilege". More broadly, the Y chromosome is kinda fizzling out (at least according to some studies, I've seen other studies that claim thats not the case). Western men are facing shortening life expectancies, high suicide rates, depression, etc. There is a complete lack of social fabric. Nothing unites them anymore (no military, religion, honor, purpose). But isn't this the world that many intellectuals are looking for? Don't we want to remove western male dominance? Don't we want people to control their sexual promiscuity? Don't we all agree that patriarchy is bad so we have to destroy it? And that white men have had a historical advantage that should be taken away? I was always under the impression that the thing that makes western society great is that everyone is supposed to be equal. So why tolerate excessive masculinity from western males? Edit: case in point, this article has been insta-flagged from the front page. Shows you how much even HN cares about boys/men. And maybe that's good, western males apparently have a lot of privilege anyway.
- alacombe 9y ago
  > I was always under the impression that the thing that makes western society great is that everyone is supposed to be equal. What makes the Western societies great revolve more around "equality of opportunity" than "equality of outcome", which, if I'm not mistaken, you seem to imply.
nickbauman 9y ago
I was relentlessly bullied as a kid because I was not the typical boy type (which sane people now associate with a toxic masculinity). At one point my bullies (there are always a group that picks on the one) chased me onto a 20 meter dam where I fell into its spillway and almost drowned. My pursuers were never punished. The only reason I didn't become a school shooter is because I literally did not know how to get a gun. I didn't live in a community where there was any kind of gun culture. That's all. If I would have had access to a gun I would have tried to kill them. Because they were, to any point of rationality, on a direct course to killing me. I felt like it was me or them. I am the school shooter poster child for gun control. Because I couldn't get a gun, I survived my ordeal and became a productive member of society. We need common sense gun control.
- rvo 9y ago
  > If I would have had access to a gun I would have tried to kill them. you got issues, mate. maybe talk to someone? > We need common sense gun control. like what? anything short of repealing the 2A makes no sense to me frankly. Perhaps it's time to just repeal it and possibly confiscate guns across the board.
  - nickbauman 9y ago
    Nope. I was 11 years old and I defy you to take your 11 year old self in that situation and do it differently.
    - rvo 9y ago
      of course I wouldnt be too different. I'm just saying you should talk to someone about this. Isn't it good that you didn't have access to guns? So why not just repeal the 2A?
      - reitanqild 9y ago
        There's a few options between not shaving at all and removing the nose together with the eyebrows. Teaching gun culture and demanding gun safes (like it's done around here) would probably be a safer and more efficient route.
gdepuydt 9y ago
Would he follow the same line of reasoning, if the shooter was Muslim?
I_Love_My_Mac 9y ago
The solution is simple. 1. Rust. Teach the rust language in school. This will empower boys and make them less violent. 2. The Blockchain. Schools should launch their own ICOs and have the funding they need. 3. Guaranteed minimum income. This way, school teachers won't be starving. And in California, repeal Prop 13.
rdiddly 9y ago
Besides withdrawal and rage, there are plenty of ways of handling it. You can be a Total Badass(tm) in your work. You can offer clear, consistent, moral, protective leadership. You can be a crusader against all that is extraneous or deceptive, a warrior for clarity and simplicity. Or something. Unfortunately your role as a defender of others probably won't be fulfilling unless you join the armed forces or a gang. Because you probably live in a an ugly car-choked suburban dystopia with douchebags all around, meaning you have no place to care about and no one worth defending. Not that they were in any danger anyway, in their SUV tank on the way to the mall. But that's why people join the armed forces or gangs. They're the only things left. I don't have time right now to treat this topic properly. And I kind of think more talking-about-it might not be the answer anyway. EDIT: Or the police force, put that in there too.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rmason 9y ago
I don't think there's any single thing responsible. But when I contrast growing up in the fifties and sixties versus today one difference stands out and that's the nuclear family. Did you know that you're twice as likely to live in a single family household in the USA than Canada? That might be part of the reason why Canada doesn't have school shootings and we do. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/the-inequality-we-dont-talk-about/article15636708/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/the-inequality-we-do...
monksy 9y ago
