[ytwombly]

US-based cis-hetero white man here. The data reinforce the impression you get glancing at the headlines or spending a day out anywhere in America observing other men. Dare I say it even reinforces what I know from painful firsthand experience as a man, at the lowest points in my life. I was lucky though, with a supportive family who helped me through the confusing years of early adulthood.

You can point to the decline of organized religion and with it traditional gender roles, but then what explains the relative stability in post-Christian Europe? The China Shock combined with America's threadbare social safety net starts looking more salient. We have inherited a much less trusting, much more alienated society than you are likely to find overseas.

Whatever the cause I fully reject the lazy conclusion this is somehow women's fault. The "Lump of Labor" fallacy is just that, a fallacy. Economic gains are not zero-sum.

[rayiner]

> You can point to the decline of organized religion and with it traditional gender roles, but then what explains the relative stability in post-Christian Europe?

As far as I can tell, Europe isn’t all that post-Christian. Even countries that have low levels of people actively practicing religion still carry a strong cultural legacy from Christianity: https://www.europenowjournal.org/2019/10/02/the-catholic-nes...

Counterintuitively, America’s lack of a generous welfare system tends to destabilize traditional gender roles. Among women with children under 18, 56% would prefer a “homemaker” role if they were “free” to do either: https://news.gallup.com/poll/186050/children-key-factor-wome.... Contrast with just 26% of men. 39% of women without kids would also prefer to stay home if they had the choice. Even out of women who are currently employed, but have children under 18, the majority would prefer not to work.

Contrast say the Netherlands. It is an egalitarian, post-Christian place, for example, but 60% of working Dutch women only work part time, versus 20% of working Dutch men.

[nautilius]

Note that 'cultural legacy' is completely different from 'organized religion'. Celebrating 'Christmas' as a family get-together is completely different from celebrating the arrival of the messiah and deriving your complete moral compass from that.

[rayiner]

I think cultural legacy is more deeply intertwined with morals than people appreciate. It’s just hard to see it because you’re surrounded by it.

It’s easier to notice when you compare between countries and across religious traditions. My dad was raised very religious (Muslim) in Bangladesh. His grandfather was an imam. He is non-religious and I grew up non-religious, but I joined a Christian church after I got married. From that vantage point I was able to see how much of what I thought was secular American culture could be traced back to Christianity.

Consider, for example, the obsession in Christian countries with equality. They almost fall over themselves to welcome people from different ethnic backgrounds. I suspect this has something to do with Christianity’s origins as a Jewish religion adopted by the Gentiles. I mean, how many societies have a religion centered around some other ethnic group?

There’s so many aspects of society and culture that are the product of history, and of course history is deeply intertwined with religion. My atheist friend, who is white, was telling me how much she hated her uncle for being racist against Muslims. I pointed out to her that was an extremely Christian thing to say! https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010&ve...

> Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

By contrast, Islam is a religion that arose in Arab society, where kinship ties mean everything. In my home country, putting people you don’t even know over kin, based on some abstract notion of justice, would be unthinkable. It actually made me a little uncomfortable to think that people like me had caused strife within her family.

[trees101]

Yours is a really valuable perspective on this issue, and probably gives you more clarity than those of us who have grown up immersed in the values of the West like fish in water. I had a Muslim friend who used to comment on how "Christian" my country was, whereas I'd always seen it as highly secular.

The British historian Tom Holland is very good on this topic. His recent book "Dominion" is basically an examination of how Christianity so pervasively shaped the West. He's got some good interviews on YouTube if anyone wants a shorter introduction to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIJ9gK47Ogw,https://www.yout....

[dekervin]

As some said, the greatest trick christianity ever pulled...

[rayiner]

Thanks for the book reference.

[ctrl_s]

> Consider, for example, the obsession in Christian countries with equality. They almost fall over themselves to welcome people from different ethnic backgrounds. I suspect this has something to do with Christianity’s origins as a Jewish religion adopted by the Gentiles

My experiences are almost the complete opposite to yours, I suspect there are major differences between congregations that can't be applied to the nation at large. Churches in the US are weirdly segregated by ethnicity, at least in the south[0] where you find black churches,white churches, Korean churches, etc.

I am African, and had the misfortune of attending a church that's part of the Southern Baptist Convention. I got the distinct sense that they are warm and welcoming to people requiring charity or to rake on as a "project"; not equals. Almost everyone who saw me volunteer assumed I was a poor student at the affiliated Theological college, and would be very warm, but when I'd let them know I was a software engineer and much closer to them socio-economically than they had assumed, they didn't know quite how to act, it was weird,and it happened multiple times.

Trump's presidency was a bad time to be black in an SBC church. I never felt quite comfortable, and my faith intensely tested. It came to a head when I encountered incidents of passive and active racism[1],and I came to the conclusion that we could not possibly be worshipping the same God. Then again, the southern churches could reconcile Christianity and slavery, so perhaps all ethnicities are welcome, with the long-lived exception of blacks. YMMV

0. As a point of comparison: South Africa has more integrated churches, just 1 generation since the end of apartheid.

1. Why aren't you going to a black church? Oh, the other black member, he's intelligent and articulate, he's practically white!

[x86_64Ubuntu]

Keep in mind, that the Southern Baptist church literally exists because the Baptist convention started asking thorny questions concerning slavery and Christianity. In light of that discussion, the southern congregations broke off to form a convention that would welcome African slavery[1] and have white supremacy as a bedrock principle. Sure, there are plenty of blacks in the Southern Baptist denomination, but they attend black churches for the reasons you've noted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention#Di...

[rayiner]

Without trying to detract from your experience, I would suggest that your experience as a Black person in Bangladesh, India, or China would have been a whole lot worse. Heck, even though most Muslims aren’t Arab, it’s pretty darn clear that the Arabs think that is south Asians are second class citizens in the Muslim world. And unlike white southerners they’re not passive aggressive about it.

[random314]

Without trying to distract from your suggestions, I would like to state that I have never seen race segregated mosques anywhere in India, while these seem to be widespread in the United states.

[MockObject]

Seems like a strange post to receive these silent downvotes.

[btilly]

Question. How would you suggest I square your claims about Arab society with the observed fact that every year thousands of girls die in Arab countries from honor killings. And the fact that, as https://www.statista.com/statistics/1019538/mena-arab-respon... shows, in many of these countries, significant minorities think that such killings are justified.

Killing your own child suggests to me that kinship means rather less than it does in Western cultures.

[rayiner]

Honor killings happen because kinship ties are so strong. The individual becomes completely subsumed within the family. Anything that brings shame to the individual is imputed to the whole family. Moreover, controlling reproduction becomes extremely important because that is how kinship links between families are created.

[btilly]

I know that I am showing my cultural biases. But the entire way of thinking that you are describing strikes me as fundamentally evil. Subsuming the individual to the social unit is at the heart of the worst excesses of racism, nationalism, etc. If you look for the worst mass crimes in history, you will find this idea at the core.

Conversely, liberty starts with valuing humans for the individuals that they are. And not as mere appendages which serve a larger whole.

[FooBarBizBazz]

This is sort of a tangential post starting from your phrases "Killing your own child" and "honor killings". I eventually try to link it back to themes of loyalty to "family" vs. "nation" vs. universality.

1.

> Killing your own child

I can't hear this phrase without thinking of Abraham and Isaac. It's the story that the whole of the Old Testament revolves around.

(And then the New Testament goes to heroic lengths of reinterpretation? Or have I just gotten too much Girard in my head? I'm never sure how much to celebrate it as reformist (moving past the animal sacrifice cult of the Levites), vs. to detest it (continuing to worship the obscene god of the burning bush. But then how do you carve out that the Commandments are actually decent?). I'm also not quite sure that I'm really all that big a fan of Jesus himself; I may actually prefer the religion of Paul. But it was Jesus who was responsible for the Beatitudes, and for his famous and beautiful "whole of the law" summary. So I'm not sure. His radical anti-family message, combined with his urgency (and his apparent contempt for his disciples?) have never sat right with me. But maybe the urgency at least is essential.)

And supposedly the version we get in the Torah is the "Hollywood ending", whereas in the original (late neolithic?) story Isaac is simply killed and Abraham is rewarded. So the original is even worse.

(Or perhaps the fact of the "Hollywood ending" to Abraham and Isaac is itself an innovation to be celebrated, and we can view the Old Testament itself as part of that same Girardian process of reform, of yet-worse human sacrifice religions. A good thing about this is that it creates less of an Old Testament vs. New Testament binary/dualism; it expands the field of view.)

(There may also be a Yahwist vs. Elohist conflict I have yet to understand, which may help me tease apart good from bad parts of the Old Testament.)

2.

> honor killings

Not long ago I quoted Genesis 34, which disturbs me for several reasons -- that it celebrates an honor killing being one of them.

(Actually, maybe I'm wrong? Because they do not kill Dinah? More on that in a second.)

That the enemy clan is treated as a unit to be destroyed rather than the individual man is another. How can that possibly be justice?

