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With the release of the recent Barbie movie, the old gender debates on the internet have been reignited. (Admittedly, I haven't watched it yet, might pen down my thoughts once I do.)
I recently encountered another article by a heterosexual, middle-class woman discussing how we can assist young men in discovering their masculinity. The piece, confidently titled map out of the wilderness, repeats the narrative tropes that countless similar works in journalism tend to focus on.
Does it argue that men are disoriented because women are no longer subservient? Indeed. Does it accuse men of falling for 'destructive' ideologues such as Jordan Peterson and Bronze Age Pervert whose political ideologies aren't personally favored? Yes. Does it claim men are discontent because women wish for them to behave more femininely? Absolutely. Does it state there's a lack of 'positive masculinity?' Oh, for sure.
To credit the writer, Christine Emba, she does highlight some of the more sinister issues that venture slightly beyond the bounds of conventional discourse. She openly criticizes feminists and women in general for refusing to assist men, citing an instance where Obama was chastised for attempting to help boys, and thousands of women denounced him in protest.
What prompted me to respond to this article was a moment of blatant self-awareness by the author, who admits when reproached by a man that she doesn't want to be intimate with men who heed her advice (emphasis mine):
Yes, dear writer, you recoiled in acknowledgment. If you, a talking head opining on this topic, felt this way, consider the reaction of those numerous women with lesser self-awareness when they encounter these feeble, effeminate men.
However, all the discussions around gender roles, sexual relations, power dynamics, and 'incels' are missing the real issue. They're distractions, veils obscuring the core problem.
At the risk of being cliche, I'll reference Nietzsche's most well-known line:
Why has this single paragraph echoed throughout recent centuries as one of the deepest and most frequently reiterated explanations of modernity's moral crisis? Obviously, Nietzsche, a self-proclaimed atheist, doesn't imply we've executed deicide in the literal sense. What we've done is obliterated any transcendent reason for existence. There is no apparent reason why young men should exhibit concern for their neighbors, work towards self-improvement, curtail their desires, or even make an effort to contribute to society.
For a young man in a contemporary world that is entirely individual-centric, what is the appeal of any altruistic act?
Regardless of the religion you choose, these systems provided us with a motive beyond primal, materialistic pleasures to care. They provided us with an aim to pursue. Most importantly, they offered us a social framework within which we could strive collectively with others and receive commendation for our benevolent deeds.
Nietzsche's suggested solution is that the New Men must 'become deities' to be worthy of God's murder. Regrettably, as we've found out, not everyone can ascend to godhood. Certainly some of the highest status and highest agency men can create their own values, but what about the rest of us?
How is a young man in his twenties, armed with a useless college degree and forced to work at a supermarket to get by, supposed to find purpose in what he's doing? How can he feel accomplished, or masculine, or empowered? He definitely can't rely on God or religion for that feeling. If he tries, he'll be overwhelmed by relentless mockery and cynicism from his society.
Returning to Ms. Emba's proposed solution, she states that men need to experience masculinity by:
This, she asserts, is 'Constructive Masculinity.' Let's look past the glaring issue that it's a woman attempting to define what masculinity should be - the question remains: why?
Without some larger mission, most men aren't going to be motivated whatsoever. Men need a reason to exist. And not a poor, weak reason like 'following your dreams' or 'getting money' or 'being a good person.' Men need something to strive for, something worth dying for, something that they can use to shield themselves from the terror of the void.
Of course this problem is applicable to far more people than just young Western males. This lack of meaning, lack of purpose, is at the core of modernity's societal problems. It waits like a tiger in the shadows, seizing us in our moments and weakness and pulling us into a black pit of despair, nihilism. Emptiness.
When you're on your deathbed, where will you look for comfort? What force or being or god will let you face your own death without flinching? What water will purify you?
How will you cleanse your hands of blood?
For the vast majority of human history the vast majority of men (and women) have been beasts of burden. All this stuff about men needing adventure or heroism elides the fact that only a tiny minority of men have ever been heroes or adventurers. Working as a cashier at Walgreens is not significantly more monotonous or miserable than year-round farmwork.
