A Plea for Curiosity

Several years ago I recall reading a think piece about the Seth Rogan movie Knocked Up. The writer focused on the scene when Katherine Heigel's character contemplates having an abortion, but ultimatley decides to proceed with the pregnancy. The author was disappointed with how the scene played out. Not in the character's decision, but how brief the whole discussion was. 

The critic's point was that unplanned pregnancies and the prospect of abortion is a harrowing decision for many women. The movie had the opportunity to explore the depths of that choice but they just kinda rolled over it (Yes, we're talking about a Seth Rogan movie here. Judd Apatows' decision to keep it light and funny was the correct one). 

I was thinking about this while watching Season 1 of The Pitt. It's a good show, probably a great show. I enjoyed it a lot. But as someone who is left of center but has actual conversations with actual conservatives, it was obvious the writers were left wing people who never leave their idealogical bubble. 

Nothing is leftist progadanda--it is first and foremost a medical drama--but it is obvious that the writers lack curiosity. In one scene, a teenage girl, accompanied by her "mother," are seeking an abortion. Just before a dose of Mifepristone arrives, a frantic middle-aged woman storms into the room looking for her daughter. Turns out the girl's aunt was posing as the girl's mom because the frantic woman is the real mom and doesn't approve of the abortion.

I was expecting the plot to unfold with the doctors having to wrestle with the conflict of treating the wishes of an underage patient with the religious beliefs of a conservative Christian mother. I was wrong. We don't get much detail on the mother's background, no mention of religion, other than she was once a teen mom as well. Most of the conflict is spoken doctor-to-doctor, behind closed doors, about how to convince the mom that she is wrong and that abortion is the correct choice. 

In another scene, two doctors are treating a transgendered woman with a cut. One doctor notices the woman has been misgendered in her charts and updates it. The doctor is praised by her superior. This could have been an opportunity to explore the risks of classifying, e.g. transgendered men who are classified as female, like the pregnant transgender man who never revealed his sex to doctors when admitted to the ER with abdominal pains. They had no idea he was, or even could be, pregnant. By the time, doctors uncovered his sex, it was too late. He delivered a stillborn. That would have made for dramatic television but writers in an ideological bubble would not have considered it. 

Later, a fight breaks out in the waiting room between two women; one taunting the other for wearing a mask. It's later revealed that she has contempt for people who wear masks and get vaccinated. This could have been an opportunity to explore all of the ways that people lost faith in the public health institutions in recent years: Dr. Fauci telling people that masks don't work then later admitting he lied so they wouldn't buy them, telling people the vaccines will prevent transmission, telling people they couldn't go to their church but it was acceptable for others to attend Black Lives Matter rallies, and on and on. Instead the woman is portrayed as a buffoon and the doctors as the wise people who have to deal with idiots. Over and over, the medical professionals are in the right and the patients who oppose them are cartoonish idiots.

Troubled Young Men

Finally, a young man shows up with his ill mother, who secretly tells doctors that her son has a hit list. When the son runs off, she has to decide whether to admit him for a pyschic evaluation. The show's protagonist, attending physician Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch goes on a spiel about how men are troubled because they are "told" to show no emotion, suggesting there would be no problems if men could just be more emotional.

Rather than relitigate my views on healthy masculinity, and how it's not just femininity, I'm going to stick with the Robby character for a moment. The ER's attending physician is basically the boss. He oversees everything that his happening, coaches people, hands out praise and criticism, and always seems to know what to do in every medical situation. 

During the emotional height of the season, when he loses a patient he knows and the ER is overwhelmed with victims from a mass shooting, he cloisters himself in a room, falls to the floor, puts his head between his knees, and begins sobbing. An intern finds him and has to convince him to get up and continue treating the victims who still need help. 

Leadership Requires Stoicism

Later, at the end of the shift, he is talking to the night shift attending physician and telling him how he let everyone down when he lost control of his emotions. Guess what: he's fucking right. As the leader, he has two heavy responsibilities. He treats patients with supreme care and expertise, and is someone everyone else looks up to. 

During the stretch of the series when they are treating the mass shooting victims, the chaos is described as a war zone. The staff are literally covered in blood. One dude slips on and falls into a puddle of blood. It would be easy for a doctor or nurse to become overwhelmed with it all. One thing to prevent that from happening is the presence of a leader demonstrating calm under pressure. If your leader throws in the towel, what motivation do you have for pressing on?

