JULY 9, SATURDAY

DYSFUNCTIONAL YOUNG MEN

I’ve been reading that American young men are in crisis mode. This is my narrow take on that because being male it could be that I am in crisis mode myself and am writing from a biased perspective.

From what I read the signs of this male dysfunction are that young women do better in school all the way through and are more likely to get a college education and a good job in the shift from manufacturing to a service economy. Young women are earning on a par with men and are just as likely to be able to support a family, even a family without a man in the family and don’t need male support and protection. Young men are more likely to die early from deaths of despair: overdosing on drugs and suicide. Young men are more likely to be aimless without a job that satisfies them and more often unemployed. Male sexuality has drawn fire from the “Me Too” movement and young men feel victims with their normal sexual drive and behavior being stigmatized.

In an article that I read lately Progressives are more likely to be critical of male domination and in support of feminism while right wing pundits like Jordan Peterson and Josh Hawley, among others, see feminism as being a force that emasculates men and are encouraging male strength and domination.

In my own simplistic view of things MAGA people feel that their identity is threatened by the erosion of traditional American values: male domination, white supremacy, Christian fundamentalism, competitive capitalism, heterosexual affirmation, American nationalism (excluding immigrants), and American exceptionalism.

I wrestle with my characterization of MAGA people this way because I also believe that most MAGA people are good, churchgoing, law abiding, friendly people. They are good people who are simply defending their identity.

But when I wonder about the dysfunction that American young men feel I am struck by how much the loss of identity of American young men resembles the overall loss of identity of by MAGA people, both male and female. The two groups overlap a great deal. But in both cases the loss of identity comes from a threatened shift in American cultural values. The big shift it seems is from a male centered narrow set of traditional American values to a much more inclusive set of values that includes immigrants, women, people of all genders, the global community, secularism and science based shifts in every way.

It seems to me that young men are especially caught in this shift in values and feel most threatened because the traditional male roles of physical strength, male family support and protection, work and politics being the male sphere and family and the home being the woman’s sphere are all shifting and being threatened by a new technologically driven change worldwide.

So for me this is the problem that young males have, the traditional roles are being threatened and they don’t know how to respond. With young women the opposite is happening, they are more cheerfully abandoning the traditional homemaker roles and even homemaking and even having and caring for children entirely or at least finding it easier to balance homemaking and work opportunities. This shift also empowers gay people and people of other races and immigrants and everyone who was marginalized by the traditional American values.

But even if I am right, and right is the wrong word, even if my analysis makes sense from my perspective and the perspective of many other people it doesn’t resolve the threat that MAGA people and young men have to their identities. And as long at they perceive a threat they are going to do the natural thing, try to push back and defend themselves in any way that they can.

The only way out that I can see is a slow shift over one generation or two from the narrower traditional American values to a more inclusive and more open set of values. This happens more easily with young people than with older people and happens more easily with people who were marginalized within the old set of values and now feel freed and energized by the new more inclusive values. By this reasoning the shift in values is easier for young women who feel empowered than for young men who feel diminished. This doesn’t mean that feminine values are becoming dominant and masculine values are becoming rejected. It just means that there is more of a balance between the two. But how to persuade MAGA people or young men that their identity is not being threatened but is just being balanced out to allow them to be more inclusive, and is liberating them rather than diminishing them, allowing them to see from a feminine perspective as well as a masculine perspective?

This could also liberate MAGA people and young males from fear which leads to rage at being threatened. This liberating change could shift people from fear of transgender people to acceptance, fear of immigrants to acceptance, fear of feminism to acceptance, fear of other religions and secularism to acceptance, fear of technological change to acceptance.

If this change could happen, from my perspective, we could return to thinking of ourselves as one community, one nation, rather than two sides in a civil war. We could go back to thinking of ourselves as a melting pot, a welcoming place for people from everywhere, a country with shared values where we sing together and play together and work together.

But of course this is from the liberal, the liberating side. MAGA people would like the same kind of shared community, which they feel we had back in the !950’s, but based on a return to conservative traditional American values.

My only solution is the passage of time in which I think we, as Americans, will slowly shift to this new world where technology is turning everything upside down. It isn’t only in the United States where I believe this shift will slowly happen. It also has to happen in England, Turkey, Russia, India and all around the world.

So maybe the only thing to do is to accept incremental, slow change and hope we can keep the lid on without too many explosions until this happens.

As I look back on what I have just written I realize that it might make sense only to me, an ordinary 85 year old who is trying to make sense of things for himself but who somehow thinks his vision will fit other people.