I would like to observe that, assuming that what you say about the male role is accurate--and 77 years of life lead me inevitably to that conclusion--we've done two things that need to be remedied.
1) We have given over the role of passing values, and included among these, traditional masculine values that at the core preceded language--to educators. We have allowed this to happen--they did not initially take this away. Within my experience it started with the idea of civil rights for blacks, which came out of the schools. The goal was fine; we are dealing with humans and they need to be treated accordingly, but at that time, Trojan-horsed with lessons to be decent to blacks was the very beginning of the moral authority of academia in all areas of what is correct to think and believe.
It has gone on without any real popular push-back since that time, and like any entity without discipline, has become self-indulgent, immature, and arrogant. A lot like Caligula.
2) And this one is worse, still.
There are "male traits". I believe that they are evolved to enable survival within an indifferent environment. These include aggression, sexual dominance, opportunism, and energy unbridled by an excess of empathy. These traits, practiced at a societal level, produced ascendant cultures.
These traits have been identified by society and academia at all levels, as *negative*, to be done away with, and to feel shame if you find yourself moved by the instinctive appeal of these traits.
It becomes hard to argue against in today's society because it's true that in modern times, an *excess* of these traits is counter to an ordered and functional society. So the way it had worked up until post-modern times was that society, as represented by the legal system, culled off the excess of these trait. It was like pruning off the shoots below the graft of a citrus tree. But in the smug total absence of these traits, the society becomes weak, effeminate, and lacking the will to cohesion such as is needed for the culture to survive.
It is where I think we are now,
What's needed is not a surgical removal of these traits from society, but a moderating in scale of what is acceptable, and this is, and should be, by laws, alone, not smarmy shaming sessions and concellation.
I really enjoy following this rational discussion of the "bootstrap" kerfuffle. You are all doing a great service to our younger generations. Thank you!
I agree with the Librarian in that the term "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps" is a silly and self-destructive way to describe that one has agency and one must not hesitate to use it in pursuit of opportunities that come along.
Truly, it's all about learning how to recognize and "size" events/trnds you become aware of and think if you can benefit from them. It's certainly not a one-to-one exercise, where each such opportunity can be realized *by you*, but it has to be a never-ending process in how you live your life.
It's surprising to me how many are deterred by early set-backs and misjudgements, YOu just plain have to work thru this phase.
This is the better of the responses to this debate, and born of experience, which I appreciate.
Young men sometimes visit our church, having read a lot online, and will want to talk to me, as one of the few adult men with a family. I struggle with what to tell them, or what advice to give. They want to get married, find a wife, etc. My own generation was relentlessly told "follow your dreams" which was terrible advice. I don't know what they're told now, but it doesn't seem much better. As you say, each person is different and no one solution exists for them all. Talk often turns to intentional communities, yet rarely does it happen. I've seen it when people help revitalize a church and the rest follow.
If there were a frontier, many young men would do better, I think. Which makes me a little less skeptical of old Elon (and John Carter). But that doesn't help anyone now.
"My own generation was relentlessly told "follow your dreams" which was terrible advice."
YES! EXACTLY!
And this holds true even more today! I know this for a fact because I saw this in my daughter's generation. I was not firm enough to counter this, and she, and many others of her cohort, are paying the price right now.
Don't blame yourself. My wife's parents, being from more working-class backgrounds, told her to do practical things, not take too much debt, etc. But when every other outlet and authority in your life (school, media, friends, probably some church folk) are all saying the opposite, it's very hard. The kid is going to naturally think, "Maybe times are different. maybe I should have my dreams. Dad's just mean and doesn't believe in me."
It is one of the toughest aspects to parenting that I've encounter, the idea of throwing a wet tarp on your kids hopeful fantasies.
It wasn't like I was young when the time came--I was in my early 60s, fer god's sake!--but you're seeing them still in transition from pretend games, where, e.g., they own and operate a restaurant, and include you and your wife as employees. In their 9-year old minds, this *will* happen and everyone will stay the same and be just as happy as they are right now.
So *you*, yourself, tend to want to think that maybe, just maybe, there are employment opportunities out there now, that were not available to you when you were going thru school, and so you just let this stuff ride, hoping for the best. After all, I became a SW engineer--something my parents could have never foreseen.
It is *very* hard to make a happy kid face reality, but it has to be done, in small increments, like taking snake venom to achieve an immunity. That's where I didn't do well.
