Masculinity in crisis
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That is a good video. There's a lot of overlap between what was covered therein and Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration: that neurosis was an indication of the personality transforming into something higher.
Robert L. Moore (as quoted in the video) certainly has a lot in common with Peterson. His "King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine" was a pretty good read.
Here is another great interview with Dr. Warren Farrell. This one is done by Jordan Peterson so you can also hear his bits of wisdom. It's no wonder why so many young people nowadays are confused about themselves, when many of them are growing up without fathers which are crucial for child development, especially boys.
The videos from my other post on the forum are also connected to this problem of crisis of masculinity in our world. And the C's say that it is all part of the bigger agenda:
The videos from my other post on the forum are also connected to this problem of crisis of masculinity in our world. And the C's say that it is all part of the bigger agenda:
Joe made a nice comment about "toxic masculinity" that today on FB:
That reminded me of this article that I also read today that talks about problems of boys raised in modern times:
And here is a review of his book mentioned in the above article:
So we had this 'sexual revolution' that left many boys without their fathers as their natural role models, then we have mostly women educating the boys in school, so they don't have male role models there either, and also in the same time we have this technology (TV, smartphones, video games, porn) that is abusing the boys' brains and making them even more socially inept.
No wonder why boys are in such a mess. And a sad thing is that, I think, most parents are not even aware of all of this happening!
That reminded me of this article that I also read today that talks about problems of boys raised in modern times:
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo: ‘Boys risk becoming addicted to porn, video games and Ritalin’
Stuart Jeffries
Absent fathers and feminised schools are driving boys into a disconnected online world of porn and video games, argues the academic
In the UK today, a young person is more likely to have a television in their bedroom than a father in their house by the end of their childhood. And even if fathers are around, their sons don’t engage with them much: boys spend 44 hours in front of a TV, smartphone or computer screen for every half hour in conversation with their fathers.
Why does any of this really matter, I ask the American psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who cites these figures in his new book Man (Dis)connected: How Technology Has Sabotaged What It Means To Be Male. Why do boys need fathers?
Zimbardo, professor emeritus at Stanford University, replies that everybody needs a mother and father because they give different kinds of love. “Mothers give love unconditionally – because you came out of her body, a mother loves you. You bring home your report card and it’s all Cs? Mom will say, ‘It’s OK. Momma loves you anyway. Try harder.’
“Fathers give love provisionally. If you want your allowance, if you don’t want me to turn off your computer, then you’ve got to perform. That’s always been the deal with fathers and sons – you don’t get a pass just because you exist, just because you got my name on your birth certificate. You’re going to do it because you want your father to love you and admire you. That central source of extrinsic motivation is gone now for almost one out of every two kids.”
The book, by Zimbardo and his co-author Nikita D Coulombe, is about why boys don’t man up as previous generations of males ostensibly did.
They argue that, while girls are increasingly succeeding in the real world, boys are retreating into cyberspace, seeking online the security and validation they can’t get anywhere else. They are bored at school, increasingly have no father figures to motivate them, don’t have the skills to form real romantic relationships, feel entitled to have things done for them (usually by their parents) and seek to avoid a looming adulthood of debt, unfulfilling work and other irksome responsibilities. As a result, they disappear into their bedrooms where, he argues, they risk becoming addicted to porn, video games and Ritalin.
No wonder, Zimbardo argues, popular culture teems with moodles (“man poodles”) or infantilised jerks (think: Jackass, Failure to Launch, Step Brothers, Hall Pass and The Hangover series), devoid of economic purpose, emotional intelligence, temperamentally unable to commit or take responsibility.
Zimbardo claims that a majority of African-American boys have been brought up in female-dominated households for generations. “Sixty, 70% grow up in a female world. I would trace a lot of that poor performance of black kids to not having a father present to make demands and not setting limits. This is now spilling out of the black community to the white community.”
In the US, about a third of boys are raised in absent-father homes, while in the UK about a quarter of children are raised by single mothers, triple what it was in 1971.
But hold on. Doesn’t the absence of fathers hit girls as much as boys? Apparently not.
“Men are opting out and women are opting in. Women are working harder at jobs, they’re working harder in school, and they are achieving – last year women had more of every single category of degree, even engineering. This is data from around the world. Now in many colleges there’s a big gap as boys are dropping out of school and college.”
Zimbardo estimates that there are, in Britain and the US, 5-10% more women than men at many colleges and universities. “So they’re going to have to have affirmative action for guys because obviously one reason you go to college is to find a guy.”