(Some people will claim that Shechem raped Dinah. NIV translates it that way, but KJV doesn't. I don't believe the NIV translation. First, because those societies still exist and "consent" isn't really something they think about in judging these cases. And I mean, it says right there at the end that the Israelites kill the men and take their wives captive, presumably to be raped. Second, because Shechem is said to speak kindly to her and request her hand in marriage. And third because Hamor et al act as though good relations should be possible with the Israelites. KJV doesn't say "raped", it says "defiled" (more than once), and, given the rest of the chapter's focus on circumcision, I honestly think that the fact that he had sex with her with his intact penis is the thing they found offensive. Symbolic of course of his being an Other. A belief that comports with the rest of the Old Testament's repeated admonishments not to marry outside the Tribe (e.g., Samson and Delilah). I think it's much closer to a Black man being lynched for having the temerity to sleep with a white woman.)

...which brings us to, of course, the central role of genital mutilation to the story, which is another reason to be disturbed by it.

The complete rejection of an apparently good-faith effort towards peace and mutual assimilation is a fourth reason to be disturbed, but consistent with the particularism/separatism of the rest of the Old Testament.

And a fifth is the trickery involved. "Yes, yes, we can all get along! Undergo our painful and irreversible initiatiation!" ...and then be slain without mercy while you're still recovering.

I had the TV on the other day and saw a Rick Steves visit to Auschwitz/Birkenau, in which I was similarly disturbed by the amount of trickery involved. The victims were told to bring their luggage, so they would believe that they were being resettled to live good lives in another place. The sign over the gate famously said "Arbeit macht frei", another lie. All to avoid panic while their killing was planned. All like the promise of the sons of Jacob in Genesis 34:15-16.

All the more tragic because so many of those Jewish victims had assimilated into German society (not necessarily abandoning Judaism, but just treating it as another religion in the Liberal style, instead of as an ethno-nationalist thing), and they and the German gentiles they lived more-or-less peacefully among (until the Nazis riled them up) were essentially living as Hamor had promised,

> 9 And make ye marriages with us, and give your daughters unto us, and take our daughters unto you.

> 10 And ye shall dwell with us: and the land shall be before you; dwell and trade ye therein, and get you possessions therein.

which would have been the desirable outcome.

If it isn't clear yet, while Shechem may be a little dumb here (sort of a Romeo character), I think Hamor's the good guy, consistently trying to steer the situation towards a peaceful and mutually beneficial outcome.

We could really use Dinah's point of view here. I choose to interpret her as a sort of Juliet, stuck between these Montagues (Israelites) and Capulets (Hivites).

...

Can we bring it back to the themes of "kinship" and "Arab culture" (or, culture in the Middle East) vs. "Western culture"? To the themes of grandparent post?

Well, my interpretation of Genesis 34 is that it is anti-"miscegenist". Which would be, if not about kinship, then at least about nationality. And certainly not universalist.

And Abraham/Isaac is about sacrificing blood kin for the demands of a god who is arguably the personification of a nation.

So perhaps this is about nation vs. family -- dishonor to the nation outranking loyalty to kin.

Of course, this is all a bit inbred, so "nation" largely is "kin". Maybe then this is a meme that wants to create loyalty among genes at, say, the cousin-level degree of relatedness, at expense both of loyalty to specific children, and also of sympathy to outsiders. I'm thinking about ant colonies and cancer cells now. It's a choice to privilege a certain scale of "incorporation" -- what is the "body" we care about?

[danans]

> I mean, how many societies have a religion centered around some other ethnic group?

Plenty. Southeast Asia has religions centered around Indian or Arab religions. Same for Iran and much of Central Asia with Islam.

All these places have adapted the other ethnicity's belief system to their own culture.

It's no different for Christianity. Bertrand Russell described it as the combination of Greek philosophy with Jewish mythology and Roman societal/power structures.

[bangkoksbest]

I want to add double emphasis on this. Christianity before and without the Greek philosophical influence is primarily a religion of itinerant ascetics and martyrs (without the abstract ideals added, almost all of the story in the Gospels boils down to an itinerant ascetic being martyred).

Some of the earliest extant texts in Christianity come from Justin Martyr, who, just a century after Jesus, was already workshopping the idea that Plato and Socrates were unknowing Christians that laid a philosophical ground for Christianity.

[bckr]

For an intriguing spin on this, look into Manichaeism, a 3rd-century religion from modern Iran which syncretizes Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Buddhism, and survived until the middle of the last millennium in China.

[bckr]

clarification: from what is now called Iran

[ClumsyPilot]

"think cultural legacy is more deeply intertwined with morals than people appreciate."

The cultural legacy of modern Europe is that of Renaissance, which is a partial rejection of many religious morals and practices we would find abhorrent today. Like burning heretics, astronomers and philosophers at the stake, witch hunts, etc.

People were put to death for translating the Bible into english from latin, mind you.

There was a re-discovery and embracement of great works antiquity, think ancient Greece.

[labster]

This reads like Renaissance era propaganda. It was mostly a reaction to existing social pressures which used the notion of the classics to promote change.

People did not go out and restart republics (for a couple centuries, which is a long time), nor bring back Aristotelian astronomy (rather the opposite), nor rituals of the old gods, nor rediscover ancient works that hadn’t been intentionally preserved by centuries of medieval scribes (papyrus lasts < 500 years in moist Europe). They reinterpreted the past. It was no longer “copy the procedures of the great doctor Galen”, it was “copy the curiosity”.

[ClumsyPilot]

> This reads like Renaissance era propaganda

The fact that we call the time when Church was at the peak of it's power 'Dark Ages' is a testament to success of Renaissance era propaganda

> People did not go out and restart republics

The french revolution?

[hipparchus]

I can't help but feel like you've got a deep case of confirmation bias here.

> Consider, for example, the obsession in Christian countries with equality. They almost fall over themselves to welcome people from different ethnic backgrounds. [...]

This is true in anglophone countries, sure, but it's less the case in europe and in particular, say, eastern europe or the balkans: ignoring albania/kosovo/bosnia, you've got plenty of heavily christian countries there who are not so open to people of different ethnic groups (well, which deviate from ethnic groups common to the region). You'll be treated more or less well but still fundamentally considered an outsider, and may not be welcome depending on where you go. Consider otherwise the armenians who, while I'm heavily leaning on stereotypes, are still quite well known for being both 1. pretty deeply culturally christians, and 2. a pretty closed-off community that often intermarry (although I do know there's often intermarriages with greeks and georgians)

I would agree with your point, but I would warn you not to assume that everything true of americans and/or anglophone countries often follows closely in other christian countries.

[dragonwriter]

> Consider, for example, the obsession in Christian countries with equality.

I think you are confusing “Western liberal democratic societies” with “Christian countries”. The latter are a subset of historically Christian countries (many are more accurately post-Christian, now), but plenty of Christian countries are not Western liberal democracies and those do not fit the mold you are trying to fit “Christian countries” into.

[unmole]

> Consider, for example, the obsession in Christian countries with equality.

Citation needed.

> They almost fall over themselves to welcome people from different ethnic backgrounds. I suspect this has something to do with Christianity’s origins as a Jewish religion adopted by the Gentiles.

Yet Christian kingdoms had zero qualms about persicuting Jews for centuries.

> I mean, how many societies have a religion centered around some other ethnic group?

You mean like Islam which has over 1.9 billion adherents and privileges a language spoken by 300 million Arabs?

[DyslexicAtheist]

>> Consider, for example, the obsession in Christian countries with equality.

> Citation needed.

Jacques Ellul got you covered[1], if you dig through the footnotes and references in his books you'll be able to find hundreds more.

Jacques Ellul's La subversion du Christianisme (The Subversion of Christianity)

also "Trahison de l'Occident" (The Betrayal of the West)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Ellul#Bibliography

[tsimionescu]

Christianity in Europe has been historically the biggest source of social hierarchy, supporting the divine right of Kings, the notion of deference to the priesthood, and the priesthood's subservience to the Pope (or, in Eastern Europe, the Patriarch).

Even after the Reform, Christianity encouraged tight family groups, the wife's subservience to her husband, and similarly children's subservience to their father.

Equality only exists in Christian texts, it is not part of any common practice.

If you want to look for a historical source about modern ideas of equality between people that inspired the Enlightenment movement, then that source are the Iroquois (or Haudenosaunee), whose society didn't have the same type of rigid hierarchies that all European societies at the time had.

[nautilius]

Obsession about equality as a central tenet in Christianity? You may want to read up on the crusades, slavery, the 30 year war, how even other Christian immigrants (Irish, Italian, etc) were welcomed into the US etc.

Also, just because some Christians share some of the morals of your humanist friend does not imply any relation whatsoever. There appears to be that desire from religious groups to often exaggerate and emphasize any such correlation as something more. When your friend meets with his family at the end of December and again at the equinox in spring - do you point out how Paganist he is? And, when you as a Christian presumably celebrate Christmas and Easter with your family - do you tell them they are just like Pagans as well? If not - why not?

[rayiner]

> Obsession about equality as a central tenet in Christianity? You may want to read up on the crusades, slavery, the 30 year war, how even other Christian immigrants (Irish, Italian, etc) were welcomed into the US etc.

You may want to read up on slavery. Abolition in Christian societies was mainly a religious movement. Arab societies practiced it extensively as well, but kept going until the 20th century, and only really stopped because of international pressure from Christian countries.

The crusades? Both Muslims and Christians engaged in offensive military campaigns during the crusades. Only in Christian countries do any appreciable number of people feel bad about it.

