8 ms·

There's a very weird "let them eat cake" attitude in this thread which I find distressing. The study reports on the millions of working age men in the US who ar

There's a very weird "let them eat cake" attitude in this thread which I find distressing. The study reports on the millions of working age men in the US who are essentially too depressed and face too many obstacles to search for work. Instead, they're spending their days staying inside, getting high, and playing video games. They essentially have little to no chance to pursue romantic relationships. Many of them eventually take their own lives. Perhaps some are enjoying their "hedonistic" lifestyles, but likely most have totally given up on life, much like the Japanese hikikomori. It's not healthy mentally or physically. But it seems like as long as people treat these men as "losers" who deserve their fate, the more this problem will grow.

commandlinefan 7y ago
As far as I can tell, men have always been treated this way, in all societies: accomplish or disappear. The difference now is that automation is rendering the hill insurmountable.
- indigochill 7y ago
  >The difference now is that automation is rendering the hill insurmountable. I would say "the difference now is that the failing educational system is rendering the hill insurmountable." Automation is just tools. Reasonably able people can learn to use tools. But they need the means to do so affordably and effectively. Our system of education, however, is largely stuck two generations back and not up to the task of preparing people for the fast-moving world we're now in. And this isn't even the fact that textbooks are out-of-date before they see print, or that greedy publishers keep educational materials locked behind arbitrarily high paywalls. The problem is deeper: people are not taught how to learn, and are in fact taught to fear learning because learning means judgement. They are not taught the joy of self-motivated learning which gives them the drive to keep actively learning on their own, which I believe is becoming an increasingly crucial trait to succeed at work.
  - chongli 7y ago
    the difference now is that the failing educational system is rendering the hill insurmountable. As an aspiring educator, it's becoming increasingly obvious to me that society expects teachers to be miracle-workers, to motivate children so they study really hard and get into a good college. Yet we don't expect the same from parents. Parents are spending less and less time with their kids, while the demands for education are growing more and more intensive. My grandfather got his first job after finishing the eighth grade. He worked for over five decades and raised six kids together with my grandmother, who was a homemaker her entire life. Both he and grandma grew up on farms with two-digit numbers of children in the family. Everyone worked from a young age and learned to provide for the household, boys and girls alike. Nowadays, we expect kids to spend a quarter of their lives or more in school. We expect them to work extremely hard and compete for a spot in a top rated school. We give them no real responsibilities apart from academics. No, cleaning your bedroom or mowing the lawn are not real responsibilities the way milking the cows or making preserves from the garden produce were for my grandparents. If you don't clean your room, nobody will go hungry. Life was much harder, physically speaking, for most people from my grandparents' generation and earlier, stretching back into antiquity. It was not harder to find purpose in life, however. Nature and the struggle to survive together with your family and community was enough for most people to feel fulfilled. Today it's the complete opposite on both accounts. Extremely easy to survive with all of the benefits, cheap food and clean water, electricity and heating available. Finding meaning amid so much plenty, on the other hand, is a monumental task.
    - dlp211 7y ago
      > Parents are spending less and less time with their kids This is not true, in fact, parents are spending 2x more time with their kids. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/11/27/parents-now-spend-twice-as-much-time-with-their-children-as-50-years-ago https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/11/27/parents-...
      - chongli 7y ago
        The vast majority of that increase looks to be caring for young children (under 6) and for physical needs [1]. Look at how little time is spent reading to kids or helping them with school. A lot of parents don't even know how to help their teens with math and science homework, unless they're highly educated in those subjects themselves. [1] https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/activity-by-parent.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/activity-by-par...
lidHanteyk 7y ago
To give my perspective: I'm a cake-eater. I have a dayjob, but I don't really care about it beyond basic professionalism, and I spend a fair amount of my spare time with cannabis and video games rather than with people. Who cares if my male peers think I'm a loser? Most of them are incompetent mooching pieces of shit, and I don't have to believe in their crab mentality. They can say "loser" all they like. Who cares if my female peers think I'm a loser? I've gotten laid enough in life, and it's not like job sites are dating sites. I already dodged the bullet of having to raise somebody else's kid or having to be stuck in a loveless marriage, which makes me not-a-loser in my book.
- _7kf0 7y ago
  Word.
- Iwan-Zotow 7y ago
  Bro...
- weepywarlo 7y ago
  loser this loser that no matter what don’t get fat!
- weepywarlo 7y ago
  Depressionalism can be a constant threat but someday you may want more so it’s up to you to find your inner core.
- _fq4v 7y ago
  Youre right you have dodged a bullet in not having to raise another mans child or being in a loveless marriage. However, societally speaking, there is an alternative.. Good enough marriages where men raise their own children.
mythrwy 7y ago
This may be an unpopular opinion but the real issue (biologically) is that we don't need all the men. We only need a tiny percentage of men. So how societies sometimes dealt with this excess of men was to send a good number of them off to war. Also occupations used to be much more hazardous so many more die working. The days of bundling laggers up in a red coat and sending them off with a musket to make the queens empire a bit larger appear to be coming to a close. But in my opinion, we still haven't addressed the underlying problem evolution has left us with. I don't have a good answer either.
- HeroOfAges 7y ago