But I'm not *really* very hard on myself...not really! :^)
Yes, the “wet tarp.” I’m GenX, five GenZ children. Instead of the unrealistic follow-your-dreams advice (that cost me a fortune in the long run 😂) (and probably shaved years off my life 😂 because of stress 😂), I tell the two children (who are old enough to hear it) to invest in marriage (non-“feminist” marriage), & in food (cooking real food from scratch), & in extended family relationships (implications include refusing to relocate for job opportunities), & to make as many babies as they can afford to feed.
Because marriage, extended family, & local community, plus especially children-as-capital-investments is the only ROI (return on investment) that is reasonably within their power & under their own control.
Basically, I’m advising my GenZ children to aspire to my Depression Era grandparents‘ socioeconomic values 😳 (because the Battle of the Sexes/ Yuppie lifestyle has revealed itself to be a dead end, counterproductive, lost cause - Soul Destroying 😡).
I agree that that “follow your dreams” advice was really bad advice 😂 (for a Sensitive Young Man) … I don’t blame my Older Boomer parents for not understanding (in the 80’s) the globalists’ intentional ‘managed decline of the West,’ but I will be ever grateful to my father for teaching me that my USA is a female-dominated (not woman-dominated!) & man-hating (not male-hating!) socioeconomic system 😡 That wake-up call resulted in my future marriage to an “anti-feminist” woman. I attribute my financial stability, today, to my marriage to an anti-feminist woman, whereas the financial consequences of “following my dreams” would include decades of financial repair 😂 , among other consequences … My parents were born into an era of job opportunities & large families and extended family networks & traditional cultural values. I don’t blame them for not seeing what is obvious now, in retrospect.
One thing that occurs to me is the affect of class in all this. We don't like to imagine class exists in America but....
Henderson said people should work whatever job they need to, to survive or raise a family. You more or less did that path working at hotels (partly for other reasons, I understand). But Kurtz was right that working as an assistant manager is below many young men's class expectation; and indeed would hurt the prospects of an upper-middle-class or upper-class male. They're both right.
We've enculturated huge swaths of young men to think they're above Chipotle, and should be aspiring to... I don't know, finance bro, lawyer, or maybe Substack writer. Yet most cannot achieve that: their start position is too low, and they don't have the incredible fortitude to overcome that. That's okay. Not everyone is an uber-mensch. And I think that's where this "advice for society" and "advice for individuals" meets. Some young men are low class but we might reasonably hope they can aspire to a lot more. Many, I would guess, we don't see that potential in. We need to have something to tell them. Your advice to have income streams and maintain freedom is good, I think. And some will adjunct instead -- that's, indeed, what I did, along with computer work.
Our country offers pretty degraded true-middle-class options, yet it still might offer them. Not thinking your job(s) will be your vocation might help young men navigate this: instead finding meaning elsewhere.
"Not thinking your job(s) will be your vocation might help young men navigate this: instead finding meaning elsewhere."
Again, this is key.
For a while, out of college in the early 70s, I, and a whole lot of other run-of-the-mill young idealists, thought that our parents had it wrong--the old fogies--and that the New Man, the Modern Man, would find life satisfaction in the creative execution of his chosen occupation, and would socialize with other happy artisans.
While you can't really argue that this is impossible and does not happen, it's utter and complete idiocy to actually approach adulthood seriously expecting this. You'll be bound to find disappointment in at least 95% of the cases.
Me, I learned to split my life: there was work, which enabled me to indulge the remained of my life in areas that *were* and are creatively and socially satisfying.
So in caveman terms, "work" was the clubbing to death of a ground sloth, and "life" was sitting around the fire, doing hunting pantomimes, and eating the kill with friends and family.
...along with tasteless roots and gelatinous grubs.
"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."
Do it.
Start a Polity. Be one of the founders. A family remembered through the ages. When the average American is having 1.8 children, and you're having 8, building things, and getting it done... You don't have to do much. You don't have to be amazing.
All you have to do is survive. To teach your children how to thrive. In a world stacked against you, THAT IS WINNING.
So go out there. Get a job and use the money to buy productive tools. Go to auctions to get them for cheap. A used welder for pennies, teach yourself how to weld. Then level up to a cheap trailer, used oxy torch, and get a mobile rig going. Either with a welder generator or a generator to power what you have.
Or do mechanic work. Or carpentry. You could sell cool stuff on etsy if yours stands out - or just to your Church. Appliance repair is usually fairly easy, and people HATE doing it themselves or calling someone they don't know. You could pick up the free stuff off craigslist, repair it, sell it to gain skills before starting your own company.
If you don't have a teachers license, and aren't sure if you want to do it, offer to mentor children in your church in subjects you're strong in. Dip your toes in. See if it suites you.