Despite his talk about men needing to express their emotions, Robby was right about himself. His duty called him to suppress his emotions in that moment. At least until he can be vulnerable around someone who doesn't need to see him strong, like the other attending physician who was his equivalent. 

I love the Elizabeth Brunig line about how modern society lacks opportunities for heroism. The Pitt has been praised for its realistic portrayal of emergency rooms. If this is true, then the success of the show is revealing that these people are heroes. You leave the season with nothing but respect for a profession that often times lacks respect. The direction is good, the performances are great, I just wish the writers were a bit more ideologically curious.

Book Review: Notes on Being a Man

Source: TED Salon: Brightline Initiative

Scott Galloway wrote a book called Notes on Being a Man, a topic I am interested in so I read the whole thing so you don't have to. Before reading it, I came across a critical essay titled "What Did Men Do to Deserve This?" by Jessica Winter, who seems to hate everything Scott stands for.

In retrospect, there are some things Galloway could've been clearer about. Early on, he states that men need to do the three Ps: protect, provide, procreate. This is like dropping your fists, closing your eyes, and leaning into a feminist right cross. However, the rest of the book goes on to make slightly different arguments. In fact, there are a lot of implications in Winter's essay that make me wonder if she actually read the whole book. She provides direct quotes but leaves out the context, making me think she is deliberately misleading people.

For example, Winter writes:

"The nuclear family he imagines seems to be one in which the mom is the default parent ('[My sons] look to her for nurturing. When they really have a problem, they go to Mom'), while the necessary dad is the authority figure to whom Mom can appeal as the occasion demands."

She leaves out that Galloway hates that his boys don't come to him for nurturing and yearns to be as close to his kids as they are to their mother. Seems important.

Winter also writes:

"Reading Galloway, one gets the sense that men last knew who they were about seventy-five years ago… Galloway appeals to the reader's nostalgia for mid-century 'Peak Male.' It was young men, he reminds us, who stormed the beaches at Normandy and who won the Battle of the Bulge."

"Galloway also singles out two monumental building projects of the Great Depression as bygone proof of men's capacity for 'collective effort, incredible bravery, risk-taking, aggression, and sacrifice.' … He does not add that the skyscraper went up so fast and so cheaply in part because New York City was filled with men who would work for next to nothing under grueling, even lethal conditions, because the implosion of global capital had buried wages and organized labor beneath it."

This mistake seems more forgivable. Winter seems to imply that Galloway is doing a Trumpism here: advocating for a return to trad lifestyles when men were men, and women were in the kitchen. Maybe he doesn't do a good job of explaining his point of view (although his audience is men, so I trust my read on him over Winter's) but it seems clear to me Galloway is describing the utility of masculinity, its benefit to society.

Although, he doesn't connect the dots as well as Sebastian Junger does in his beautiful essay, "The Anthropology of Manhood," in which he suggests that the masculinity crisis can be explained by no longer feeling valued by society. Moreover, it seems the point Galloway is trying to make is that the question of manhood used to be more easily answered, whereas now it requires a more intentional focus and there is less of a roadmap.

Finally, Winter writes:

"But the person it describes—a kind and conscientious sort, who aspires to make a decent living and who looks after their loved ones—seems blessedly gender-free. So why make this about manhood … Within this amorphous framework, men's biggest problem is, likewise, a feeling—an unreachable itch, or a marrow-deep belief—that men should still rank above women in the social hierarchy, just not as much as before."

So it appears her argument is that there is nothing unique about men's struggles, as compared to women, and any attempts to address them are zero sum, i.e. they come at the expense of women.

So is there a masculinity crisis and is the solution a return to early 20th century lifestyle? These are the things to think about as we dive into the review.

Lines I highlighted

"Boys face an educational system biased against them—with brains that mature later than girls'"

This is pure Richard Reeves here. And both writers are right. Our one-size-fits-all education system is better suited for girls, which is why boys get suspended, drop out, commit suicide, overdose on drugs, wind up in prison, and become homeless at higher rates.

But what about the gender wage gap? I asked two different AI bots to estimate the effect on the wage gap if it included the homeless and incarcerated population, which are overwhelmingly men. Basically, it adds a bunch of zeroes to the ledger. The bots estimate it would narrow the gap but not completely. So despite all the masculinity crisis things I just mentioned, your son is still likely to outearn your daughter. So if earnings are your only measure, you can cry foul of this whole project and say it steals the spotlight from more women who are more deserving of your sympathy for their 85 cents on the dollar incomes.