I thought I'd stay away from commenting this article, but the more I consider what was said the more I'm concerned. A few points: 1. The article starts off with putting down the behavior of other men. As if it was a weakness to have difficulty in expressing a displeasure. "The way to emasculate a man is to..." I wasn't as much about, lets help the person to realize this, as much as it was to embarass. (No wonder men can't be vulenerable) 2. It goes on to claim that men and only men were the problem with the violence. It didn't go on to complex situations where they may be doing it over jealously, competition for women, as the result of (Elliot Rodgers and his "women" problem), or even persuaded by women. If you're going to talk about a loopsided amount of violence by men, it may be helpful to seperate the violence by proxy. I would suggest bringing up actual crime data that goes indepth about these situations as a counter point. Brief massacures are nothing new, but they are something to consider solving. --- Mr. Black should have made a trueful effort in suggesting that we should be more concerned about the development, and socialization of boys to men. 3. The Boys vs Girls arguement in schools: If you really want to be truthful, explain where it came and how it came to be. Go on and explain how the AAUW influenced schools with faulty data to change how education was done. Explain how there is a lack of male teachers in the classrooms. (And why male teachers are by far kicked out of the schools) There have been studies (I don't have them on hand) that suggest gender seperated schools. I'm all for that. 4. "Toxic masculanity"- Again, he's trying to frame traits that are common in males, and in the presence of testotrone in a negative light. He even goes as far as to claim that "it's a model for behavior". It's not. I would suggestion how the environment attempts to surpress these traits and refuses to allow for it to be expressed completely. I.e.: boys rough housing, supression of anger, supression of male bonding, and suppression of independence (helicopter parents, sociality expectations/impressions etc) 5. Soy boys- lol. In a way I would agree with them, on the metalevel where they would claim that you are betraying your own biological configuration. (In the whole article he keeps tring to maintain a frame that masculine traits are bad) However, they're bully's and they say it because they know that they can get to you. (In a masculine world, those bully's would be beaten as that it's asocial behavior) 6. Binding the male development to feminism. Sigh. Can men ever not be compared to women? This is incredibly tiring.
jeffdavis 9y ago
I don't know whether it has anything to do with the shootings or not, but the problem is real. American men and boys are really denied any kind of culture or identity because of political correctness. I can go to a Dewali celebration, and it's obvious the people there have a cultural identity. But try making an American version of that, and it will either be drained of any real culture or come across as intolerant or at least unaccomodating. The male identity issue is just a part of the larger cultural identity issue. Aside: I think "guy" is one of the worst examples. Ambiguous about gender and adulthood at the same time. What an identity-killer.
simple10 9y ago
Part of the benefit of living in the Bay Area – other than tech – is early stage exposure to large scale social and cultural experiments. Hippies, New Age, Eastern mysticism (translated into Western culture), libertarianism, futurism, biohacking, micro-dosing, etc. etc. All of them seeking to find a new but familiar frame of reference for being human in a rapidly changing modern world. In the whole of human history, every thriving culture had a dedicated male right of passage where a boy becomes a man... every culture except one... ours. While not mainstream, a few newer practices in the vein of cultural biohacking exist as nascent replacements for right-of-passage ceremonies. The ones I've come across are somewhat underground or at least offline. They're not a secret, they're just currently weird in the same way Steve Jobs using meditation for productivity was unorthodox a few decades ago. While it's easy to downplay the role of right-of-passage ceremonies as archaic, their existence served a necessary function. It's where a boy gained his confidence and understanding in his role in the community. A time where he stood up as a man to face his peers and elders. An expression at the core of human experience: claiming individual identity within a group. The need for these ceremonies has not gone away. We just now see the aftermath of what happens when our culture no longer serves the needs of the individual, opting instead to serve the crowd. With men causing most of the newsworthy problems these days, perhaps the culture is not optimal for adapting biologically and socially male tendencies into our present reality. I've had a chance to attend a few different right-of-passage ceremonies. It's hard to explain how powerful an intentionally crafted ceremony can be in transforming someone until you've seen it first hand. It's nearly impossible to describe.
xxxdarrenxxx 9y ago
Why are we not looking at the inverse, hmm???? Have people never wondered Why people in modern germanic countries don't wear axes anymore. Why english people don't walk around with broadsword. Why do Italians (read Romans), not have a gladius strapped on their pants. Why do the Japanese (read samurai) not all walk around with katanas (this one is relatively recent and is interesting to read as it was met equally with heavy criticism upon banning) DOES AMERICA THINK THAT THIS IS A NEW THING?! To be overly verbose. Every country started out as people carrying weapons if you go far back enough. And almost ALL stopped carrying personal weapons or it was banned. I really want people to read each individual countries history around the time weapons became banned/dissappear culturally. After that look how many of those countries fell into civil war/had increase in gun related deaths. (It didn't really) WHY did almost every country ever ban weapons in history. Did you think people were bored and just banned guns randomly? The direct issue is not the weapons, give me a gun and I won't shoot. The direct issue is psychological trauma/damage of the individual shooters, but things in general are almost always banned/regulated because off the potential dmg the 1% can do with it. Not relevant if the 99% is responsible. I go as far as saying that the half the law is a direct resulting bi-product because off these psychological irregularities that due to the unfortunate pseudo butterfly effect of some people's life events come to be every now and then.