Why are boys more likely to retreat into cyberspace than girls? “Boys have never been self-reflective. Boys are focused on doing and acting, girls are more focused on being and feeling. The new video-game world encourages doing and acting and not really thinking. Video games are not so attractive to girls.”
And pornography? “The relative proportions are hard to come by. But for girls, it’s just boring. In general, sex has always been linked with romance for girls – much more than for boys. For boys it’s always been much more visual and physical. I presume boys masturbate much more than girls – there’s no good data on that.”
Zimbardo reckons that online pornography is much more appealing to boys than girls, in part because it eliminates narratives. “With the old pornography there were typically stories. There was a movie, like Deep Throat, and in the course of some interesting theme people were having sex. Now it’s only about physical sexual contact.”
Such material, he argues, is increasingly and disastrously a boy’s introduction to human sexuality. “It’s such a bad introduction because it eliminates romance and love. It’s only visual so you don’t realise what you’re missing – the touching, the kissing, the communication, the negotiation of boundaries. When you see 100,000 instances of it, it becomes the social norm. Every boy believes this is what women want, what girls want.”
Zimbardo contends that immersion in online technology means that boys never learn basic social communication skills, still less how to flirt, risk rejection or ask for a date. As a result, boys are hobbled by a new form of social shyness.
“It’s always been difficult for boys to talk to girls because you are never sure what they want or what their agenda is. And now without trying or practice it becomes more and more difficult. So it’s a reason to retreat into this virtual world.”
How all this maps on to the experience of boys who are gay is less clear – his and Coulombe’s book is overwhelmingly about the crisis for heterosexual boys.
“The one thing every boy or man fears from girls is being rejected. I don’t want you to kiss me, I don’t want sex, I don’t want you, I don’t want to date. That fear of rejection by women is eliminated in this virtual pornography world.”
There is, Zimbardo suggests, a new phrase to describe people, mostly male, who don’t need another physical person to satisfy their sexual needs – “sexual singularity”. In Japan, there is even a phrase for the kind of man no longer interested in real sex, soshoku danshi – or herbivorous men. Zimbardo’s fear is that herbivorous men are becoming a global phenomenon. He also fears that, thanks to how online pornography is becoming more interactive and immersive, real-life romantic relationships will become even less appealing.
“Pornography is being moved to the next level. You’ll put on 3D glasses and the woman or man will proposition you. And in some cases it’ll be interactive – you could say ‘Take off your clothes’. The idea of the film-maker of 3D virtual sex is to make it seem ever more real, just as video games are. Soon they’ll be able to put the face of the viewer on to the leading character. So you’ll be the man the woman wants to have sex with.”
But there is a grisly paradox, Zimbardo argues. Boys’ retreat into a putatively safe virtual world involves, in fact, a new kind of rejection. “In online porn, the men are incredibly well-endowed – they are paid precisely because they have those attributes. In addition, some of the men take penile injections so they can perform for half an hour non-stop. When you’re a 10 or 15-year-old kid, you say to yourself, ‘I will never, ever look like that or perform like that’.”
One reason porn is providing the introduction to human sexuality for boys, Zimbardo argues, is because of the dearth of meaningful sex education at school. A quarter of British pupils, his book claims, have no sex education.
Indeed, he argues that schools are increasingly ill-suited to boys’ needs – another reason for their retreat into cyberspace. In the US, he says, 90% of elementary school teachers are women, while in the UK one in five teachers is a man. “Female teachers can be wonderful but they model skills that girls are good at – fine motor tuning rather than big physical activity. They don’t like boys running around. And, with funding shortages, they’re eliminating gym classes so boys don’t have the time to do physical activity.” He cites schoolchildren being assigned to write diaries as a compositional task. “Boys don’t write diaries! The worst thing I can imagine giving a boy as a present is a diary.”
In such feminised schools, Zimbardo argues, boys are bored. “So they’re labelled as having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and given drugs like Ritalin.” Boys, he estimates, are five to six times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. “These drugs are addictive, so you’ll be taking them for the rest of your life.” Which, he argues, suits the drug companies. “They’re big businesses so they are encouraging teachers to do diagnosis and encouraging kids to be sent to the medical staff to get the drugs.”
What can be done to reconnect boys with the real world? Zimbardo has lots of suggestions: more male teachers, more incentives for men to establish boys’ and men’s groups so that the former can get the masculine mentoring they otherwise lack, welfare reform to encourage fathers to remain in the family loop, crowdsourcing initiatives to fund video games that are less violent and require more co-operation, parents to talk to their sons about sex and relationships so they don’t take porn to represent real life.