But is money all that matters?

(This is the part of the review where I insert my Bayesian Fox Personal Hobby Horse in the middle of my essay. Don't worry, I will circle back to the review.)

Maybe the most important concept to me is Aristotle's eudaimonia. There isn't an English equivalent of the word, the closest would be "flourishing." Eudaimonia is not happiness, because happiness is fleeting. It's closer to contentment—although that can sound like settling. I like flourishing or fulfillment best.

Eudaimonia is the endpoint of Aristotle's virtue ethics. The reason to live a life of virtue is to reach the feeling of eudaimonia, just as the reason for Buddhist meditation is to achieve enlightenment.

I am choosing to see Galloway's arguments, and to rebut Winter's critiques, through the lens of eudaimonia. I am convinced that the median girl/woman is closer to eudaimonia than the median boy/man. And that is what the masculinity crisis is about.

On making yourself attractive

You could slice a good portion of this book and title it How to Get Laid. These quotes fall under the first P: procreate. Galloway doesn't necessarily say this is what men are supposed to do. His examples say slightly different things. First, from personal experience, he says the most satisfied he has ever felt (closest to eudaimonia) has been sitting on the couch with his children—not being single and making millions of dollars. And second, young men have a natural sex drive. His message: This is fine. Here is the best way to channel it so that it also is a benefit to society.

"Studies show that women are generally attracted to men for three reasons. Number three is kindness, number two is intellect, and number one is resources (not just money per se but also ambition, social status, and the potential for career success: Can you take care of potential offspring?)."

"You have to have a plan. You can even change it six months in, but girls want a man who has a plan."

So Galloway is telling young men to be nice, smart, and generous to women. Is that really so misogynistic? Seems like good advice.

"Young men today have fewer venues in which to meet potential romantic partners. With fewer of them going to college or church, and more of them working remotely, men have less social interaction and no ability to build social capital. Those muscles of going out in public, meeting strangers, and going up to women with a fun, funny line cannot be done without practice."

"And fewer dates and romance means overall less intimacy, less sex, fewer marriages and kids. Straight young men are often interested in straight young women because they want to have sex. We tend to act as if there's something wrong with that—there isn't. Sex and the pursuit of it leads to romance and intimacy. It lights a fire under young men to better themselves to be more attractive to potential mates, who help them reach their potential. This intimacy often involves sacrifice."

This is hitting all of my priors. A lack of third spaces is bad for everyone. Social skills are a muscle, without practice they atrophy. Men are the best version of themselves when they are well dressed, have good manners, have a career plan, act smart and funny … even if it's only to have sex. Living in their parents' basement, playing video games and watching porn is not the path to eudaimonia.

On college

"College is maturity boot camp… I was equipped with a more valuable, even marketable skill: the ability to prioritize. I was bombarded by choices and distractions … I learned to weigh various activities based on their importance and the time they required.

College helped give me an outline. It whittled down and began to clarify and expose who I might be and/or become."

College isn't about building human capital or a signalling device—it's Adulting 101. Take that Bryan Caplan!

On labor

Galloway repeats a Reeves line about how we should seek to create surplus value; to give more than we take.

"Service jobs are early training for delivering surplus value… Anyone under the age of eighteen has negative value. They take in much more than they give. Now, suddenly, they're in a workplace situation where they have to fetch someone's Prius, serve half a dozen lunches, and ring up strangers. It instills humility. It activates the mirror neurons. For young men especially, it's a rehearsal for learning how to be in the service of others.

Every young man should work a service job at least once. It's a vaccine against the idea of meritocracy. You also gain empathy."

This is the same argument for mandatory service. I find it compelling.

On careers

"Don't follow your passion professionally. Find what you're good at—and follow your talent. The rewards and recognition that stem from being great at something will make you passionate about that something."

"For the first 24-36 months after graduation, young men are advised to embrace a degree of stoicism … Whether shopping, gaming, swiping, posting, eating, looking at porn, streaming, gambling, or watching ESPN. Take as much of this energy and time for the next couple years and reallocate that human capital to 3 areas: work, relationships, and fitness."

It's hard to convince twentysomethings to devote themselves to such a dull lifestyle. He's going to have to come up with a harder sell than this. I mean, have you seen those VR headsets?

