Male malaise in the United States goes back to the founders, and it is a preoccupation of elites in particular. They might teach us something about this current wave of manliness panic.
When it comes to iron determination, strength of character, courage, resilience and sheer power and scope, a man manlier than all of us was Fred Rogers.
He was a pretty tough sonuvabitch. He saw a whole generation of children frightened by a bold new world, and did something about it. Could you do this?
My mother will go on and on about how much I loved watching Mister Rogers Neighborhood as a kid, he was a major contributor to my moral compass and his journey is inspiring
And always a panic about the morals and life skills of the next generation. I've always hated "kids these days" arguments
Although, now that I'm getting older and I work in higher education, it's getting harder and harder to tell the difference between actual need for educational reform to fit the modern climate and the relaxing of standards and rigor in higher ed. Is the crisis that we need to do a better job teaching students not to cheat, or do we just need to change how we write tests? Etc.
Anyways, get off of my lawn and thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Initially, the article brought up a lot of cool things about masculinity, which I didn’t know: notably about how society, sees a crisis of masculinity, at every social change.
However, the article did not wrap this up at all. It resorted to talking about essentially a religious convention, and Trump rally. Then referenced so-called “philosophers” and “scholars” akin to Joe Rogan. This isn’t a fair comparison, it’s literally asking a podcast host to solve a huge social issue.
Additionally for some reason referencing how white men don’t even belong in America because it’s native land; when that is a whole separate issue that we can talk about and needs to be addressed but distracts from the article title.
I would love to talk about this more, but this article really drags men’s mental health + belonging in the dirt and undermines anyone trying to legitimately help men belong in this world in a non-toxic and fulfilling way.