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I do think it is important to have some perspective here. Individuals, men included, have never been freer. Mandatory conscription has declined since the cold war, education and knowledge is accessible to everyone, and outside of the big cities it is possible to live very cheaply as long as you don't mind having very few material possessions. No job can turn you into a wage slave. You are free to save up, quit, and live your life as you please. Wages are high enough that a single man with good financial sense can build savings over time.
Social mobility has never been easier. No longer are you bound to the same job that your father had. If you are born smart and driven, but low class, you are free to get an education, build connections at university and create a better life for yourself and your children. The social roles of gender and class have eroded, giving you more opportunities than ever before.
Male dominated jobs have never been safer. You are not going to die at 60 because your lungs were destroyed from inhaling dust at the factory. The western world has tons of regulations concerning ventilation, overtime, how much you are allowed to carry at once and so forth. If you do get an injury, modern medicine gives you better odds of recovery than your forefathers could have even dreamed of.
If you do initially fail to create a good life for yourself there are social safety nets that can catch you and potentially allow you to start over and learn from your mistakes. The strength of these depend on your country, but at the very least you are not going to starve.
A man who takes ownership of his life, builds an understanding of the world he lives in, and takes the initiative to improve his station has better chances than basically any man who came before him. The issue of course, is that young men are not raised to do this.
Where I agree with you is that society lies to young men. We are raised to be obedient and easy to manage, then bombarded with messages of how we are the cause of every problem in the world. We are taught to expend considerable effort on providing for minorities (anyone who isn't a white man) due to notions of guilt and fairness. Young men are taught to play it safe, avoid risks, and do only as others tell them. This completely fails to prepare them for a world that actually rewards risk taking, courage, independent thinking, and initiative.
Then, of course, there is the whole dating thing, where men are lied to about women want for their entire childhood, only to be ridiculed as adults for failing to attract any.
I do see problems, but overall I think your message can only hold true for men born into high social status. Historically, the majority of men have been largely considered as cheap disposable labor, and have led extremely harsh and thankless lives. For those, the current world by far outclasses what we had a hundred years ago. It isn't even close.
Not even close to true. Freedom on the frontier blows anything we have out of the water, and it's not close. You cannot have freedom in a panopticon, it's a misnomer.
Plenty of people have been much, much freer than this, and most of them are in the past of this very country.
It’s because ordinary people mistakenly accept a simple “freedom of motion” as an adequate substitute for the [real] feeling of freedom that comes from the absence of financial insecurity, the absence of neighborhood crime, the ability to express a distaste or prejudice without retribution, or simply being empowered to get up on a whim and move somewhere else.
It's never been easier for the average person to make enough money to not feel financial insecure.
If this is critical you can move to the countryside, which is much less crime-riddled than it was during the frontier days.
This is a pretty corny idea of freedom
There's nothing stopping you from moving except a way to support yourself financially, and it's easier than ever to save a bunch of money and/or get a remote work gig.
It's not that easy. I'm a white man with a STEM degree that tests at ~135 IQ, had good marks and all of that, and I pretty consistently can't get this right now. Seems to mainly go to people of preferable ethnicities. Statistically I am still better off than a huge majority of men my age. There is just no way someone with a 100 IQ can do what you're saying if it's not falling out of a tree for me.
If you're trying to get your first job and have no better options that spamming resumes online then OK I can see your point, especially if you were unlucky enough to choose computer science.
If you're mid-career or later though, with a STEM degree and 135 IQ then this is really just a skill issue.
Demonstrably untrue.
It was never trivial to support yourself, especially as a midwit or worse. The point is that it's easier today thanks to technology than it ever has been.
Only if you believe that IQ/competence/etc. are equal between those ethnic groups.
That wouldn't matter to the statement being argued:
Affirmative Action can exist and be bad and also not really matter to the employment prospects of any individual white person who isn't looking for a cabinet post or an NFL coaching job.
Yep, thanks for making my point for me.
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