The recent issue of City Journal has several excellent articles, including this follow-up to the New Girl Order, "Child-Man in the Promised Land." I'm generally unsympathetic to shirking twenty-somethings who lead meaningless lives of frivolity. But I also mostly live one of those myself, so that's put me in a rather difficult situation with regard to these kinds of indictments, especially when the most widely circulated solution to this moral failing is immediate marriage and childrearing.
I think this aim is emphasized more loudly than other possible paths to living a serious and meaningful life because it is in a certain sense the easiest to attain, but it's also one of the most difficult to sell to precisely those twenty-somethings who can afford to indulge in many years of uncommitted frivolity. Getting married and having children seems to be pretty much within reach for most people who set their minds to it, especially if the eligible cohorts of both sexes seek it simultaneously and with equal desire. And in some of Hymowitz's child-man situations, it's likely that marriage and family are best route to attaining not the just bourgie respectability that frowns on 35-year-old men who spend more time playing Halo than caring for their children, but some share of actual nobility that comes from parenthood. It seems unlikely, for example, that Knocked Up's Ben is going to come by eudaimonia as a a philosopher or statesman or even a skilled craftsman (don't knock the categories--they encompass more than you think). Fatherhood might be the best impetus he ever has to grow up.
But what about people who could potentially attain moral seriousness and nobility in other ways (or those who think they could)? They are the least tempted by marriage, and often the most able to avoid it financially and socially. One argument could be that if those people were truly destined to be the great men of our time, they would probably not be choosing to spend their post-college years clubbing and bonding with their Wii's (or clubbing and bonding with their Manolos, in the case of women) in the first place. According to this logic, the great men of any generation are not to be found on the slacker couch at age 24, so the problems Hymowitz describes only plague the substratum of affluent but unambitious or intellectually lazy twenty-somethings for whom marriage is the only way to anything higher. So if you're between the ages of 20 and 29, and you're not poring over illuminated manuscripts, working on a new theory of justice, or overhauling an urban school system, you should get married now, but those who are doing otherwise important and serious things can get the equivalent of a draft deferment.
But that still leaves some questionable cases on the slacker couch. For example, that segment of the young and frivolous who claim to be artists and justify their apparent frivolity as part of the creative process (or part of some tradition of avant garde libertinism and self-destructive behavior), and that other segment that claims to be doing, or thinking about doing, the serious things above, just more slowly. These people might occasionally display symptoms of man-childishness, but also engage in occasional instances of genuine adult accomplishment. Assuming the video games should probably be sidelined either way, should the borderline cases be pushed towards marriage or should Hymowitz be writing articles exhorting them to other forms of nobility? Do other forms of nobility even need public exhortation when fame is already such a universally desirable status? (We've already exiled the would-be infamous from our slacker couch and into marriage, so public distinctions between honorable and dishonorable fame are not as important here.) Or should we assume that even the borderline cases of possible alternative nobility are better off married and pushing strollers, which doesn't totally foreclose their chances of doing other great things in life (though it may interfere to varying degrees) and may even encourage quicker maturity and firmer commitment to such projects, but at least gets them off the slacker couch in case they were just having delusions of grandeur all along?
Monday, January 28, 2008
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16 comments:
You bring up eudaimonia more than anyone else I know. :) It makes me nostalgic for Greek class (can't believe I'm saying that).
If they justify their frivolity with reference to their artistic genius, they know they are being frivolous, and choosing the worser part--hence, unjustified. But the claim in any case comes from a claim that creative genius requires as compensation some sort of unpleasant behavior--this is nonsense on stilts. Rene Magritte is my favorite example of a sweet bourgeois, happily married, who combined creativity and bourgeois virtue to a T.
I suppose it's possible there are the occasional geniuses who truly and inseparably yoke antisocial behavior and creative fire. But as a rule, don't believe any one who claims to be one of this remarkable few.
The article was well-written, but pointless. Hymowitz makes up a category based on a stereotype drawn from pop culture and anecdotes, then generalizes this to an entire generation of males. Then she waxes hysterical. Society is cracking! Chaos runs in the streets! Irresponsible men! Maxim! Spike TV!
Never mind the global warfare, the capsizing economy. No, we readers should worry that young men are more irresponsible than their brethren were in the past.
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/hymowitz.htm
This article is a thinly disguised vessel for the author's archaic (and callous) views of marriage. Her "Mission" concept - that marriage exists solely for the perfection of children - insults the many fulfilled couples that do not have children. What about gay couples? What about people who love each other but don't want kids?
What about marriage for love and mutual support? Is that an inferior value to pumping out future capitalists?
Hana: D.Wray persuaded me that it is a better and fuller term than happiness.
Withywindle: Well, historically, it seems to have indulged (if not strictly required) a lot of drinking and smoking.