Likewise, the speed at which Irish and Italians were integrated into American society is pretty much unparalleled by anything in any non-Christian society. I’m Bangladeshi on both sides back into the the dim reaches of history. But if I went back I would be “bideshi” (foreigner) because I was raised in American. My white wife and mixed kids would never be considered Bangladeshi, no matter how long they lived there. (It’s an ethnostate: a country for people of ancertsin

[nautilius]

> You may want to read up on slavery. Abolition in Christian societies was mainly a religious movement.

Ah, so there were Christians who opposed it, which makes that the central tenet in Christianity. But there were also those Christians who practiced it - does that now make slavery a central tenet in Christianity instead?

You can't just cherrypick what you find most flattering for your group and then round it off with 'but the Arabs'.

Italians are still a protected minority in New Jersey, and Hispanics are still a protected minority throughout the US. Natives were forcibly Christianized and then killed or deported to barren lands no one wanted.

[bangkoksbest]

Liberalism is marked by comparison to abstract ideals. Whether and to what degree other areas of the world do worse in comparison to those ideals is not usually going to be something of paramount concern.

This idealisation and universalisation is not only Western of course. I'm a mixed kid like your kids, but South India rather than Bangladesh, and I would be and am rather unquestionably accepted as Indian when I am there. But a major driver in the split between India and (then-)Pakistan comes down to the (novel & idiosyncratic) liberal ideals we compare to.

As a final note re: the Crusades. I was not under the impression the Crusades were looked down upon because of war, but because they too often were incoherent raiding expéditions that sacked and subdued parts of Christendom even more than they won control of the Jerusalem.

[mangodrunk]

Equality isn't a central tenet of Christianity (for some sects, probably it is), and even if it were, many Christian socities have certainly not practiced that. Christian societies have tendencies to be militaristic and exploitative. I do think that is in part driven by their religion, to convert others.

You are are oversimplifying, cherrypicking, or getting the facts wrong.

Isn't equality a tenet of Islam?

[trees101]

Christianity subsumed some pagan traditions. It's hardly a secret "gotcha", it's open for all to see. In the same way that when I eat an apple, the apple becomes part of me, I don't become an apple.

There are critical differences between Paganism and Christianity. For example, the philosopher Rene Girard showed that many traditions had stories of mimetic desire and scapegoating, but Christianity showed the crucial end of that story, the fact that the killing of the scapegoat to save the community is a lie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSzF2OG2ejI.

GK Chesterton has a lot of interesting things to say about Pagans also http://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/heretics/12/, and his book The Everlasting Man is worth reading for the way that it uses pagan tropes to point towards Christianity.

[nautilius]

Sure. But do you go around claiming that the apple just sprang into your hand without a tree to grow from? That's the argument the post I replied to made.

And the common cherrypicking strawman again in this thread. No one claimed that Christianity is indistinguishable from Paganism, much like no one claims that the apple is indistinguishable from the apple tree.

[hypertele-Xii]

Not completely different, the messianic morals are embedded in the ceremony by design: Sharing, caring, family, food, etc. These aren't incidental, they're the whole point. Sure the specific historical person, i.e. the messiah, blurs over time, as probably do the ceremonial activities, but surely they retain some of the original moral ideals.

[nautilius]

You prove my point. You won't find many atheists (if any) that will take Jesus as in any shape or form a historical person. These are two different worlds.

Atheists don't derive their morals from these stories, that's the difference. That there is some superficial overlap (a tree? presents?) doesn't allow you to claim the morality of atheists as religion-derived. That's ludicrous. It's like saying the local butcher taking apart a pig is adhering to Aztec rituals and their morals because at some point in both 'ceremonies' someone holds a heart in their hands.

In fact, the source of morals among atheists seems to be a permanent puzzle for many people with religious background, simply claiming them as religion-based misses the point completely.

[atq2119]

> You won't find many atheists (if any) that will take Jesus as in any shape or form a historical person.

Raises hand: Atheist here who thinks that a historical Jesus is at least plausible. Obviously not a son of god, though, that would have been embellishment by later generations.

[jmopp]

This. The existence of Jesus says nothing about his divinity or the validity of Christianity. We have more evidence for the existence of Muhammad. Does that make Islam the 'correct' religion? We have even more evidence for the existence of Joseph Smith. Does that make Mormonism the 'correct' religion? We have video recordings of L. Ron Hubbard, along with many people still alive who have met him. Does that make Scientology the 'correct' religion?

[tsol]

Jesus definitely existed as a person, we have records from the time mentioning him

[lovecg]

> In fact, the source of morals among atheists seems to be a permanent puzzle for many people with religious background, simply claiming them as religion-based misses the point completely.

I don’t have a religious background and it’s still a puzzle for me. Best I can manage to explain it is through a combination of tradition and genes (“human nature”), and tradition is often indeed derived from historical religious environment. Moral is mostly universal but not completely - for one example the attitudes towards hard work at the expense of everything else vary greatly across different cultures and religious traditions.

[atq2119]

Amusingly, there's the same trap here as with the "who created the world" problem.

Sure, religious people get their morals largely from their religion. But where do the morals of the religion come from?

[nautilius]

I don't think moral is universal at all - 'You shall not kill' vs cannibal societies and honor killings, monogamy vs polygamy, eating animals vs vegetarianism, slavery vs abolitionism, democracy vs. tribalism, patriarchy vs. equality, mothers' rights vs unborn rights, etc.

It's not only not universal, but it's highly fluid (which it couldn't be if it was universal).

[galangalalgol]

I'd still suggest the overlap isn't incidental. Religions need stable or expanding societies to procreate. So ideology that leads to stable or expanding societies is strongly selected for. Religions with written texts have surprisingly low mutation rates in their ideology, but when conditions begin to favor different behaviors to promote stability, polygamy for instance, the ideology changes quickly.

As a reference to my biases, I'm a theistic agnost, I don't know, but I believe. The life of pie or secondhand lions explain the why pretty well.

[nautilius]

But you're only arguing about proliferation of religion, you're not saying anything about the overlap?

[xhevahir]

>Atheists don't derive their morals from these stories, that's the difference.

The notion that atheists--or Christians, for that matter--ground their moral reasoning in first principles, completely free of unexamined assumptions and social convention, is so laughable that I'm amazed anyone here is seriously suggesting it.

[nautilius]

Wow, you destroyed that strawman!

[robotresearcher]

The mid winter family-oriented festival predates Christianity. The party at the darkest part of the year is indeed the original point.

[nautilius]

Indeed. I'd be surprised to find a single culture on this planet that did/does not celebrate that days are finally getting longer.

[Enginerrrd]

Even among equatorial people's?

[ClumsyPilot]

> Sharing, caring, family, food, etc

I really dislike religion claiming monopoly on morals.

Even tribes of cavemen cared for each-other. We have evidence of people being cared for and living for years with crippling iniiries. They could not care for themselves let alone help the tribe.

Even animals care for each-other and protect each-other, can't claim culture or religion there - its a basic feature of evolution.

If there was actually a correlation between religion and morality, then we would see less crimes like murder/ robbery /rape in religious societies. If anything, the opposite is true.

[hypertele-Xii]

> I really dislike religion claiming monopoly on morals.

Where's the monopoly? A discussion on the moral values of religious rituals doesn't preclude anything. I don't even belong to a church.

It seems you think (perhaps subconsciously) that religion has a monopoly on morals. Why else are you bringing that into the discussion and arguing against it?

> Even animals care for each-other and protect each-other, can't claim culture or religion there - its a basic feature of evolution.

Religious morals are an instance of mutual care emerging through social evolution in an animal - the human, specifically. And humans call it "culture", because humans like to invent words to describe specific instances of phenomena.

[throwaway894345]

To be fair, you can interpret “cultural legacy” as “celebrating the same holidays” or as “having similar morals even if they are divorced from religious faith”.

[nautilius]

Yes, but a superficial and accidental partial overlap between atheist and religious morals is meaningless.

[throwaway894345]

I disagree that it’s superficial or accidental.

[nautilius]

You’re not alone. Many religious people cannot fathom that something outside of and independent of their moral system exists. Take the old discussion of atheists as satanists. What is that joke again? “No, we don’t believe in any of your imaginary friends.“

[leto_ii]

> 60% of working Dutch women only work part time, versus 20% of working Dutch men

I would attribute this more to cultural aspects (there's something of a ravenmuter [1] issue in the Netherlands as well), but even more importantly, to basic economics. Kindergarden is very expensive, women get some maternal leave while men basically get none, so there's significant pressure on the mother to stay at home with the kids for longer.

When they return to the workforce after some years of childcare, they do so to lower salaries than they would have had otherwise, hence part time work becomes more attractive.

I don't deny that there's a natural tendency for women to be more nurturing, but I don't think that's the main force driving this disparity.

[1] https://m.dw.com/en/rabenmutter/a-6616009

[dan-robertson]

To what extent is this just people not liking their current job? That is, what percentage of homemakers would rather be employed, and how would the opinions of employed women change if their choices in the poll were current job/appealing alternative job/homemaker?

[scarmig]

Women generally report more job satisfaction than men do; you'd expect a higher proportion of men preferring homemaking to their jobs if that was the dominant factor.

[rayiner]

I suspect it’s a sliding scale—working is probably relatively more compelling if you’re a cancer researcher than if you’re writing up the paperwork for home mortgages. But way more people do the latter than the former, right? And most people doing the latter aren’t qualified to do the former (and that’s okay).