My favourite suggestion is that boys learn to dance. “It’s the easiest thing in the world,” says the 82-year-old professor with the enthusiasm of an American Bruce Forsyth. “I would say if you’re a parent the most important thing you could teach your kid to do is social dancing. Because at a dance – I don’t even know if kids go to dances any more – you see girls dancing with each other. And if you were a boy and said to a girl, ‘Would you like to dance?’ you would be so popular. Most of the dance schools are for older people, but there should be dance schools for teens.”
If there were, boys might experience something they are increasingly less likely to as their lives become more and more virtual – what it is to touch and be touched by a real, live human being.
It’s a lovely dream, but one that Zimbardo doesn’t expect to be put into practice any time soon. In fact, he has little hope that any of the book’s suggestions will be realised.
“This thing with boys is really getting me down because I can’t think of a solution that is easy to entrain, that’s easy to realise. It’s painful for me because I’m an optimistic person. Boys are in a mess.”
As if to clinch the point, Zimbardo tells me about how he recently took part in a documentary about boys called The Mask You Live In. Directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, it’s a sequel to her film Miss Representation, about the false depictions of women in the media. In one scene, a US school teacher gives a group of boys each a circular piece of paper. On one side they write what their image is, and on the other what they are feeling. Then they scrunch up the paper and throw it to another kid. “What they said was all the same,” recalls Zimbardo. “On the outside it said: ‘Tough. Fearless. Kick your ass.’ And on the inside: ‘Lonely. Sad. Got no friends.’ Each boy was stunned that the others felt the same way. I think it’s what it’s like for boys now – they’re in a terrible state and I can’t imagine that it’s going to get better any time soon.”
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo: ‘Boys risk becoming addicted to porn, video games and Ritalin’
Absent fathers and feminised schools are driving boys into a disconnected online world of porn and video games, argues the academicwww.theguardian.com
And here is a review of his book mentioned in the above article:
So we had this 'sexual revolution' that left many boys without their fathers as their natural role models, then we have mostly women educating the boys in school, so they don't have male role models there either, and also in the same time we have this technology (TV, smartphones, video games, porn) that is abusing the boys' brains and making them even more socially inept.
No wonder why boys are in such a mess. And a sad thing is that, I think, most parents are not even aware of all of this happening!
or find it completely desirable, where they want to raise kids who are “woke” and sensible and whatnot. Which I think it’s a twisted version of being a decent man.
Where concepts like respect and tact are confused with being passive and submissive for the sake of passivity and submissiveness.
And that is not to say that being respectful and gentle aren’t desirable goals for an adult man, but I think, and it’s the theme of this thread, that the path towards those aspects being consciously incorporated isn’t through a by default denial or judgement of the masculine aspects of the psyche, but through mastery and choice.
And this requires some exposure and experiencing of the same, most optimally (I would think) under the guidance of a “master” or a father. Because it can be confusing and because one could become identified with very basic instincts/drives and never develop them to a highly complex behavior that is an ally and not an enemy.
But that’s where Joe’s post comes in, you could probably make the case that there aren’t many good masters/fathers out there and once that goes on for a few generations, you end up with the world of today.
And in light of all that, what can one do? And I think part of the answer is the reason why Jordan Peterson became so popular, one could seek for these influences outside of oneself, and create an abstract model to somewhat follow. An inspiration, to follow by faith even.
The above reminded me Joe of arguably the finest, dramatically realized assessment of this state and the relationship to a growing young man who must find his 'Will' by leaving behind the dead end trail you note above, and that is Shake-Speare's analysis of the relationship of Falstaff and the young prince Henry in the two parts of Henry IV.
Its an astonishing clinical examination of the dangers inherent in failing to do this and risk staying invested in the Dionysian revels of debauched male youth into gross old age (a stunted man - but in Shakes-peare's mind, gross and corpulent) and what it takes to skin this beast (the Boar... the swine... note the scene takes place in the Boar's HEAD) - and grow into yourself (or perish to nothingness).
From the famous denouement scene where the now King Henry V playacts with Falstaff a pretend trial in which Henry (playing his Father) and Falstaff (playing young Henry) act out what would happen if he were confronted by his increasingly rash deeds... unbeknown to Falstaff Henry is playing for real and finally cuts off the rotten limb (Falstaff - which is part of himself) and stakes his claim to be a true grown man.
History of Henry IV, Part I
Act II, Scene 4
The Boar’s-Head Tavern, Eastcheap
HENRY V: Dost thou speak like a king? Do thou stand for me,
and I'll play my father.
FALSTAFF: Depose me? if thou dost it half so gravely, so
majestically, both in word and matter, hang me up by
the heels for a rabbit-sucker or a poulter's hare.