From dealing with my thirteen year old son, this is sound advice. I don't see him going the traditional academic into white collar job route. I already know it isn't going to work. My son has said he wants to create his own job. I know other parents of boys who are like this and some of the parents, I can tell, are ashamed of it because we've had it jammed into our heads that everyone has to go to college. I wish there were more teachers like you these boys could go to.
Thank you! I think you’re addressing this issue with as much nuance as anyone could.
For me, my life as a carpenter felt well-paired with my life as a reader. I had a late-in-life opportunity to enter academia which I decided to forgo, and stayed with my trade another fifteen years—happily. My early life as an advertising copywriter I passionately despised and I knew early on that I would never make peace with that profession, much as I really wanted to in the beginning. Today the digital world is pretty much wall to wall advertising.
The composition of the American economy feels substantially different than the one I faced in the seventies, though I was very hard pressed to find my place in it back then. It feels hollow by comparison. So much gig work, quasi jobs, empty store fronts, empty commercial property, and immigrants combined with the strictures of an online public presence and unhelpful superficial websites like Yelp and Linked-in. Maybe the young men of today don’t feel the absence of all that manufacturing that we don’t have anymore, but it added a robustness to the economy that i think we’ve lost.
I don't think I've ever referred to myself as a "sensitive young man" but it's encouraging to hear this understanding of what we Gen Zers are supposed to do if we're not inclined to grind it out in tech in pursuit of status. I went to a good school, and am no idiot, but I often find "only at the extremes of mindless routine and total spiritual engagement can they thrive" to be frustratingly true; especially when I have periods of great ambition and I still butt up against my temperament. I find myself more disposed to life in the monastery than any office job, even as much as I recognize the many gifts (interior and exterior) that I have been given and recognize a call to lead and serve others.
For now, I'm a Catholic missionary leading pilgrimages and backpacking trips. Pretty much all I do is walk and engage in spiritual conversation and/or teaching, and I really can't imagine a better job except for the fact that it is entirely fundraised and has a two-year time limit, which I am fast approaching. Pray for me as I reach the moment of decision as a sensitive young man looking to build a worthwhile life. If my vocation is in the secular world, I have no intention or desire to spend it blackpilled about my options.
Dang you thinks and writes good for a piney woods cracker (Sez the guy raised in the northern most state south of the Mason Dixon line, down below Miami, who's neighbor buddy really was named Bubba & where my backyard ended, nothing but glades from there way up yt Tampa.)!
I like Johann, he does very good work but on this issue I pretty much disagree. My position is far closer to yours and rather than re-write it (I've important stuff to do, a batch of homebrewed beer I need to rack.) Here's a reposing of what I said over at Johann's site;
Quoting myself & then I said to Johann: "While I respect your opinions and thoroughly enjoy your essays I still disagree on almost all points you make on this subject.
I noted before that it's been well over twenty years since I've worked for money but I do not think the world has changed all that much.
Over my career why yes I've worked more than knee deep in offal and I've also enjoyed the corner office, a great view of the taiga or tundra & a pretty little brass nameplate on my desk.
Though I never had to, I always figured, planning my expenses and obligations accordingly, that no matter what happened, anything curtailing my employment, on having a bit set aside so/and that I could always get a job pumping gas, make enough to house, clothe and feed my family until things improved.
Admittedly that's not true today but flipping burgers or baristaing is. I do think it's a terrible mistake to tell any youngster entering the workforce that any job is beneath him. He should be ready and willing to do whatever it takes to support himself and his loved ones.
The advice I would give youngsters entering the workforce, white or blue collar, is to avoid debt as much as possible. I pretty much paychecked my acreage and house, buying and building when I'd enough money in my pocket. Money in the bank is money in the bank and even a zero balance is far better than a negative balance "
You mentioned a bricklayer, so I thought you might want a bricklayer's opinion. Forty plus years in my trade through good times and bad I managed to provide for my family. And now in the winter of my life I look back and see meaning in it. Was I a fool to stick with my trade all these years? To strive for excellence? To set an example to others by trying to live a worthy life?
The choices I have made and many others like me, made it possible for those young men to pursue the kind of life you describe in your essay. As a classic liberal Boomer I take issue with you continuing description of liberalism.
I wish you would define your terms more accurately. Freedom is not the problem. It is how individuals practice their freedom. I infer from your writing that you advocate some kind of coercion to correct society's problems. I think that moral suasion is how to create a better society. I apologize for the length. Take care.
My maternal grandfather was a bricklayer, as well as a steelworker and a farmer. My father’s line were all carpenters l, wheelwrights, and railmen. There’s a nobility and freedom in skilled labor that too many will never know.
