That’s a bit of the point. Before this period in history young Guys tended to live like the picture… but worse. In general historical avenues like “join the military and go die at war or stand around somewhere doing mostly boring shit and talking about how you thought it would be different” or “impregnate the first woman you sleep with and see how that turns out” are still very much on the table as are: “go do difficult and often dangerous labor for often far too little money and hope to maybe start developing a skill…
Young men have three main things that are very hard in modern society that have changed greatly in a relatively short time.
1. Women now have more freedom and self sufficiency and aren’t essentially forced to take a man just to survive or have social value.
2. In much of the world we are somewhat more isolated because we don’t directly rely on each other as much. People are much freer to avoid others if they choose and we can more easily live out lives without relying on those immediately around us.
3. Men have more freedom from expectations than almost any period. While there are still various degrees of “traditionalist.”en aren’t expected to join the military or serve in government or start a family by 20 something to farm or carry a family business or trade as a general rule.
I believe that last one is the biggest source of problems for many people. Not being told what to do. Not being socially rewarded the same ways for doing those things.
Men today don’t wake up at 8 years old and go to work generally. They don’t know from their first memories that someday they will be a baker or soldier or follow dads footsteps on the whole. It’s rare to be conscripted at 16 or spend your life being prepared for the role you’ll be filling for the rest of it. Men are expected to make something of themselves. That’s the big expectation men face. The world still largely expects men to have ambition and gain power and wealth and competency and the means to go into the world and carve for themselves the life they want and to be able to protect it.
That’s a hard world to live in for a man that doesn’t have what it takes or doesn’t want to put in the effort. It’s hard because what you value may not be what the world values. You can have everything you want but still be seen as a failure because you don’t have everything other people want. That’s not a man thing- it’s all people. Some of us want less. Some of us want things that take less work to achieve. The big issues comes when one has everything they need to be happy except a partner- because partnership isn’t about you only, so you don’t just need a life that provides all you want, you need to have a life that a partner wants to share with you. The life that makes you happy might not be a life most partners want to share or it might not be one that is easily shared because it is all about you, or the partners that want that life might not be the partners you want.
But it is generally a great time and a historically easy time to be a man. Perhaps it isn’t a simple time- things were generally simpler in long gone days. The world isn’t a simple place and so man or not, the world can be hard on simple people who have trouble dealing with things that aren’t simple.
We have stories and diaries going back thousands of years and biology generally suggests… being young has its advantages but it has always sucked in certain ways. Many of the broad woes of teens and young adults today are echoed into antiquity by their peers. If you didn’t inherit or weren’t born to wealth being young usually means starting with little and having to build up.
If you don’t have a dream or a goal or a purpose you are working towards it is easy to feel lost. Since at large society doesn’t give to each man and woman a purpose in life like it once did, you’re more on your own. In generally no one is going to tell you what your life is going to look like and unlike the days that was the case and generally speaking people didn’t expect a farmers son to be anything but a farmer, you choose your destiny so people will likely judge you based on where you are because that reflects your choices, not some path you were forced down or everyone relied on you to take necessarily.
Because there are so many people and because information is so free and available and because resources are so available In developed countries- people will generally expect you to do things. The world will make memes about your dirty room/apartment with the TV on a crate and the one folding chair and the mattress on the floor not because you are poor or just starting out or cheap- but because you can go on Google and see hundreds of thousands of examples where for free or pennies, people made clever and useful or striking aesthetic furnishings often out of trash. Not because it’s a crime to be happy with your functional home- but because in all likelihood you didn’t take the time you saved on doing something more into some grand effort at self improvement or helping others but you were just being lazy.
Because your life and how you treat yourself and appear to value yourself are often seen as a reflection of how you treat others or your self respect. Because almost no one “wants” the pizza box coffee table and folding chair. If you were given the choice to make a wish and have your home look any way you wanted, to design and decorate or just copy some space you’d seen and liked- free of charge, no work, no cost- fee if anyone would go with empty pizza box stack and a folding chair. So it isn’t so much that one wants that, it’s that one doesn’t want to put in work to realize a vision of what they do want.