Andrew: Capitalism is only a couple centuries old. If Hymowitz is so tied to it, how can her views be archaic? There is also nothing particularly hysterical in her argument; chaos precisely does not run in the street because our subjects are inside hypnotically playing video games. It's bad for them because their lives are aimless, and it's bad for their communities b/c they add nothing to them. But it's not a violent and bloody revolution. Finally, it's not clear that it's callous to suggest that the aim of marriage is the perfection of children. It doesn't preclude people who don't want children from marrying and feeling fulfilled without them, but that end alone doesn't seem to require the institution of marriage, whereas perfecting children does seem to.
If global warfare and economic woe are really the only subjects worthy of everyone's attention, one may have cause to wonder why you are spending the wee hours of the morning commenting on random personal blogs about boys who play too many video games.
1) If all the 20-29-year-old brilliant people are not reproducing, while all the mediocre minds in that age range are having a baby a week, isn't that a problem? The children of the illuminated-manuscript scholars are likely to be intelligent and industrious, whether you're going by nature or nurture. Isn't a continual proportional reduction, generation after generation, of brilliant people sort of a bad thing for society? (For the record I'm wary of any general urge that women do or do not have babies, or that some women should and others should not do so. Hymowitz, however, doesn't seem so wary, so this criticism might apply)
2) I don't understand where Hymowitz gets that men and women have such different feelings about marriage. While it's socially expected that a man will make remarks about needing his freedom while a woman will secretly (or overtly) crave a ring from age 18 on, I'm not sure if there's such a discrepancy in terms of what's actually desired. Don't women break up with men all the time, for reasons other than 'he was afraid of commitment'? Isn't the question of who wants to make a relationship more serious and who does not far more a question of which party is more interested than of who's the boy and who's the girl?
Miss Self Important:
The reason I left a comment was because I took umbrage at Hymowitz's article. She aims to set out a social problem, then propose a remedy, but like many provocateurs she doesn't provide much hard evidence for the supposed problem, aside from a few census statistics. There could be many factors at work in the decline in marriage rates. Individuals choosing to delay marriage for the sake of their careers; fewer people being shotgunned into marriages of necessity; and changing social perceptions of marriage can all play roles. Instead of taking a nuanced, academic approach, Hymowitz lays all the blame on a culture of debauchery among young men.
Arguing from extremes - Tucker Max as "evidence of a male culture in profound decline" - leads to hysterical thinking. Is Pat Robertson evidence of a religious culture descending into bigotry? It is unfair to argue that one bigot represents the views of all religious people, or all young men in the case of Max.
Another problem with this piece is that a whole range of unrelated behaviors are being held up for condemnation. Young men are chastised for playing video games, reading Maxim or Max, being unemployed, being employed but unmarried, being a poor husband/boyfriend, and watching The Daily Show. All these behaviors are grouped under the rubric of the SYM, but they are by no means related to one another. Good fathers sometimes consume porn, many people are not unemployed by choice, and 50-60 year-olds like my parents watch The Daily Show. To say that someone who works hard at his job, but doesn't have a family and plays D&D or Halo, is not contributing to society strikes me as silly. Their work is their contribution to society.
So my objections are to the methodology and conclusions of this piece. I also find the author's view of marriage impersonal and cold; treating humans as instruments for social good rather than individuals valuable in and of themselves.
Finally, I'm surprised you attacked me for commenting on your blog ("wee hours," etc etc). If desired, I will certainly refrain from doing so in the future. I see no discontinuity between debunking the claim that something is a serious problem, and arguing that other subjects are more important. Also, I don't have the same media access that Ms. Hymowitz does; I am limited to forums like this one rather than writing articles for City Journal.
1) There is actually a terrible movie based on this premise. But no, even most smart people are not great minds, but that doesn't mean they're stupid or depraved. Certainly not that they should be discouraged from childbearing for lack of excellent enough genetics (if that were the case, I assume neither of us would ever have been born). Historically, many exceptionally brilliant people didn't have children (and those who did often had mediocre and disappointing ones), and yet we have somehow plodded along without their contributions to the gene pool.
2) Doesn't she suggest in the previous article, The New Girl Order, that women are actually now less inclined to marry than they have been historically, in part at least because the selection is or looks worse? I think it's probably difficult to determine empirically who wants marriage more, since all you'd have to go on is self-reported data, but anecdotally, I'd imagine "fear of commitment" is not a justification for breaking up one hears very much from men.
I suspect that many of the "perpetual adolescent" guys are engaging in this behavior largely because they aren't really interesed in their careers...that they chose the careers because of because of either (1)social pressure from parents/friends, or (2)a belief that there is no alternative way to make acceptable money, or (3)a belief that this career will make them more attractive to women. I'm fairly confident that many young lawyers, for example, are more influenced by these factors than by any burning desire to practice law.
The author seems to portray SYM's recreational activities much more negatively than she does of the recreational habits of SYF's.
To some extent this is fair. Women should be commended for exercising their newfound freedom and the ability to make choices their mothers could not. But the same is true of men today. That is, SYM are exercising choices today that were socially ostracized in the past. Maybe they should be commended too?