On health

Galloway talks a lot about working out, which shouldn't be surprising given the size of his biceps. This is something I have come around to. I am at a point where I think near-daily exercise is a non-negotiable; like daily hygiene. It absolutely must become a priority in one's life.

"The most common trait among CEOs isn't the colleges they went to, or their ethnicity, or the ability to get by on two hours of sleep: it's that many exercise four to five times a week. If you adopt a single CEO trait, I would strongly advise taking this one to heart. If you were offered a drug that was guaranteed to make you less depressed, give you focus and make you think more clearly, make you eat better and drink more water, and increase your dating pool, wouldn't you take that drug?"

"We are happiest when in motion and surrounded by others. A decent proxy for your success will be your ratio of sweating to watching others sweat. It's not about being skinny or ripped but committing to sweat."

"Stepping outside is another fitness value-add. Being outside offers a bunch of positive benefits: it lowers blood pressure and heart rate, enhances immune function, and decreases the likelihood of diabetes and cardiovascular mortality. Exposure to sunlight increases testosterone levels in men, while trips to the park improve health outcomes and create resilience in children who've experienced trauma, abuse, and poverty."

As I mentioned in my life lessons post, you can knock out most of these just by playing golf with your buddies.

On socialization

"Along with fitness and work, I also ask young men to place themselves in an unfamiliar situation in the company of strangers three times a week in the agency of something bigger—a writing or cooking class, a nonprofit, church, a sports league. The only rule is that within the month they have to introduce themselves to everyone there. Starting with hello, then asking a stranger out for coffee. The other person might say no. The next day, they have to call and tell me how they feel. It might hurt, but guess what? They're not mortally wounded or bankrupt; they're still standing, and that's everything. Now do it again until they start developing a callus. The more nos they get, the more they can calibrate what works and what doesn't. The key, the skill, the talent, the mastery, the ninja artisanship no one teaches, is that the greatest, most specific skill a young man can have is willingness to endure rejection."

"Meeting strangers and experiencing novel environments is fundamental to human growth. Our podcast producer once told me she was cultivating a practice of 'say yes to everything.' I loved this. The comfortable and the familiar are the harbingers of weakness and fear. Without rejection and awkwardness, you won't experience victory or true satisfaction ... the feeling that you've achieved something."

This feels like advice specific to Gen Z. And I would agree with Winter that it is probably gender neutral advice. Social skills were built into our institutions—middle school dances, high school prom, physically handing your resume to a prospective employer—that have now dissolved thanks to technology. We have to be more intentional about building social skills in our youth and this is a good start.

On having a code

"Historically, religion offers a code (or codes): Don't eat pork, don't sleep with your neighbor's spouse, turn the other cheek. The armed services also have one: Never surrender. If I'm captured, I'll resist by all means available and keep faith with my fellow prisoners. Without a code, humans, men especially, can become feral and disorganized. Every man needs an inner structure, whether it comes from family, education, the Marines, church, Buddhism, stoicism, or whatever. Codes don't show up organically, either—you have to develop one."

"To this day, I try to be three things. The first is generous: someone who gives more than he takes without any reciprocal expectation; second, a really good dad—that's my code. I'm not perfect, I still struggle; I'm not some great guy who hangs out all day with his sons, talking shit and roughhousing. I get impatient, I have outsized reactions, I catastrophize things, I talk more than I listen, I get in my sons' faces, I even intimidate them physically sometimes. Without giving the subject thought, writing it down, and committing to being a great dad, I'm not sure it would have worked out as well as it has."

I wrote down this quote and for some reason it cut off the third thing, so I apologize.

I think this is the liberal/enlightenment answer to one of the flaws of liberalism. Instead of "do what you want; find your own happiness." It's "find your own code, but make sure you have one." Liberalism isn't enough; you need a code. Liberalism just means you are free to choose your own code. A lack of guardrails will keep you from eudaimonia.

Speaking of guardrails …

"Men of any age need an organizing principle to help regulate their lives and make them accountable—work, a friend group, hobbies, ideally a romantic relationship. Women typically pour their energy into relationships with their families and friends. They're demonstrably better at maintaining social fabrics in person, too, versus men, who are more likely to adopt a bullshit masculinity template of not needing anyone."