To that end, what is freedom in the liberal sense? Liberalism is a political philosophy that holds that the individual is the fundamental unit of society, that individuals possess natural rights, that individuals form contingent and contractual arrangement to secure these rights, being called governments, and that the most fundamental of all rights is freedom, understood as the absence of constraint. One is free to the degree that forces- social, traditional, religious, or even natural- are not acting upon him.
This is so basic to American life that it never even occurs to most people that, historically speaking it’s both recent and anomalous. Nor to people spend much time on the internal contradictions. I would encourage you to read Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed for a primer on some of them. But suffice to say, the liberal understanding of freedom has reached a point where it collides with the basic needs of an ordered and just society, and the need to prop up egalitarianism and the inability to adjudicate between competing truth claims born of subjective notions of what is good and just mean that the system is unraveling in real time.
The problem is knowing when practicing a freedom is best done in private, and when it has low impact, or a slight positive impact, if done publicly.
E.g., a Castro district gay rights parade is an example of the former; its intent is a public provocation, or has been in the past. Joining a group that cleans up one's neighborhood periodically is an example of the latter.
There are many other better examples of each, but I'm sure you see what i'm saying.
"Sensitivity" comes in different hues, and one thing often neglected is that a lot of men - including guys you'd never look at and think of as sensitive - just don't operate all that well in a socially nuanced and complex mixed-gender environment, like your typical modern office -- or teachers' lounge. Or hospital, city hall, university, courthouse, etc.
Simply once again allowing gender-segregated spaces would solve a lot of problems in that regard. Maybe not entire institutions, but places in the institutions.
We pretty much take it for granted that putting a woman in charge of a men's sports team as head coach is a bad idea. I think we also know in our hearts that women shouldn't be combat officers. But for some reason giving them authority over young men in every other field is just fine... It makes no sense.
Young men cannot develop a sense of self mastery under purely maternal influence. But even a sensitive boy, under the protection and guidance of a caring, mature man, can learn to withstand a lot of pressure and maintain a sense of self-control and perseverance even in highly unpleasant circumstances, which we all face from time to time.
So it's good to know that you, Librarian, are doing your part in this regard, but this paternal influence is unavailable to far too many young men. I personally sacrificed a great deal in material terms so that I could give as much as possible to my sons, and I think it was more than worth it, but I look around and see so many fatherless boys out there that I know we'll have a lot of work to do for a long time.
🎯 51 year-old **very** sensitive man, father of five. Many thoughts, here’s just one to add to your excellent points: Co-educational environments are abusive to young men during early adolescence, (middle school & high school), because we’re **horny** & energetic. Girls are not horny, and not energetic. Boys & girls need two different educational paths starting in adolescence.
I say segregate the sexes at age 10 or 12, then reunite them in the workforce or in post-secondary education. Ideally, mist girls would devote themselves to homemaking & childrearing.
In retrospect, being surrounded by girls was a non-stop tantalizing distraction during the teen years.
Later in my life, in US army Basic Training, & in my all male mechanized infantry battalions, (I was a mechanic), what a contrast, & what a **relief** from tantalizing sexual distraction 24/7/365. Being in an all-male environment was the moment (which totally suppressed my sex drive) that I understood how **abusive** to boys the coeducational environment is (and was to me personally as well 😡).
I’m GenX, five GenZ children. Instead of the unrealistic follow-your-dreams advice (that cost me a fortune in the long run 😂) (and probably shaved years off my life 😂 because of stress 😂), I tell the two children (who are old enough to hear it) to invest in marriage (non-“feminist” marriage), & in food (cooking real food from scratch), & in extended family relationships (implications include refusing to relocate for job opportunities), & to make as many babies as they can afford to feed.
Because marriage, extended family, & local community, plus especially children-as-capital-investments is the only ROI (return on investment) that is reasonably under their own control.
Basically, I’m advising my GenZ children to aspire to my Depression Era grandparents‘ socioeconomic values 😳 (because the Battle of the Sexes/ Yuppie lifestyle has revealed itself to be a dead end, counterproductive, lost cause - Soul Destroying 😡).
I think you raise very important points.
I would like to observe that, assuming that what you say about the male role is accurate--and 77 years of life lead me inevitably to that conclusion--we've done two things that need to be remedied.
