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The duties remain, but the actual structure that supported and encouraged performance of those duties have atrophied.
Guys don't have an innate urge to uphold their society or even their neighborhood. Their drive is not to just accept a crappy status quo simply because its "normal."
Especially when there's clearly a class of male who is accruing all the benefits and status and women, and enduring much less of a sacrifice. I can't think of any stable, highly civilized society that survived long with such an imbalance.
Saying "men have a duty" rings utterly hollow. They need "buy-in." Stakes, if you will.
I'm not even criticizing the point that being the male protector is a thankless role. That is part of the game, sure. I'm criticizing your implication that men will just cast aside their own interests to become a protector, unless they identify something they need to protect.
A society that values them, or a genetic legacy that will survive them. Or, AT LEAST, the promise that they'll earn their way into a blissful afterlife. Valhalla works as a reward for a society that wants men to go forth and pillage and die in battle, and even that society promises rewards to their men.
The promise of Western Society was that the men would drop everything to repel invaders or catch and kill a criminal or rescue people from a natural disaster.
And then, when the crisis passed, they could return to their farm, with a wife and kids they were relatively sure were their own, and would otherwise have significant leeway to run their own affairs. If they survived the crisis.
That promise has been eroded and replaced with nothing, the duties have no real attachment to any underlying purpose whatsoever, and the previously stableish equilibrium has been wrecked by unpunished defectors.
How can you not expect rebellion at that point?
"What's the penalty for failing to carry out my expected male duties?"
"Get screeched at by harpies for having toxic masculinity, rejected by any moderately attractive woman, and the spoils of your efforts captured by foreigners and sociopathic male rivals."
"OH. Whats the reward for carrying out my expected male duties?"
"Get screeched at by harpies for having toxic masculinity, rejected by any moderately attractive woman, and the spoils of your efforts captured by foreigners and sociopathic male rivals."
"Well then."
They ain't going to fight for a civilization that doesn't at least pretend to work in their favor.
Agreed, and I'd totally support fixing them back up (reactionary Monarchist, here).
Because material comfort, electronic distractions, ersatz simulacra of success, etc. dull the rebellious spirits of the youth. Obesity, falling testosterone levels, and psychiatric drugs all suppress it further. Plus, peasant revolts have always failed outside of East Asia, and modern states have (or are gaining) various institutional and technological advantages that make them increasingly rebellion-proof.
Basically, all the same reasons Tyler Cowen gave in Average is Over for why we won't expect rebellion when 80% of the population, rendered economically superfluous by automation, are immiserated and packed into overcrowded favelas to subsist on beans.
Oh yes. This is indeed a recipe for the collapse of liberal civilization, with basically two possible outcomes depending on how well memetic transmission of modern Western views can be maintained.
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