91 points by tysone 9y ago

> We will probably never understand why any one young man decides to end the lives of others. [...] Actually, there is a very easy answer and precisely why men join armed forces, or a biker's club / gang / ISIS: power. [and to follow up on this, the same "will to power" that our societies have deprived them of.]

hoodoof 9y ago
Adult men joining gangs just seems so childish. I remember wanting to be in a gang when I was 15 years old but I grew out of it.
- alacombe 9y ago
  Exactly, this is generally going to happen before 25 years old, when the frontal cortex is not yet fully developed. Which is another pattern: most are below 25 years of age.
  - harry8 9y ago
    [citation needed] I can think of as many examples of wanton killers from all ages, genders, races etc. But now I've said that I'm not sure I want to look at those stats.
- colechristensen 9y ago
  Humans form social groups. If you have a segment of the population that has nowhere to be part of a group, they'll find a place to be part of a group.
- shard972 9y ago
  Did you grow up in the lower class though? You would never expect someone from the upper class for instance to join a street gang and rare for people from the middle class in general. You might think it is childish, but if it's presented to you as the ticket to success in your otherwise unsuccessfull world, why would it be childish?
  - hoodoof 9y ago
    That's a reasonable counterpoint.
  - harry8 9y ago
    joining the golf club? Cliques are not unknown in middle class life. We may heap scorn upon them by naming them gangs in conversation. Organisational rules being more subtle does not make an organised group less effective than disorganised individuals. Management "teams" are a thing most of us have to deal with.
- debatem1 9y ago
  Gangs are fascinatingly effective and persistent social structures. I suspect that they and the three/four man squad form the minimum viable products for defensive and offensive operations, respectively. The conclusion from that is that it can be rational to want to join a gang when in a situation where larger forms of political or military organization are undesirable or ineffective, and particularly when they're suppressed or are active adversaries.
- redleggedfrog 9y ago
  You forgot political parties. That's the tribalism for the masses.
harry8 9y ago
“Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” Yeah its a quote, Mencken if you need source. Yeah quotes are not a substitute for thought. Yes. I don't pretend to have all the answers but I'm pretty sure one answer does not fit every single individual in finding their motive to do or not do any one thing. We all need the humility to note that what I think I may do in a certain set of circumstances is not what another person might do, they may well just be better than I am, for example. What I will say is that in this topic there is fear (and rightly so). This fear will bring out the salespeople who may even believe 100% in the ideas they're pushing. So we should be mindful of that as we listen to it all.
- txt 9y ago
  Bravo, took all the words out of my head!
telesilla 9y ago
This is a good overview of the topic of youth violence in schools: https://books.google.be/books?id=XYAFC3vmPmcC&dq=%22will+to+power%22+columbine&source=gbs_navlinks_s https://books.google.be/books?id=XYAFC3vmPmcC&dq=%22will+to+... A young killer supplants "his lost, confused, and unstable self-image with an actively nihilistic will to power." (A reference to Nietzschean nihilism)
- giardini 9y ago
  telesillla says>"A young killer supplants "his lost, confused, and unstable self-image with an actively nihilistic will to power." Is this possibly also how normal teens become political science students?
redleggedfrog 9y ago
You forgot political parties. That's the tribalism for the masses.