1) We have given over the role of passing values, and included among these, traditional masculine values that at the core preceded language--to educators. We have allowed this to happen--they did not initially take this away. Within my experience it started with the idea of civil rights for blacks, which came out of the schools. The goal was fine; we are dealing with humans and they need to be treated accordingly, but at that time, Trojan-horsed with lessons to be decent to blacks was the very beginning of the moral authority of academia in all areas of what is correct to think and believe.
It has gone on without any real popular push-back since that time, and like any entity without discipline, has become self-indulgent, immature, and arrogant. A lot like Caligula.
2) And this one is worse, still.
There are "male traits". I believe that they are evolved to enable survival within an indifferent environment. These include aggression, sexual dominance, opportunism, and energy unbridled by an excess of empathy. These traits, practiced at a societal level, produced ascendant cultures.
These traits have been identified by society and academia at all levels, as *negative*, to be done away with, and to feel shame if you find yourself moved by the instinctive appeal of these traits.
It becomes hard to argue against in today's society because it's true that in modern times, an *excess* of these traits is counter to an ordered and functional society. So the way it had worked up until post-modern times was that society, as represented by the legal system, culled off the excess of these trait. It was like pruning off the shoots below the graft of a citrus tree. But in the smug total absence of these traits, the society becomes weak, effeminate, and lacking the will to cohesion such as is needed for the culture to survive.
It is where I think we are now,
What's needed is not a surgical removal of these traits from society, but a moderating in scale of what is acceptable, and this is, and should be, by laws, alone, not smarmy shaming sessions and concellation.
I really enjoy following this rational discussion of the "bootstrap" kerfuffle. You are all doing a great service to our younger generations. Thank you!
Thank you for reading.
I agree with the Librarian in that the term "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps" is a silly and self-destructive way to describe that one has agency and one must not hesitate to use it in pursuit of opportunities that come along.
Truly, it's all about learning how to recognize and "size" events/trnds you become aware of and think if you can benefit from them. It's certainly not a one-to-one exercise, where each such opportunity can be realized *by you*, but it has to be a never-ending process in how you live your life.
It's surprising to me how many are deterred by early set-backs and misjudgements, YOu just plain have to work thru this phase.
...or, you can be born to wealth.
This is the better of the responses to this debate, and born of experience, which I appreciate.
Young men sometimes visit our church, having read a lot online, and will want to talk to me, as one of the few adult men with a family. I struggle with what to tell them, or what advice to give. They want to get married, find a wife, etc. My own generation was relentlessly told "follow your dreams" which was terrible advice. I don't know what they're told now, but it doesn't seem much better. As you say, each person is different and no one solution exists for them all. Talk often turns to intentional communities, yet rarely does it happen. I've seen it when people help revitalize a church and the rest follow.
If there were a frontier, many young men would do better, I think. Which makes me a little less skeptical of old Elon (and John Carter). But that doesn't help anyone now.
Vale
"My own generation was relentlessly told "follow your dreams" which was terrible advice."
YES! EXACTLY!
And this holds true even more today! I know this for a fact because I saw this in my daughter's generation. I was not firm enough to counter this, and she, and many others of her cohort, are paying the price right now.
Don't blame yourself. My wife's parents, being from more working-class backgrounds, told her to do practical things, not take too much debt, etc. But when every other outlet and authority in your life (school, media, friends, probably some church folk) are all saying the opposite, it's very hard. The kid is going to naturally think, "Maybe times are different. maybe I should have my dreams. Dad's just mean and doesn't believe in me."
It is one of the toughest aspects to parenting that I've encounter, the idea of throwing a wet tarp on your kids hopeful fantasies.
It wasn't like I was young when the time came--I was in my early 60s, fer god's sake!--but you're seeing them still in transition from pretend games, where, e.g., they own and operate a restaurant, and include you and your wife as employees. In their 9-year old minds, this *will* happen and everyone will stay the same and be just as happy as they are right now.
So *you*, yourself, tend to want to think that maybe, just maybe, there are employment opportunities out there now, that were not available to you when you were going thru school, and so you just let this stuff ride, hoping for the best. After all, I became a SW engineer--something my parents could have never foreseen.
It is *very* hard to make a happy kid face reality, but it has to be done, in small increments, like taking snake venom to achieve an immunity. That's where I didn't do well.
But I'm not *really* very hard on myself...not really! :^)
Yes, the “wet tarp.” I’m GenX, five GenZ children. Instead of the unrealistic follow-your-dreams advice (that cost me a fortune in the long run 😂) (and probably shaved years off my life 😂 because of stress 😂), I tell the two children (who are old enough to hear it) to invest in marriage (non-“feminist” marriage), & in food (cooking real food from scratch), & in extended family relationships (implications include refusing to relocate for job opportunities), & to make as many babies as they can afford to feed.
