Worthwhile Lives for Sensitive Young Men

A coda and response

I was very grateful for the opportunity to speak with

Johann Kurtz

and

Dave Greene

the other day and for the chance to hear their views expounded more directly, as well as to elaborate on my own. Johann Kurtz has offered an afterword and I thought I might do so as well. These are very much the sorts of conversations we should be having on the right, and with things evolving as they are in the political and economic spheres, I suspect this is a topic we will be returning to more than once in the near future. This is also a kind of introductory piece to my next and much longer essay about those trends and their significance.

Kurtz titled his piece “Jobs for Sensitive Young Men.” I should note that if he meant that in the literal sense as opposed to shorthand for the coming generations then there are really only a few, if any, jobs that such people will be able to do for any length of time without feeling greatly encumbered and deeply demoralized. Sensitive people think and feel, and only at the extremes of mindless routine and total spiritual engagement can they thrive. It’s why monks either weave baskets or write theological treatises. Sensitive young men could not bear working at McDonalds, but nor would life as a stockbroker be appealing, regardless of the compensation.

Write narrative poetry, Anon.

Fortunately, the life of the spirit is available to those willing to put in the work, just as it has been in any age. There are certain sacrifices that must be made, of course- generally those who wish to dedicate themselves to art or literature or philosophy or music or something along those lines do so at the cost of wealth, station, and the esteem of their peers. Granted, some few will achieve some modicum of each in their lives, but one cannot enter on that path with that expectation. I have taught such young men, for whom a normal life offers few satisfactions, and I caution them that if they wish to live authentically they will have to carve out a way very different from their peers. There’s no one right way, no formula or checklist- each such young man is different. I’m pleased that I have one of them writing here on Substack and I hope to encourage more, but for others I help them seek out more appropriate mentors than myself.

The great mass of young men aren’t especially sensitive in the sense Goethe or such would have recognized- they want to get on with the business of normie life, working, marrying, and raising a family. Young men are under no illusions about how hard this will be. It’s for that reason that I hesitate to dwell on that reality with them, nor do I encourage individual or collective fixation on the same. As a teacher there is nothing sadder than seeing bitterness in the young, that group that’s supposed to supply the energy and optimism of a society, as we older folks offer tempered experience and authority. I never use the stupid phrase ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps-’ in the first place because it’s meaningless, but in the second place because it’s not really how opportunity works. Every young man who makes his way in the world depends on the work of those who came before him and the opportunities those men created, even if its nothing more than throwing the youth into a war (it’s how a lot of men got their start, after all). And if we’re going to give young men the advice to tailor their ambitions to the expectations of the economy controlled by their elders, then the latter have the concomitant responsibility to maximize our ability to make a way for them, the young men of our society, rather than some other end like profits or efficiency.

That said, too much of the rhetoric around how bad the situation is for young men veers into despair and toxicity. Time and again, in comments on Substack, X, and elsewhere, young (and not so young) men would demand I acknowledge how bad they have it and demand that I demand in turn some specific policy program that would alleviate their personal and collective conditions. When I responded that I already fully agreed that things were not well for them and supported the changes they stipulated, they simply doubled down as if I was arguing with them, and would hold forth on how I just didn’t get it, how easy they knew I had it, all the wonderful opportunities I had that they lacked, etc. Pointing out that I’d worked in food service myself for many years, that I’d married and had children while earning less than the infamous- perhaps apocryphal- Chipotle manager, and have extensive experience at my current job working with young men only made them madder.

A lot of this, sadly

The longhouse is insidious. There’s a kind of effeminacy to this sort of despondent rhetoric, a self-absorbed insistence on emotional validation as opposed to manful acceptance of hardship and a seeking out of solutions. A woman’s most basic trait is her drive to care, and thus women seek out empathy as a bridge toward helping others. When your wife tells you that her car didn’t start that morning, she’ll generally get even more upset if you stop her short in her story to tell her you’ll call AAA. “You’re not listening! I was late and my boss was mad at me and it was the worst morning!” She needs to know you care, not that you know what to do (if she didn’t trust that you already knew that, she wouldn’t be telling you how she felt in the first place). But some young men’s constant need for others to take a hit off the blackpill pipe with them is still more insidious. It’s that womanly urge, but wedded to male aggression and entitlement, not true effeminacy even but a type of spiritual trannyism, a perverse appetite for a toxically pseudo-empathic endorsement of victimhood. And that cannot be abided.

Not anymore, at least

Solutions for individuals and society as a whole must reflect that the powerful force of young male energy must be directed away from ruminating on sewage and toward positive ends. The first thing to do is to make sure young men know that you acknowledge how hard their lives are. But everything else after must be geared towards working towards helping make their lives better. This is a real challenge, because as the left has taught us, it feels good to be a victim, especially when you can plausibly claim to be one. It lifts the burden of agency from one’s shoulders and dissolves it in a solvent of nebulous theories and proposals, especially from distant others who seek political power from their claim to address that oppression. Immigration is a problem. Boomer wealth hoarding is a problem. Neoliberalism is a problem. They should be addressed and fixed, but their persistence is never a pretext for inaction or indifference.

