Considerations

JERUSALEM — The Atlantic Monthly looks at the polit­i­cal and cul­tural con­se­quences of the reces­sion that per­vades the West­ern world, and here is an enlight­en­ing excerpt on how men with­out work need finan­cial help and finan­cial advice:

In her clas­sic soci­ol­ogy of the Depres­sion, The Unem­ployed Man and His Fam­ily, Mirra Komarovsky vividly describes how job­less­ness strained—and in many cases fun­da­men­tally altered—family rela­tion­ships in the 1930s. Dur­ing 1935 and 1936, Komarovsky and her research team inter­viewed the mem­bers of 59 white middle-class fam­i­lies in which the hus­band and father had been out of work for at least a year. Her research revealed deep psy­cho­log­i­cal wounds. “It is awful to be old and dis­carded at 40,” said one father. “A man is not a man with­out work.” Another said plainly, “Dur­ing the depres­sion I lost some­thing. Maybe you call it self-respect, but in los­ing it I also lost the respect of my chil­dren, and I am afraid I am los­ing my wife.” Noted one woman of her hus­band, “I still love him, but he doesn’t seem as ‘big’ a man…”

The weight of this [cur­rent] reces­sion has fallen most heav­ily upon men, who’ve suf­fered roughly three-quarters of the 8 mil­lion job losses since the begin­ning of 2008. Male-dominated indus­tries (con­struc­tion, finance, man­u­fac­tur­ing) have been par­tic­u­larly hard-hit, while sec­tors that dis­pro­por­tion­ately employ women (edu­ca­tion, health care) have held up rel­a­tively well. In Novem­ber, 19.4 per­cent of all men in their prime work­ing years, 25 to 54, did not have jobs, the high­est fig­ure since the Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics began track­ing the sta­tis­tic in 1948. At the time of this writ­ing, it looks pos­si­ble that within the next few months, for the first time in U.S. his­tory, women will hold a major­ity of the country’s jobs…

Com­mu­ni­ties with large num­bers of unmar­ried, job­less men take on an unsa­vory char­ac­ter over time. Edin’s research team spent part of last sum­mer in North­east and South Philadel­phia, con­duct­ing in-depth inter­views with res­i­dents. She says she was struck by what she saw: “These white working-class communities—once strong, vibrant, proud com­mu­ni­ties, often orga­nized around big industries—they’re just in ter­ri­ble straits. The social fab­ric of these places is just shred­ding. There’s lit­tle engage­ment in reli­gious life, and the old civic orga­ni­za­tions that peo­ple used to belong to are fad­ing. Drugs have rav­aged these com­mu­ni­ties, along with divorce, alco­holism, vio­lence. I hang around these neigh­bor­hoods in South Philadel­phia, and I think, ‘This is begin­ning to look like the black inner-city neigh­bor­hoods we’ve been study­ing for the past 20 years.’ When young men can’t tran­si­tion into formal-sector jobs, they sell drugs and drink and do drugs. And it wreaks havoc on fam­ily life. They think, ‘Hey, if I’m 23 and I don’t have a baby, there’s some­thing wrong with me.’ They’re fol­low­ing the pat­tern of their fathers in terms of the tim­ing of child­bear­ing, but they don’t have the jobs to sup­port it. So their fam­i­lies are falling apart—and often spectacularly.”

Why are action movies — from World War II epics to “Die Hard” to “Glad­i­a­tor” — so pop­u­lar among men? I was watch­ing “Troy” on Israeli cable the other day, and I real­ized the answer: Every man wants to be a hero. It is ingrained in our con­scious­ness by both nature and nur­ture. (And women secretly — or not-so-secretly — need a hero as well.)

Now, of course, few men will storm the Nor­mandy beaches, bat­tle ter­ror­ists in a sky­scraper, kill a dic­ta­to­r­ial emperor in front of a cheer­ing crowd, or wage an epic bat­tle to take an impen­e­tra­ble fortress. So men have always done what they can: they work hard at their jobs to pro­vide food, cloth­ing, and shel­ter for their fam­i­lies. This was the way that they could be a hero — even if they would be some­what unappreciated.

When fem­i­nists cheer the fact that women are becom­ing more suc­cess­ful in uni­ver­si­ties and the work­place, they are look­ing at the issue in term of ratio­nal util­ity. After all, as long as some­one is putting food on the table, who cares whether it is the hus­band or wife? This mind­set, how­ever, ignores the fact that eco­nomic mar­kets and gen­eral soci­ety are gov­erned by irra­tional impulses just as much as ratio­nal ones. And both are valid — or, at least, realistic.

When fem­i­nists go into the work­place, their moti­va­tions are var­ied. They want to make a polit­i­cal state­ment; they want to ful­fill their per­sonal dreams; and so on. But when men work, their moti­va­tion is to ful­fill an age-old imper­a­tive that has existed for tens of thou­sands of years — to pro­vide for their loved ones and gain respect as a provider. They want to be a hero. It’s an entirely-different mindset.

And what hap­pens when this exist­ing order dis­ap­pears? Chaos reigns. In the Mid­dle East, unem­ployed men with no prospects turn to ter­ror­ism to “be a hero,” fight for their per­ceived greater good, make a dif­fer­ence, and gain respect in their com­mu­ni­ties. In urban, minor­ity com­mu­ni­ties in the United States, young men with no edu­ca­tion and even fewer job-prospects join gangs because it gives them mean­ing, a sense of com­mu­nity, and a mea­sure of respect that they would oth­er­wise lack.

In middle-class Amer­ica, young men are join­ing “Guy­land” by, in part, spend­ing too much time play­ing video games like “Dun­geons & Drag­ons,” “World of War­craft,” “Civ­i­liza­tion,” and sports games. (Much to the cha­grin of women who do not under­stand the obses­sion.) Men have innate lev­els of testos­terone that need to have an outlet.

Look at it like this: In the cur­rent economic-and-feminist cli­mate, men have no out­let through which they can feel like a hero. So, what can they do? They will escape to a fan­tasy world in which they can be a pow­er­ful war­rior, a leader of a coun­try, or Curt Shilling lead­ing the Red Sox to their first World Series in eighty-six years. It gives them the feel­ing of being a hero — just like watch­ing John McClane in “Die Hard” — as well as the feel­ing of being in con­trol of some­thing when the entire world seems to have lost its way.

If West­ern soci­ety con­tin­ues down the cur­rent path, it will only be harm­ful to soci­ety. As the Atlantic arti­cle notes, the cur­rent par­a­digm of a soci­ety in which women have all the respon­si­bil­ity and men do not — inner-city Amer­ica — only leads to soci­etal breakdown.

Else­where: Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid agrees. Hat tip: Vox Day.

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