Toxic Society

A professor recently gave a talk about toxic masculinity. He described it has not showing emotion, engaging in risky behavior, and a desire for physical strength, suggesting this leads to substance abuse, aggression, abusing women, depression, and other health problems.

My question is: is this type masculinity toxic, or is our society toxic to this type of masculinity?

While I often agree with the phrase "prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child," there is one area I dissent. Our school system has moved into a structure that is more conducive to girls than boys. As a result, this hinders social and physical development at best and at worst leads to males being overrepresented in the school dropout, homelessness, and prison populations.

Maybe if these men liked school, they wouldn't end up homeless, in jail, or out of work. Maybe they wouldn't use drugs and assault women. Maybe they would feel like valued members of society and wouldn't give in to these toxic behaviors.

A Little Risk Goes a Long Way

We are hardwired for risk taking. Risky, rough-and-tumble play is actually a good an necessary thing for development. But we have eliminated it from our children's lives, which negatively impacts boys more than girls. Maybe that is why risky behavior turns more hardcore later in life; young boys weren't given the opportunity to navigate it.

Maybe instead of telling young men to stop being who they are, we should give them more freedom to develop social skills as youth so they don't feel alienated by society and turn toward toxic behavior.

Toxic just means Testosterone

The professor who gave the talk seemed to believe that young men choose these toxic behaviors because they think it is what society expects of them. I disagree. Research shows a correlation between high levels of testosterone and risk taking.

Sebastian Junger writes:

"Male violence is a problem across all societies, communities, and races, and the primary driver is testosterone, which declines steadily throughout a man’s adult lifetime. As testosterone levels go down, so do rates of violence and accidental death — which would not be the case if socialization alone were to blame."

I think we are wired that way and the "toxic" aggression and violence are a result of not having appropriate outlets for them.

I also disagree that stoicism and physical strength are, prima facie, toxic behaviors. In a great article about different cultures' rites of passage to manhood, the author asks the question of why young men go through these difficult tasks.

The disquieting answer, of course, is to prepare for war...Boys are “tempered” and “toughened” so they may fulfill the classic duties to procreate, provide, and protect that men have performed for millennia. Whether it’s marshaled to ward off the aggression of other males or to capitalize on weakness, violence is the leitmotif of manhood in countless cultures. 

We've moved past a society that needs all young men to be prepared for war, but we haven't solved the biological hardwiring that remains. My belief is that is will be easier, but not easy, to adapt our society to this need with some type of rite of passage for young men then it will be to convince young men to socially neuter themselves.

"In the fall of 1999, the journalist Susan Faludi published Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, in which she interviewed everyone from gang members to shipyard employees to even Sylvester Stallone to suss out the root causes of America’s “crisis of masculinity.” One possible cause: a postwar emphasis on consumerism and vanity. The modern man, Faludi wrote, has been sold the idea that masculinity is “something to drape over the body, not draw from inner resources; that it is personal, not societal; that manhood is displayed, not demonstrated.”

Victim Blaming

Wait a minute, are you saying rapists should be absolved because it's society's fault for turning them into monsters? 

Well, no. I still believe in personal agency and accountability. Put those monsters behind bars. But I think that if we make tweaks to our institutions and social norms we can, in the aggregate, have a positive impact on these toxic behaviors. Society might be more, dare I say, equitable?

A Return to Walter Cronkite news?

In an essay about our growing partisan divide, Jon Haidt and Sam Abrams note:

American newspapers were quite partisan for most of history. But with the emergence of television in the post-war years, and with the popularity of newscasters such as Walter Cronkite, the nation had a few decades in which most Americans got the same news from the same few sources, particularly the three national television networks.

All that changed with the advent of cable television in the 1980s and the Internet in the 1990s. Now Americans can choose from hundreds of partisan news sources, many of which care more about arousing emotions than hewing to journalistic standards.

Is it possible this course reverses direction and media becomes consolidated again? Seems impossible, information is way too bottom up and widely accessible now.

But is it?

The big 4 (Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple) keep growing and swallowing up their competition. Jeff Bezos even owns the Washington Post. People regularly get their news from Facebook and Twitter, accessing it through Google Chrome on their iPhone.

I know, these are content aggregators and not content producers like NBC, ABC, and CBS. But what's to stop them from filtering content or eventually producing their own content?

We've already seen Alex Jones' Infowars get banned from pretty much every online platform. If the big 4 decide to ban unpopular messages, they can control the content to more palpable tastes. They might tone done dangerous rhetoric at the risk of drowning out important dissent.

I'm still not sure if this would be a good thing or not.

Who is brilliant?

In recent months, I've heard friends describe Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson as "brilliant."

That sounds bold. I am really reserved when using that term. But it got me to thinking: who would I think of as "brilliant" among living intellectuals.