shard972 9y ago

> But to even admit our terror is to be reduced, because we don’t have a model of masculinity that allows for fear or grief or tenderness or the day-to-day sadness that sometimes overtakes us all. Is this really the big issue? It seems the current "model" of masculinity while recently undergoing heavy debate has historically been pretty consistent. If it was a serious issue that men couldn't cry a few times a day it should have been an issue throughout history?

wwalser 9y ago
> it should have been an issue throughout history? Has it not been an issue throughout history? Honest question.
zachkatz 9y ago
> If it was a serious issue that men couldn't cry a few times a day it should have been an issue throughout history? Hypothesis: Men have always been able to "take their frustration out" on women (sexually or otherwise). Now that women are becoming less tolerant of that dynamic, it's affecting men in unforeseen ways.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

joe_the_user 9y ago

The total number of high school shooters is a minuscule number, much small than the number of teenage murders. The US murder rate hasn't increased significantly over the last twenty years, in fact, it's decreased. We should be concerned with school shooters, of course, but taking them as a chance to generalize about most boys or even a small percentage of boys seems incorrect. Oddly enough, Malcolm Gladwell has some trenchant comments on the dynamics behind school shootings and the role media and culture play in this. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/thresholds-of-violence https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/thresholds-of-...

wwalser 9y ago
You're responding to points that the author hasn't made. Any time you're writing, you can absolutely not afford to explain to readers all of the things which you are _not_ talking about. You have to rely on a reader's ability to discern that there may well be other valid points besides the one(s) that you're writing about. > but taking them as a chance to generalize about most boys or even a small percentage of boys seems incorrect. This points was made in the article. The author points that that boys committing mass killing is extremely uncommon. That most are okay. That nearly all will turn out fine. That doesn't seem to me to be the point. > We should be concerned with school shooters, of course That (it seems to me) is the author's point. That all of the mass killings are committed by men. And since we are concerned with school shootings, masculinity in the context of modernity is one topic worth discussing. Yes, it's only one topic amongst many. This article isn't about those topics. It's about one of the many topics. We can discuss how the world is getting better all the time (a statement I agree with), in some other article.
- changchuming 9y ago
  > That all of the mass killings are committed by men. Should that honestly surprise us? Most killings are done by men. This has been true since time immemorial, going back to the time when we first stepped out of Africa.

graeme 9y ago

The topical thesis of this article is extremely weak, considering: 1. Male underachievement and lack of identity is happening elsewhere. Certainly in Canada. 2. Mass shootings are not happening everywhere I think there is a much simpler explantion for male mass shooters: men commit vastly more crime. America has a cultural tendency for mass shooting crime, so it shouldn't be surprising men dominate that crime like they do the rest. Maybe fixing male identity would do it, but that's far from a given, and given international experience it doesn't seem to be the direct cause. (Men committed most crime even when they were confident in their identity) The more likely cause is the legal structure around gun ownership in the United States.

SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
>The more likely cause is the legal structure around gun ownership in the United States. And what are your qualifications on the topic? What do you actually know about the laws starting at the founding and hitting the popular milestones of 1934, 1968, 1986, 1994, 2008, and 2010? If someone doesn’t know why those years are significant but still has strong opinions on the topic... well, it’s just that the USA has been having this “conversation” for 200 years and these people are just new to it, being unaware of the facts is a bad position to start from.
- wwalser 9y ago
  This isn't an argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority See also reddit.com/r/iamverysmart
  - SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
    Asking someone to be educated on a topic is not an argument from authority.
- mpweiher 9y ago
  The simple fact is that (a) the US has a 10x higher gun homicide rate and ~5x higher homicide rate than other comparable countries (b) the big difference between the US and these countries is vastly higher gun ownership in the US What could the relationship be between guns and deaths from guns? Nope, too hard.

taneq 9y ago

> No commensurate movement has emerged to help them navigate toward a full expression of their gender. It’s no longer enough to “be a man” — we no longer even know what that means. Worse, it's no longer OK to "be a man". You can posture all you want about "toxic masculinity" but physical aggression and ambition are intrinsic parts of the masculine psyche. We need to stop pretending that a man is just a woman with a penis and some cultural influences, and find healthy ways to express these traits.