What has changed significantly in the last century or two for men is that simply surviving childhood and not being a criminal or an imbecile is no longer enough to guarantee a wife and kids. To the extent men used to have any kind of higher “purpose” or “mission” I guess it was that. It’s not like (99% of) premoderns were sitting around philosophizing about Faith and transcendental values. This is not because of feminism or liberalism or atheism (as can be seen by the same issues developing in countries much more conservative than the west) but pretty straightforwardly a consequence of modern industrial civilization, which means individual women no longer have to rely on individual men for economic and physical security. When Jane doesn’t have to choose between starvation and prostitution on the one hand and marrying John on the other, she’s not going to marry John.
Physical and economic security is increasingly provided by ever-smaller groups of ‘specialists’ who keep the lights on and the barbarians out (and who may be mostly men, but are certainly not most men). That goes for all of us of course, which is why nobody knows how to fight or farm anymore.
No amount of social engineering, whether right-wing fantasies of restoring traditional masculinity, or left-wing ideas of building a new positive masculinity or whatever, is going to change that. There’s no cosmic law that says there has to be a solution.
Here's where I disagree. If you read history, you'll find that religion was extremely central to premoderns' conceptions of the world. I agree that industrial society is what did it in, and in some cases it was very dramatic. Take the worldview described in The Pervasive World-View: Religion in Pre-Modern Britain:
Religion is often also the centerpiece of rebellions:
For an idea of what people thought about religion and superstition day to day:
I hope this shows that even right in pre-modernity, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Religious worldviews and superstition were still going quite strong. We could expect that before the change of the industrial revolution these religious views were even more closely held.
To you point about mate selection:
I get so tired of evolutionary psychologists reducing everything to who gets to mate with whom. Clearly humans have a lot more going on than just trying to get their rocks off, and while the evo psych mating lens can be useful, it is not something which can explain away the whole of human experience.
Do you truly believe you can reduce the tens of thousands of years humans have spent contemplating God, building great works, fighting massive wars, and the general whole of human experience down to someone's sexual market value? If so, I think the inferential distance between us may be too far to easily bridge.
I agree that religion was de jure central to life for most of human history, but it's not clear to what extent its details actually made a difference. Certainly they do matter a lot in some contexts. But most of the things that you say they're central to, such as rebellions, schools, and marriage all existed before and after any given religion and, I claim, mostly don't depend on the details of religious texts.
As for "who gets to mate with whom", that's what the OP was discussing.
Really? I would argue that religion is the central piece that made things like rebellions, schools and marriages even possible. Sure you can take a purely materialist view and say they exist separately, but how did we humans manage to rise out of prehistory to even create a functioning society? How did we get along without killing each other? Where did the idea of marriage, or the idea of teaching your descendants important truths, or the idea that a sovereign is beholden to a higher power, even come from?
All of these things have their roots in religion.
All of these things happen all the time without religion, and also happen to a lesser extent amongst animals. And even sovereigns notionally beholden to god didn't keep power long without armies.
Sure they happen without explicit religion, but could they happen without the framework religion provided? If people want to bring in evo psych arguments, we're talking an incredibly short timeline for evolutionary situations.
Yes, they happen without the framework religion provides all the time in the animal world, where we see pair bonding, leaders, and parents teaching children. I agree that religions shaped these institutions in the human world to some extent, but I claim that since these behaviors and institutions can clearly survive on their own merits, something like them would have arisen even if early humans somehow weren't religious.
That is a good point. Do you not think religion plays an important social role?
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How do gangs of monkeys and bands of apes stay together?
How do some animals regularly pair bond for life?
While religion may have once been a social lubricant, now it's sand in the gears.
If that’s the case, why can’t we create secular ideologies that function as well as religions created thousands of years ago?
You are, I assume, aware of the centuries of butchery produced by the European Wars Of Religion, all of which were fought (at least nominally) about Christianity? And the similarly brutal sectarian conflicts produced by the various offshoots of Islam? Note that I’m not downplaying any of the good and noble results produced by these religions; you have to take the bad with the good. It’s not remotely clear to me that, in terms of per capita, fascism and communism produced worse or bloodier results than their religious counterpart ideologies.
Oh don't get me wrong, it's all bloody as hell. The reason I keep pushing for religion is that I think it's bloody for a reason. It's bloody and awful because there is a there there. Because religion speaks to something fundamental, that humans cannot live without.
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