Rhyd, this is brilliant and most welcome in my life. I'm a feminist, but also the mother of two sons (in their twenties). I find myself in many conversations with women who are righfully angry at the Patriarchy, but conflating it with actual men, most of whom are not wealthy and powerful, most of whom are suffering in the ways you describe. It's hard to defend men without seeming to be on the "wrong side."
Also, that statistic about the drop in testosterone is horrifying.
Right now, there is a gulf between American leftists and European leftists. The way you're writing and thinking about this issue is very much rooted in European leftism. That's not a problem, just a difference. Right now, in America, those of us on the left are fighting to keep our basic human rights, to restore basic human rights for our trans siblings and try to move the country forward against its own will. I agree with all of your principal statements, but that said, I can't even begin to think about what's going on in Spain right now. The American class struggle is currently bent like Atlas by the proto-fascistic government and its oligarch buddies here. We're hoping to make it through the next election without martial law and seized voting machines, and Gods help us if round two of the last Big Fight happens.
I was in the big protests in the late 90s and early 2000s against the WTO, I still have lung damage to prove it. I knew this was going to happen 25 years ago. American leftists squandered 20 years to get ahead of this, and the result is the world we're currently living in. We let ourselves get fractured by purity politics and forgetting why coalitions are important. Some of that was outside influence deliberately fracturing the left, some of that was inflicted by ourselves, tripping over our own dicks. I'm getting old and tired, and I don't know how to undo it, but I'm still showing up, and we need more to do that.
So the question is, how can you help us show up? How can you use your writing to help those of us you left behind? How we find coalitions and be more flexible in our praxis to get things done instead of holding out for the perfect solution? I can tell you from too many years of experience the perfect solution doesn't exist. I feel like you're lecturing us about our shortcomings when what we need is constructive use of platforms to reminds the American left what actually fucking works. Bridge building. Coalition. Accepting that no one's praxis is perfect. That we have to work together to defeat the growing fascism under our nose. That this class struggle we're in will inevitably lead to capitalism continuing to choke under its own weight. That globalism is the natural result of capitalism, and that we can have global trade without the consequences you write so eloquently about.
Yes this is all so true but am so glad that in the face of it all you come back to the acts of kindness, the helping hand which can change things one person at a time . This comforts me so thank you .
Thank you Rhyd for this perspective and for the humanity from which you write. These are potent times and your willingness to speak your truth and walk your talk support the collective to shift. May we all be courageous to act and speak from our own truths.🙏
“The material conditions into which I was born and in which I lived up through adolescence should have made me surplus. Only my own drive, my own will to live, my own desire for something better kept me from such a fate.” Same. And a lot of grace. And good fortune. White skin didn’t hurt in my case. But the imprint is still there and being a Covid dissident ripped the bandaid right off. Likening this phenomenon to industrial ag is ghoulishly and jarringly on point.
I'd also distinguish between the ascetic tradition of Egyptian and Irish monasticism, as well as those found in Sufism and Buddhism, from the highly hierarchical, centralised and institutionalised (and proto-Capitalist) Cistercian rule that spread and highly transformed all of Europe, leading to personalities such as Bernard de Clairvaux, founder of the Knights Templar. Precisely the Cistercian and Benedictine orders, among other Christian reforms and movements, originated as a way to control and bring back to ecclesiastical rule the peripheral regions where these more autonomous and localised forms of monasticism (and cult, in general) had take root and started to deviate, when not entirely independent from the latest developments in normative Christianity (since many of them stemmed from at least the Council of Nicaea, but had barely been supervised by Rome or Constantinople since). Ironically, major heretical movements started to sprout and spread during the following 10th to 13th centuries.
Most of the men went home after a few days. Spain deserves great credit for standing up to Washington over Trump's disasterous Iran war. Indeed using Morocco as diplomatic leverage is a sign of strategic weakness rather than strength.
Maybe the Dead Kennedy's should rerelease their song "Kill the poor" to "kill the men" - because likely war devastating another generation is likely how this will end. "Efficiency and progress are ours once more now that we have the neutron bomb. No sense for use at war, but perfect sense at home."
Beautifully written reflections! I think the deterioration, and sometimes even inadequacy, of cultural beliefs make it even harder to handle surplus males whether native-born or not. I remember not that long ago overhearing an asylum seeker earnestly complaining in the gym (in central London) that he didn't know what the local culture was or how to fit into it. Without a stable and productive centre of meaning and gravity for him and other men we risk having them spin off aimlessly or be attracted to more destructive or nihilistic ideologies and beliefs.
I think the shock for the elite chickens/males will be harder if they're culled (AI related or due to general economic downturns) as I imagine it's harder to lose status if you've not been poor or low status before. From them could come the craziest denials of reality or strangest forms of resistance to capitalism if left undirected.
I have a chick who has turned out to be a rooster — from poppy to papi. Everyone suggests I get rid of him or even kill him, without even knowing him. A creature I have raised by hand, from when he was a tiny puff. I would sooner cut off my own hand than harm my darling bird! Anyway it’s not the same, I do realize — but it is somehow a small echo.