I am not very familiar with the SYF subculture but I have a feeling it is probably just as superfluous, aimless, self-involved as the SYM subculture she criticizes. But I could be wrong.
Andrew: It's true that there are many factors involved in delayed marriage, but I think she accepts that and instead examines what people are now doing with their unmarried leisure rather than how it came about. While she could perhaps benefit from more data on male behavior, I don't think that her cultural evidence is misleading--Nick Hornby and Judd Apatow are popular precisely because they reflect experiences with which their readers and viewers are familiar. The target demographic of Maxim and video games really is the 18-34 male crowd, and their success is some evidence that the target is being reached. That doesn't mean your parents don't watch the Daily Show, or 13-yo girls don't play Halo, just that, for the most part, many of these products are targeted at a different demographic (though the Daily Show strikes me as more broadly appealing). Maybe Spike TV is off--I don't know anyone who watches it, but the rest seems a fair description of a considerable segment of the post-college unmarried men I encounter, though of course not all. Here though I am curious about the probably significant number of twenty-somethings who are part frivolous, part serious, or at least not married to their inanity. I don't think she addresses that very well.
Working hard at a job is important, but I don't think it necessarily excuses or justifies hedonistic or idiotic leisure. Obviously, men, like everyone else, can spend their leisure as they wish, but that doesn't mean that every form of leisure is equally good for those who engage in it, or for anyone else. It doesn't strike me as particularly deranged or cruel to suggest that working all day and playing video games all evening is not an ideal life, even if you do your job well.
There is no social good absent of individuals whose lives are good because of it. Hymowitz thinks marriage is good for the individuals involved in it, particularly the poor, for whom marriage is a means of mobility, and for children, who after all, are individuals too, aren't they?
If you really want to redirect the nation's intellectual energies from questions about marriage or leisure towards war and economics, you would probably do well not to read articles like Hymowitz's or discuss them on blogs (which have no media access either). It only directs more attention to her subject and others like it. Even the time I spend responding to you is time devoted to thinking about men who play video games instead of Iraq and recession. You may be undermining your own cause here.
David: So if they liked their jobs more, they'd do better things with their free time?
Karim: I think she was pretty down on the women who are obsessed with shoes and pink drinks in her last article. Maybe she's less disappointed with women than she is with men b/c she assumes women inherently want to marry and settle down, and the reason they're not doing so as readily is in part because men are not living up to them as women become more educated and successful. But women would be partially to blame too for making it easier for men to stay single. As for the frivolous lifestyles, I'd say men and women are about even, though they may specialize in different aimless activities.
"So if they liked their jobs more, they'd do better things with their free time?"...that's my hypothesis of the moment, anyhow...the vision of spending all of one's future working hours doing something one dislike might well lead a person toward activities that make him less conscious.
It's not unreasonable, though it would require more evidence to establish. I do know people who'd agree with you based on their own lives though.
I don't think Ms. Hymowitz is encouraging child-men to get married: "For the problem with child-men is that they’re not very promising husbands and fathers." Contrary to conventional wisdom, I haven't seen marriage and children make men out of boys. I think women tend to believe they can change men, but the woman who marries a slacker will probably just become Mrs. Slacker. Some husbands really do have to be told to go to work, take a bath, and pay the bills.
While I agree that generally speaking, young, single men should be more ambitious, Ms. Hymowitz seems to employ a horrible double standard in her two articles ("New Girl Order" and "Child-man in the Promised Land"). She celebrates the "shop till you drop" freedom that young, single women have, yet lambasts SYM for playing video games. "Child-man"'s opening paragprahs assert that male adulthood requires marriage and children (even if the Child-man himself will likely be a poor husband). If a woman does not need to be a mother and wife in order to be a successful adult (who can and should be praised for her other achievements), why does a man need to be a father and a husband in order to be considered an adult?
In "Child-Man," she concludes that "men are 'more unfinished as people,'" and that "young men especially need a culture that can help them define worthy aspirations." Are the New Girl Order's worthy aspirations "packing leisure hours with shopping, traveling, and dining with friends"? Why is playing video games any worse than shopping for handbags? Is reading Maxim any more a waste of time than reading Cosmopolitan or In Style?
More importantly (and like Andrew pointed out above), both articles lack hard data about the demographics about young men and women's family choices and desires (e.g. get married, stay single, have children, want to get married and raise children, but can't find a suitable man, etc.) to back up the author's assertions. The closest the author has is the claim in "Child-man" that "legions of frustrated young women" are vainly looking for potential husbands.
Finally, for every Child-man hooking up (and thereby delaying commitment and marriage), there's a woman hooking up with him. Does she represent the New Girl Order, or is she, in fact, a Child-woman?
If I were a true slacker I would glance through your article and think:-Stupid! And move on. I am a bit of an energetic slacker though and felt I really had to put it down here since stupidity is the most provocative thing out there.
You need to chill
If I were a true slacker I would glance through your article and think:-Stupid! And move on. I am a bit of an energetic slacker though and felt I really had to put it down here since stupidity is the most provocative thing out there.
You need to chill
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