wwalser 9y ago
I felt this was well covered in the OP. > Many feel that the very qualities that used to define them — their strength, aggression and competitiveness — are no longer wanted or needed… Makes the point but is subtle enough to avoid using hyperbole.
- taneq 9y ago
  It's not the same point. I didn't say that "many feel that" those qualities are no longer wanted or needed, I said that in modern 'western' civilisation they are explicitly disparaged. And I wasn't saying that those qualities "used to define [males]", I was saying that they are inherent qualities of a male human, and that trying to redefine the social interpretation of masculinity is not going to change that.
  - detcader 9y ago
    Why not explicitly define strength, aggression and competitiveness as measurable quantities and provide reproduced studies proving males would be stronger in these qualities even without socialization in childhood, rather than leave people guessing?
  - wwalser 9y ago
    I think the reason that I feel that the authors points is the same as yours but better made is that the author's doesn't lean so heavily on hyperbole. > I said that in modern 'western' civilisation they are explicitly disparaged. In parts, sure. In other parts. Not at all. Anyone who feels that disparagement of traditionally (or genetically) masculine qualities is a universal in the west spends too much time in the wrong filter bubbles. Go watch some sports ball. Please understand that I don't think it's a bad point either. I'm not disagreeing with the point. I'm saying your can have you point and make it more charitably, carefully and accurately.

davesque 9y ago

That was a nice read and there's a lot of truth there. I've always thought the US's ideals of masculinity are untenable.

detcader 9y ago

> the complexities of womanhood, its many forms and expressions. > help [boys] navigate toward a full expression of their gender > outdated model of masculinity What kind of framing of the problem is this? There is no such salvageable thing as any objective "womanhood" or "the male gender" or "masculinity". We have biological sex and we have a power dynamic of which roles and socialized behaviors are the main properties. Take away men's social power structure of over women, and "womanhood" "gender" "masculinity" refer to nothing, or very clinical medical things.

alacombe 9y ago
Argument could by made as to whether or not power dynamic is directly linked to biological sex (in general) at the biological level.
- detcader 9y ago
  Then the questions obviously become "how do we prove that?" and then "how do we work against the crippling effects that condition obviously has on civilization?" Who has gotten past the first within the scientific community? Until they appear, I'll assume the less extraordinary claim that gendered behaviors are socialized

tribby 9y ago

> Boys are broken, and I want to help. I haven't seen michael ian black perform or on tv in many years, but if "isn't it funny what a vicious and petty jerk I am" still makes up a majority of his act/screen persona, maybe he can start by changing that.

Bitcoin_McPonzi 9y ago

Girls aren't pulling the triggers? The "modern" school shooting was invented by a girl in San Diego when a Brenda Spencer shot up an elementary school: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Elementary_School_shooting_(San_Diego) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Elementary_School_sh... There was even a pop song written about the incident. And more recently, Tafsheen Malik, shot up a San Bernadino workplace along with her husband. And a woman along with her husband went on a shooting rampage in Vegas in 2014. http://abcnews.go.com/US/las-vegas-cop-killers-husband-wife-team/story?id=24052877 http://abcnews.go.com/US/las-vegas-cop-killers-husband-wife-... Women were persons of interest in the most recent Vegas shooting, and the wife of the Pulse gunman was arrested in connection with the murders (http://abcnews.go.com/US/wife-pulse-nightclub-gunman-omar-mateen-arrested-san/story?id=44808948 http://abcnews.go.com/US/wife-pulse-nightclub-gunman-omar-ma...). Women can and do pick up guns and murder.

detcader 9y ago
You named one woman who was a lone shooter. All arrested people aren't violent criminals in the United States. Maybe in Saudi Arabia?
reitanqild 9y ago
As has already been hinted to by others it's not that girls don’t: It seems that as usual boys just do more. Win more. Fail more. Fail more spectacularly. Etc.

Iv 9y ago

One of the biggest health progress in the 20th century was hygiene. I believe that the 21st century will introduce us to mental hygiene. I was watching cartoons recently with my little boy and was amazed at the focus that some put on emotions and how to react to them. That some have a discussion over stress or impulsive behaviors. I did not remember such discussion in my childhood cartoons. I was surprised (and slightly ashamed) to actually learn some stuff from these.

shard972 9y ago
When the term is already used mostly by government when talking about radical individuals, i'm not sure im so keen on the new century.
moultano 9y ago
Which cartoons? Any to recommend?
- Iv 9y ago
  I got this thought while watching Steven Universe but this is a general trend. A friend told me that Inside Out got her kids starting to talk more about their emotions too.