  While I would agree that this is an unpopular opinion, it's one I've come to terms with myself as I've grown older. There's a book I read that's popular in men's rights advocate circles called "The Myth of Male Power" that explores the idea of males being the "disposable" sex. Unfortunately, we live in a time where you're branded a misogynist for even mentioning the possibility that men face some serious disadvantages in modern American society.
  - bluntfang 7y ago
    >we live in a time where you're branded a misogynist for even mentioning the possibility that men face some serious disadvantages in modern American society. no we don't
    - scarmig 7y ago
      Feel free to restate it as "you're branded a misogynist for not conceding from the get go that women experience an order of magnitude more suffering than men and need more rectification of gender injustice than men do."
  - JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
    Anyone with an ounce of empathy can see how men and women face unique challenges in society. The discussion to be avoided is "who has it worse". The more effective discussion is to see the problems for what they are, and come up with solutions.
Mirioron 7y ago
I don't think people will care until the issue has become large enough that it will start impacting others in society indirectly. Eg not enough tax revenue being generated or not enough men willing to fight in a war.
- war1025 7y ago
  I would wager that a lot of the people wasting time playing video games all day are precisely the ones who would benefit most from serving in the armed forces. Traditionally that is probably where a lot of them would have ended up.
  - whytaka 7y ago
    As cannon fodder to protect the privileged.
    - war1025 7y ago
      That's actually one argument people make for reinstating the draft. With the draft, people from all walks of life were enlisted. (Yes, there were ways to weasel out of it, but beside the point) Without the draft, the army is largely built from the lower-class, conservative, patriotic populous. The argument is that the privileged would be less likely to send people off to war if it meant their loved ones lives were on the line.
  - remarkEon 7y ago
    You're right, they would be the ones that would benefit the most. Unfortunately, since many of them are already on disability and have prescriptions for certain drugs they'd likely be disqualified from service. Barring an actual WWIII scenario and a draft that would waive these restrictions, "join the Army" isn't an option.
  - jotakami 7y ago
    15 years ago I failed out of computer science at UIUC because I skipped class, got high and played video games all day. Once my parents cut me off, the depression of working dead-end jobs after having such high prospects before led me to enlist in the Navy to try and start over. Today I’m married with a child, I support my family as the primary breadwinner, I have a BS and MBA and am pursuing a PhD in computer science. All of that education was paid for by the GI Bill. Sample size of one, but I can confirm your hypothesis.
jfengel 7y ago
The problem, I think, is that the article seems to believe that the solution is "return to the 1950s". The world has changed. The relationships between men and women have changed. The relationship of the economy to individuals has changed. The article seems predicated on the notion that this number (male participation in the labor force) is the metric that matters, rather than anything about their mental health -- harder to measure, and therefore outside the purview of an economist (especially a right-wing economist). It doesn't even really try to look at what's in their minds, much less how we could go about creating a more healthy world for them to live in -- with everybody else. I felt as if what the article kept trying hard not to say was, "Well, if only women would return home, there would be more lucrative jobs for men, and more need for the women to be taken care of by a man". That ship has sailed. Many men have adjusted to a new kind of masculinity for that world. Many haven't, and we'll need to discover some new things. And I don't think that's well-served by the article's tacit notion that what's really needed are more of the old things.
- allovernow 7y ago
  >The relationships between men and women have changed. The relationship of the economy to individuals has changed. >Well, if only women would return home, there would be more lucrative jobs for men, and more need for the women to be taken care of by a man". That ship has sailed Worth noting that the current changes are explicitly counter to traditional roles which have existed for thousands of years. Yes, appeal solely to tradition is a fallacy, but it's also unreasonable to conclude that all past civilizations were bumbling barbarians with totally dysfunctional societies. >Many men have adjusted to a new kind of masculinity for that world. Many haven't, and we'll need to discover some new things The trouble is that most of these modern changes to the definition and role of masculinity (and femininity) are engineered by a particularly loud subset of the population. They run counter to what could be considered human nature (as evidenced by virtually all past and most contemporary societies) and although the ideals are ostensibly about freedom and equality, they fail to be self critical and account for the potential that gender roles have specialized over millions of years of evolution and there are associated costs to such an apparently egalitarian society. Consider, first and foremost, that by shaming two or so Western generations into believing that the life of a housewife is menial and subservient, we have virtually doubled the workforce, without necessarily increasing the number of jobs required for a functioning society. Results include the modern necessity for a dual household income and negative wage pressure. And there are studies that life satisfaction of women relative to men has been steadily decreasing for 2-5 decades (can't remember exactly). Maybe that ship shouldn't have sailed. Maybe it's folly to decide to turn thousands of years of wisdom on its head. Men have intrinsic, biological drives to compete, which are far stronger and more critical for life satisfaction than those of women, and the current Western push for "equality" may be leading to worse outcomes for society, especially for men who feel they've been outcompeted not because of lack of skill but because of forced social norms. The unfortunate truth is that the majority of people live their lives according to the norms of their societies - even when such norms have negative overall outcomes.

