Snippet: "The most violent, unstable societies in the world all have one thing in common, too many young men with no prospects"
Snip·pet | ˈsnipit | noun a small piece or brief extract. Another rather long one.
Same interview as the previous snippet post. It’s from Scott Galloway on the Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast (Episode 646). It’s not new information for me. It’s the powerful way he makes his points that captured my attention. He does get in on the solution side of things in the interview, like the previous snippet where he talks about the importance of religious institutions. But the way he lays out the problems facing young males is powerful.
“There is no group in our society that has fallen further faster than young men. Three times more likely to be addicted. Four times more likely to kill themselves. Twelve times more likely to be incarcerated. Two and a half times as likely to be homeless. I mean, if you think about it, we have a homeless, opioid, suicide problem.
“Yeah, but what we really have is a male homeless, a male opiate, and a male suicide problem. And unfortunately, because of the advantage that men have had for so long, and it's been such a huge advantage, there really is a lack of empathy for them. And young men are just struggling.
“They're confused in the dating market. It's about to go two to one [graduating rate women to men] because men drop out at a greater rate. And it has real impact on our society because women mate horizontally and up economically, men [date] horizontally and down [economically].
“And so when the pool of viable mates in the eyes of women gets smaller and smaller, you have less household formation. And now you have women dating much older because they want to date an economically and emotionally viable male. And so what do you have?
“You have a young man who doesn't have the same economic prospects as Dad has. He has a series of algorithms and companies trying to segregate him from society to convince him that he doesn't need a relationship—he just needs porn, he doesn't need work, he just needs Coinbase and Robinhood, he doesn't need friends, he just needs Reddit and Discord.
“And of all the people I hear from on this topic, the ones I hear from the most and the most supportive are mothers.
“And it goes something like this, I have three kids, two daughters, one son. One daughter's a Penn, the other daughter's into PR in Chicago, and my son's in the basement vaping and playing video games. On any metric, young men are doing worse and have fallen further faster than anyone. And I wanna be clear, empathy is not a zero-sum game.
“…The most violent, unstable societies in the world all have one thing in common, too many young men with no prospects. And that's what's happening here in the US.
“…when these men go down this rabbit hole where they feel rejected by society, by the economy, by potential mating opportunities, they become really poor citizens. They're more prone to conspiracy theories. They start blaming immigrants. They start blaming women. They start sequestering from society and never really develop the skills to be successful professionally.
“There are three million working-age men under the age of, I think, 40 who've just given up on working. Half of millennial men aren't dating. They're not even trying because they find it so humiliating and hard.
“…The greatest innovation in history isn't the iPhone or the semiconductor; it's the middle class. And people think it's some sort of self-sustaining organism. It's not. It requires massive investment. The middle class was an accident in history. It's not a naturally occurring thing.
“In 1945, seven million men returned from war, they showed heroics, they were in uniforms, they were strong, they were attractive, and we gave them money. We gave them the GI Bill. We had the National Highway Act so they could have jobs.
“And quite frankly, we had a group of very attractive males that mated, created a ton of household wealth, created loving, secure households that brought civil rights into the discussion. We're confident enough to say it's time to share this prosperity with non-whites. It's time to bring women into the labor force and give them some of the same opportunities that men have enjoyed.
“…We created so much innovation and so much prosperity that we had the tax revenue to start having influence all over the world and protect our borders and spend more on the military than anyone else in the world. And we get it wrong all the time, but our hearts are in the right place.
“And this is still, I think, still the best place to be born, but less so. And, you know, there's never been, in America, there's never been a better time to be remarkable. It's never been easier to be a billionaire. I think it's never been harder to be a millionaire.”
That’s a lot there to think about, right? It’s not the entire picture. It’s his take. But it does help explain a lot.
Photo by Altin Ferreira on Unsplash
