inferiorly A very nice piece by Roy Baumeister on gender differences and the oppression of patriarchy. It is consistently insightful and is a good explanation of a lot of male behavior (for women who don’t understand men or men who don’t understand themselves).
http://columbuscameragroup.com/used-products/ It relates to the Atlantic piece “The End of Men” from last year, which documents what I think will be the continuing economic and social decline of men. Baumeister gives a pretty good basic explanation of this: our society is a low-risk, stable society which does not really need the things men are particularly necessary for. We don’t really need to build anything more. We don’t need to explore anything. We don’t need strength of body or quick calculating of anything. We don’t need large numbers of soldiers. We don’t need independent people. Our entire society is getting more and more hostile to independence. There are two realms where independence is important, computers and the arts. For most other things our society is busy erecting barriers to entry which men do not on average want: x number of years of conformist schooling.
I was struck by this years ago when reading a book about plant collecting. In years past a young man with brains but no tolerance for education could be given a copy of Linnaeus’ Species Plantarum and sent off on some dangerous expedition to find new rhododendron species in the Himalayas. The only instructions were to bring back something no one had ever found before. Now there aren’t really any jobs like that, and those which exist require you to stay in school until you’re thirty. This is way too long – the young man’s spirit will wilt long before he gets through 25 years of schooling. The great plant discoverers were all famous long before turning 30.
Men have all kinds of instincts which lead them to resist systems. But the system has succeeded so well there really are very few places you can go to get outside it. And very few social rewards for it.
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