Thank you Rhyd. I gave birth to a boy about seven months ago, and this article hits home even more than it would've before. Shortly after my son was born, I also started reading John Michael Greer because you mentioned a book of his that your company is publishing, and I've since read about twenty five of his books. So thank you for that, it apparently was time to really internalize the ramifications of peak oil, and to start formally practicing a little magic! It all makes me think about how important it is that 1) I honor what it means to be a boy and a man when I raise my son, instead of what our modern culture often does, in my experience, which is shame boys and men for not being more like girls and women; and 2) I give him lots of opportunities to build a wide variety of skillsets and an expansive and confident inner world, so he hopefully he can find his place in our declining world.
I used to live in California, and my social groups were drenched in wokeism...it took me a while to clear myself of all of the self-censoring and -shaming voices in my head that came from that environment. Among other things, I got really sick of the incredibly simplified and often blatantly untrue caricatures of "male privilege", when all around me I saw men who were lost and hurting and full of shame for being men. I knew more than one man who decided he was actually a trans woman to escape that socially-induced shame (which only made them hate themselves and their male bodies more).
When I was in prenatal yoga last year, an expecting mother in the class said that she found out the gender of her baby, and learned that she was having "...a boy." The tone with which she said it gave me a sinking feeling of dread, feeling all the ways this beautiful and innocent baby boy was about to be projected on by his fucked up mother. She went on to say that of course, she wants him to be himself, but also, maybe he needs to understand history, and where his instincts might be coming from, and so on. I can't explain how hard that was to hear as a pregnant expecting mother. Pregnancy and birth changed my biology to make any threat to a baby feel a magnified way beyond how it felt before. I didn't even know that I too had a son growing inside me, although I suspected as much (both my husband and I felt a clear masculine energy since my first trimester). I've read those insane articles in the New York Times and other corporate media by women who are worried how to stop their two-year-old boys from becoming predators, but it hit so much harder hearing that insanity in person. This trendy hatred of men needs to stop.
Ultimately, I'm grateful that you're writing about any aspect of this incredibly important topic. Thank you.
We are living through a global financial reset. When you understand incentives everything gets clear. Follow the money not the headlines.
Rhyd, this is brilliant and most welcome in my life. I'm a feminist, but also the mother of two sons (in their twenties). I find myself in many conversations with women who are righfully angry at the Patriarchy, but conflating it with actual men, most of whom are not wealthy and powerful, most of whom are suffering in the ways you describe. It's hard to defend men without seeming to be on the "wrong side."
Also, that statistic about the drop in testosterone is horrifying.
That's a brilliant and nuanced piece Rhyd, thank you.
Right now, there is a gulf between American leftists and European leftists. The way you're writing and thinking about this issue is very much rooted in European leftism. That's not a problem, just a difference. Right now, in America, those of us on the left are fighting to keep our basic human rights, to restore basic human rights for our trans siblings and try to move the country forward against its own will. I agree with all of your principal statements, but that said, I can't even begin to think about what's going on in Spain right now. The American class struggle is currently bent like Atlas by the proto-fascistic government and its oligarch buddies here. We're hoping to make it through the next election without martial law and seized voting machines, and Gods help us if round two of the last Big Fight happens.
I was in the big protests in the late 90s and early 2000s against the WTO, I still have lung damage to prove it. I knew this was going to happen 25 years ago. American leftists squandered 20 years to get ahead of this, and the result is the world we're currently living in. We let ourselves get fractured by purity politics and forgetting why coalitions are important. Some of that was outside influence deliberately fracturing the left, some of that was inflicted by ourselves, tripping over our own dicks. I'm getting old and tired, and I don't know how to undo it, but I'm still showing up, and we need more to do that.
So the question is, how can you help us show up? How can you use your writing to help those of us you left behind? How we find coalitions and be more flexible in our praxis to get things done instead of holding out for the perfect solution? I can tell you from too many years of experience the perfect solution doesn't exist. I feel like you're lecturing us about our shortcomings when what we need is constructive use of platforms to reminds the American left what actually fucking works. Bridge building. Coalition. Accepting that no one's praxis is perfect. That we have to work together to defeat the growing fascism under our nose. That this class struggle we're in will inevitably lead to capitalism continuing to choke under its own weight. That globalism is the natural result of capitalism, and that we can have global trade without the consequences you write so eloquently about.
Yes this is all so true but am so glad that in the face of it all you come back to the acts of kindness, the helping hand which can change things one person at a time . This comforts me so thank you .
Thank you Rhyd for this perspective and for the humanity from which you write. These are potent times and your willingness to speak your truth and walk your talk support the collective to shift. May we all be courageous to act and speak from our own truths.🙏
“The material conditions into which I was born and in which I lived up through adolescence should have made me surplus. Only my own drive, my own will to live, my own desire for something better kept me from such a fate.” Same. And a lot of grace. And good fortune. White skin didn’t hurt in my case. But the imprint is still there and being a Covid dissident ripped the bandaid right off. Likening this phenomenon to industrial ag is ghoulishly and jarringly on point.