I think that often people with remunerative, intellectually stimulating jobs overlook the perspective of women who have (and are realistically only qualified to have) jobs we would probably regard as more mundane.

[jolux]

Polling is one thing but the economics on this are extensive and they mostly reject your suggestions here. Female labor force participation is U-shaped with regards to GDP (https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w4707/w4707...), once you reach the middle part of the curve it starts to increase again as GDP increases, probably because employment becomes more lucrative to women than raising children or staying at home.

If there is an effect here it can't be all that significant, if you look at wealthy countries with larger welfare states than the US most have a female labor force participation rate at least as high.

[danans]

> Counterintuitively, America’s lack of a generous welfare system tends to destabilize traditional gender roles.

I don't think that's so counterintuitive. Generous welfare systems give more people the opportunity to pursue the work lifestyle they would like to rather than the one they would have to to make ends meet if the generous welfare system didn't exist.

That's a totally different scenario than gender roles being enforced by religious or cultural restrictions. That also promotes traditional gender roles but doesn't give individuals a choice in the matter.

[jjav]

> 56% would prefer a “homemaker” role if they were “free” to do either

I would imagine approximately everyone would prefer a homemaker role if it was possible.

I had the fortune of taking multiple years off to spend with my child at home, it was the best time ever. Unfortunately savings don't last forever so eventually had to go back to the soulless grind of daily status report standups and endless useless meetings.

[sstoks]

What's is the desired conclusion of your comment? That women prefer to be homemakers more than men do so we should go ahead and do that and leave men to work? Please explain because I have no idea where you're going with this.

[industriousthou]

I think he’s pointing out the irony in conservative views. They bemoan the erosion of traditional gender roles, but undermine those roles by opposing a generous welfare state.

But, I mean, obviously it would be good if most workers made enough to support a family with a single income.

[itronitron]

You mention a lot of statistics. If there is a point you wanted to make could you clarify it?

[rayiner]

I stated the point in the beginning of the paragraph in which I cited the statistics:

> Counterintuitively, America’s lack of a generous welfare system tends to destabilize traditional gender roles.

[symlinkk]

That traditional gender roles are good for society

[irrational]

Who wouldn’t prefer to stay home if they had the choice? I could spend my days traveling, hiking, going to the beach, reading, working on hobbies, learning new skills, cooking, etc.

[thematrixturtle]

I think you misspelled changing diapers, doing laundry three times a day, spoon-feeding broccoli puree, scraping dried broccoli off the floor, shopping while trying to contain a squealing octopus, etc.

[coryrc]

Or watching and helping form your own child into him/herself, meeting your friends for casual lunches in the park while your kids play, playing goofy games, having time to make nutritious meals instead of heating frozen foods, etc.

[kQq9oHeAz6wLLS]

Interestingly, you're both right. Turns out you have to take the bad with the good, or more accurately TANSTAAFL

[cgriswald]

Grandparent was responding to the ridiculous notion that being a homemaker is like being on vacation with kids. No one is disputing there can be benefits to being a homemaker or having one in the family.

[coryrc]

Being on vacation with kids is far harder than being at home with kids!

[stickfigure]

It's... really not that bad? Actually, it's pretty fun.

I work from home, wife doesn't, that makes me the defacto stay-at-home dad. It's definitely playing the startup game in "hard mode" but I love not missing a thing.

[zdbrandon]

Also work from home and 100% disagree. Can hardly get anything done with a 4 month old.

[stickfigure]

Oh no! Well, it gets easier as the kid gets older. But they say every kid is different so YMMV. I only have the one, he's 4, and he's pretty easy.

Suerte.

[jjav]

All of these are orders of magnitude more pleasant than daily standups etc.

As a man, I had the fortune to stay at home for several years with my child and it was the most wonderful time ever. Sure it's a lot of work, but also a lot of joy.

[d0mine]

The statistics for what it is worth is 56% (kids) vs. 39% (no kids) women chosen "homemaker" option i.e., perhaps diapers are not as important.

[tablespoon]

>> Among women with children under 18, 56% would prefer a “homemaker” role if they were “free” to do either: https://news.gallup.com/poll/186050/children-key-factor-wome.... Contrast with just 26% of men. 39% of women without kids would also prefer to stay home if they had the choice.

> Who wouldn’t prefer to stay home if they had the choice? I could spend my days traveling, hiking, going to the beach, reading, working on hobbies, learning new skills, cooking, etc.

"Homemaker" does not mean "staying at home, doing whatever you want."

[bluecalm]

Homemaker role doesn't mean spending your days travelling, hiking or going to the beach.

[rdtwo]

Can confirm had to do homemaker job on top of paid job I’d prefer to be at my normal job

[nanomonkey]

Metaverse Homemaker Addition allows you to do what every you want between wash cycles.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Depends on how many children you have.

[corpMaverick]

Yes, me too.

But, would you still feel the same if you had to stay home to take care of kids and a working spouse ?

[wolverine876]

And having very few adults to talk to, no status, no career advancement (in fact, the opposite), and little recognition.

[barry-cotter]

Most people do not care about their jobs. And they have jobs, not careers. They work because they get paid. Occasionally they get a brief flicker of satisfaction. More often they enjoy the company of their co-workers. Occasionally they hate their jobs so much that they engage in unhealthy behaviors s as a coping mechanism, like alcoholism, or they quit.

Basically everyone who doesn’t stay heavily involved in their professional field after retirement was doing it almost solely for money. There are better and worse jobs, more and less enjoyable ones. But a huge majority of people have jobs, not careers.

[cgriswald]

Well, sure, but take a few years off of your "job" and you'll find that your prospects for another job are far fewer and for less pay. I think that's generally what people mean by a career even if they aren't particularly chasing advancement.

[wolverine876]

I'm sorry to hear you feel that way, but those are pretty extreme and sweeping claims. Where do they come from? Here's some data from Gallup, which seems to strongly disagree with at least some aspects of the parent. It shows that every year, going back to 1993, over 80% report being completely or somewhat satisfied with their jobs.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1720/Work-Work-Place.aspx

On the Internet these days I often see contructed claims of extreme despair - about finding a partner, jobs, war, democracy, crime, etc. etc. In a way it matches an older rhetoric of making brazen, extreme, baseless statements that frame the conversation (around the baseless claims rather than the issue at hand), inflame it, and disrupt people who disagree. It's time to think about whose interests the despair serves.

[ericd]

Eh? There are plenty of other parents and nannies at the park taking their kids out, if you want to talk to someone.

[cgriswald]

As a former homemaker this comes across as tone deaf. From my experience, you might as well have just said, "You can always hang out at a PTA meeting."

Being a homemaker can be incredibly isolating. Homemakers need meaningful adult interaction and relationships that are not centered around their children or exclusive to their spouses.

[barry-cotter]

Nannies are of a different social class. Most middle class people are much less likely to have real relationships with people who can’t relate to their problems. Same as rich people tend to have rich friends.

“Talking to someone” isn’t community. Colleagues provide an ersatz community for people who don’t have a real one in their life. You need a steady cast of characters and ideally repeated, purposeful interaction.

[AdrianB1]

Having no career advancement is sometimes like not having cancer: a net positive. Most people have no career at all, they retire on the same job (just more "senior") they started with. For them, there is no loss.

Also a stay at home wife was traditionally not isolated from society; in my family one generation ago almost everyone was in that situation and I can tell that social interactions were much stronger and more frequent than my generation.

Recognition? That stuff people look for in Facebook likes, Twitter shares and LinkedIn "achievements"? That is attention seeking, not recognition.

[wolverine876]

Again, broad claims, but based on what?

> Having no career advancement is sometimes like not having cancer: a net positive.

I have never heard anyone express or imply that. I don't doubt you feel that way, but is there any evidence that it's widespread?

> Most people have no career at all, they retire on the same job (just more "senior") they started with.

That is almost certainly not true. I believe the evidence says that the great majority switch jobs many times and switch careers several times.

> a stay at home wife was traditionally not isolated from society

I've heard otherwise from homemakers of prior generations - the isolation was one of their primary complaints. And I'm pretty sure I've read about research showing the same. What makes your narrative true?

[npip99]

"Who wouldn’t prefer to stay home if they had the choice? I could spend my days traveling"

It's not travelling... If you're staying at home...

[cuddlybacon]

Note: This is a rough mix of reading Jonathan Haidt's books and my own thoughts.

What America is seeing is basically the result of a culture that only uses one moral value. Jonathan Haidt believes there is a set of moral primitives that all our brains support[0]. All other moral values or rules can be explained in terms of these. He also says that the US (potentially excluding the south) is the most single moral on earth. Particularly the "Liberal Cities" and particularly Universities. That one moral is care vs harm.

Some people want to be particularly moral. In societies the various morals have balanced usage, people will pick different morals to exemplify. Since different morals can give contradicting judgements on the same issue, this results in the net effect of these people being fairly neutral.

In a society with just one moral, all these people end up pushing in the same direction. If society is moving in one direction, then these people need to keep advancing in order to remain particularly moral. Given some specifics of US history, we see this result in the social justice movement we've seen in the last 10 years.

> what explains the relative stability in post-Christian Europe?