commandlinefan 7y ago

As far as I can tell, men have always been treated this way, in all societies: accomplish or disappear. The difference now is that automation is rendering the hill insurmountable.

indigochill 7y ago
>The difference now is that automation is rendering the hill insurmountable. I would say "the difference now is that the failing educational system is rendering the hill insurmountable." Automation is just tools. Reasonably able people can learn to use tools. But they need the means to do so affordably and effectively. Our system of education, however, is largely stuck two generations back and not up to the task of preparing people for the fast-moving world we're now in. And this isn't even the fact that textbooks are out-of-date before they see print, or that greedy publishers keep educational materials locked behind arbitrarily high paywalls. The problem is deeper: people are not taught how to learn, and are in fact taught to fear learning because learning means judgement. They are not taught the joy of self-motivated learning which gives them the drive to keep actively learning on their own, which I believe is becoming an increasingly crucial trait to succeed at work.
- chongli 7y ago
  the difference now is that the failing educational system is rendering the hill insurmountable. As an aspiring educator, it's becoming increasingly obvious to me that society expects teachers to be miracle-workers, to motivate children so they study really hard and get into a good college. Yet we don't expect the same from parents. Parents are spending less and less time with their kids, while the demands for education are growing more and more intensive. My grandfather got his first job after finishing the eighth grade. He worked for over five decades and raised six kids together with my grandmother, who was a homemaker her entire life. Both he and grandma grew up on farms with two-digit numbers of children in the family. Everyone worked from a young age and learned to provide for the household, boys and girls alike. Nowadays, we expect kids to spend a quarter of their lives or more in school. We expect them to work extremely hard and compete for a spot in a top rated school. We give them no real responsibilities apart from academics. No, cleaning your bedroom or mowing the lawn are not real responsibilities the way milking the cows or making preserves from the garden produce were for my grandparents. If you don't clean your room, nobody will go hungry. Life was much harder, physically speaking, for most people from my grandparents' generation and earlier, stretching back into antiquity. It was not harder to find purpose in life, however. Nature and the struggle to survive together with your family and community was enough for most people to feel fulfilled. Today it's the complete opposite on both accounts. Extremely easy to survive with all of the benefits, cheap food and clean water, electricity and heating available. Finding meaning amid so much plenty, on the other hand, is a monumental task.
  - dlp211 7y ago
    > Parents are spending less and less time with their kids This is not true, in fact, parents are spending 2x more time with their kids. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/11/27/parents-now-spend-twice-as-much-time-with-their-children-as-50-years-ago https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/11/27/parents-...
    - chongli 7y ago
      The vast majority of that increase looks to be caring for young children (under 6) and for physical needs [1]. Look at how little time is spent reading to kids or helping them with school. A lot of parents don't even know how to help their teens with math and science homework, unless they're highly educated in those subjects themselves. [1] https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/activity-by-parent.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/activity-by-par...