ReinholdNiebuhr 9y ago

Christina Sommer's "The War Against Boys"* is pretty relevant. * Not "The War on Boys", it's the "The War Against Boys", my bad.

totalZero 9y ago
Philip Zimbardo, who ran the Stanford Prison Experiment, has written and spoken on this topic too. TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/zimchallenge https://www.ted.com/talks/zimchallenge Man, Interrupted (Why Young Men are Struggling & What We Can Do About It): https://www.amazon.com/Man-Interrupted-Young-Struggling-About-ebook/dp/B01BZLTBCA/ https://www.amazon.com/Man-Interrupted-Young-Struggling-Abou...
- ReinholdNiebuhr 9y ago
  thanks for the amazon link, it's now bumped up to my next read.

kbrwn 9y ago

In my own experience the modern American young adult male is overcome with an intense feeling of powerlessness. Powerless to change the direction of his own life. Powerless to provide for himself and future family. Powerless to effect anything beyond the virtual world without violence. There's no easy fix. It's the result of a combination of economics, culture, power structures, and parental disinterest in the lives of their young adults.

heurist 9y ago
The social issues are real. Water quality probably plays a larger role than anyone wants to admit. Beyond that, the puberty hormone cocktail does plenty of damage on its own. Most of the factors are out of any individual's control. However, nutrition, exercise, and creating are the answers I found for myself. My family paid little attention to any of those and my few friends were like me so I didn't have enough exposure to the benefits to give them the effort they require. Fortunately in college I made friends with some powerlifters and art students, then a couple years after graduating I lived with a crazy artist very much unlike the art students I knew, who helped me loosen up and find the artist in myself, largely through psychadelics. I took weekly art classes from there. Hints for any struggling young men reading this: starting strength and whole foods (not the store). Get fit and life gets better. Rebel against conformity by becoming the best human you can be.

rvo 9y ago

> Girls aren’t pulling the triggers. It’s boys. It’s almost always boys. One could argue that it is the abundance of guns thats the issue. Why not consider repealing the 2nd Amendment? Do something like what Australia did. 2nd Amendment seems to be too masculine anyway. > It’s no longer enough to “be a man” — we no longer even know what that means. "Toxic masculinity" is a phrase that seems to be thrown around a bit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity). And it seems to be mostly applied to western (white) men. I would argue that western white males are more 'broken' compared to other males. > Too many boys are trapped in the same suffocating, outdated model of masculinity, where manhood is measured in strength, where there is no way to be vulnerable without being emasculated, where manliness is about having power over others. Possibly. As the author says, the lack of focus on men / boys hasn't given them a fresh way of channeling their masculinity in the 21st century. > I would like men to use feminism as an inspiration, in the same way that feminists used the civil rights movement as theirs. Not sure how he means it. (Western) men are having less sex, watching more porn. The testosterone levels have plummeted. Special programs are being held for females, LGBT, etc but not for men due to unquantifiable broad points about "history of patriarchy" and "white male privilege". More broadly, the Y chromosome is kinda fizzling out (at least according to some studies, I've seen other studies that claim thats not the case). Western men are facing shortening life expectancies, high suicide rates, depression, etc. There is a complete lack of social fabric. Nothing unites them anymore (no military, religion, honor, purpose). But isn't this the world that many intellectuals are looking for? Don't we want to remove western male dominance? Don't we want people to control their sexual promiscuity? Don't we all agree that patriarchy is bad so we have to destroy it? And that white men have had a historical advantage that should be taken away? I was always under the impression that the thing that makes western society great is that everyone is supposed to be equal. So why tolerate excessive masculinity from western males? Edit: case in point, this article has been insta-flagged from the front page. Shows you how much even HN cares about boys/men. And maybe that's good, western males apparently have a lot of privilege anyway.

alacombe 9y ago
> I was always under the impression that the thing that makes western society great is that everyone is supposed to be equal. What makes the Western societies great revolve more around "equality of opportunity" than "equality of outcome", which, if I'm not mistaken, you seem to imply.