Europe, with a few exceptions, hasn't gone as hard at being focused on just a single moral value. They are largely biased towards care vs harm, but still use the other moral values.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory

[jimkleiber]

> The theory proposes six foundations: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation, and Liberty/Oppression;

I'm curious to learn more about how he concludes that most of the US has coalesced on care/harm, as intuitively I would assume at least fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, and liberty/oppression would also apply as I see them come up a lot in the discourse here in the US.

Could you share some other links about how he concludes that?

[monkeydreams]

I am in agreement with you that Care/Harm is probably not the moral axis most at play in the US.

Liberty/Oppression is the primary axis (see gun control debates, state rights, mask mandates, neo-liberalism, etc, etc) with Fairness/Cheating (billionaires paying more tax, public healthcare for all vs excessive hospital bills, etc, etc) corresponding as the secondary political axis. Nearly all arguments portrayed in media, government, etc, orbit along one or both of these dimensions.

[jimkleiber]

I guess I don't see a particular primary moral axis. I've run workshops on responding to emotional attacks and I would imagine all 5 they listed would apply to most Americans in different ways, so I'm curious why he woukd say there's one and why he said it was care/harm.

[monkeydreams]

A few days late in my reply but I found your response very interesting. I feel that I have fallen into the very glib reactionary narrative I was trying to avoid. Thanks.

[jimkleiber]

It's ok, I'd say it happens to most of us. I wrote an essay (or recorded a podcast episode, I can't remember) the other day that I titled "Blinded by the fight," as I've seen how easily I can lock into a perspective based on the emotions I'm feeling in the moment. Eg, feeling fear of being too public on the internet and getting cancelled/stalked/manipulated can make me blind to the fact that many people on the internet may help me and support me in ways that I would love.

So, maybe a long way to say I'm grateful for what you said and glad we interacted here. Thank you :-)

[ReactiveJelly]

And pointing to the decline of religion isn't very helpful for us atheists.

I can't really buy into a religion I don't believe in for the sake of making society better. I'd rather try to make society better directly, I don't want to do a "noble lie".

I'll gesture vaguely at "the suburbs". Low trust and alienation describes my childhood in a place where you needed a car to do anything and even when my parents let me wander, there was almost nowhere fun to wander _to_.

I don't have data to back this up, though. Maybe it's just resentment at how my childhood turned out.

[SECProto]

> I'll gesture vaguely at "the suburbs". Low trust and alienation describes

I agree with this for sure, and such zoning issues have been pointed to as the root cause of other societal ills dating back to (at least) Jane Jacobs' 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Am...

[Gwarzo]

"And pointing to the decline of religion isn't very helpful for us atheists"

Pointing to something that is true doesn't need to be helpful. Making the statement it's not helpful to you, is helpful to noone.

[nautilius]

Surely, there are more atheists than ReactiveJelly. No need to be so restrictively negative.

[greggman3]

I'm 100% with you on being athiest and not wanting to support religion in my life

but, one thing many religions provide is a social club. Every Sunday and for some religion even more days, you meet up with people socially. Churches have festivals, dances, classes, even singles events that you're encouraged to attend regularly and at which you'll likely make friends and possible more

Vs outside where sure I can join a club or go to a Meetup but some part of that just doesn't seem to hit the same levels as church type stuff. Maybe it's a stronger feeling of obligation to participate. Maybe it's shared beliefs ...

Let pitch a non-religious social club to YC :p

[magicroot75]

But it's not a the social aspect that does the work. While important, we have social clubs already. NFL on Sundays, adult sports leagues, workplace. We do yoga, pilates, CrossFit, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It's not the social aspect that will save society. It is the moral order pointing a group towards a common source that doesn't just give meaning to one's own personal journey, but that gives a lifelong context and meaning to one's life in relationship with humanity and the cosmos. Otherwise a group is just something members enter and exit at will. This is similarly why family is so powerful. It is governed by an intrinsic relationship that can't be altered. When we call someone "family," regardless of biological status, we are inviting them into a permanent place in our lives unlike more recreational social groups.

[cpach]

“ Let pitch a non-religious social club to YC :p”

That’s actually a very interesting idea!

[mellavora]

like the Masonic lodges?

Or how about any of the various modern fitness fads. Crossfit, for example.

[xyzzyz]

The bad suburbs theory sounds plausible, but it has a big problem: it predicts that cities will be less dysfunctional than suburbs, but in reality they are anything but — things are way worse in the cities.

[stirbot]

reduced social interaction in a suburban setting could simultaneously explain both the psychological harm to young men and the elevated 'way worse' things in cities.

[dan-robertson]

Aren’t there secular clubs that can have a large social element like rotary clubs or book clubs or even some sports like golf for example?

I guess you could also try joining a church where it’s basically acceptable to be an atheist like the Unitarian Universalist church although that would maybe be too spiritual.

[barry-cotter]

UU, mainline Protestantism, Reform Judaism. Religions that ask for nothing but attendance one day a week and don’t believe in anything uncomfortable for nice university educated people have been collapsing since the 60s.

[sjtindell]

Bowling Alone is a great book about the complete collapse of these sort of groups in America.

[skinkestek]

> Whatever the cause I fully reject the lazy conclusion this is somehow women's fault.

Of course! The problem is not women!

The problem is media, schools, companies, everyone buying into this in a collective delusion.

Men also think this, but unlike women we are even encouraged to strengthen these insane ideas that we are somehow inferior (gets imprisoned more often, less academic success despite supposedly being extremely privileged.)

[ksec]

>The problem is media, schools, companies.

I can only upvote. My comment is probably not very good for HN.

[boppo1]

How so?

[ksec]

In terms of the media, politics, ideology, just any one of them could get ugly in a hurry. And if you have all three, that is not a good start.

Although I am glad this topic is finally getting "some" attention.

[snerbles]

If only because it's posing an existential threat to society and the very powers that be that are contributing to this mess.

Given current trends I expect things to get much, much worse.

[ksec]

>Given current trends I expect things to get much, much worse.

Unfortunately I agree.

[adriand]

Right. It’s our fault, that is, men’s. We live in a society in which we we have disproportionately had the power. And this is the result.

But I don’t think it’s really a gender thing, I think it’s a power and money thing. That is, I don’t think mainly white, rich and powerful men set out to disadvantage other men. I think they were more focused on advantaging themselves to the exclusion of everyone else.

What I find interesting isn’t so much why men are doing poorly. Why are women doing better in certain areas? Although progress has been made towards institutional equity, men still have the advantage in most places. Why are women succeeding despite that?

[_ktx2]

> Right. It’s our fault, that is, men’s. We live in a society in which we we have disproportionately had the power. And this is the result.

I find gender blaming conversation to be reductive. The decline of men and boys is not men's fault nor is it women's fault. Dare I say there's little data to show either way, nor is it really helpful in healing from a dysfunctional society that has failed you on a systemic and individual level.

Even worse, the way some people will wave their hands and use the word "power" to justify why men should be successful is pure misandry and a misunderstanding of the availability and avenues of power. A boy that grows up with an undiagnosed learning challenge is not afforded power or privilege, despite blanketly being regarded as powerful due to their gender. Parallel examples to this are countless.

> Why are women doing better in certain areas?

Easy. Feminism. It's the societal block for the broader representation of a spectrum of views that are women-centric that has significant force in society. They provide programs that are often woman-exclusive, advocate and raise alarms on issues, etc... There is nothing like this for men because modern rhetoric opposes the idea that men can be a victim to much of anything.

The point of the post seems to be, "Maybe stop treating men and boys like the villains in their own story, don't make scarecrows out of other groups as has been historically done, and use positivity to create a culture that men want and strive to be a part of."

[8f2ab37a-ed6c]

Women as an "interest group" have been incredible at PR this last century. Men, on the other hand, have yet to realize that they can't coast on the existing historic momentum and have to start speaking up.

It doesn't help that folks who attempt to represent men's rights are instantly smeared as either pathetic incel losers, or as alt-right oppressor misogynists. There's no in-between that I'm aware of. From what I can tell, shame is the main weapon used against men who claim that men's rights have a justifiable place in society.

No healthy "meninism" exists as of today the same way it does for women, and I suspect this is causing all sorts of problems.

[rdtwo]

Yep mens right is a cesspool of toxicity but so is much of the modern women’s movement one is just tolerated and the other crushed

[kansface]

Doesn't Jordan Peterson occupy that niche?

[MathCodeLove]

He does, but he's painted as some awful far-right figure head for daring to mention mens issues and protesting legally compelled speech.

Anyone who takes the time to listen to what he has to say knows his views are actually quite reasonable and mild.

[adriand]

Feminism isn’t about putting women ahead of men though. It’s about creating equity. Feminism is needed because of the ongoing power imbalance between the sexes. There are still very few arenas in which men do not enjoy the advantage.

The men’s rights stuff is toxic because it’s about conflict. It’s about pushing back against feminism, which is essentially fighting against equity. With that said, I see nothing wrong with fighting for the interests of boys and men. I, too, want to see boys succeed (I have a son!) But it’s not about his rights. It’s about his opportunities and the support and so on, that he gets.

It isn’t feminism that is holding boys and men back, it’s that we live in an inequitable society. That makes feminists allies, not enemies.

I agree with your parent commenter, kodah, that gender blaming is reductive. I recognize that the way I phrased my views could have been better: perhaps a more constructive way of putting it is to say that the present situation is one that men have both the responsibility to improve, and the power to do so.