Because marriage, extended family, & local community, plus especially children-as-capital-investments is the only ROI (return on investment) that is reasonably within their power & under their own control.
Basically, I’m advising my GenZ children to aspire to my Depression Era grandparents‘ socioeconomic values 😳 (because the Battle of the Sexes/ Yuppie lifestyle has revealed itself to be a dead end, counterproductive, lost cause - Soul Destroying 😡).
I agree that that “follow your dreams” advice was really bad advice 😂 (for a Sensitive Young Man) … I don’t blame my Older Boomer parents for not understanding (in the 80’s) the globalists’ intentional ‘managed decline of the West,’ but I will be ever grateful to my father for teaching me that my USA is a female-dominated (not woman-dominated!) & man-hating (not male-hating!) socioeconomic system 😡 That wake-up call resulted in my future marriage to an “anti-feminist” woman. I attribute my financial stability, today, to my marriage to an anti-feminist woman, whereas the financial consequences of “following my dreams” would include decades of financial repair 😂 , among other consequences … My parents were born into an era of job opportunities & large families and extended family networks & traditional cultural values. I don’t blame them for not seeing what is obvious now, in retrospect.
One thing that occurs to me is the affect of class in all this. We don't like to imagine class exists in America but....
Henderson said people should work whatever job they need to, to survive or raise a family. You more or less did that path working at hotels (partly for other reasons, I understand). But Kurtz was right that working as an assistant manager is below many young men's class expectation; and indeed would hurt the prospects of an upper-middle-class or upper-class male. They're both right.
We've enculturated huge swaths of young men to think they're above Chipotle, and should be aspiring to... I don't know, finance bro, lawyer, or maybe Substack writer. Yet most cannot achieve that: their start position is too low, and they don't have the incredible fortitude to overcome that. That's okay. Not everyone is an uber-mensch. And I think that's where this "advice for society" and "advice for individuals" meets. Some young men are low class but we might reasonably hope they can aspire to a lot more. Many, I would guess, we don't see that potential in. We need to have something to tell them. Your advice to have income streams and maintain freedom is good, I think. And some will adjunct instead -- that's, indeed, what I did, along with computer work.
Our country offers pretty degraded true-middle-class options, yet it still might offer them. Not thinking your job(s) will be your vocation might help young men navigate this: instead finding meaning elsewhere.
"Not thinking your job(s) will be your vocation might help young men navigate this: instead finding meaning elsewhere."
Again, this is key.
For a while, out of college in the early 70s, I, and a whole lot of other run-of-the-mill young idealists, thought that our parents had it wrong--the old fogies--and that the New Man, the Modern Man, would find life satisfaction in the creative execution of his chosen occupation, and would socialize with other happy artisans.
While you can't really argue that this is impossible and does not happen, it's utter and complete idiocy to actually approach adulthood seriously expecting this. You'll be bound to find disappointment in at least 95% of the cases.
Me, I learned to split my life: there was work, which enabled me to indulge the remained of my life in areas that *were* and are creatively and socially satisfying.
So in caveman terms, "work" was the clubbing to death of a ground sloth, and "life" was sitting around the fire, doing hunting pantomimes, and eating the kill with friends and family.
...along with tasteless roots and gelatinous grubs.
"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."
Do it.
Start a Polity. Be one of the founders. A family remembered through the ages. When the average American is having 1.8 children, and you're having 8, building things, and getting it done... You don't have to do much. You don't have to be amazing.
All you have to do is survive. To teach your children how to thrive. In a world stacked against you, THAT IS WINNING.
So go out there. Get a job and use the money to buy productive tools. Go to auctions to get them for cheap. A used welder for pennies, teach yourself how to weld. Then level up to a cheap trailer, used oxy torch, and get a mobile rig going. Either with a welder generator or a generator to power what you have.
Or do mechanic work. Or carpentry. You could sell cool stuff on etsy if yours stands out - or just to your Church. Appliance repair is usually fairly easy, and people HATE doing it themselves or calling someone they don't know. You could pick up the free stuff off craigslist, repair it, sell it to gain skills before starting your own company.
If you don't have a teachers license, and aren't sure if you want to do it, offer to mentor children in your church in subjects you're strong in. Dip your toes in. See if it suites you.
Anyways, possibilities are endless.
Be the change you want to see.
From dealing with my thirteen year old son, this is sound advice. I don't see him going the traditional academic into white collar job route. I already know it isn't going to work. My son has said he wants to create his own job. I know other parents of boys who are like this and some of the parents, I can tell, are ashamed of it because we've had it jammed into our heads that everyone has to go to college. I wish there were more teachers like you these boys could go to.