"My mom was my first guardrail. She always made sure I dressed neatly, kept clean, and had good manners. My UCLA frat was another guardrail, since without the socialization, scrutiny, and camaraderie of my 'brothers,' I probably wouldn't have made it to graduation. Another guardrail was my college girlfriend. Basically, she told me that if I didn't quit smoking so much weed, she would stop having sex with me. Spoiler alert: this was incredibly motivating. It's now come full circle. My wife will tell our youngest that he's not getting dessert until he finishes his salad. She'll tell me I need to attend my oldest's spring recital; it doesn't matter who I'm interviewing on my podcast. In other words, my fourteen-year-old needs guardrails, and I, somewhat older, still find them incredibly useful.

The positive guardrails young women provide men are formidable. Their presence alone is a positive vote for the overall mental health of a young man. Young men partnered will be fitter, kinder, smell better (they'll shower more), dress better, and be more disciplined and ambitious. Without women around, young men, especially those under the age of twenty-five whose prefrontal cortices are still developing, are prone to making remarkably bad decisions. They detach from the world, put on weight, stop shaving, wear the same clothes, and revert to the same negative surplus value they had as kids.

Human relationships are about connection and compromise, about listening and bouncing off one another in unexpected ways ..."

Again, these are subtle hints at how to get laid. And making the case that men following these hints are more well-liked by society than those who do not.

On alcohol

"I don't worry about what I say when I'm drunk. I worry about what I don't say when I'm sober."

Galloway weighs the cost of the negative effects of consuming alcohol with the positive benefits of them being a social lubricant that can strengthen social bonds. This was probably my favorite sentence in the whole book.

On friendship

"Men and women approach friendship differently. Men have it drilled into us from an early age that vulnerability and emotional connections are signs of weakness. They aren't. Men with influence have an obligation to cleanse this bullshit version of masculinity from the zeitgeist. The decline in friendship is insidious, as it feeds on itself."

This is a line I think Winter would agree with. However, I have never been told that vulnerability is a sign of weakness. I have never told my sons that. I think this is overstated, although not completely untrue, and that there is a biological component here that gets ignored.

"Friendship is a muscle that strengthens with use but atrophies with age, but we have to keep pulsing it. We have so many more opportunities and so much more fuel for our friendships when we are children and even as young adults, but we cannot stop building and using these muscles into and throughout adulthood."

This builds on his socialization commentary. But prioritizing friendships is more of a two-way street; you do it so they are closer to you, not just for your own benefit.

"Compliment your friends. Tell them how much you value what they bring to your life. The struggles young men share are often kept private—you'd be surprised how universal and solvable most are. Be upfront about what's going on with you. If you can't put it into words, maybe your friends can. Put yourself, if possible, in regular social situations over time. Remember that boys and men typically socialize side by side versus the female propensity to interact face-to-face. Don't forget to reach out, check in, shoot off a text or email. According to one 2022 study, casual check-ins among friends and acquaintances are profoundly appreciated and unexpectedly meaningful."

"The best thing anyone can do to improve their own success is make friends with people of high character who are ambitious. You are the average of your five closest friends. Your goal at any age is to surround yourself with impressive, good, nice people."

I endorse this. I know so much about my friends that I go golfing with that I would never know if we were not playing golf together for 5 hours at a time. We just don't know how to talk face to face or over text.

In conclusion …

In Season 1 of True Detective, there is a scene where Woody Harelson's character comes home and finds his detective parter, Matthew McConaughey, mowing Woody's lawn. Woody is pissed, telling him "Don't you ever mow my lawn. I like mowing my lawn." One of the reasons guys like mowing their lawn, or doing any type of hard labor around their house, is that it makes them feel useful.

Junger cites research that women are never questioned on their womanhood. Only men are questioned on their manhood. One way to answer that question is Galloway's first two Ps: provide and protect. But now that the state has a monopoly on violence, we have a standing army, and life is relatively safe in America, there are less opportunities to protect.

And now that women have ample economic opportunities, there is less reliance on men to provide.

So we are in a unique space in history where men have to intentionally look for ways to prove their manhood. I think this book is mostly good advice. I think that men have distinct modern challenges that women do not (and women have unique challenges that men do not).

And if you do not like what Galloway, or Josh Hawley, or Jordan Peterson have to say to young men facing these challenges, then what do you propose is better? And it better be compelling enough to get young men off the vape pen, away from Pornhub and FanDuel, and move them closer to eudaimonia.