[hiptobecubic]

This post pretty much perfectly reflects their point.

"Arguing for men's rights is bad because it's all about squashing women, otherwise they'd be arguing for women's rights, which is actually just arguing for everyone's rights." This just isn't a reasonable way to frame it at all.

There aren't many places where men have a clear and systematic disadvantage in society, but there are some and arguing that there shouldn't be is not all about conflict.

[rmak]

Feminism is never about equity or equality between sexes. The most straight forward and correct definition of feminism is women wanting to be equal to or surpass rich and powerful men. Women never wanted to be equal to average men. Average men are disposable. Women had it better than men almost everywhere since the beginning.

Feminists are out rightly man hating. They are not allies of men/boys. They start killallmen trend, they started endfatherday, feminists support not jailing women for anything, NOW, the largest feminist org in the us oppose shared parenting, feminists in Canada shut down male dv centers....

[Gareth321]

>Feminism isn’t about putting women ahead of men though. It’s about creating equity.

This is demonstrably incorrect. In our society, men are underrepresented in all kinds of quality of life metrics. They die younger. They comprise the vast majority of the homeless. The vast majority of workplace death and injury. They work much longer hours. They commit suicide at much higher rates. They have much higher rates of unemployment. They're failing, relatively, at every level of the educational system. They're far overrepresented in endemic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes; as well as mental health problems like depression and addiction. I could go on for a long time.

This isn't to say women don't have their own unique issues - like sexual assault. Feminism advocates for only issues in which women experience issues, and none of the issues I listed above. The net effect is observable today: areas in which women underperformed are now normalising at that "equity" level. But all of the many ways in which men are underperforming are getting worse. Any movement which purports to aim for equity cannot only focus on one side of the equation. Feminism doesn't aim for equity or equality. It is an advocacy movement for women. And that's okay. Just don't lie and say it has anything to do with equity or equality. Don't try to prevent men from having their own movement to try to improve some of the horrific ways in which men are suffering today in Western nations.

[mecha_ghidorah]

> "The men’s rights stuff is toxic because it’s about conflict. It’s about pushing back against feminism, which is essentially fighting against equity. With that said, I see nothing wrong with fighting for the interests of boys and men. I, too, want to see boys succeed (I have a son!) But it’s not about his rights. It’s about his opportunities and the support and so on, that he gets."

See the thing about this is even if you genuinely try to not make it about conflict in my experience people project conflict on to you. I once wrote an article about men being disadvantaged when it came to access to resources when escaping domestic violence, despite making up a significant proportion of victims according to data gathered by the Australian bureau of statistics (I'm Australian and was writing about the situation here).

A lot of government sources also presented domestic violence data in a way that was straight up misleading i.e. "31% of women experiencing assault experienced it from a partner vs 4.4% of men", totally ignoring that men were vastly more likely to be assaulted by strangers and a better comparison is the total number of men and women (73,800 women vs 21,200). Which works out to a little over than 1in 5 people surveyed who were assaulted by a partner being men, which despite still being significantly less certainly doesn't seem as minimal as the numbers when presented as a proportion of total assaults suffered. (note this happened nearly 10 years ago so these numbers are from a survey done in 2006).

My article discussed this kind of presentation and how it made male victims of DV more invisible than they should be, and how services for them weren't present (including some government services having "for men" pages which only had advice for how abusers can stop being abusive).

I legitimately had editors at places argue with me and suggest I was ignoring facts to have an anti woman agenda by quoting some of the numbers I was criticising in my article. That's how pervasive some of this stuff is. That you can say "hey look, this place is using very selective language when when framing the data, look if even using their own sources you can see how this creates an unfair comparison to minimise male victims" and then have someone use the exact numbers being discussed to tell you that you are being anti woman.

This is a sore spot for me because as a child I suffered domestic abuse, and I find the idea that there wouldn't have been resources for me if I had suffered it as an adult scary.

And I especially object to the idea that men's rights stuff is inherently about conflict. It certainly is for some people, but I made a genuinely constructive attempt to discuss a problem that in no way blamed women (my sister suffered the same abuse I did, I certainly wouldn't want her to not have resources!) and I had multiple people accuse me of being sexist.

[rdtwo]

It’s true feminism provides a second set of safety net for women that does not exist for men. Also the rhetoric in media as part of feminism is that women are better than men at everything and a large percentage of people believe it.

[N1H1L]

Sadly, I could upvote you only once. You have hit the nail on the head.

[Gwarzo]

"Right. It’s our fault, that is, men’s. We live in a society in which we we have disproportionately had the power. And this is the result."

This is an incredibly asinine take.

[snerbles]

But not an uncommon one.

[indigochill]

> Why are women succeeding despite that?

Might have something to do with women (speaking very broadly) being more social than men. Social connection provide a framework for cooperation and competition, without which some men drift aimlessly.

This is just an off-the-cuff hypothesis, though, not researched in any way (at least by me).

[Zababa]

> But I don’t think it’s really a gender thing, I think it’s a power and money thing. That is, I don’t think mainly white, rich and powerful men set out to disadvantage other men. I think they were more focused on advantaging themselves to the exclusion of everyone else.

> What I find interesting isn’t so much why men are doing poorly. Why are women doing better in certain areas?

You answered you own question. The """men in power""" spend more time helping women like them than helping men different from them (in terms of money and power).

[Glawen]

In my opinion, women have a better sense of survival than men.

I know that if I hit a rough patch in my life, I will certainly make myself miserable and would not care what happens to me. I know it by is not rational, but that would explain also probably why wars are fought by men.

Add the fact that society are blaming men for pretty much everything going wrong, it does not surprise me that men are getting loose

[mrtweetyhack]

You have the power? Break the law, you get more jail time than women. Get a divorce, women automatically get the children and half of your assets and you pay alimony. They cry rape and you are instantly guilty. But you are right, women aren't the problem. You are.

[uoaei]

> what explains the relative stability in post-Christian Europe?

Politics is the new religion insofar as it develops moral frameworks and makes people abide by them while convincing them they are making the "rational" choice. This is informed substantially by Enlightenment-era philosophies and is the major component in modern consent manufacturing.

"Rational" in scare quotes because good luck converting questions of morality into questions of rationality.

[etempleton]

Americans by and large want to be believers in…something.

There is nothing more frightening than someone that really and truly believes something. There is no end to what they will do.

[wwweston]

Yep. A total lack of belief to the point of nihilism is a crisis of meaning, to be sure, but it tends to collapse towards either hedonism or depression rather than monomaniacal infliction of harm on the rest of the world. True determined harm usually requires ideological zeal.

[TimTheTinker]

> True determined harm usually requires ideological zeal.

That's not what I think motivated all the US school shootings in the last 25 years.

Ideological zeal that pursues actively harming others is something I don't think the US has much of, culturally speaking. No one preaches "those people need to die" or "we need to harm those people".

[wwweston]

It's certainly worth considering mass shootings. They're unsettling and the apparently growth in frequency is alarming, and I think you could fairly attribute them to personal crises in meaning that lead to a path of resentment ("if I'm suffering, why shouldn't others suffer too?") that does germinate into a plan to inflict arbitrary harm.

Still, as far as I can tell, even with the increase in frequency these are not common events. ~600 per year. No number of them is rare enough, but imagine if even 1 in 1000 of the estimated number of Americans who suffer from major depression (around 16 million) did a mass shooting. Running amok may be the exception that proves the rule.

I'd also point out that ideological zeal may play a role here. Ideology seems to underly policy of not only refusing to examine potential further restrictions on access but to broadly increasing access to arms/gear that make them easier. Characterizations of these events as mental health crises don't seem to lead to social policy supporting mental health. Certainly not the whole story, but probably plays a role in paving the way for harm.

[etempleton]

I would argue mass shooters do, more often than not, believe strongly in something. It might not be religion or even a traditional ideology and the shooter might not even really understand themselves what they are experiencing but I bet if you dug in deep you would see some pretty extreme views on the world, themselves or their fellow man.

[pjc50]

> even with the increase in frequency these are not common events. ~600 per year

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_To_Prevent_This,%27_...

The UK had one mass shooting, twenty-five years ago, and chose to end the problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre

Mass shootings are a horror that the US is unwilling and unable to confront. Far too many people would simply prefer to listen to Alex Jones and imagine that it's all fake.

[pjc50]

> No one preaches "those people need to die" or "we need to harm those people".

.. yes they do? It's not usually spelled out in those words, at least not on the "respectable" side of the preaching, but when there's a mass shooter manifesto the shooter usually makes clear their influences and sometimes gives them thanks and citations.

It's also often done in the past tense. Whenever there's a controversial shooting, hundreds of commentators will turn up to say "that person deserved to be shot".

[vkou]

> No one preaches "those people need to die" or "we need to harm those people".

Nobody says it out loud, they just strongly imply it.

Much like how nobody advocates for war by saying that <people in some other country should die>, they couch it behind nicer-sounding rhetoric.

[notriddle]

People suffering a crisis of meaning might not inflict harm directly, but instead fail to stop the maniacs who do.

[wwweston]

Fair point! Definitely some 2nd order effects to consider.

[diordiderot]

Well there's no such thing as 'morality', there's mostly power and sometimes law. The golden rule is a pretty easy starting point for determining which rules are fair.

[antisthenes]

> The "Lump of Labor" fallacy is just that, a fallacy. Economic gains are not zero-sum.