There is one approach that was used to deal with surplus men in the past. Monasteries.
Didn’t that lead to the reconquista.
More than any other factor?
I'd also distinguish between the ascetic tradition of Egyptian and Irish monasticism, as well as those found in Sufism and Buddhism, from the highly hierarchical, centralised and institutionalised (and proto-Capitalist) Cistercian rule that spread and highly transformed all of Europe, leading to personalities such as Bernard de Clairvaux, founder of the Knights Templar. Precisely the Cistercian and Benedictine orders, among other Christian reforms and movements, originated as a way to control and bring back to ecclesiastical rule the peripheral regions where these more autonomous and localised forms of monasticism (and cult, in general) had take root and started to deviate, when not entirely independent from the latest developments in normative Christianity (since many of them stemmed from at least the Council of Nicaea, but had barely been supervised by Rome or Constantinople since). Ironically, major heretical movements started to sprout and spread during the following 10th to 13th centuries.
If I get it right, they got their soldiers from the orders who were mostly defenders of Christendom.
Of course I can be wrong, and it’s always good to interact with someone who’s fluent in the mysterious monks who so influenced our past foundations.
Most of the men went home after a few days. Spain deserves great credit for standing up to Washington over Trump's disasterous Iran war. Indeed using Morocco as diplomatic leverage is a sign of strategic weakness rather than strength.
Maybe the Dead Kennedy's should rerelease their song "Kill the poor" to "kill the men" - because likely war devastating another generation is likely how this will end. "Efficiency and progress are ours once more now that we have the neutron bomb. No sense for use at war, but perfect sense at home."
Beautifully written reflections! I think the deterioration, and sometimes even inadequacy, of cultural beliefs make it even harder to handle surplus males whether native-born or not. I remember not that long ago overhearing an asylum seeker earnestly complaining in the gym (in central London) that he didn't know what the local culture was or how to fit into it. Without a stable and productive centre of meaning and gravity for him and other men we risk having them spin off aimlessly or be attracted to more destructive or nihilistic ideologies and beliefs.
I think the shock for the elite chickens/males will be harder if they're culled (AI related or due to general economic downturns) as I imagine it's harder to lose status if you've not been poor or low status before. From them could come the craziest denials of reality or strangest forms of resistance to capitalism if left undirected.
I have a chick who has turned out to be a rooster — from poppy to papi. Everyone suggests I get rid of him or even kill him, without even knowing him. A creature I have raised by hand, from when he was a tiny puff. I would sooner cut off my own hand than harm my darling bird! Anyway it’s not the same, I do realize — but it is somehow a small echo.
This is most sensible essay I've read on immigration in a long time. Thank you 🙏
Thank you Rhyd. I gave birth to a boy about seven months ago, and this article hits home even more than it would've before. Shortly after my son was born, I also started reading John Michael Greer because you mentioned a book of his that your company is publishing, and I've since read about twenty five of his books. So thank you for that, it apparently was time to really internalize the ramifications of peak oil, and to start formally practicing a little magic! It all makes me think about how important it is that 1) I honor what it means to be a boy and a man when I raise my son, instead of what our modern culture often does, in my experience, which is shame boys and men for not being more like girls and women; and 2) I give him lots of opportunities to build a wide variety of skillsets and an expansive and confident inner world, so he hopefully he can find his place in our declining world.
I used to live in California, and my social groups were drenched in wokeism...it took me a while to clear myself of all of the self-censoring and -shaming voices in my head that came from that environment. Among other things, I got really sick of the incredibly simplified and often blatantly untrue caricatures of "male privilege", when all around me I saw men who were lost and hurting and full of shame for being men. I knew more than one man who decided he was actually a trans woman to escape that socially-induced shame (which only made them hate themselves and their male bodies more).
When I was in prenatal yoga last year, an expecting mother in the class said that she found out the gender of her baby, and learned that she was having "...a boy." The tone with which she said it gave me a sinking feeling of dread, feeling all the ways this beautiful and innocent baby boy was about to be projected on by his fucked up mother. She went on to say that of course, she wants him to be himself, but also, maybe he needs to understand history, and where his instincts might be coming from, and so on. I can't explain how hard that was to hear as a pregnant expecting mother. Pregnancy and birth changed my biology to make any threat to a baby feel a magnified way beyond how it felt before. I didn't even know that I too had a son growing inside me, although I suspected as much (both my husband and I felt a clear masculine energy since my first trimester). I've read those insane articles in the New York Times and other corporate media by women who are worried how to stop their two-year-old boys from becoming predators, but it hit so much harder hearing that insanity in person. This trendy hatred of men needs to stop.
Ultimately, I'm grateful that you're writing about any aspect of this incredibly important topic. Thank you.