Considerations

Michael J. Tot­ten watches this YouTube video and makes an impor­tant point:

I don’t know much about demog­ra­phy, but Mar­tin Kramer makes a strong case in just a few short min­utes for the idea that a sur­plus of military-aged males is a big part of the Mid­dle East’s prob­lem right now and that it will even­tu­ally cor­rect itself.

Men have an innate need to be a part of some­thing larger than them­selves. They want to belong. They want to lead some­thing. They want to take charge. They have all this pent-up energy to make a dif­fer­ence, and in too many parts of the world, they do not have an out­let to do so. They want to feel impor­tant. They want to be a provider, in some capacity.

This real­ity — or lack thereof — plays itself out in dif­fer­ent ways in dif­fer­ent parts of the world. In inner-city Amer­ica, young men join gangs when they have lit­tle edu­ca­tion and even fewer job prospects. In the Mid­dle East, they join extrem­ist groups that offer a pur­pose in a part the world that cur­rently has few job prospects. In sub­ur­ban Amer­ica, they live in “Guy­land” — they sleep around, prey on women, work dead-end jobs, and play video-games in which they can exert some con­trol a the vir­tual world that they have cre­ated because they have no con­trol over the real one. For exam­ple, sev­eral friends of mine have said that they love the “Civ­i­liza­tion” computer-game series because it allows them to be the “mas­ter of their domain” when they are cur­rently pow­er­less in the cur­rent economy.

The biggest question-mark in this con­text is China. The coun­try has mil­lions of men who will never have wives because of a population-imbalance result­ing from a one-child pol­icy that led to par­ents killing female chil­dren through abor­tion or other means because a male child was cul­tur­ally viewed as more impor­tant than a female one. What will these men do? Exert their inner rage against the gov­ern­ment? Join the mil­i­tary and fight an enemy, who­ever it may be?

I also won­der how this will affect West­ern soci­ety, which is see­ing men out­num­bered at uni­ver­si­ties over women as well as men begin­ning to earn less on aver­age than female pro­fes­sion­als. Men are increas­ingly angry and agi­tated, and I fear where it may lead. These feel­ing that men have will need an outlet.

Now Avail­able: E-Book down­load: “Let­ters from Israel: An Amer­i­can journalist’s adven­tures in the Holy Land.“

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4. Japan­ese Culture
5. Iran is Dying