I really enjoy and respect the thoughtfulness of writers like David Brooks and Conor Friedersdorf, but I don't think of them as brilliant.

David Foster Wallace comes to mind (okay, no longer living but still a contemporary intellectual) Same goes for Robert Pirsig, Jonathan Haidt, Daniel Kahneman, Nassim Taleb, Scott Alexander; I still feel I have more to learn about the Weinstein brothers, but probably them.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Stephen Hawking are probably brilliant but maybe they just know a lot about a subject I know nothing of.

What about business and technology? Is Elon Musk brilliant? Jeff Bezos? Bill Gates? Or did they have one really great idea/invention?

I feel most comfortable assigning the word to writers. Probably because we have documented access to their thoughts and can confirm their brilliance.

My father-in-law is great at solving riddles and playing chess and would probably score high on tests that measure cognition. But he also gets his news from chain e-mails and thinks Obama is a closet Muslim. So even though he might be "smart," I don't really respect his opinion on most subjects.

In fact, I can think of many people with doctoral degrees or ivy league educations, and I don't respect their opinion either.

So what am I really talking about? I think I'm trying to describe people who are in my [extreme Robert DeNiro voice] Circle of Trust. It's my coterie of people whom I find thoughtful and careful in their analysis of a subject before weighing in on it. As Philip Tetlock would say, more "fox" than "hedgehog." 

Socialism's Ascendency

With the rise in popularity of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, socialism in America is having a moment. This always shocks me. We live in the wealthiest country in the world, maybe ever, and it was built on the backs of capitalism. Why would we turn on what made us who we are?

As it turns out, measuring what is best for everyone is really difficult.  Here is what I understand: the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism has done more to bring people out of poverty than any social assistance program.

Unfettered capitalism creates wealth and it isn't zero sum. Jeff Bezos didn't become rich by taking money from poor people; he created wealth (Of course there are people who acquire money through rent seeking, which does not create wealth and basically is taking money from the lower classes). Poor people today are much better off than poor people were 100 years ago.

So what's the problem? If there is so much more wealth year after year, why are people occupying Wall Street and cheering on socialism? I can think of two reasons.

Cost Disease

I admire the Democrats' goal of wanting to improve the lives of struggling Americans. If one is having difficulty making ends meet, there are really only two choices: make more or spend less.

What's odd is that Democrats only focus on one of those choices. You see it in their calls for a $15 minimum wage or a Universal Basic Income.

I get that median wages are stagnating*, but it doesn't help that the cost of living keeps rising (most notably in rent, health care, and tuition). Maybe that is the bigger issue.

From Slate Star Codex:

Even if you’re making twice as much money, if your health care and education and so on cost ten times as much, you’re going to start falling behind.

Regarding rising tuition:

Would you rather graduate from a modern college, or graduate from a college more like the one your parents went to, plus get a check for $72,000? (or, more realistically, have $72,000 less in student loans to pay off).

Control Rent

Cost disease is about more than just college. It affects housing as well, probably the largest expense in most Americans' budget. 

I wonder what a Democratic platform that focuses on reducing costs would look like. For starters, it would wind back urban zoning regulations that crowd out lower income housing in upper class neighborhoods. (I'm looking at you Seattle and San Francisco. You wouldn't need a $15 minimum wage if people could afford rent.)

Control Healthcare

It would also look at healthcare. It's great that Obamacare gave people access to healthcare that didn't have it before, but costs have skyrocketed.

How about implementing the Thaler/Sustein proposal of allowing people to waive their right to sue for malpractice to lower the cost?  Scott Alexander gives a good example of this.

I see this all the time in medicine. A patient goes to the hospital with a heart attack. While he’s recovering, he tells his doctor that he’s really upset about all of this. Any normal person would say “You had a heart attack, of course you’re upset, get over it.” But if his doctor says this, and then a year later he commits suicide for some unrelated reason, his family can sue the doctor for “not picking up the warning signs” and win several million dollars. So now the doctor consults a psychiatrist, who does an hour-long evaluation, charges the insurance company $500, and determines using her immense clinical expertise that the patient is upset because he just had a heart attack.

How about any of these ideas that cost no money and don't require big sweeping legislation? Can we give people more options to pay for the level of care they can afford?  What about Elizabeth Warren's effort to allow students to refinance their student loan debt?

If $15/hour is what it takes to meet the cost of living, why aren't Democrats looking at what is causing this high cost of living?

It appears that markets aren't operating as efficiently as they should be.

The Joneses

There might be another reason for all the socialism fervor. Here, psychology can help us. Throw out your employment rates, your GDP growth, your consumer price index, and all other measures of economic health.

Only one measure matters and it's the only one that has ever mattered: happiness.

As explained in The Happiness Curve, people don't notice changes in their day-to-day lives. They notice changes in relation to the people around them. So if your wealth increases but so does everyone around you, you don't notice. But when Mark Zuckerburg becomes a multi billionaire, you feel it and you are not happy about it.