That problem is often very common in the lives of many young men who struggle.
At home alone and bored. “I can’t go out I’m broke!” Well.. you don’t need to spend money to do things. You can want things that are free. There are often also ways to change priorities and other ways to maybe free up some funds or find other ways. Any given day a person is sitting at home bored there is likely an event- a free event, a low cost event, a park, a hiking trail, some thing that they could go do. Many of us just won’t do these things if someone doesn’t serve as the catalyst. We might live our whole lives near an epic trail people dream of or a beautiful beach or the perfect bike route etc etc. and never touch it until or unless someone says “let’s go do this today..” and even then we might say no, not because we have a reason to say no but because no is easier than yes.
People do judge us for not having wealth or status. Some. Many perhaps. Often times though we let self inflicted fear of judgment stop us from facing reality. Maybe it isn’t super cool to go to the local festival and walk around and not even be able to order a drink, bring your own food or whatever. Maybe it’s just fine. But either way you are who you are. If you aren’t someone with the wealth or inclination to be at all the clubs buying drinks and such- be who you are right now. Do the things that person can do. Others might judge, but what, you’re going to sit around and wait until you are rich to do anything because you’re afraid to look cheap?
And you don’t have to hike or walk or go to events even. You can build and fix things. You can paint or write or draw or make sand castles or carve wood or garden or whatever else. You can build skills and learn things. Often- it’s a cliche but often- you are the biggest thing stopping yourself from enjoying life.
And that’s hard for men. That’s a fourth thing. Society is still in general very bias against men showing things perceived as vulnerability or weakness. About being too honest. About having feelings and expressing them. About asking for help of saying a load is too heavy. It’s hard because men often are some of the ones who want to cling to traditional expectations and values and ideas of masculinity but are also the ones who need to shape what it means to be a man and to have the courage to go outside the mold and be themselves despite the likely social consequences.
No one’s likely gonna live life for you modern man. If you don’t like what you have, you gotta figure out how to get what you want. That hasn’t changed for men in general throughout history.
1. Women now have more freedom and self sufficiency and aren’t essentially forced to take a man just to survive or have social value.
2. In much of the world we are somewhat more isolated because we don’t directly rely on each other as much. People are much freer to avoid others if they choose and we can more easily live out lives without relying on those immediately around us.
3. Men have more freedom from expectations than almost any period. While there are still various degrees of “traditionalist.”en aren’t expected to join the military or serve in government or start a family by 20 something to farm or carry a family business or trade as a general rule.
Men today don’t wake up at 8 years old and go to work generally. They don’t know from their first memories that someday they will be a baker or soldier or follow dads footsteps on the whole. It’s rare to be conscripted at 16 or spend your life being prepared for the role you’ll be filling for the rest of it. Men are expected to make something of themselves. That’s the big expectation men face. The world still largely expects men to have ambition and gain power and wealth and competency and the means to go into the world and carve for themselves the life they want and to be able to protect it.
We have stories and diaries going back thousands of years and biology generally suggests… being young has its advantages but it has always sucked in certain ways. Many of the broad woes of teens and young adults today are echoed into antiquity by their peers. If you didn’t inherit or weren’t born to wealth being young usually means starting with little and having to build up.
At home alone and bored. “I can’t go out I’m broke!” Well.. you don’t need to spend money to do things. You can want things that are free. There are often also ways to change priorities and other ways to maybe free up some funds or find other ways. Any given day a person is sitting at home bored there is likely an event- a free event, a low cost event, a park, a hiking trail, some thing that they could go do. Many of us just won’t do these things if someone doesn’t serve as the catalyst. We might live our whole lives near an epic trail people dream of or a beautiful beach or the perfect bike route etc etc. and never touch it until or unless someone says “let’s go do this today..” and even then we might say no, not because we have a reason to say no but because no is easier than yes.