Thank you! I think you’re addressing this issue with as much nuance as anyone could.
For me, my life as a carpenter felt well-paired with my life as a reader. I had a late-in-life opportunity to enter academia which I decided to forgo, and stayed with my trade another fifteen years—happily. My early life as an advertising copywriter I passionately despised and I knew early on that I would never make peace with that profession, much as I really wanted to in the beginning. Today the digital world is pretty much wall to wall advertising.
The composition of the American economy feels substantially different than the one I faced in the seventies, though I was very hard pressed to find my place in it back then. It feels hollow by comparison. So much gig work, quasi jobs, empty store fronts, empty commercial property, and immigrants combined with the strictures of an online public presence and unhelpful superficial websites like Yelp and Linked-in. Maybe the young men of today don’t feel the absence of all that manufacturing that we don’t have anymore, but it added a robustness to the economy that i think we’ve lost.
I don't think I've ever referred to myself as a "sensitive young man" but it's encouraging to hear this understanding of what we Gen Zers are supposed to do if we're not inclined to grind it out in tech in pursuit of status. I went to a good school, and am no idiot, but I often find "only at the extremes of mindless routine and total spiritual engagement can they thrive" to be frustratingly true; especially when I have periods of great ambition and I still butt up against my temperament. I find myself more disposed to life in the monastery than any office job, even as much as I recognize the many gifts (interior and exterior) that I have been given and recognize a call to lead and serve others.
For now, I'm a Catholic missionary leading pilgrimages and backpacking trips. Pretty much all I do is walk and engage in spiritual conversation and/or teaching, and I really can't imagine a better job except for the fact that it is entirely fundraised and has a two-year time limit, which I am fast approaching. Pray for me as I reach the moment of decision as a sensitive young man looking to build a worthwhile life. If my vocation is in the secular world, I have no intention or desire to spend it blackpilled about my options.
I will happily pray for you. Remember, it’s not so much what you want, but how bad you want it.
Dang you thinks and writes good for a piney woods cracker (Sez the guy raised in the northern most state south of the Mason Dixon line, down below Miami, who's neighbor buddy really was named Bubba & where my backyard ended, nothing but glades from there way up yt Tampa.)!
I like Johann, he does very good work but on this issue I pretty much disagree. My position is far closer to yours and rather than re-write it (I've important stuff to do, a batch of homebrewed beer I need to rack.) Here's a reposing of what I said over at Johann's site;
Quoting myself & then I said to Johann: "While I respect your opinions and thoroughly enjoy your essays I still disagree on almost all points you make on this subject.
I noted before that it's been well over twenty years since I've worked for money but I do not think the world has changed all that much.
Over my career why yes I've worked more than knee deep in offal and I've also enjoyed the corner office, a great view of the taiga or tundra & a pretty little brass nameplate on my desk.
Though I never had to, I always figured, planning my expenses and obligations accordingly, that no matter what happened, anything curtailing my employment, on having a bit set aside so/and that I could always get a job pumping gas, make enough to house, clothe and feed my family until things improved.
Admittedly that's not true today but flipping burgers or baristaing is. I do think it's a terrible mistake to tell any youngster entering the workforce that any job is beneath him. He should be ready and willing to do whatever it takes to support himself and his loved ones.
The advice I would give youngsters entering the workforce, white or blue collar, is to avoid debt as much as possible. I pretty much paychecked my acreage and house, buying and building when I'd enough money in my pocket. Money in the bank is money in the bank and even a zero balance is far better than a negative balance "
& yes Lib'aeno, kidding, teasing aside, excellent writing!
You mentioned a bricklayer, so I thought you might want a bricklayer's opinion. Forty plus years in my trade through good times and bad I managed to provide for my family. And now in the winter of my life I look back and see meaning in it. Was I a fool to stick with my trade all these years? To strive for excellence? To set an example to others by trying to live a worthy life?
The choices I have made and many others like me, made it possible for those young men to pursue the kind of life you describe in your essay. As a classic liberal Boomer I take issue with you continuing description of liberalism.
I wish you would define your terms more accurately. Freedom is not the problem. It is how individuals practice their freedom. I infer from your writing that you advocate some kind of coercion to correct society's problems. I think that moral suasion is how to create a better society. I apologize for the length. Take care.
My maternal grandfather was a bricklayer, as well as a steelworker and a farmer. My father’s line were all carpenters l, wheelwrights, and railmen. There’s a nobility and freedom in skilled labor that too many will never know.