Frankly, I'm very tired of debunking the zero-sum trope.

Not only are many things in the economy zero-sum, in the case of labor, even if the economy is humming at 150%, it's trivial to imagine a scenario where the man and the woman are both earning 75% of what they would have without the other sex in the labor force. Both are worse off, yet the capital owners are better off and it gives the illusion that everything is going great.

The illusion is so good that we've divorced productivity from wage for 50 years, made tons of women miserable and no one so much as batted an eye.

And in many places, housing has effectively become zero-sum, due to pressure from large capital investors and zoning restrictions on building new housing. In these scenarios, even modest increases in demand can skyrocket the housing/rental prices beyond what is sustainable by the young population.

> Whatever the cause I fully reject the lazy conclusion this is somehow women's fault.

You're right to reject it, but the zero-sum argument is absolutely orthogonal to the issue. It's also completely incorrect and trivially debunked by anyone with a shred of economic common sense.

[boppo1]

> Not only are many things in the economy zero-sum, in the case of labor, even if the economy is humming at 150%, it's trivial to imagine a scenario where the man and the woman are both earning 75% of what they would have without the other sex in the labor force. Both are worse off, yet the capital owners are better off and it gives the illusion that everything is going great.

> The illusion is so good that we've divorced productivity from wage for 50 years, made tons of women miserable and no one so much as batted an eye.

Pop-feminism is too carefully-enshrined to speak openly about this, but I'm pretty sure it's absolutely correct.

[tpxl]

> Not only are many things in the economy zero-sum, in the case of labor, even if the economy is humming at 150%, it's trivial to imagine a scenario where the man and the woman are both earning 75% of what they would have without the other sex in the labor force. Both are worse off, yet the capital owners are better off and it gives the illusion that everything is going great.

Can you elaborate further on this please, I'm not sure I understand your point (genuinely).

[piaste]

Women entering the workforce en masse did double the supply of labor, regardless of any other merits of that change.

And increasing the supply reduces prices.

[tpxl]

Unless it halved the prices (which I doubt greatly) it's a positive sum.

[piaste]

It's a valid point, but I have at least three objections:

1) Everybody starts out as single, so young men start out with a sharply reduced salary due to higher supply, which makes it harder for them to become financially secure and find a partner (which would then decrease their costs).

2) There are many extra costs associated with a two-income household, and many more negative effects from a two-income-as-the-default economy. Elizabeth Warren write The Two-Income Trap on this very subject.

3) It's quite possible that it did halve prices, or came surprisingly close! Have you seen those productivity vs wages graphs? Productivity increased by about 245%, wages increased by 110% (since 1950). That means wages are now at 60% of what they were, relative to productivity. That's not quite half, and the switch to a two-income expectation can't be the only factor, but it's close. Then again, there is still a significant workforce participation gap between men and women, even in the USA (69% vs. 57%), so even in ideal circumstances I wouldn't expect a perfect halving.

[tpxl]

1) I don't quite understand, what does being single have to do with anything and why do men start out with a sharply reduced salary? Or do you mean relative to the men only workforce?

2) I'll check it out.

3) 1890 to 1950 has also seen big productivity growth and I doubt the wages kept pace.

[paganel]

And there's also the immigration fallacy. At least in their last issue The Economist has the decency of mentioning the "de facto lack of incoming migrants" as one of the main 3 (I think they were 3) causes behind the US's current privileged position for its workers, but that definitely wasn't the case until very recently. In other words, no matter how mocked it was, there was a definite truth behind "Dey took 'er jerbs!".

The Economist quote:

> Immigration, which plunged during Donald Trump’s nativist presidency, has sunk further, to less than a quarter of the level in 2016

source here [1]

[1] https://archive.fo/qOPe9

[wahern]

> the relative stability in post-Christian Europe

Relative stability might be too presumptuous. Far right politics in Europe is playing better now than it has in generations, AFAIU. Largely for the same socio-economic reasons it has in the U.S. and elsewhere. The rise of conservative populism is a global phenomenon, which is strong evidence for it having a shared origin, such as trade-induced labor dislocation, the rise of social media, etc.

[hwers]

I feel like at least being allowed to state that things are as bad as they are (outside anonymous forums like this) would be a great step towards getting closer to solving things. Right now we're still in a state where we have to keep a faked optimism everywhere we go which is suffocating.

[wolverine876]

What is so bad? IME, you can easily ignore all the fatalism (popular to feel on every topic) - pretend it isn't there - and do what you want.

[fuzzer37]

An economy that increasingly gets worse and worse for newer generations? The destruction of the planet? The decline of Western Democracy? I guess if you bury your head in the sand and never pay attention to anything then I guess it's not that bad.

[wolverine876]

You are talking about broad trends that, first of all, we have all the tools to fix, and second, probably don't affect you much individually right now (and maybe not ever). Again, don't sit home thinking about how terrible it is, just get out and start moving.

> if you bury your head in the sand

Conversation doesn't need to be so bad either; we could have a constructive one.

[tonyedgecombe]

If you are American then you are living in one of the richest countries in the world at a time of amazing abundance. People really don't know how good they have it in developed Western countries.

[boppo1]

> The decline of Western Democracy?

Do you mean for white people? Last I checked, no one else's interests were ever substantially represented until very recently. And it still needs a lot of work.

[jimkleiber]

I appreciate this. I've worked for the last 10 years in helping us get better at saying how we're feeling and yet we still hold so much in. Projecting one thing yet feeling something different on the inside.

[bsder]

> The China Shock combined with America's threadbare social safety net starts looking more salient.

The threadbare safety net is definitely a huge driving force on that.

However, what we need to get past is "Your job is your worth." This needs to end. There are simply not enough "good jobs" to go around.

We have changed from the primary employers being US Steel, GM, etc. (manufacturing) to the primary employers being WalMart, Amazon, and UPS (logistics). The quality of job loss in changing from manufacturing to logistics is gigantic. And no matter how much manufacturing you bring back (which I think we ought to do as well), you will not easily reverse that.

[spaniard89277]

Mmm, what stability are you referring to? I'm 34 and pretty much all men I know is in pretty bad situation.

I bet here in HN most people has a somewhat functional family, some savings and decent wages. It's not my case or the case of most of the people that I know.

And yes, in general men seem to be doing worse than women, although Spain may be a bit of an outlier here.

By my own account, I've grown poor. Meaning, that there has been times where I didn't have to eat. Not like I couldn't afford food that I liked, just that there was nothing in the fridge, no money to go buy anything, and I was queued for help (which by the way, it was almost all the time provided by NGOs...).

In the long way of getting out of poverty, I was offered barely any help, and, in hindsight, pretty poor guidance and counseling. I should have been told to study IT-related stuff given my predispositions or some trade, but oh well, it is what it is.

Now, of course I also had female friends in a similar situation. I'd say they had better counseling, better opportunies and above everything, which is a taboo here in Spain, there where more resources for them AND they had an easier time finding low-wage jobs, which is fairly important when you're at the botton of the society.

Now some of them are public employees. Which is kind of surprising given that I can't see how I would be able to study about two years full time (it's pretty difficult to get a position) or any of my friends. I mean, I know how that happend, they've got money that I can't qualify for because I have a penis. There are plenty of places where being a female gives you extra points by law, so I guess some of that benefited them too.

The major difference between me and my male friends is that I've got an stable contract in a telco contractor when I was about 24 (HelpDesk). I kept costs low and saved as much as I could. This saved my life. Liking computers saved my life. If it wasn't for that, I'd be who knows where, maybe homeless or in jail.

And I'm here now with 34 learning programming (thank you so much of all the volunteers that make this possible, in particular for the folks of Stanford Code in Place and The Odin Project).

Does this sound bad? Well, I know, I think 2 guys that are better off than me. One had a working class but functional family, and went to study physics, so good guidance and enough money. The other one had a hard time but eventually did the equivalent of community college and works as a consultant for wireless solutions. Everyone else is fucked up, and if look at the numbers in Spain I bet it will back up my observations.

[colechristensen]

While a lot of the west is “post Christian” in that very little actual worship happens, the mythology which is the lens people view reality though is very much pervasive.

The biggest examples are Christian sexual morality and the separation of things into good vs evil. Look at all of our popular culture or politics and find examples of struggles which aren’t some form of a struggle between good and evil, good guys vs bad guys. It might strike people as odd that in many other religions and cultures this idea is much much less dominant.

[ravel-bar-foo]

You focus on sexual morality, but I don't think Christian sexual morality is particularly unusual. (Confucian sexual mores look a lot like Christian sexual mores). To me what makes the cultural background of Christianity unusual is that it focuses on individuals striving to follow abstract virtues. 'Sinners' recognizing that they have done harm and then seeking to do less harm. The lazy believer is slothful, and so confesses their faults to the priest (acknowledging personal faults), repents (promises to act differently) and expects their god to hold them accountable (feels obligation to follow through). Repeat once per week for ten years and they will either become industrious or neurotic. Same thing with all the seven deadly sins. So the cultural focus is on individuals adopting pro-social abstract virtues. It seems to me that in other cultures there is less focus on abstract virtues, and more emphasis on social heirarchies (son obeying Father) or specific actions that must be taken (one must pray 5 times per day and follow a specific diet). One might also argue that the history of belief in personal sin makes European cultures more self-depreciating, but I feel the Japanese are more self-depreciating than the Europeans.