It doesn't help that, post recession, wages for middle- and lower- class Americans have stagnated*. Add to that rising rents, ballooning college tuition, and exploding health care costs, and many people really are worse off than they were 50 years ago.

But even if we fix these things, people will still focus on the haves and feel the system is unfair. Comparing ourselves to the Joneses is natural and it's unrealistic to expect people to stop.

*After viewing this video by Russ Roberts, I'm no longer convinced that middle class wages are actually stagnating. However, that doesn't change the fact that the cost of living is rising.

The Next Generation of Donors

The Seven Faces of Philanthropy is an interesting book. The authors talk to major donors about their movitations for giving, pore over the responses, and identify seven personalities.

As a higher education professional, the one personality that seems to fit most of our donors (many of whom are alumni) is the Repayer. Repayers tend to have been constituents first and partners second. A typical Repayer has benefited from some institution and now supports that institution from a feeling of loyalty or obligation.

Most of our donors are also 55 and older. Most colleges struggle to get millenials to give; but just because they are paying off student debt doesn't mean they can't give something. It's more likely that they don't see themselves as Repayers.

Millenials don't trust institutions. Ergo, they won't support them. So asking them to support the annual fund so a college can go on college-ing is a lost cause.

However, they will support causes. They won't support the Red Cross because they believe in their mission but they will support the Red Cross' efforts to help Hurricane Harvey victims. Then they move on to the next cause, regardless of the charity doing the work.

This is where The Seven Faces of Philanthropy can help. When millenials give, they see themselves as (mostly) Altruists. Altruists give out of generosity and empathy to urgent causes and who modestly wish to remain anonymous.

The challenge for higher education is to market giving opportunities as causes. Talk to millenials as Altruists, people who's gift can directly improve someone's life.

My journey with Better Angels

When I first read about Better Angels—a non profit group whose goal is to depolarize America by, among other things, hosting workshops with 7 liberals and 7 conservatives to get people talking again and forming community-based alliances—my reaction was that this was similar to an idea I had percolating in the back of my mind.

The other similar group was Living Room Conversations. Although they had similar missions, their approach couldn't be more different. Living Room Conversations was very libertarian. Their message is: "Talk to a friend in your house. Here are some discussion points. Let us know how it goes."

BA's message is "Here is what you need to do and how you need to do it. Follow this blueprint."

I ultimately chose BA because I wanted to work off of a blueprint. I know I wanted to get people from my community together with opposing views so we could find common ground. But I wanted some sort of direction.

I became a dues-paying member, reached out to some people from my town about starting a workshop (with little success), and haven't done much since. While I love BA and their mission, I have a few concerns.

First, to sign up they make you chose a side: red or blue. I don't identify either way and don't like being put into a camp. Plus, this crowds out libertarians, greens, and other independents, who should have a voice as well.

Second, the few people I have talked to who have shown interest have the same problems that I do. We're all in our thirties, have young children, and are consumed by our expanding responsibilities. The workshop is a full seven-hour day. I have trouble finding a sitter for a two-hour stretch.

I attended a group meeting with local BA members and was struck by how relatively-young I was compared to everyone else; mostly empty-nesters and retirees. In other words, people who have time for a day-long workshop and recruiting local members. I'll return to this in a moment.

Thirdly, BA seems to have a goal of creating BA red-blue alliances all across the country. I think that is a shallow goal. They mention "depolarizing" and "getting people talking again" but I think it should be more ambitious.

My goal is to solve problems. Immigration, healthcare, guns, terrorism; these are all issues we want to solve but cannot without coming to a mutual understanding with our political opponents. In that respect, I view BA is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

For millenials, such as myself and the other young fathers I spoke to about BA, trust in institutions is at an all-time low. That is why the book New Power shows how young people are drawn to movements that allow for their own customization, like the Ice Bucket Challenge or AirBNB.

BA does not allow such customization; it's structure is top-down. As such, I worry that it's very nature will crowd-out millenials. Based on my own observations; it already has.

Why I read

Justin Theroux, not reading. Trust me, it will make sense.

At the beginning of Season 2 of The Leftovers, you see the protagonist Kevin Garvey constantly wearing earbuds and playing loud music.

The narration keeps you in the dark before the big reveal: Kevin is experiencing hallucinations of a women for whose death he feels responsible. The music is his solution for drowning out the hallucinations.

I mention this because it is the best metaphor for explaining why I am always reading a book, particularly nonfiction.

My mind's natural state is untethered, and will invariably drift toward depression. A good book— particularly a complicated one in which I am learning something new, something that, for a moment, makes the world a little more sensible—drowns out the noise of my depression.

Unlike medication, there are no side effects. Unlike therapy, there is no cost (as long as I can find the book in a library). My only vulnerability would be running out of books to read.