For society as a whole I endorse nearly everything Kurtz does, but I would again emphasize the real need for educators with a correct understanding of politics and human nature, which is to say rightists, and if there is anywhere a smart and hardworking person can have an impact, it is there. It would benefit a lot of the people commenting on this and related issues to spent time with large groups of young people on their own terms, offering firsthand guidance and the benefits of experience to them. You’ll learn where you’re the same and where you’re different. You can get rid of all the immigrants you want, ban HR, do whatever, but if you’re handing over young men en masse to an education system that hates them, none of it will matter. And the leftism is the least of the problems. Much worse is the reductive neoliberal materialism that reduces students to stratified components in a global system of extractive peonage. Classical education- the past- is the future if there is to be a future, and more of us need to be on board with that and other such models. Note that I’m not calling for every young rightist to devote himself to a life in the classroom. Ideally, in fact, people would rotate into and out of that role periodically throughout their lives, teaching when younger, working at a business or such when more mature with family responsibilities, then returning to teaching when the demands of that career ebb- something like that.

Along those lines, for individual young men, I recommend something a bit more nuanced and perhaps counterintuitive than Johann Kurtz does. I recognize that his ideas are probably the better immediate practical solution to navigating existing realities. Nonetheless, I think those realities are not quite so fixed- that they must be adapted to, certainly, but also that we can adapt them through no small amount of force of will. The Matrix has rules- rules like gravity. What you must learn is that some of these rules can be bent; others can be broken.

To whit, and to elide my earlier distinction a bit, I think there should be a bit more overlap between the worlds of sensitive and not-so-sensitive young men. It is good for everyone to be exposed to culture both high and low. Bricklayers should know who Homer is; Homeric scholars should know how bricks are laid. The course through which the young are sorted out into categories rarified and commonplace is a product of modernity and not reflected historically in other elites. Consider that George Washington spent his youth in the woods surveying and negotiating with Indians, that Ben Franklin got buff working a printing press, that Lincoln famously split rails, etc. None of them were groomed to be elites (Washington was a second son who expected to have to support himself) and yet they made it. You can say times are different now, and they are, but perhaps not so much as we think. Maybe, just maybe, the system isn’t as strong as it looks.

And this is where the question of status comes in. My biggest initial difference with Kurtz was the emphasis he places on following the conventional path for elites. One’s LinkedIn status must be cultivated and protected from bad karma at all costs, including such spiritual pollution as working fast food. Fair enough- fast food isn’t the best choice if your plan is to move into elite spaces as presently constituted. My contention, however, is that those elite spaces are not quite what they seem. One must traipse further and further up the ladder to reach a place that hasn’t been proletarianized by the one above it, until at last you hit the heights of tech elite, and discover, as Mark Zuckerberg did, that all your supposed wealth and power is contingent on satisfying the whims of unelected faceless, fungible non-entities who exist as mere instantiations of the logic of the system as a whole. It’s really just a closed loop of endless deference to protocols and the shaping of new processes for anticipating novelties, all of which are outside the authority or agency of any one person or even one cell within it. All are equally bound to it; what looks like an elite to an outsider is really just that group of people most conditioned to defer to the system without deviation or greater purpose.

What does ‘status’ mean in a system like that? Sure, going to a better school can let you plug into it at a more remunerative and respected point, but as I said before, there are tradeoffs the same as working at Burger King. Being well thought of by your peers and society as a whole isn’t a bad thing, but I don’t think it should be a goal, least of all because the experience of the past thirty years or so (at least) has been that our elites are not especially elite by any objective measure, and have turned credentials and titles into a proxy for what ought to be individual and class excellence. There are people in power, perhaps the majority, whom I don’t want to like me. They’re awful- corrupt, incompetent, and venal, and to be quite blunt, I don’t fancy the idea of telling young men, “you know those guys we’ve just established created the conditions that left you bereft of opportunities and meaningful options in life; if you play your cards right, they’ll let you into their club.” Granted, if the goal is to infiltrate and replace them there is something to be said for that. But I stand by the idea that curating one’s whole young life for the opportunity to join the Roman Senate circa 450 AD is not an unproblematic plan.

What then? I propose a more decentralized redefinition of status, one where self-sufficiency, freedom, and personal cultivation are the goals. In general, young men should back away from the idea of ‘a’ job or even ‘a’ career in favor of multiple overlapping income streams derived from a diverse range of sources, as many as possible relating to the talents and drive of individuals. A young man should not be a fast food worker. He should be a fast food worker two days a week, as well as a fishing guide, a Kick streamer, a small-engine repairman, and a mobile pressure washer. If he’s the more sensitive type, he should teach part time, tutor, work as an adjunct, and write on Substack. Once he gains the resources and knowledge, he can be an investor and advisor for others. In his free time, he networks with other young men, working to mitigate the costs of living through skill-sharing and cooperative labor. This will in turn lead to a more cohesive society, personal antifragility, and the economic security that makes for an attractive spouse. There’s nothing keeping women from doing similar things, and indeed, organized intelligently, this could be the foundation of a prosperous household.

The objections to this would be that one cannot live where they are like that in which case you have to decide if you think it’s more likely you can change things or that you can do better elsewhere, and if the latter, you’ll simply need to move. It’s unfortunate, but if you don’t get to continue your community, you’ll at least get to be part of starting a new one. There is also the idea that these jobs won’t provide enough of an income. There might need to be a reimagining of what sort of lifestyle is feasible for you, but what you lose out on in material terms you gain in freedom and agency. And that is the real foundation of an elite, not certifications and official stamps of approval, but the ability to govern oneself that’s fundamental to being able to govern others. You can choose to be a cog in the system, or you can break the wheel.

All of this advice is about empowering young men to accept the burden of freedom and the responsibilities of manhood in a way that allows them to maintain their dignity and agency. I respect Johann Kurtz and Dave Greene immensely for the work they’ve put into thinking about this problem and for the empathy they’ve shown for young men. But all of us on the right are called to effect solutions of one type or another wherever we find scope for our abilities. I hope you reading this see some opportunity in your own life to help the young. If not our ideas, then whose?