nickbauman 9y ago

I was relentlessly bullied as a kid because I was not the typical boy type (which sane people now associate with a toxic masculinity). At one point my bullies (there are always a group that picks on the one) chased me onto a 20 meter dam where I fell into its spillway and almost drowned. My pursuers were never punished. The only reason I didn't become a school shooter is because I literally did not know how to get a gun. I didn't live in a community where there was any kind of gun culture. That's all. If I would have had access to a gun I would have tried to kill them. Because they were, to any point of rationality, on a direct course to killing me. I felt like it was me or them. I am the school shooter poster child for gun control. Because I couldn't get a gun, I survived my ordeal and became a productive member of society. We need common sense gun control.

rvo 9y ago
> If I would have had access to a gun I would have tried to kill them. you got issues, mate. maybe talk to someone? > We need common sense gun control. like what? anything short of repealing the 2A makes no sense to me frankly. Perhaps it's time to just repeal it and possibly confiscate guns across the board.
- nickbauman 9y ago
  Nope. I was 11 years old and I defy you to take your 11 year old self in that situation and do it differently.
  - rvo 9y ago
    of course I wouldnt be too different. I'm just saying you should talk to someone about this. Isn't it good that you didn't have access to guns? So why not just repeal the 2A?
    - reitanqild 9y ago
      There's a few options between not shaving at all and removing the nose together with the eyebrows. Teaching gun culture and demanding gun safes (like it's done around here) would probably be a safer and more efficient route.

gdepuydt 9y ago

Would he follow the same line of reasoning, if the shooter was Muslim?

I_Love_My_Mac 9y ago

The solution is simple. 1. Rust. Teach the rust language in school. This will empower boys and make them less violent. 2. The Blockchain. Schools should launch their own ICOs and have the funding they need. 3. Guaranteed minimum income. This way, school teachers won't be starving. And in California, repeal Prop 13.

rdiddly 9y ago

Besides withdrawal and rage, there are plenty of ways of handling it. You can be a Total Badass(tm) in your work. You can offer clear, consistent, moral, protective leadership. You can be a crusader against all that is extraneous or deceptive, a warrior for clarity and simplicity. Or something. Unfortunately your role as a defender of others probably won't be fulfilling unless you join the armed forces or a gang. Because you probably live in a an ugly car-choked suburban dystopia with douchebags all around, meaning you have no place to care about and no one worth defending. Not that they were in any danger anyway, in their SUV tank on the way to the mall. But that's why people join the armed forces or gangs. They're the only things left. I don't have time right now to treat this topic properly. And I kind of think more talking-about-it might not be the answer anyway. EDIT: Or the police force, put that in there too.

deleted 9y ago

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rmason 9y ago

I don't think there's any single thing responsible. But when I contrast growing up in the fifties and sixties versus today one difference stands out and that's the nuclear family. Did you know that you're twice as likely to live in a single family household in the USA than Canada? That might be part of the reason why Canada doesn't have school shootings and we do. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/the-inequality-we-dont-talk-about/article15636708/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/the-inequality-we-do...

monksy 9y ago

I thought I'd stay away from commenting this article, but the more I consider what was said the more I'm concerned. A few points: 1. The article starts off with putting down the behavior of other men. As if it was a weakness to have difficulty in expressing a displeasure. "The way to emasculate a man is to..." I wasn't as much about, lets help the person to realize this, as much as it was to embarass. (No wonder men can't be vulenerable) 2. It goes on to claim that men and only men were the problem with the violence. It didn't go on to complex situations where they may be doing it over jealously, competition for women, as the result of (Elliot Rodgers and his "women" problem), or even persuaded by women. If you're going to talk about a loopsided amount of violence by men, it may be helpful to seperate the violence by proxy. I would suggest bringing up actual crime data that goes indepth about these situations as a counter point. Brief massacures are nothing new, but they are something to consider solving. --- Mr. Black should have made a trueful effort in suggesting that we should be more concerned about the development, and socialization of boys to men. 3. The Boys vs Girls arguement in schools: If you really want to be truthful, explain where it came and how it came to be. Go on and explain how the AAUW influenced schools with faulty data to change how education was done. Explain how there is a lack of male teachers in the classrooms. (And why male teachers are by far kicked out of the schools) There have been studies (I don't have them on hand) that suggest gender seperated schools. I'm all for that. 4. "Toxic masculanity"- Again, he's trying to frame traits that are common in males, and in the presence of testotrone in a negative light. He even goes as far as to claim that "it's a model for behavior". It's not. I would suggestion how the environment attempts to surpress these traits and refuses to allow for it to be expressed completely. I.e.: boys rough housing, supression of anger, supression of male bonding, and suppression of independence (helicopter parents, sociality expectations/impressions etc) 5. Soy boys- lol. In a way I would agree with them, on the metalevel where they would claim that you are betraying your own biological configuration. (In the whole article he keeps tring to maintain a frame that masculine traits are bad) However, they're bully's and they say it because they know that they can get to you. (In a masculine world, those bully's would be beaten as that it's asocial behavior) 6. Binding the male development to feminism. Sigh. Can men ever not be compared to women? This is incredibly tiring.