To that end, what is freedom in the liberal sense? Liberalism is a political philosophy that holds that the individual is the fundamental unit of society, that individuals possess natural rights, that individuals form contingent and contractual arrangement to secure these rights, being called governments, and that the most fundamental of all rights is freedom, understood as the absence of constraint. One is free to the degree that forces- social, traditional, religious, or even natural- are not acting upon him.
This is so basic to American life that it never even occurs to most people that, historically speaking it’s both recent and anomalous. Nor to people spend much time on the internal contradictions. I would encourage you to read Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed for a primer on some of them. But suffice to say, the liberal understanding of freedom has reached a point where it collides with the basic needs of an ordered and just society, and the need to prop up egalitarianism and the inability to adjudicate between competing truth claims born of subjective notions of what is good and just mean that the system is unraveling in real time.
Freedom is not, per se, the problem.
The problem is knowing when practicing a freedom is best done in private, and when it has low impact, or a slight positive impact, if done publicly.
E.g., a Castro district gay rights parade is an example of the former; its intent is a public provocation, or has been in the past. Joining a group that cleans up one's neighborhood periodically is an example of the latter.
There are many other better examples of each, but I'm sure you see what i'm saying.
"Sensitivity" comes in different hues, and one thing often neglected is that a lot of men - including guys you'd never look at and think of as sensitive - just don't operate all that well in a socially nuanced and complex mixed-gender environment, like your typical modern office -- or teachers' lounge. Or hospital, city hall, university, courthouse, etc.
Simply once again allowing gender-segregated spaces would solve a lot of problems in that regard. Maybe not entire institutions, but places in the institutions.
We pretty much take it for granted that putting a woman in charge of a men's sports team as head coach is a bad idea. I think we also know in our hearts that women shouldn't be combat officers. But for some reason giving them authority over young men in every other field is just fine... It makes no sense.
Young men cannot develop a sense of self mastery under purely maternal influence. But even a sensitive boy, under the protection and guidance of a caring, mature man, can learn to withstand a lot of pressure and maintain a sense of self-control and perseverance even in highly unpleasant circumstances, which we all face from time to time.
So it's good to know that you, Librarian, are doing your part in this regard, but this paternal influence is unavailable to far too many young men. I personally sacrificed a great deal in material terms so that I could give as much as possible to my sons, and I think it was more than worth it, but I look around and see so many fatherless boys out there that I know we'll have a lot of work to do for a long time.
🎯 51 year-old **very** sensitive man, father of five. Many thoughts, here’s just one to add to your excellent points: Co-educational environments are abusive to young men during early adolescence, (middle school & high school), because we’re **horny** & energetic. Girls are not horny, and not energetic. Boys & girls need two different educational paths starting in adolescence.
I say segregate the sexes at age 10 or 12, then reunite them in the workforce or in post-secondary education. Ideally, mist girls would devote themselves to homemaking & childrearing.
In retrospect, being surrounded by girls was a non-stop tantalizing distraction during the teen years.
Later in my life, in US army Basic Training, & in my all male mechanized infantry battalions, (I was a mechanic), what a contrast, & what a **relief** from tantalizing sexual distraction 24/7/365. Being in an all-male environment was the moment (which totally suppressed my sex drive) that I understood how **abusive** to boys the coeducational environment is (and was to me personally as well 😡).
Thanks,
Gerald
Yes agree wholeheartedly on the problems with coeducation. Girls in the classroom? You can bet my eyes and mind weren't on the blackboard.
Also I'm with you on your other comment. Investing in family and community is far more rewarding than "career."
Much appreciate you raising five kids. Hard but rewarding work, and absolutely essential to society at large.
I’m GenX, five GenZ children. Instead of the unrealistic follow-your-dreams advice (that cost me a fortune in the long run 😂) (and probably shaved years off my life 😂 because of stress 😂), I tell the two children (who are old enough to hear it) to invest in marriage (non-“feminist” marriage), & in food (cooking real food from scratch), & in extended family relationships (implications include refusing to relocate for job opportunities), & to make as many babies as they can afford to feed.
Because marriage, extended family, & local community, plus especially children-as-capital-investments is the only ROI (return on investment) that is reasonably under their own control.
Basically, I’m advising my GenZ children to aspire to my Depression Era grandparents‘ socioeconomic values 😳 (because the Battle of the Sexes/ Yuppie lifestyle has revealed itself to be a dead end, counterproductive, lost cause - Soul Destroying 😡).
If our goal is to revitalize the culture, we will need some Hölderlins and Wordsworths of our own.