HENRY V: Well, here I am set.
FALSTAFF: And here I stand: judge, my masters.
HENRY V: Now, Harry, whence come you?
FALSTAFF: My noble lord, from Eastcheap.
HENRY V: The complaints I hear of thee are grievous.
FALSTAFF: 'Sblood, my lord, they are false: nay, I'll tickle
ye for a young prince, i' faith.
HENRY V: Swearest thou, ungracious boy? henceforth ne'er look
on me. Thou art violently carried away from grace:
there is a devil haunts thee in the likeness of an
old fat man; a tun of man is thy companion. Why
dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that
bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel
of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed
cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with
the pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that
grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in
years? Wherein is he good, but to taste sack (booze!) and
drink it? wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a
capon and eat it? wherein cunning, but in craft?
wherein crafty, but in villany? wherein villanous,
but in all things? wherein worthy, but in nothing?
FALSTAFF: I would your grace would take me with you: whom
means your grace?
HENRY V: That villanous abominable misleader of youth,
Falstaff, that old white-bearded Satan.
FALSTAFF: My lord, the man I know.
HENRY V: I know thou dost.
FALSTAFF: But to say I know more harm in him than in myself,
were to say more than I know. That he is old, the
more the pity, his white hairs do witness it; but
that he is, saving your reverence, a whoremaster,
that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault,
God help the wicked! if to be old and merry be a
sin, then many an old host that I know is damned: if
to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh's lean kine
are to be loved. No, my good lord; banish Peto,
banish Bardolph, banish Poins: but for sweet Jack
Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff,
valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant,
being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish not him
thy Harry's company, banish not him thy Harry's
company: banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.
HENRY V: I do, I will.
Yes. Boys of today can at least theoretically find Jordan Peterson and other good people, like this Philip Zimbardo, and get a knowledge of the situation and what can they do to try to prevent bad things from happening to them. In my time, I had no chance to find out about these things because nobody was talking about it. But now I can help share this knowledge in the hope that more people are gonna become aware of it. And if they don't like to read, they can watch clips like this:
Both of my 30-ish daughters complain that the males of their generation were raised by their mothers to be “little princes”, taking no personal responsibility.
I try really hard not to come across as the typical grouchy old man about it. Truthfully, if I had the opportunity in my 20s & 30s to just play games and take life easy I likely would have done so.
I try really hard not to come across as the typical grouchy old man about it. Truthfully, if I had the opportunity in my 20s & 30s to just play games and take life easy I likely would have done so.
altomaltes
Padawan Learner
Is a big problem, but I will try not to be that serious:
Maybe those little princes will become "fossilized young people" instead of adults. I think the word used in marketing to made this problem desirable is "extended youth"
Yes, I remember listening to an interview years ago by Gore Vidal in which he was talking about the education system and he’d mention exactly this. By the time most people leave the schooling system they’re in their early or mid 20’s.
You’d think they’d start maturing into adults by them, but given the world of today... it seems unlikely. So this young teenage/student mindset is extended as long as possible.
I found these US statistics:
And a world statistics:
And an interesting fact:
And a world statistics:
And an interesting fact:
The regions where children are least likely to be reared in single-parent households are Asia and the Middle East, where cohabitation and non-marital childbearing are rare. For example, less than 1 percent of children are born out of wedlock in China, Egypt, India and Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.
A lot of this can be traced back to certain ideas that were put forth by 'intellectuals' (mostly left-leaning) during the last century. I don't think we're fully seeing the full repercussions that such ideas have had on our culture, but we're getting there. Traditional institutions (such as marriage) were esentially destroyed for false hopes and promises of progress. In truth, they've brough all sorts of problems such as increase in crime rates, psychological problems, abdication of responsibility and so on.
On top of that you have the welfare state which further cemented this so-called 'progress'.
Why Young Adults, Especially Men, Are Having Sex Less Frequently
People are having less sex, and the decline is being seen among younger adults, particularly men.
- A new study indicates that men and women between the ages of 18 and 24 are having sex less often.
- Experts say delayed adulthood may be one factor.
- They add the amount of material on the internet to watch may also be affecting personal, face-to-face relationships.
- The experts say a lack of sex can affect a person’s overall well-being.
The trend may have more to do with the internet and dating apps than morality, fear of pregnancy, or easy access to porn.
About 1 in 3 men ages 18 to 24 years reported no sexual activity in the past year, according to a new studyTrusted Source published in JAMA Network Open.