lidHanteyk 7y ago

To give my perspective: I'm a cake-eater. I have a dayjob, but I don't really care about it beyond basic professionalism, and I spend a fair amount of my spare time with cannabis and video games rather than with people. Who cares if my male peers think I'm a loser? Most of them are incompetent mooching pieces of shit, and I don't have to believe in their crab mentality. They can say "loser" all they like. Who cares if my female peers think I'm a loser? I've gotten laid enough in life, and it's not like job sites are dating sites. I already dodged the bullet of having to raise somebody else's kid or having to be stuck in a loveless marriage, which makes me not-a-loser in my book.

_7kf0 7y ago
Word.
Iwan-Zotow 7y ago
Bro...
weepywarlo 7y ago
loser this loser that no matter what don’t get fat!
weepywarlo 7y ago
Depressionalism can be a constant threat but someday you may want more so it’s up to you to find your inner core.
_fq4v 7y ago
Youre right you have dodged a bullet in not having to raise another mans child or being in a loveless marriage. However, societally speaking, there is an alternative.. Good enough marriages where men raise their own children.

mythrwy 7y ago

This may be an unpopular opinion but the real issue (biologically) is that we don't need all the men. We only need a tiny percentage of men. So how societies sometimes dealt with this excess of men was to send a good number of them off to war. Also occupations used to be much more hazardous so many more die working. The days of bundling laggers up in a red coat and sending them off with a musket to make the queens empire a bit larger appear to be coming to a close. But in my opinion, we still haven't addressed the underlying problem evolution has left us with. I don't have a good answer either.

HeroOfAges 7y ago
While I would agree that this is an unpopular opinion, it's one I've come to terms with myself as I've grown older. There's a book I read that's popular in men's rights advocate circles called "The Myth of Male Power" that explores the idea of males being the "disposable" sex. Unfortunately, we live in a time where you're branded a misogynist for even mentioning the possibility that men face some serious disadvantages in modern American society.
- bluntfang 7y ago
  >we live in a time where you're branded a misogynist for even mentioning the possibility that men face some serious disadvantages in modern American society. no we don't
  - scarmig 7y ago
    Feel free to restate it as "you're branded a misogynist for not conceding from the get go that women experience an order of magnitude more suffering than men and need more rectification of gender injustice than men do."
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
  Anyone with an ounce of empathy can see how men and women face unique challenges in society. The discussion to be avoided is "who has it worse". The more effective discussion is to see the problems for what they are, and come up with solutions.

