Demented Dreams (of guys in trouble)

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That either-or can be disputed; the transformed social landscape that men face cannot. When Beauvoir was writing her manifesto on the plight of women, she noted that “the most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women,” and that “a man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male.” Nowadays, there are many such books. Self-doubt has broken through the supposed imperviousness of masculine self-belief. Reeves’s book is only the latest; it is also one of the most cogent. That’s not just a consequence of his compelling procession of statistical findings. It’s also due to the originality of his crisply expressed thesis: that men’s struggles are not reducible to a masculinity that is too toxic or too enfeebled but, rather, reflect the workings of the same structural forces that apply to every other group. It would help if we had a firm grasp on why men are withdrawing from work. Many economists have theories. Eberstadt believes that “something like infantilization besets some un-working men.” He notes the availability of disability-insurance programs (roughly a third of nonworking men reported some kind of disability in 2016) and the over-all expansion of the social safety net after the nineteen-sixties. In 2017, the late Alan Krueger, who chaired President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, calculated that nearly half of all nonworking men were taking pain medication on a daily basis, and argued that the increased prescribing of opioids could explain a lot of the decline in the male labor force. Erik Hurst, an economist at the University of Chicago, thinks that the rapid improvement in video-game quality could account for much of the especially deep drop in work among younger men. Anyone who has recently played (or momentarily lost a loved one to) Elden Ring or God of War Ragnarök can grasp the immersive spell that video games cast. But, in the end, most economists admit that they cannot settle on an exact etiology for the problem of nonworking men. The former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president Larry Summers, who is not known for his intellectual humility, recently surmised that “the answers here lie more in the realm of sociology than they do in economics.” Reeves, too, thinks that we can’t explain the economic decline of men without looking at non-economic factors: “It is not that men have fewer opportunities. It is that they are not taking them.” The Bend in the River" with Dirk Benedict, George Peppard, Dwight Schultz, Mr. T and Barry Van Dyke Bruce Campbell, Julius Carry and Jeff Phillips in The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. "High Treason"

What he describes are trends that have evolved over decades across developed countries, and are most obviously visible in education. In Britain, generation X went off to university in a world where women had only just been grudgingly permitted to apply to some Oxbridge colleges. Now their sons and daughters inhabit a world where almost half of girls consider going to university while fewer than a third of boys do. A similar split in Sweden prompted a flurry of concern about the so-called “pojkkrisen” (boy crisis), while in the US, some college deans of admission have admitted secretly discriminating in favour of boys’ applications to stop the gender gap widening too much.

Dulé Hill, James Roday Rodriguez, John Cena and Sean Rogerson in Psych "You Can't Handle This Episode" Dulé Hill, James Roday Rodriguez and Steven Weber in Psych "The Greatest Adventure in the History of Basic Cable" The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. "Bounty Hunters Convention" with Bruce Campbell and Julius Carry

Perry King, Joe Penny, Thom Bray, Russell Todd and Cesar Romero in Riptide "The Pirate and the Princess" Gerald McRaney and Jameson Parker in Simon and Simon "Caught Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea"

Reeves’ suggested progressive routes through the minefield range from encouraging boys to consider traditionally female (and relatively automation-proof) careers in health and education, just as girls have been steered towards science or engineering, to the rather wilder idea of letting boys start school later than girls. But whether or not these are the right answers, he’s asking the right questions. Progressives need to talk about the trouble with men, or the solutions that bubble to the surface may be anything but benign. Simon and Simon "Caught Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" with Gerald McRaney and Jameson Parker

on me; others push the right buttons for me, or I especially like the actors in them. Everyone's list is different, but Psych "You Can't Handle This Episode" with Dulé Hill, James Roday Rodriguez, John Cena and Sean Rogerson Clayton Moore, Jay Silverheels, Rufe Davis, Don Diamond and William F. Leicester in The Lone Ranger The Man from U.N.C.L.E. "The My Friend, the Gorilla Affair" with David McCallum, Robert Vaughn and othersChristopher George, Gary Raymond, Lawrence Casey and Justin Tarr in The Rat Patrol "The Holy War Raid" David McCallum, Robert Vaughn and others in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. "The My Friend, the Gorilla Affair"