jeffdavis 9y ago

I don't know whether it has anything to do with the shootings or not, but the problem is real. American men and boys are really denied any kind of culture or identity because of political correctness. I can go to a Dewali celebration, and it's obvious the people there have a cultural identity. But try making an American version of that, and it will either be drained of any real culture or come across as intolerant or at least unaccomodating. The male identity issue is just a part of the larger cultural identity issue. Aside: I think "guy" is one of the worst examples. Ambiguous about gender and adulthood at the same time. What an identity-killer.

simple10 9y ago

Part of the benefit of living in the Bay Area – other than tech – is early stage exposure to large scale social and cultural experiments. Hippies, New Age, Eastern mysticism (translated into Western culture), libertarianism, futurism, biohacking, micro-dosing, etc. etc. All of them seeking to find a new but familiar frame of reference for being human in a rapidly changing modern world. In the whole of human history, every thriving culture had a dedicated male right of passage where a boy becomes a man... every culture except one... ours. While not mainstream, a few newer practices in the vein of cultural biohacking exist as nascent replacements for right-of-passage ceremonies. The ones I've come across are somewhat underground or at least offline. They're not a secret, they're just currently weird in the same way Steve Jobs using meditation for productivity was unorthodox a few decades ago. While it's easy to downplay the role of right-of-passage ceremonies as archaic, their existence served a necessary function. It's where a boy gained his confidence and understanding in his role in the community. A time where he stood up as a man to face his peers and elders. An expression at the core of human experience: claiming individual identity within a group. The need for these ceremonies has not gone away. We just now see the aftermath of what happens when our culture no longer serves the needs of the individual, opting instead to serve the crowd. With men causing most of the newsworthy problems these days, perhaps the culture is not optimal for adapting biologically and socially male tendencies into our present reality. I've had a chance to attend a few different right-of-passage ceremonies. It's hard to explain how powerful an intentionally crafted ceremony can be in transforming someone until you've seen it first hand. It's nearly impossible to describe.

xxxdarrenxxx 9y ago

Why are we not looking at the inverse, hmm???? Have people never wondered Why people in modern germanic countries don't wear axes anymore. Why english people don't walk around with broadsword. Why do Italians (read Romans), not have a gladius strapped on their pants. Why do the Japanese (read samurai) not all walk around with katanas (this one is relatively recent and is interesting to read as it was met equally with heavy criticism upon banning) DOES AMERICA THINK THAT THIS IS A NEW THING?! To be overly verbose. Every country started out as people carrying weapons if you go far back enough. And almost ALL stopped carrying personal weapons or it was banned. I really want people to read each individual countries history around the time weapons became banned/dissappear culturally. After that look how many of those countries fell into civil war/had increase in gun related deaths. (It didn't really) WHY did almost every country ever ban weapons in history. Did you think people were bored and just banned guns randomly? The direct issue is not the weapons, give me a gun and I won't shoot. The direct issue is psychological trauma/damage of the individual shooters, but things in general are almost always banned/regulated because off the potential dmg the 1% can do with it. Not relevant if the 99% is responsible. I go as far as saying that the half the law is a direct resulting bi-product because off these psychological irregularities that due to the unfortunate pseudo butterfly effect of some people's life events come to be every now and then.