[ehnto]

> One might also argue that the history of belief in personal sin makes European cultures more self-depreciating, but I feel the Japanese are more self-depreciating than the Europeans.

I think that has more to do with collectivism vs individualism, which itself may be to do with hierarchy and community. Those values may have been endowed through religion over time, but I don't know enough about Shintoism or Buddhism to comment on if it influenced Japan into becoming a collective focused society.

[tonyedgecombe]

>The "Lump of Labor" fallacy is just that, a fallacy. Economic gains are not zero-sum.

One of the consequences of women entering the labor force is banks will lend on the basis of two salaries instead of one. In a world of constrained housing supply (which seems to be most of the west) this means prices will be bid up to match the joint income.

This looks awfully like a zero-sum outcome to me.

[Gareth321]

>Whatever the cause I fully reject the lazy conclusion this is somehow women's fault.

What a jarring non-sequitur. The article doesn't mention anything about women being to blame, and I don't think anyone is raising this as the cause.

[ytwombly]

That part was in response to some of the other comments here

[N1H1L]

The purpose of a man's life is meaning and the search for it. For years, centuries even, this meaning in a man's life was provided by being a provider. This order was enforced through society. And you can use society and religion interchangeably here because the distinction between the two is only a century or two old. And this order enforced the role of a child-bearer and nurturer to women. Obviously, such an order was very restrictive (especially to women) and that people would rebel against is easy to comprehend.

This state of affairs continued till the 1980s. Since then, multiple forces have led to a perfect storm - where men have no meaning/purpose in their life, and the desire to have meaning often signals that you want to go back to that older society.

But that's wrong. The people who desire to go back are actually who are rebelling; the rest of the men are either locked up in prison, or overdosing on opioids, or being incels or numbing themselves with video games. The failure of modern liberalism to acknowledge this is basically being an ostrich while the forest is on fire.

[wolverine876]

Why do you get to say what someone's purpose is? Why is being a provider necessarily the purpose in life? People might have done it before (I'm dubious of sweeping, golden-age claims like that), but for almost all of human history we lived short, brutal, illiterate lives as hunter-gatherers. I don't feel that is necessarily my purpose in life.

Find a meaning that is important to you; be a provider if you like. IMHO, people are spending a lot of time getting wrapped up in these questions, debating what is possible, participating in trendy despair - it's all a parlor game, like worrying about whether your car will start because you don't understand the physics and some people online say it can't possibly. Just stop talking to them and they will fade quickly; get up, turn the ignition, and go.

> The people who desire to go back are actually who are rebelling; the rest of the men are either locked up in prison, or overdosing on opioids, or being incels or numbing themselves with video games.

There are a lot of males - most of them, really - doing other things.

[N1H1L]

Being a provider was the purpose, not is. And I acknowledge that it's restrictive.

[AdrianB1]

> Why do you get to say what someone's purpose is? Why is being a provider necessarily the purpose in life?

Because this was the case for the last 10,000 years and you cannot change it overnight, unless you are in Soviet Russia and send people to Gulag for re-education. It is built into men's biological nature to be provider (like most mammals in the nature), you cannot change it because society decided less than a generation ago that this is no longer needed.

And also because many, if not most women are still expecting men to be the provider. Biology dictates that women need a provider (resources and security) to bring a child to this world and that provider should not be the government (which destroys the idea of family and the society with it).

[amanaplanacanal]

> It is built into men's biological nature to be provider (like most mammals in the nature)

I'd say there is a giant citation needed on that one.

[prawn]

I asked someone up thread, but what's stopping males being a provider? The original suggestion was a change from traditional roles is the issue, but I don't think that's it.

[Mikeb85]

>what's stopping males being a provider?

Economics. There's not enough jobs for men in society. Women are preferred for most entry level office jobs, industrial jobs were always the go-to for uneducated men, but those have been mostly eliminated. High achievers will always do well, but by definition not everyone can be a high achiever.

[prawn]

I think this is a more significant factor than the suggestion of changes in traditional roles (upthread) or decline in religion (mentioned elsewhere).

Another one might be a sense that getting ahead from the lower class is harder given wages versus house prices. I imagine that works against any motivation some people have.

[N1H1L]

Yes. This is the key. Provider jobs have disappeared for a huge section. Also, implicit in this is that the man is the higher earner. Rage against it, but a man's attractiveness to a woman does notch up a lot of points if they are the higher earner. Basically, if you can provide. And the chances for that have gone drastically down due to a confluence of multiple economic and cultural factors.

[wolverine876]

> Women are preferred for most entry level office jobs

What is that based on?

[wolverine876]

> what's stopping males being a provider?

Imagining how impossible it is.

[tootahe45]

Probably this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_J8dHLe1Vc

[prawn]

That's what's hindering males on dating apps. I'm asking what's stopping people being a provider, because I'm guessing the decline in education level, job motivation and whatever else isn't just single men. Upthread was the implication that "providing" was a near-biological urge (I disagree) so it should be an option providing for family or for community or whatever else.

I think the issue is motivation and there are other causes, personally.

[prawn]

What's stopping these men being a provider for themselves, their partner, family or children?

I'd agree that meaning/purpose is part of this puzzle, but there are still children needing a provider and partners who either expect a fulltime breadwinner or find some other balance.

My guess is the perceived opportunity of improving your lot in life has declined and males, on the whole, have struggled with motivation as a result. I suspect housing affordability is part of that.

[ravel-bar-foo]

So my family is very liberal. When I mentioned to my trans-brother that my goal in life is to be a well-earning father who is able to provide for my family, I got called 'priviledged', told I have an outdated mindset, and demeaned as a wannabe patriarch. I didn't say anything about limiting the opportunities of my wife, but bigoted sentiments were read into my desire to support a family. This despite the fact that my father was very much the supportive and calm leader, and we turned out very well as a result.

It seems to me that in one generation we have gone from fatherhood and motherhood being high-status to being low-status. But maybe that is part of this very liberal bubble.

[prawn]

They're not giving you a very charitable reading. Easy enough to ignore. And their response doesn't stop you from putting yourself into that position - to provide for yourself, for a partner, for parents, children, etc. Just remember that money isn't the only way you provide, so maybe "well-earning" is what gave them the wrong impression.

[ravel-bar-foo]

> They're not giving you a very charitable reading.

Good point. I hadn't noticed before, but that has been a repeated problem with my brother. When he transitioned, my parent's difficulty changing pronouns was interpreted as a sign of their lack of support. Well no, they're just trying to break 25 years of conditioning ...

[prawn]

For sure. It's likely habit, not intent. Public reactions lag cultural changes, and this generates so much of the drama we see.

[majormajor]

Let's split out your "purpose" vs "role" statements more precisely.

You say the purpose of a man's life is meaning and the search for it. Do you use "man" to mean both men and women there, or are you simply ignoring women?

You say historically the role of being a provider provided (ahem) that meaning to men. You say the role of being a child-bearer and nurturer was forced on women and don't comment on what this meant re: purpose or meaning there.

So I have a lot of questions I don't see answered in your claims:

1) What is stopping men today from providing? I'm surrounded by male coworkers who (in)famously make more than many women, including most of their own spouses. Some of those partners are not employed, even. So clearly this is not a universal, but specific to a subset of men.

2) Are those men who are not doing "traditional providing" being provided for or are they simply solo? Being a bachelor is of course not new; living off your parents is also not new, but maybe more common today (?), being provided for by a woman would be relatively newer.

3) What is preventing men who are not providers from finding other meaning while being provided for?

4) If we want to go back in time, wouldn't the answer just be "man the fuck up and get over it"?

I'm pretty sure "modern liberalism" acknowledges that there is a problem (at the extreme level, incels who go on mass shootings are obviously seen as a problem), I think your diagnosis is just in a minority.

What data point supports your claims that society has broken men versus something like "the problem is that today many men have adjusted poorly to lessened dependence on them, and increased competition with them, and this is made worse by self-reinforcing downward-spiral bubbles like the "incel" wing of the internet." That the societal failing is actually "toxic masculinity," etc, which gives boys ridiculous expectations and standards to meet in order to feel successful. Not everyone can excel! Only 5% of people will be in the top 5% by definition! Pushing boys towards achievement and material success if doomed to failure.

That's not even getting into e.g. how suicide/opiod addiction/etc are hardly restricted to un-or-underemployed men who aren't in traditional gender roles!

Or how a major complaint of young women today in the dating world is "young men are fuckboys who have no interest in a long term thing" which is quite the opposite observed behavior from "trying to be a provider"...

[medo-bear]

> US-based cis-hetero white man here

?

[CodeGlitch]

Yes I agree - "cis" is a made up word invented to try and win arguments.

[AdrianB1]

Not 100% sure, but the fact that you specified cis and hetero is part of the problem. These 2 terms are a strong indication of some recent changes that are probably having a big influence in this problem.

[bckr]

> are probably having a big influence in this problem

Or maybe they're orthogonal. Or maybe the influence is going in the other direction. Or maybe it's a feedback loop (most likely). Or maybe they're both caused by overlapping upstream causes.

In any case, a return to a society that acknowledges and appreciates gender and sexual minorities is probably a positive. (A return, in that at least one ancient civilization had a place for these folks, namely the Sumerians).