Well, I’m back from the travels detailed in my “decline of civilization” post.
The KIA appears to be its old self again. Though things didn’t go easy (and it took my local insurance agent helping me get the boss’s boss on the case), the claims people finally talked turkey with the KIA service center. Once that happened, everything came together nicely.
I even had a great time on the part of my trip not dedicated to tweaker thieves, destruction, and insurance claims. Even on the bad days, I — as usual — got by with a little, or a lot, of help from my friends.
Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to produce the final narrative installment of my blogseries “In Praise of Men.”
Soon now. I promise.
Meanwhile, I’ll share with you a selection of links I’ve collected while researching that project. I intended to do this all along, but planned it as the ultimate, not the penultimate, feature in the series. Oh well, who expects rational order in this world of chaos?
So, in no particular order or topic grouping, here are interesting readings on the subject of what our crazy culture and physical environment are doing to boys, men, and the future of a healthy human race. Also a few more positive articles.
Some of these I’ve linked earlier in the series; most not. More than a little help from my friends here, also, including C^2, S, j, and the blog Commentariat.
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Most recent: “America Has a Boy Crisis.” This link also has the virtue of being from a new online ‘zine directed toward hip and fashionable young women — but with a traditionalist slant.
Even oblivious Newsweek noticed a few years ago a baffling crisis affecting male fertility
Falling male fertility rates are a real crisis, not your Basic Standard Media-Generated Crisis. Recently, it became somewhat less baffling. Maybe.
Scott Greenfield: Sex and Salience. The diverse priorities of men and women.
In Praise of Masculine Love. On the importance of good — and sometimes tough — men in the lives of boys.
An “oldie” from the nostalgic good old days (well, relatively speaking) when Trump was president: His “dragon energy” inspired strong black men. A liberal perspective.
Two from Goodmenproject.com:
Six Kinds of Compliments Men Would Like to Hear More Often.
Seven Things Men Want in a Relationship.
Don’t believe the breezy claims of activists. What medical gender transition really looks like, By a transgender man.
A young liberal woman describes her fling with a Proud Boy.
Rod Dreher on the cultural shift toward no family, no children, and no future. (Even I — hardly a big family person — think this thoughtful piece contains many important points. Dreher is like that; I disagree with him frequently and admire his thinking tremendously.)
The boy who became a WWII veteran at age 13.
Manly attributes still matter on the battlefield.
Mark Tapson: The War on Manly Men.
Yeah, it’s from Penthouse (albeit the Australian edition) so it has its biases. But it makes its point strongly: men are getting a raw deal. Great illustration, too.
Two on the great pioneer of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft:
the feminist (and very libertarian) views of Mary Wollstonecraft, “I do not wish [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.”
More Wollstonecraft quotes.
Speaking of biases, even the wokesters of Bored Panda see men’s struggles, though their prescription for the problem might be 180 degrees from mine.
Finally, a very oldie, but very goodie from Kate Jimenez of the California Homeschool Network: The Trouble with Boys. This is from my very first website, Wolfe’s Lodge, which Bill St. Clair has preserved for lo these many years. It was written just after the Columbine High School massacre, and seems as apt as ever in this month when deadly young men are in the news again.
Wow. Dang near a score of links.
So there goes Saturday.
Great links!
May I add one more;
Here’s another link to a true story of heroic boys who formed their own resistance unit in WWII:
https://www.skillsetmag.com/2021/03/25/churchill-club/
CW NOTE: Link edited for privacy
You may definitely add more links — in fact I’m hoping you will!
Good one, Noah Body. What an great, inspiring story I’ll bet most of us have never heard about. I edited your link, removing everything from the question mark on, because the rest was just tracking info of one sort or another. Please let me know if I got the edit wrong and changed anything vital.)
Adorable one, Comrade X.
And larryarnold, ah feeeeel yr pain (or you anticipation of going down yet another Internet rabbit hold).
May I humbly add another link. Well, okay, it’s self-promotion, but on-topic.
“This is the story of the time I went camping because my wife was pregnant.”
http://www.talonsite.com/fstory.htm
Fiction, but based on truth. The trip happened, and the Father next door did show up. Briefly.
Great illustration, too.
Claire, Claire, Claire. That comment, when applied to Penthouse, raises a whole different expectation from me than, apparently, it does for you. š
Thanks for the edit, Claire. I find it amazing the Nazis didn’t kill those boys, the way they killed other resistance groups, like the White Rose students.
And, in thinking about it, although they fought a brutal regime, in some ways it was easier to resist and sabotage back then than now. Because now there are cameras. Everywhere. Not just stationary cameras, but in the cell phones just about everyone carries And a population that has been conditioned to snitch: “If you see something, say something.” And technology, like facial recognition and license plate readers. Orwell’s 1984 has come to life: Big Brother is watching us.
LOL, truly my error, larryarnold. I’m sorry I gave you and and others of the male persuasion any … um, outsized impressions of what that illustration might be.
I wondered about that, too, Noah Body, why they didn’t condemn those boys to death. I’m guessing it might be because the White Rose was in Germany itself and also because they came up at a time when Germany’s war effort was in peril. In Denmark, and with Germany flush from rapid victories, maybe the pressures were different.
I also wondered about the claim that the boys sawed their way out of prison, then kept coming back into prison while conducting their sabotage operations at night. If true … wow. (I’ve requested the book from the library to learn more.)
And of course you’re sadly right about our omnipresent surveillance and how it cripples resistance.
On the other hand, good news about human fertility. This planet is way too populated with people. Dropping fertility rates is a good way to deal with it – as opposed to wars and famine.
Chris — To the extent that decreasing childbirth is a matter of choice, I’m inclined to agree with you.
To the extent that it’s a matter of testosterone and sperm counts being drastically diminished by mysterious forces — environmental, psychological, nutritional, health-related, and who knows what else — it’s a sign that the human race is weakening and losing its vigor. And since there are many other signs of such weakening (e.g. children and young adults increasingly getting diseases of middle- or old-age), it’s not good at all.
If trends like these continue, you won’t end up with a happily less-populated world filled with healthy humans living in harmony with their environment. You’ll end up with societies (and perhaps a species) not capable of sustaining themselves.
Yes Claire, if you take the trend and “linearly extrapolate” it, the human population would go to zero. In fact any linear extrapolation of any trend either goes to zero or to infinity given enough time. But real life trends have feedback. In the case of significantly declining human population, it is likely the decreased stress and lesser competition for resources due to smaller population would lead to improved health and increased fertility. I think what we are seeing now is just mankind reaping what they have sowed in the last century.
Chris — Point taken on the reality that trends don’t continue in a linear fashion. OTOH, my point is that we have a problem right now of men’s physical and psychological health, and part of its manifestation is shocking and sudden reductions in testosterone and sperm counts.
This leaves humanity not with the either/or choice you expressed — depopulation via war or depopulation by a reduction in childbirth — but with a serious health problem that few people are paying attention to (and some who do know about it might even be saying, “Oh good.”). Will the problem be solved? Probably, if we’re not to end up as Eloi. Will it be solved by depopulation? Not necessarily, as we’ve already seen that greater access to resources (as in our society of plenty) doesn’t automatically result in good health. I agree with you, though, that we are reaping what mankind has sowed in recent times.
Someone once said;
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf”
For some reason I suspect whoever said this wasn’t speaking about guys with low testosterone and sperm counts.
I was at one time one of those men, now on the cusp of social security I’m still far ahead of all to many youth of today.