Between 2000-2002 and 2016-2018, past-year sexual inactivity rose from almost 19 percent to almost 31 percent among men ages 18 to 24, according to researchers led by Dr. Peter Ueda, a postdoctoral researcher at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden.
Sexual inactivity among women of the same age remained relatively constant, rising from 15 percent to 19 percent over the same time period.
The study also found that sexual activity declined significantly among men and women ages 25 to 34 years old (7 percent versus 14 percent among men, 7 percent versus 12 percent among women).
Sexual activity did not decline among adults ages 35 to 44 years old.
Fewer adults also reported having sex weekly or more frequently.
Unmarried, low-income, and unemployed or part-time employed men were more likely to have had no sex within the past year than those who were married, had higher income, or had jobs.
“It seems like in the U.S. and elsewhere, it might be harder for a proportion of the population to establish themselves in society, in the labor market, and perhaps also in the dating market,” Ueda told Healthline.
The study also found that even among people who were having sex, frequency has declined.
“While the mean sexual frequency among those who were sexually active may reflect their priorities and preferences, sexual inactivity may reflect an absence of sexually intimate relationships, with substantially different implications for individuals and society,” Ueda said.
The findings were drawn from the responses of 4,291 men and 5,213 women who took part in the U.S. General Social Survey between 2000 and 2018.
Delayed adulthood may be a factor
In a commentaryTrusted Source accompanying the survey results, Jean M. Twenge, PhD, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, said that similar declines in sexual activity have been shown in surveys conducted in Great Britain, suggesting that the trend isn’t limited to the United States.
Twenge said that young adults may be having less sex because they’re taking longer to progress to adulthood.
“This includes the postponement of not just sexual activity but also other activities related to mating and reproduction, including dating, living with a partner, pregnancy, and birth,” she said. “However, these reproductive trends have not occurred in isolation; instead, they are part of a broader cultural trend toward delayed development. For example, adolescents in the 2010s were also less likely to drive, drink alcohol, go out without their parents, and work at paid jobs compared with adolescents in previous decades.”
“It’s not just young men who are having less sex than a generation ago, it’s young women, too,” said Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, PhD, a research professor at Clark University in Massachusetts and originator of the theory of “emerging adulthood” — defined as the time from the end of adolescence to the beginning of young-adult responsibilities such as a stable job, marriage, and parenthood.
“It’s part of an overall trend toward less risky behavior since 1990, including not only sex but alcohol use, risky driving, and criminal activity,” Dr. Arnett told Healthline.
Digital media distractions
Porn probably isn’t the problem, added Twenge, since research shows that pornography users are actually more sexually active.
Rather, she suggested, the vast entertainment options offered by the internet and digital media as a whole may be distracting young people from developing real-life relationships.
“Although internet sites and social media should theoretically make it easier to find new sexual partners, time spent online has also displaced time once spent on face-to-face social interaction,” Twenge said. “Between the 24-hour availability of entertainment and the temptation to use smartphones and social media, sexual activity may not be as attractive as it once was. Put simply, there are now many more choices of things to do in the late evening than there once were and fewer opportunities to initiate sexual activity if both partners are engrossed in social media, electronic gaming, or binge-watching.”
Nancy Sutton Pierce, a clinical sexologist, told Healthline that decades-long decline in male testosterone levels also may play a role in sexual inactivity, and that the #MeToo movement also may be playing a part.
“Women are more empowered to say both yes and no and intolerant of coercion and forced sex,” Dr. Pierce said.
She added that fewer unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases might be some of the positive benefits associated with declining sexual activity.
COVID-19 isn’t helping
Quarantines and physical distancing mandates associated with the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to make sexual inactivity even more common, at least in the short term.
“If the increase in sexual inactivity is partly driven by unemployment and lower income, the economic downturn will certainly not make it better,” Ueda said.
“Lockdown and concern for disease transmission may also not be an optimal situation for finding partners,” he added.
“I think the whole world is less sexual because of COVID,” Pierce said.
Well-being at risk
The findings also may have implications beyond sexuality.
“A key question is to what extent sexual inactivity is associated with dissatisfaction,” said Ueda. “While being sexually inactive is a choice for some individuals, it could be a source of distress for others.”
“Sexual inactivity and potential dissatisfaction with it seem to be sensitive topics, perhaps more so than sex,” he added. “While much work has been done to promote a frank and nuanced discussion about sex and sexual activity, it would be in our best interest to also be better at talking about not having sex. We need to improve the public discussion regarding this topic.”
Why Young Adults, Especially Men, Are Having Sex Less Frequently
One-third of men between the ages of 18 and 24 report they had no sexual activity in the past year.www.healthline.com