Mirioron 7y ago

I don't think people will care until the issue has become large enough that it will start impacting others in society indirectly. Eg not enough tax revenue being generated or not enough men willing to fight in a war.

war1025 7y ago
I would wager that a lot of the people wasting time playing video games all day are precisely the ones who would benefit most from serving in the armed forces. Traditionally that is probably where a lot of them would have ended up.
- whytaka 7y ago
  As cannon fodder to protect the privileged.
  - war1025 7y ago
    That's actually one argument people make for reinstating the draft. With the draft, people from all walks of life were enlisted. (Yes, there were ways to weasel out of it, but beside the point) Without the draft, the army is largely built from the lower-class, conservative, patriotic populous. The argument is that the privileged would be less likely to send people off to war if it meant their loved ones lives were on the line.
- remarkEon 7y ago
  You're right, they would be the ones that would benefit the most. Unfortunately, since many of them are already on disability and have prescriptions for certain drugs they'd likely be disqualified from service. Barring an actual WWIII scenario and a draft that would waive these restrictions, "join the Army" isn't an option.
- jotakami 7y ago
  15 years ago I failed out of computer science at UIUC because I skipped class, got high and played video games all day. Once my parents cut me off, the depression of working dead-end jobs after having such high prospects before led me to enlist in the Navy to try and start over. Today I’m married with a child, I support my family as the primary breadwinner, I have a BS and MBA and am pursuing a PhD in computer science. All of that education was paid for by the GI Bill. Sample size of one, but I can confirm your hypothesis.

jfengel 7y ago

The problem, I think, is that the article seems to believe that the solution is "return to the 1950s". The world has changed. The relationships between men and women have changed. The relationship of the economy to individuals has changed. The article seems predicated on the notion that this number (male participation in the labor force) is the metric that matters, rather than anything about their mental health -- harder to measure, and therefore outside the purview of an economist (especially a right-wing economist). It doesn't even really try to look at what's in their minds, much less how we could go about creating a more healthy world for them to live in -- with everybody else. I felt as if what the article kept trying hard not to say was, "Well, if only women would return home, there would be more lucrative jobs for men, and more need for the women to be taken care of by a man". That ship has sailed. Many men have adjusted to a new kind of masculinity for that world. Many haven't, and we'll need to discover some new things. And I don't think that's well-served by the article's tacit notion that what's really needed are more of the old things.

allovernow 7y ago
>The relationships between men and women have changed. The relationship of the economy to individuals has changed. >Well, if only women would return home, there would be more lucrative jobs for men, and more need for the women to be taken care of by a man". That ship has sailed Worth noting that the current changes are explicitly counter to traditional roles which have existed for thousands of years. Yes, appeal solely to tradition is a fallacy, but it's also unreasonable to conclude that all past civilizations were bumbling barbarians with totally dysfunctional societies. >Many men have adjusted to a new kind of masculinity for that world. Many haven't, and we'll need to discover some new things The trouble is that most of these modern changes to the definition and role of masculinity (and femininity) are engineered by a particularly loud subset of the population. They run counter to what could be considered human nature (as evidenced by virtually all past and most contemporary societies) and although the ideals are ostensibly about freedom and equality, they fail to be self critical and account for the potential that gender roles have specialized over millions of years of evolution and there are associated costs to such an apparently egalitarian society. Consider, first and foremost, that by shaming two or so Western generations into believing that the life of a housewife is menial and subservient, we have virtually doubled the workforce, without necessarily increasing the number of jobs required for a functioning society. Results include the modern necessity for a dual household income and negative wage pressure. And there are studies that life satisfaction of women relative to men has been steadily decreasing for 2-5 decades (can't remember exactly). Maybe that ship shouldn't have sailed. Maybe it's folly to decide to turn thousands of years of wisdom on its head. Men have intrinsic, biological drives to compete, which are far stronger and more critical for life satisfaction than those of women, and the current Western push for "equality" may be leading to worse outcomes for society, especially for men who feel they've been outcompeted not because of lack of skill but because of forced social norms. The unfortunate truth is that the majority of people live their lives according to the norms of their societies - even when such norms have negative overall outcomes.